Day Four: The hotel lobby is cool. The internet connection is slow and staff are hovering, scowling, grumbling. There are no flights out of Africa for days – news reports say a week, airlines say nothing until next month. At the rooftop pool the air is choking thick with smog and the ten-lane jam ofContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Cairo’”
Tag Archives: 100
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Yard Sweepers’
…’kin ’ell, said the new lad. Look at the state of it though. Better get started then ain’t ye. But. I mean. Who the fuck’d’ve left it like this? Been like it fer years mate. Yer fuckin jokin. Nah. Nah, I mean, but mate. My first day n’all? You got it. You wanna be backContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Yard Sweepers’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Frogs’
Who said there are no poets any more? There they are, croaking their message in the lake, evading imminent disaster. There they go, to return safely after ten whole days into the rubble and dust. But no one will have listened. Dionysus was waylaid. Aeschylus and Euripedes dead and bickering. Even Aristophanes only hums aContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Frogs’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘If Time Can Stop’
When the train stops, time stops; that’s what they say around here. Worlds end and the unimaginable begins. We are smoked out into knowledge from the dark and the dust. But we are inconsistent, hypocritical, shallow. In other cities the same trains stop and the same people wait, forever at the platform. Frozen in griefContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘If Time Can Stop’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Petrified’
When the morning sun can no longer cast its light on the words of the people, and the words of the people are everywhere like an impotent virus, and the virus is dying in a Petri dish, and the scientists stand over and silently stare, and the lab technicians are just marketing geeks, and theContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Petrified’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Captain’
You’ll be the away team captain this week, the teacher shouted. Nick stepped out of the line-up and turned to face the other boys. He started to shake. Choose goalies first, then a good striker, then a midfielder – defenders last. Finally only two boys remained to be picked. One was a big scowling ladContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Captain’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Mirror’
Decades ago, the town’s councillors had erected a large mirror in the municipal hall. It reflected light into a function room where, at receptions, the townsfolk would see themselves in it. One day, a party at the hall became debauched and the mayor turned the mirror around so that the revellers’ actions could never beContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Mirror’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘There Is a Moment’
Maybe there is a moment when you shudder and feel a touch more dislocated from the world and even yourself. As if the axis of everything had just been tilted to a slightly more precarious degree. Waves of repressed memory. Cracks found in the waking day. Roads broken. A moment when you are shaken intoContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘There Is a Moment’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Whistleblower’
It had rained all morning and the rain had turned to sleet and then snow. There was a bitter wind too and, earlier than they should, Anne’s colleagues left work and headed to the pub. Anne had decided to go on record and reveal the big secret. She knew precisely what the fallout would be.Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Whistleblower’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Villagers’
They were out into the heat and dust again. There was no road to speak of, not even really a track, just a formless and infinite middle distance of barren land that stretched onwards and onwards, with no horizon visible in the haze of the afternoon sun. All the villagers were standing outside their mudContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Villagers’”
MW Bewick 