100-Word Fiction: ‘Effluent’

‘Pipes’ connect countless channels of overflow from East to West, Agencies say. Politicians have dubbed it a ‘super sewer’ and ‘filtrations’ are due to commence – the cost already upwards of £400m.

A communication from a group calling itself Stop the Shaft claimed, using Securities language, that the channels were only responsible for a tiny proportion of ‘human waste’ dumped into the ‘river of humanity’. The cost to the taxpayer is unjustifiable, they said, and the cost to Rights…

Agencies said the claims were ‘misleading’ and joked that the rest of the world would be ‘piped’ to hit their latest target.

100-Word Fiction: ‘Running In Fog’

We always went running in fog, early mornings at six, six thirty, at just that time of year when the fields become obscured by the weight of water in the air, so heavy it clung to your face in the pallid light and ran down it like tears, dripping from your nose and chin, and the wet grass licked your shins like a sopping tongue and the birds whispered that it was beyond dawn, their sound so close in the thick low sky, as if perched on your shoulder, but with nothing to be told about who won, who lost.

100-Word Fiction: ‘By My Side’

Your arm around me like you say my belt and braces, oh but I feel the opposite, I say an open hand, the merest brush of a tip of a finger that leads me on, could take me anywhere and we do, we do go anywhere and everywhere.

Your arm around me you say everything you say like a best man’s speech, so witty and warm and I say no, you are feeding warnings like a my old dad, a head boy eyeing me in the corridors of everywhere and thiswhere, herewhere.

Where-erity you go I go, you and me.

100-Word Fiction: ‘In the Haze’

It was the early period of the Pacific drought and every day, J___ would walk along the promenade, whether in a summer cold snap or the heatwave of a late autumn afternoon. He would stop and stare at the container ships on the horizon, imagining the imports and exports, and see the plumes of smoke from the refinery. All was well. On the pier, children whooshed down the helter-skelter. Through the haze of sea and sun, J___ saw the faint outline of the wind turbines. Were they nearer than before? There was something in his throat. He felt scared.

100-Word Fiction: ‘The Sky at Night’

Across the sky, flitting light. Not stars as such, but gilded shards. They continue to fall, piercing horizon upon horizon. Some say they will ignite briefly over the deepest darkest parts of the ocean, to be seen only by the whales and the dolphins as they break upwards from the blue. Some say the shards will spark and burn their way through the atmosphere, burying themselves blackly, finally, into the cold tundras of the Arctic north. Some say they will flicker like fireworks over Hawaii. But no human should worry. The death of one more satellite is of no concern.

100-Word Fiction: ‘Waiting for the Train’

On the platform, lighting up a cigarette, loosening his tie just a little, looking at the commuters, wondering about their lives. Their lives and his job, these two things that had somehow got themselves entwined. And yet when he’d left college, with those ideas… so determined, so green.

Inhale, hold, exhale. There was ivy weaving round the railings and climbing up the blackthorn, across the end of the station car park and all down the line. That plant could grow anywhere. A pest, people said. Needs cutting back. A good hacking. You’d need to hack for ever and for ever.

100-Word Fiction: ‘They Come’

From Siberia and the cold continent they arrive, to make home, however temporary. To eat. To survive. The Great Northern Diver. The Arctic Skua. Waxwing and Redwing. Snow Bunting. Short-eared Owl. Guillemot. Brent Geese in their tens of thousands, huddled in the cold mud of the grey estuaries, arcing over forlorn skies. Oystercatchers from Norway, stabbing the clay with flaming bills; Curlew, somewhere, it is rumoured. The great migrations of the world. While humans forge papers, dignity trafficked and stripped, never to be accepted, caged in a caravan, paying with their lives to survive and eat the carrion carcass freedom.

100-Word Fiction: ‘Approaching the 10th Parallel’

Field medics report, come in? come in? [crackles]

We are hearing you. What medicines do you require? Over.

Command suitable retaliation. Use aggressive force. Come in?

Use aggressive medicine? Over.

There has been an interstitial interruption between spaces of matter.

Check. Over.

There are holes blown. We cannot hear, clear…

Receiving. Medic coordinates? Over.

10th parallel. There is a…

What medicines do you require? Over.

There is a, jesus [crackles]…

Actioning reinforcements. What medicines do you require? Over.

There is a… action aggressive, come in?

What medicines? Over.

There is a hole, jesus, all the way along.

10th paralell, over?

100-Word Fiction: ‘For the Rest of the World’

There was a flickering on the screen: a small dot heading towards the mainland. Intelligence said the dot came from Africa, but intelligence wasn’t everything. The dot was uncontactable – recognised signals were not received. Codes failed. Some said it was coming as part of a deal, a contra agreement with certain military or government agencies. Its looming shadow headed for the heart of the countryside. Grey warplanes shot through East Anglian skies – a deathly escort. But all was safe – the dot Nigerian and allied.
For the rest of the world, the buzz of rolling news, channels upon channels of silence.

100-Word Fiction: Gone, but

Johnny had grown to love that old dog. After the yapping stopped, when it was no longer such a keen and overbearing puppy, when its occasional mistimed bark seemed endearing, some kind of grudging trust had been formed between them. Then, the dog went missing. Rumours were that another snarling hound chased it straight out of the neighbourhood. Some said they heard it howling to itself. Johnny set out to find it, enlisting young kids to patrol the local streets and flush the mutt out of hiding. It was too cunning to have died, but where was it? Soon, Johnny…