Oh this spring has been ruinous. These reflections, thoughts! And then heating up yesterday’s leftovers of stew, listening to some millionaire on the radio, distracted by the garden’s bare earth and stunted buds. I got a text from friends on holiday earlier: the sun had come out and they had gone swimming. Here there areContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Cold Spring: Part 4’”
Tag Archives: flash
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Cold Spring: Part 3’
I watched him stare at his pint for an hour. He barely drank a drop. He does this every day at the same time, with the same words to the girl at the bar, shuffling to the same seat. These days he keeps his overcoat on. It is cold in the pub and word isContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Cold Spring: Part 3’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Cold Spring: Part 2’
The stock exchange has declared that trading will be suspended until Thursday. The parliamentary vote on the bailout is being postponed. The man in the shop was in tears this morning; the shelves of his grocery almost utterly bereft. Across the town, cashpoints are running out of notes every ten minutes. Queues are restless, fraught.Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Cold Spring: Part 2’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Cold Spring: Part 1’
There is a queue spilling from a greengrocer’s door into a gentrified street. The customers are affluent and wrapped up in tweed and heavy knits. In a pub round the corner the rugby has just finished. The landlord kills the screen and the afternoon’s drinkers begin to disperse. Everyone goes home to cook or orderContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Cold Spring: Part 1’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘This Journey’
This journey, if it is one, in all its shock and awe, seems more a repeated weekly horror than a narrative of years. Statues toppled in cindered market places. The dead forgotten. Repeat. Some things, simply, exist. And others don’t, didn’t. It is decade through a looking glass. A decade of mangled language where liesContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘This Journey’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Sleep Streams’
A river, rushing by her cheek – incessant streams of red carpet ceremonies – the stations tumbling by down the line – a lap-book, spine cracked and pages forgotten – speeches were a blur too – having dressed in the dark – and stayed up so late – that a blackbird could land on herContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Sleep Streams’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Meteorite’
Nothing was unusual about that morning. The willows swayed in a slight breeze. Freddie the cat licked his paws; the man in the suit ran for his train; and no one saw the flash in the sky. A haze descended over the town and then cleared. Then people began to notice. A fine dust hadContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Meteorite’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Light’
A lightning bolt, mainlined to a spire, channels electricity between the heavens and the Earth with so much power. * * * All the candles he has lit, he has seen, has had lit for him. Offerings of light and he, he offers light too. These offerings are full of the weight of hope andContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Light’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Kora’
Kora of calabash, the bottle gourd lute, cowskin resonator, bridge and strings. Kumbengo riffs and birimintingo runs, across the wires of the dancing desert harp. Griot storytellers of Mali’s Mandinka, keepers of memory, ancient people of Sundiate Keita. Plucking notes that quiver into being, hardly heard above the arid air or the brushing of sandContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Kora’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘If Just Once Those Birds’
If just once those birds That scatter snow from the tall tree – Its branches shaken from white to green By whirled circles on the wing – Would cross to us and feed If just once those birds Would cease from flailing And flashing their colours To the phosphorescent sky And be still If justContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘If Just Once Those Birds’”
MW Bewick 