We danced around the Maypole Decorated trees, With the ritual midst of faeries crowned The queens of spring with wreaths We welcomed up godesses And all givers of life And laid amongst the flower folk Who ended winter strife. We hoisted up the banners And marched streets with flags Scrubbed grub from working shoes AndContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘We Danced’”
Tag Archives: Fiction
100-Word Fiction: ‘Blasted’
The thin ridge of houses along the top of the moor I always saw as a scar along a smooth body. That blackened body. It was so obvious what they had done. The exploitation. The pit head gone, perhaps, and them tiny men back and buried in them tiny miners cottages. Sometimes I felt sadlyContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Blasted’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘The 1970s’
Four candles. A whisp of sulphur, a spark and her gleaming eyes. Happy birthday to you. Paul, come on, sit, you’ll have your cake soon. Victoria was still singing, hugging the back of the dining chair, her cheeks red and glasses wonky. After three. One, two, three. Dawn puffed out her cheeks, blew hard andContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The 1970s’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Rains of the Spring’
The rains of spring have lasted a year. I hear that in some areas now there are only showers, or perhaps someone said light drizzle. It was always too optimistic to think the rains were seasonal. It would take a decade of downpours to drench this scorched earth. But the rains come and come: waveContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Rains of the Spring’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Dowry’
Their little hands reaching out into the sunlight and clear Clutching scrunches of silver and white, like crumpled tenners, scores – Unfolding the mottos of fortune cookies, notes of remembrance, promises Made one to another, they to us, winter to summer. The first gesture of the year is an embrace changing Studded green to garlandsContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Dowry’”
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: ‘Open Stage Directions for a New Play’
The reporter speaks to camera from the steps, recently swept, across the churchyard where huddles of tourists peer at maps and hold up camera phones, squinting into screens. A TV is being watched. The camera’s banal gaze focuses on the grey flagstones. Everything is clean as if a uniformity has returned, a natural order resumed.Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Open Stage Directions for a New Play’”
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’”
MW Bewick 