Across the sky, flitting light. Not stars as such, but gilded shards. They continue to fall, piercing horizon upon horizon. Some say they will ignite briefly over the deepest darkest parts of the ocean, to be seen only by the whales and the dolphins as they break upwards from the blue. Some say the shardsContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Sky at Night’”
Tag Archives: flash fiction
100-Word Fiction: ‘Waiting for the Train’
On the platform, lighting up a cigarette, loosening his tie just a little, looking at the commuters, wondering about their lives. Their lives and his job, these two things that had somehow got themselves entwined. And yet when he’d left college, with those ideas… so determined, so green. Inhale, hold, exhale. There was ivy weavingContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Waiting for the Train’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Approaching the 10th Parallel’
Field medics report, come in? come in? [crackles] We are hearing you. What medicines do you require? Over. Command suitable retaliation. Use aggressive force. Come in? Use aggressive medicine? Over. There has been an interstitial interruption between spaces of matter. Check. Over. There are holes blown. We cannot hear, clear… Receiving. Medic coordinates? Over. 10thContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Approaching the 10th Parallel’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘For the Rest of the World’
There was a flickering on the screen: a small dot heading towards the mainland. Intelligence said the dot came from Africa, but intelligence wasn’t everything. The dot was uncontactable – recognised signals were not received. Codes failed. Some said it was coming as part of a deal, a contra agreement with certain military or governmentContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘For the Rest of the World’”
100-Word Fiction: Gone, but
Johnny had grown to love that old dog. After the yapping stopped, when it was no longer such a keen and overbearing puppy, when its occasional mistimed bark seemed endearing, some kind of grudging trust had been formed between them. Then, the dog went missing. Rumours were that another snarling hound chased it straight outContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: Gone, but”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Squares: 25 X 4’
Stuffy and straightlaced, that’s a square. A word parents say, or are. Fearful, inward-looking, conservative, old-fashioned and boring. Boring most of all. That’s a square. And the box shape of houses, dotted along roads. Little boxes with hats on, regulation size and order. Boring. Terraces and semis, square gardens, rooms. Or the symmetrical flats andContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Squares: 25 X 4’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Caterpillar’
It is high summer and through the oldest of urban gardens crawls the caterpillar. Which way will it turn today? It approaches a crowd of city kids, tucking into falafel and hummus. It watches them a while: a mixed, raggle-taggle bunch with hungry eyes, holding their lunch proudly, guardedly, as if it were civilisation itselfContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Caterpillar’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Ones, Noughts, Else’
But if a human being is ones and noughts, a sequenced code, and if one digit were to become transposed, to throw the scheme off kilter, then what? Then all is possible. It is a depthless abyss, not sunk into experience but spreading. Bodies and minds transformed, and those new bodies and minds transforming actions,Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Ones, Noughts, Else’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘He Makes a Cup of Coffee’
He makes a cup of coffee: milk, one sugar. Drinks it in the kitchen, his bathrobe loosely tied. He dresses in front of the mirror, tweaks his tie and collar. He walks through the hallway, steps out to the waiting car. He checks emails in his office, calls meetings, takes lunch. He looks at figures,Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘He Makes a Cup of Coffee’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘When It Changes, It Changes Quickly’
It’s not that I used to believe you and that now I don’t. Or that I thought you were amusing whereas now you infuriate me. I never thought you spoke the truth. It was clear that everything you did was a sham. Maybe you helped pass the time, or maybe I thought… what did IContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘When It Changes, It Changes Quickly’”
MW Bewick 