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’”
Tag Archives: MW Bewick
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’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Those Pathways’
Kirsty was very tiny and those paths were wide and sometimes she would feel scared but then she would have her dinner and feel full and forget. And soon she was growing and the paths were all thick with flowers and weeds and then some of the paths she couldn’t see so well. And thenContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Those Pathways’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Like’
Like at night, talking at the table, and glancing outside to see the snow falling. Like forgetting and awakening; again the clear magic. Like the blackthorn’s spindle branches and grass turned bronze and the endless white sky. And the snow that came like confetti first, and clung to the birches and the oaks, and settledContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Like’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘On My Mind’
It was on my mind to tell you that I’d booked us a meal. We could maybe take a holiday in France this summer; I’d like some peace and quiet and you’ve been working so hard. The kids were coming back from school the other day and my how Olivia is growing. She’ll be asContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘On My Mind’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Day With No Horizons’
A day with white tops on the grey waves. A day of no horizons. A woman came out of one house and disappeared into the next. In the field a horse chewed grass. Herring gulls circled. Three miles out at sea it lashed rain. The rain was to come, dragging itself behind a trawler returningContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Day With No Horizons’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Bone’
In the park the dog was wrestling with a bone. Hey, said the man, throwing a ball into the sky. The dog ran across the frosty grass and the ball soared into the winter blue, rising above the trees. Upwards from the tops of the oaks and birches a bird flew – maybe it wasContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Bone’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Softer Word’
I saw her once – in person. A proud mother I thought, she stood calm and tall with such an open and steady face. I am drawn to use the word resolute, but it needs a softer word than that. She listened to speakers and clapped at the end. Eyes, mouth… as if every senseContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Softer Word’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘If In Doubt’
“If in doubt… leave it out. That’s what they say. They mean, if in doubt… abandon. Resist. Take your leave. Disengage. Only fight the battles you can win. History only remembers a winner. These are the maxims of success. It’s a money, time, success thing – a ratio of sorts. If there was a policyContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘If In Doubt’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Towards a New Year’
There are people here, but not many. An old man sighs a joke as his grandchildren try to raise a kite into the still air. On the grey banks of mud a wiry bird stands still, too tired to prod for worms with its thin beak. Reeds have been blackened by the winter across theContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Towards a New Year’”
MW Bewick 