Christ but there’s too many flags about, he said, sittin back down and slidin three pints across the table. Too much wavin from balconies, fly-pasts and old codgers grumblin bout the way they suffered. Christ, I mean. He sniffed. Look at you man, the guy’s friend said, sweepin his fringe from his eyes. I meanContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Fashion’”
Tag Archives: Bewick
100-Word Fiction: ‘So I Got My Head Kicked In, But I Was Asking For It (Redux version)
So I went to this dodgy pub and at the bar this fella gives me grief. But I chat to him then we’re having a laugh and he buys me a pint. Later I’m with my mates and he keeps looking over. At closing time he starts chatting again, pissed. I don’t want any aggroContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘So I Got My Head Kicked In, But I Was Asking For It (Redux version)”
100-Word Fiction: ‘That Wedding Dress’
Wearing this jacket, which bears witness to the grand public schools, the British Empire, Kipling and Kitchener, Ypres, the Somme and the Western Front, brassy medals, Chelsea bombings, fighting in Norway, Palestine, South Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, the Order of St Patrick, the ‘Troubles’, Brian Boru, the kid cadets still named ‘mini Micks’,Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘That Wedding Dress’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Prime Minister Speaks’
The sun is out and a flurry of cars pass the end of the road, windows open. Mr and Mrs Bluebird are hopping through the velvet branches of the staghorn tree and there is laughter in the little park. At the corner, a man with his shirt sleeves rolled up arranges a drink with aContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Prime Minister Speaks’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Andy’
Oh, you know, he was gorgeous. I thought so when he had short hair but when he grew it, my god. A local boy through and through, a real strapping lad. Those shoulders! Of course everyone knew he liked a drink. A bad lad. None of us judged, not while he was causing such aContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Andy’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Over’
I’m over it, said John. But how could he be? It was still fucking going on, still in the air like, ah what the fuck. You couldn’t fucking tell him, he just turned away, the old head in the sand. Things had to be confronted, dealt with, even if it meant facing the worst. TheContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Over’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Red Thread’
Was there a time before the freedoms that still endure, before the storms that swept the sands, where what we watched unfold bore some resemblance to reality? Once, I think, after the first of the degradations had been suffered, we still imagined the aimless orbit of missiles around the void of an ethical centre. NotContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Red Thread’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Driftwood’
The boy’s thoughts were taken with a small piece of driftwood lying on the pebbles. A line of seaweed marked where the tide had reached earlier that morning. He stepped across it and picked up the piece of wood. It looked like an antler, but bone white, smoothed and polished by the sea and sandContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Driftwood’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Nude, Green Leaves and Bust’
I don’t know, said Paul, staring intently at the painting. Me neither. I don’t get that face in the picture, with its long nose and narrow eyes, gazing down upon the naked, reclining girl. The face is so white, it’s like a ghost. And she is so pink, so fleshy and naked, her arms open,Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Nude, Green Leaves and Bust’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Julian Calendar’
The Julian calendar. That antiquated thing? Was it so imprecise? Is it so outmoded? It is reckoned that its faults caused our horological measurements to be incorrect by about three days every four centuries. But no calendar is precise. We divide up time as best we can and then continue to tell our stories, fillingContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Julian Calendar’”