The faces in anguish. The screams of a horse. The door of no exit. The eye of the blistered sun low as a ceiling bulb. The gasping bull that looks away. A glove for a hand – palm deep-lined. The screeching bird. The heavy mortal stagger of feet, the trampled flowers, the limp child in aContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘On Guernica’”
Tag Archives: flash fiction
100-Word Fiction: ‘1 September 2015’
1 September 2015. Global share prices tumble as visa checks are waived and bodies are washed up on a continent’s beaches. Dead. The stations and sports halls are full of refugees. We are learning new names and new vocabulary. There was no vocabulary for this. Old words are not sufficient. Very old words might justContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘1 September 2015’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Cancer Party’
It was the week she discovered Bob Kaufman and read a poem of his (now forgotten) while the rain streaked across the window of her suburban flat. It was the week the cancer first looked ineluctably fatal. The news streamed in dolefully: news of supporters and opponents, the disaffected and the quietly optimistic, as ifContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Cancer Party’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Perseid’
I am looking at the sky despite the clouds. I will not miss these moments. It is just me and my eyes. I have no telescope, no binoculars. I am looking at the sky, the night sky, through a mist of light pollution, into the occluded dark, here, so late and so early, standing aloneContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Perseid’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Stasis’
There will be no clichés. No morning light, no birds singing, no greening of the year. This is no bildungsroman. We learn nothing. We will repeat the same mistakes because we have the same hopes and the same fears and we continue to lack the facility to contend. We are compromised by ourselves and othersContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Stasis’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Water Memory’
I was told that water has memory. I can believe it. I think of how a drop – the cold moisture of a cloud, somewhere a continent away – might precipitate itself upon an azure sea. That it might get pulled this way and that, become submerged, forgotten, embroiled in the waves and the churnContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Water Memory’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Some Old Queen or Other’
And so what if they thought she had nothing to offer and nothing to say? If they thought she had no place in the modern world, then what? She would ride it out, keep going, fix herself on being there, again, always. What would they know about independent thought? They dieted on whatever fodder theyContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Some Old Queen or Other’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Savoy Shuffle’
That ol’ London thing, waiting at a crossing in rush hour between showers and a book falls out of the sky, lands at the side of the road, hardback, heavy, with a thud, the biography of a sports personality with late-career broadsides to discharge, and you look up, and there are only clouds. A dayContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Savoy Shuffle’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Graves Above’
That our lives are nothing less than fissile is a blind spot on a blue retina. We arc our actions, our thoughts, like missiles; sing praise, hope the heavens make us better; behold the sky and hold it high, careful not to see the cracks that let the light in – or the umbra, itsContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Graves Above’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Gestas’
She didn’t torch the place. Not yet. The others could have done it if they’d wanted. She fudged a tear. Anything more might have signalled guilt. Her predecessor, Gestas, would take the blame. They’d be happy to let him have it. They’d needed to crucify someone and Gestas, such an impenitent robber, the one she’dContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Gestas’”
MW Bewick 