100-Word Fiction: ‘The Elected Time of Year’

I can’t explain it in any other terms, she said, waving her hands in front of her and gesturing at the trees. I can’t read the papers any more. I can’t watch TV. I know what’s coming. It’s like this every time. Whoever wins out, it will be the same. We’ve still a month toContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Elected Time of Year’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘The Daffodil Girl’

She is the daffodil girl with the golden hair. She is here in the spring, telling us to slip off our winter coats. She is warmth and smiles, turning her face to the sun and the coming summer. She brings tales of childhood and hopes for the year ahead. I sometimes think the garden growsContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Daffodil Girl’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘A Cold Spring: Part 4’

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’”

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: ‘The Rains of the Spring’

The rains of spring have lasted a year. I hear that in some areas now there are only showers, or perhaps someone said light drizzle. It was always too optimistic to think the rains were seasonal. It would take a decade of downpours to drench this scorched earth. But the rains come and come: waveContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Rains of the Spring’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘A Dowry’

Their little hands reaching out into the sunlight and clear Clutching scrunches of silver and white, like crumpled tenners, scores – Unfolding the mottos of fortune cookies, notes of remembrance, promises Made one to another, they to us, winter to summer. The first gesture of the year is an embrace changing Studded green to garlandsContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Dowry’”