As large and smooth as the rocks jutting through the sand, sleek and blue-black as polished granite on top; fleshy and white underneath, they were found on beaches within days of each other, their long, beakish mouths agape in now endless smiles. Seven metres nose to tail, lying inert near to the poster-paint splash of beach huts, they were sighted by dog walkers from the cliffs. Minke whales, roaming their sea pastures like cows in fields, grazing on the season’s herring, gashed by boats and floating ashore already dead. The council hopes the sea will wash them away by morning.
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Complaint About the Building of Walls’
There is no good in a wall that only divides;
That only seeks to hinder and stop;
That only aims to split into sides;
That takes rupture and acts as a prop
There is no good in a wall that feigns to protect
While causing obstruction and hurt:
If it camouflages the onslaughts it’s supposed to deflect;
If it’s just a conduit for a hatred built in dirt
Walls provide refuge, but should they only rise
At the expense of freedom, progress and scope,
And cast only shadows, and help cement lies,
Then they leave only a barrier to hope
100-Word Fiction: ‘Kepler 2’
I am still out there, spinning. I don’t want to shackle the sun. That desire is gone. But gravitational pull is good and every day needs lit, surely. There are smaller stars: brighter clusters of light with common origins and achievable distances. I have spotted them in the ecliptic plane. I had never seen them before. Of course what people say I want is for some planetary object to orbit around me. Me! It’s what everyone wants, isn’t it? Those interstellar gyroscopic reaction wheels. Those star forming regions of space. They just keep on pulling and pushing, creating and destroying.
100-Word Fiction: ‘Kepler 1’
Have a drink while we spin around a star.
If I am alive!
You are, if not unique. Welcome, in any case. Our galaxy contains at least 2 billion planets just like Earth – and you arrive here.
Where else? I put myself first. As the suns light my mornings, I like to get to the pool early. No man can cling to a dismal rock for eternity.
How’s the water?
Thank you for the drink. Your words, however, unnerve me. I’m not here by chance.
You are tired.
I’ve been orbiting my parents for a lifetime. Of course I’m tired.
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Storm of St Lou’
Yeah can you get some now now
Hear it comin’ yeah yeah
Howlin’ howlin’ oh yeah howl howl
All the way and back and down down
Down the line now baby
Oh come on now keep it yeah
Storm is raising
Storm is raising
Storm is raising
Can you hear it rainin’ rain rain
Whistle blowin’ blow blow
Wind is rattlin’ now a huff huff
Huffin’ puffin’ huffin huff puff
Trees a-fallin’ on the line line
Trains a-rattlin’ all the time time
Woah Mister Driver you’d better
Call it off off
Aww it’s gettin’ hot hot
Awright, lemme hear ya
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Classics’
“Classics (encompassing editions available in other commercial imprints) is the branch of publishing comprising work in the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art and archaeology of the Western canon, especially as dictated by the marketing wonks of _____ PLC. Works considered for classics status originally included only those in translation, especially works from Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity (ca. 600 BC – AD600). Recently, in a sales drive, the imprint incorporated English and 20th century works. The hope of the PLC is that the study of its Classics imprint will form the basis for all study of the humanities.”
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Slow News Week’
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
Rent a smaller home.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
Wear a warmer jumper.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
Turn off the fuel.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
A slow news week.
Think about living worse.
Try and die sooner.
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Raft for the Medusa’
A decade’s unreported anarchy brings blood and dust, charted in numberless rusted cells where violence tells and torture proves.
They flee across the desert by truck, in the hands and debt of gangs, to make border disappearances.
In Libya and Yemen the smuggled bodies pay for thieved papers with degraded favours. Honours are all lost.
In the sea is the promise of every era’s castaways: souls strewn on the dark silent waves, squinting for island havens.
A small craft is a black dot in the indigo deep, the sun only a fire, a boat just another raft for the medusa.
100-Word Fiction: ‘Perspectives’
Daddy. Who was not where? Beards at the kitchen table.
Dad. Ties styled wide to thin. A holiday in Somerset, golden evenings and tractors. A rainy motorway and shouting.
Father travels first-class now. Him and Vic. Vic Benson is important. An important name. To me. I went away. So did dad. Pinstripes blurred.
Dad took mum to Spain every year, drank wine and smoked cigars.
He came to my office once, chatted up Stella on reception. She said ‘enamoured’; I reddened.
Vic got jailed for fraud. Dad didn’t.
He grows veg now. I live closer, but father is further away.
100-Word Fiction: ‘Freedom Fruit’
They lift from the hedgerow
Light as cobweb and spun sugar
A shroud of lace for a season’s going
Displaced migrants, the bramble’s other
Temporary lover:
Jenny Long Legs rise in a cloud
In pestilent numbers this September
As hands shake the limbs of briar
For black berries and rose hips
On foraging trips.
Peace treads heavily across
These rutted trails; vaults fences,
Breaks the blades of grass,
Tramps where it needs in pursuit
Of freedom’s fruit
The insects scattered seek shelter
From flailing purpose, shoed away
From Tupperware treasure pluckings:
The world’s bounty in a field
In Essex county
MW Bewick 