100Word Fiction: ‘They Came Here’

The world is painted black and red. It runs down the walls and across the dusty floors. They came here. I tell the man. They came here, can you not see? Are you colour blind? Look at the walls. You can touch them now, go on, get it on your fingers. They have dried ofContinue reading “100Word Fiction: ‘They Came Here’”

100-Word Fiction: It Comes

At first it is just a haze on the horizon but then it grows: a cloud of dust, moving fast, skittering across the desert sands: and then the noise: at first a hiss, or a sucking sound, and then a clattering and a rat-a-tat-tat. Soon the noise degenerates into a succession of booms and cracklesContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: It Comes”

100-Word Fiction: International Day for Biodiversity

It is the international day for biodiversity and the ants are back in their colony; the dust mites sleep still; a shoal of mackerel flashes by; lions yawn; a lone curlew prods the shoreline with its bill; cows head towards the gate; a sheep chews dry grass on a high promontary; the bats hang tillContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: International Day for Biodiversity”

100-Word Fiction: ‘A Feast’

On the polished table was a huge salmon; bowls of spring vegetable soup; Scotch eggs; asparagus and hams; potatoes from Majorca; goat’s cheese tartlets; prawns with caviar; pea-shoot jellies; scallops with spiced cauliflower puree; roast chickens and guinea fowl; confit duck; sherbets and ices; five kinds of trifle; a tower of profiteroles and more cheesesContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Feast’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘By the Pond’

What a sad old duck it was paddling round the pond. Was it a mallard? Ducks had names – there were all kinds. Short little things the size of a tennis ball or others with long necks, elegant, with all different colours. Oh ducks could be sleek, really dapper, dressed up for dinner like. ThatContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘By the Pond’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘If the World Was a Little Different’

At first it happened slowly, blistering the skyline and the dusty roadside only occasionally. People turned to look, crying out. But soon, more and more little outbursts came, a ceaseless bombardment, and the city became quickly transformed. The past was forgotten. There were little explosions of colour all across Homs, cherry blossom firing spring intoContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘If the World Was a Little Different’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘137 Days, 137 Minutes’

They say we have no solutions; that we are in disarray, confused, guileless; we have no plan; we are so loose a collective as to be redundant. But what a cockeyed view that is: of course, we are all those things. We have been pulled this way and that, confused past our wits, futures beatenContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘137 Days, 137 Minutes’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘The Way I See It’

Oh but the rains I remember, alternating with the regular insistence of windscreen wipers: downpour, drizzle, downpour, drizzle, downpour, drizzle. They seem so long ago. Now, the way I see it, the world is brighter. Plants bud sooner, the birds always sing. There are children playing in the cul-de-sacs and everyone, at any time, canContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Way I See It’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘A Bone’

In the park the dog was wrestling with a bone. Hey, said the man, throwing a ball into the sky. The dog ran across the frosty grass and the ball soared into the winter blue, rising above the trees. Upwards from the tops of the oaks and birches a bird flew – maybe it wasContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Bone’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘Advent’

It is the 12th of December. The passing of steady time is played out with a handball game in Doha, the King of Bahrain at Downing Street and Iraqi soldiers graduating into action after a mere month’s training in Kirkut. Was it Kirkut? The name remains, lingers like a strange flavour in the mouth. AndContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Advent’”