Tag Archives: short

100-Word Fiction: ‘They Wrote His Obituary’

I am told that Robert had been a radical. He certainly shirked definition, never committed to anything. I’m not sure that makes someone a radical, just an arch-critic, a cynic, a difficult bastard. Others say genius; I’d argue a fantastic populist. They say he was an intellectual; he was simply willing to share his viewsContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘They Wrote His Obituary’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘The Pictures On the Wall’

He spent an hour removing pictures from the bedroom wall. Images of icons, cars, animals, slogans, pin-ups, friends. He saved the blu-tack from the corners of each piece of paper and combined them into a ball. He put the pictures into a black bin liner, then he took the ball of blu-tack and dabbed itContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Pictures On the Wall’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘A Leviathan’

It was during one of the best summers in living memory that the destruction of our village began. The tremors came first, echoed by rumblings of public fear. Soon visitors arrived, seeking to bear witness to our doom. Arrests were made as families barricaded themselves into their homesteads. But the momentum became unstoppable. Elders prophesiedContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Leviathan’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘What He Did, Where He Went, They Will Never Know’

It was a summer evening and steam rose from the warm wet rails of the train tracks and as he paced along his legs were brushed by the wet grass and blackbirds hopped and pecked for worms in the earth and everything was warm and his lungs heaved and heart pumped and head pounded. EarlierContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘What He Did, Where He Went, They Will Never Know’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘Sometimes When’

Sometimes when it feels to her as if everyone is waiting for some small event to breathe life into a suffocating world, she is found attending to memories. She tries to catch absences as they arrive; the past as it claims the present; the futures that crumble at a touch; the goings as they’re coming.Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Sometimes When’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘This is My Job’

Downstairs in the shop it is sweltering. I am at a designer furniture launch. This is my job. Bring on the canapés, I should be eating dinner. Sean works for a competitor. He tells me about when his wallet was fat, when he was drunk every evening. Across the room Seb shakes hands. Everyone wantsContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘This is My Job’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘There are No Airports in Zamalek’

The icon on the map says airport, but there are no airports in Zamalek. There are lights in the sky though, from over the river at Salah Salem to the Marriott where westerners eat ful. Helicopters, flares and buckshot bring fireworks. The reports say the streets are filled with protestors and their cars – taxiContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘There are No Airports in Zamalek’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘Where Oceans Meet’

At the place where two oceans meet a white foam forms a rough line on the surface. We encounter light and dark, warm and cold. Outside the hotel room the sky was grey. On the TV the skies were all blue. Microphones were pointed towards a grimacing face. In the corridor, staff brought room serviceContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Where Oceans Meet’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘Welcome to Suffolk’

Outside the bookshop, where you bang on a can to buy Nathalie Sarraute and a map of the Lakes, and get offered tea and coffee from a man wearing a headscarf, the drakes bask and preen round the pond near the pub, and cabbages dot the garden of a small terraced house next to aContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Welcome to Suffolk’”