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: short story
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: ‘Higher Ground’
Breathing heavily but gaining elevation, the tramp up the rocks that have been laid to raise you, the village church and shops shrinking away into miniature, the gentle hum of traffic and chatting tourists silenced, your face burning with the effort, your feet in your socks in a sweat, the faces smiling that have alreadyContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Higher Ground’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘I Chase Bicycles’
There is something in human nature, I heard it said, that is disruptive. We favour the underdog, laugh too loud, stare too long, make stupid remarks. We are drawn to sarcasm, cynicism and hypocrisy. We tell little lies, become brave and boastful or lazy and stubborn. We accelerate too fast, brake too late, take theContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘I Chase Bicycles’”
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: ‘The Way I See It’
Oh but the rains I remember, alternating with the regular insistence of windscreen wipers: downpour, drizzle, downpour, drizzle, downpour, drizzle. They seem so long ago. Now, the way I see it, the world is brighter. Plants bud sooner, the birds always sing. There are children playing in the cul-de-sacs and everyone, at any time, canContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Way I See It’”
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: ‘22 November’
I do not remember Franco’s death. The first transatlantic flight of Concorde, perhaps. I remember the coming of Mike Tyson as if it were someone else’s story, not mine. The withdrawal of Thatcher from the leadership race, smothered in feelings of a time and a place… a bank of television screens in a shop window,Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘22 November’”
MW Bewick 