Downstairs in the shop it is sweltering. I am at a designer furniture launch. This is my job. Bring on the canapés, I should be eating dinner. Sean works for a competitor. He tells me about when his wallet was fat, when he was drunk every evening. Across the room Seb shakes hands. Everyone wantsContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘This is My Job’”
Tag Archives: creative
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Storming of Beake Street’
A thin blue line unravels through the back streets, broadens, becomes a gushing force, a flood, across the hunting fields where gelders and nailers worked, land then acquired by the Queen’s Messenger Thomas Beake, by the old houses intended for tradesmen and lower middle-class occupation, whereat the Venetian painter Antonio Canaletto lodged in a roomContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Storming of Beake Street’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘(Slight Return)’
‘When you leave you never go back, even if you think you might: it’s impossible.’ With these words he left: took a job somewhere abroad. He never visited, or if he did he kept it quiet. Of course we saw updates online: places he went; achievements; petty squabbles. ‘All as the world turns,’ an oldContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘(Slight Return)’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Like Pollen’
Cow parsley, she calls it. Hollow green stems rising out above lush green grass. I had always known it as Queen Anne’s Lace. White caps of tiny flowers like little parasols, umbrellas. The May rains have come and gone. We take the dogs out down the lanes. They know the hawthorn and the giant rhubarbContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Like Pollen’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Plato Laughed’
Argue it hard, said Socrates, puffing on a pipe. Argue it well. Argue it endlessly. Because they will forget. They will muscle in ideas, weedle out flaws, overstate detail, underestimate the nuances. But most of all they will forget. They will forget the logic, deny experience, erase memory, bury the truths of our lives. TheyContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Plato Laughed’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Abstinence’
Not obese, not even chubby, he decided to commence a diet plan, not for health or vanity reasons but because he thought the world overly plentiful with, as he put it, junk. He committed to two days of abstinence from food a week. He felt great. Then he turned his attention to his job andContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Abstinence’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Physical Geography of Celebrity’
Attrition: erosion of celebrity caused when new information distributed by the media collides with the narrative of a particular personality and shatters it to pieces. Collapse: when a great celebrity ‘falls’ after a loss of support from peers and public following media revelations. Corrasion: gradual wearing away of celebrity. Fault: a large crack in publicContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Physical Geography of Celebrity’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Stitching Up the Future’
I work very hard in the factory and the machines go clitter-clatter. It is so hot. I have not changed clothes in weeks. I wear my yellow T-shirt and shorts and if I smell then we all do. There is a little sink where we can wash. We get to sleep in shifts. It isContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Stitching Up the Future’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Geography of Years’
My introduction to psychogeography came in 1982 when the Falklands first became real islands – as well as a conflict. The far side of the world crash-landed in our living room and I drank black coffee and watched, aged 11. Later I realised that maps are not just about miles, they are about connections ofContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Geography of Years’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Pumped Air’
An obituary stated that oxygen was his making. Air, and good publicity, had delivered fame and fortune. In reality, success was mechanical. He invented a forced-air pump that inflated almost any object. Industrialists, financiers and the public sector all bought into it. With a quick shot, the pump blew air into balloons, bubbles and evenContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Pumped Air’”
MW Bewick 