The first we knew was when the surveyor came to the village with measuring equipment. And armed guards. Then the trucks and helpers came and a fence was built between our houses and the subsistence crops. They lifted the vegetables too early and threw them away. We villagers shouted and asked many questions as theyContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Surveyor’”
Tag Archives: Fiction
100-Word Fiction: ‘Three Candles’
* Late on in the evening – and a man walking somewhere, wrapped in his own world, humming a tune. The way that he moved, you could tell what he was like as a little boy. A big boy now with his puffer jacket and trainers. * * Coming back from the pub on aContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Three Candles’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Signs and Codes’
Exercise No. 1: Image: A fairytale castle. Words: This castle does not exist. Image: A townscape. Words: The city is at risk. Image: A man in a hat. Words: This picture is believed to have been taken in the past few weeks. Image: A man in a different hat. Words: Freedom. Image: A toy helicopter.Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Signs and Codes’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Until They are Gone’
Sssshhh, said Jackie, sssshhh, listen. Pete stopped still. Silence. Jackie beckoned. How brown the woods looked: the conifers dulled in the late afternoon light, the ground muddy after the rain. Jackie was pointing, his face contorted into an expression – half delight, half anguish. Pete shook his head and whispered: What? There! Listen! Silence. ThenContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Until They are Gone’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘For Years / Four Years’
On reflection it was perhaps youth and its restlessness that always took people away… corners turned, bridges crossed… The real challenges come surreptitiously… almost… and seem little more than normalities. Is this the sign that caprice is being buried under the rubble of real change? On Monday morning he wakes early and drinks coffee, trains,Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘For Years / Four Years’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Out, Damned Spot’
As a reminder, he wrote the words ‘Human Rights’ in red ink on the palm of his hand. They were there when he showed his passport; there when he pressed the flesh; there when he clinked crystal glassware; there when he lifted a knife during dinner; there when he signed the lucrative contracts, there whenContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Out, Damned Spot’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Black and White Night’
I walked home all the fucking way the main roads as well. It’s quiet at three in the mornin and you can get a pace on; thinkin of the alarm clock oh jesus and work sat at the desk. The road like a river, the current pullin you on and the moon overhead lightin upContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Black and White Night’”
100-Word Fiction: A Return (Sonnet)
Those years – did it ever really stick In mind, this mire of brown estuarine mud? A trick, forgot in ideals, thick With thought: how? why? what? should? There was no habitat here but the past: The sweet chestnut and bluebells of a dream A deluge of deliberations that never last A ferry to aContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: A Return (Sonnet)”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Please Write Me’
100-Word Fiction: ‘On Arriving In the Present’
It was not the 100 million tonne North Atlantic Garbage Patch, which covered hundreds of miles of ocean, that most shocked Jack, a northern pike from Saskatchewan, on arriving in what we term the present. Nor was it that he could hardly catch sight of a cod off the coast of Newfoundland, or that crabsContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘On Arriving In the Present’”
MW Bewick 