100-Word Fiction: ‘Curfews’

What are we
If the oncoming silences
Sweep in early to
Mute us even now?
And what if the stories we float
Are jetsam for the tide?
What prospect is a journey
When we cannot believe it ourselves?
And where do we get
If all the yards of days
Are dismantled by dusk
To bridge the way back home?

[The sounding of the curlew curfew / (This, always the sign) / Finds the search for meaning ended / Now friends only nod in hasty greetings / Fleet and hassled, as lovers depart / Less longingly, more slingshot / Into the frozen yawning dawn / Of our numbed tomorrows.]

100-Word Fiction: ‘Fare Thee Well Pete Seeger’

How to succeed as a musician? You play well but are modest about your talent. You sing strong without the need for any tuneless holler. You write about big things with words all folks can understand. You don’t avoid conclusions though you know some matters are contradictory at times. You respect what was, come to terms with what is and hold hope for the future. You love people even though sometimes they don’t seem worth much loving. You take all this and put it in your songs. You make the world a better place even though you’re gone. Thank you.

100-Word Fiction: ‘WTF’

I was at breakfast, on the morning of Mike and Joe’s wedding – feeling happily smug that the world we live in ain’t like it used to be, no Sirree – when the news broke on the telly that a local councillor had claimed that the recent storms and floods were ‘divine retribution for the government’s decision to legalise gay marriage’. I was like WTF, really? Limp muesli spluttering. Cup of weak hotel coffee rattling. But outside, while snowdrops quivered in the breeze, the sun was already high in a crystal sky, the flea markets were busy, and someone was singing joyfully.

100-Word Fiction: ‘Boat People’

I dreamed we had to cross the creek where the old ford once made it easy. The river was deep and the current strong. Silt turned the water brown. Or was the river a lake too wide to swim across? Or was it a sea? There were boats crammed full of people, shouting, who stood on cabin roofs, clinging to anything that would keep them aboard. They were the boat people of Vietnam, Somalia, South Sudan. They were toppling into the water, over and over, disappearing under… And I floated, floated, wakening, over, swimming, crossing, hoping, toppling, clinging, floating, floating…

100-Word Fiction: ‘Jesus of Kingsway’

Jesus takes the rubbish out when the last customers leave the café at 5.45, nods to the lads on the street and goes back inside, brings down the shutters, exits by the back. Charlie and Isaiah are the first to the bags, carefully untying the orange plastic and reaching inside. Ricky and Mohammed look on, pointing and waiting their turn. It’s a good day. There is an armful of baguettes that can be shared round, a few tubs of salad, some milk and yoghurt. Each takes their share, the bags are retied – and the lads disappear into the cold night.

100-Word Fiction: ‘Ends Again’

‘Ends’ is a word that keeps returning. It unravels every time. Whenever I think it sufficient it fails. There is more to be written, even after ends. Sometimes I mis-type it as ‘dens’. And then I rearrange the letters again. Dens! Delete, delete, delete, delete.

I may recollect that these weeks at the end of the year have been full of ends. And in that thought comes the prospect of the unknown future.

Ach, and who knows what’s going on, I asked myself as I tramped across the garden and spotted daffodil shoots already two inches high, even now, here.

100-Word Fiction: ‘In No Particular Order…’

1. Dress up and jive dance at the Clore ballroom.
2. Watch carol singers on a giant screen in Paternoster Square.
3. Take the kids to My Brother the Robot at the Roundhouse.
4. Shop for last-minute gifts at a ‘German’ market on the South Bank.
5. Donate blood at Leytonstone Methodist Church.
6. Hear Atila, King of Crooners at the Park Plaza Hotel.
7. Enjoy a Victorian Christmas with traditional mince pies at the Charles Dickens Museum.
8. Check your numbers for the Euro Millions draw (top prize £62,469,261).
9. Watch Christmas Eve dawn on Walford.
10. Breathe. Sleep.

100-Word Fiction: ‘Yellow Moon’

Yellow moon, just above the river, crossed by cloud, lighting the way. I saw it between the houses, out across the marsh, before the bends in my route swung it out of sight.

Whose illuminations are these anyway? Why should they submit to any person’s gaze? Whose air fills the great divide between what we know and the unendurable beyond?

We have filled the sky with waves and pulses – radio, micro – but care only about destinations and arrivals. Ends.

Truth is invisible, fashioned as magic. And the dark could sink a yellow moon. Most would hardly notice if it did.

100-Word Fiction: ‘Ends’

How we think about life when it ends.
The morning streetlight amber, off in an instant.
The geese that fly in and then loop back without warning.
The frosted cars idling by the pavements.
The early fog that lifts slowly above the church tower.
The shock of violas trembling in their pots.
The blackbird that hops off into the thorns.
The branches that fade from green to black.
The accretions of mud at the edge of the path.
The hold that autumn has, though winter must come.
The leaf that will not be shaken.
But it will be shaken, now.

100-Word Fiction: The Red Tree

She had never noticed the small tree with the red leaves just around the corner – couldn’t say whether the leaves were red all year or only turned so in autumn. It was only the kids playing on their scooters one morning that drew her attention. Then she forgot about it again. The following day it was stormy as she headed to the shops. Rocked by gusts of wind, the tree was hurling its leaves to the ground in showers. An hour later its branches were bare, the pavement crimson. Things fall down, she reminded herself, even as you look elsewhere.