People say it’s the smell you try to hold on to. The smell of a person. Clothes. Blankets. Cushions. After they’ve gone. Of course this is true. I’ve lived through it. What’s less noted is the way voices come and go. The first time I realised I could no longer wholly recall your voice, afterContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘After the tide’”
Tag Archives: writing
100-Word Fiction: ‘Night Shifts’
Dreaming of Cairo, so I thought, and I was on some concrete balcony at the edge of the desert, with the city in the distance, illuminated by explosions – and the death-rattle of guns and screaming missiles echoed across the void between me and… them. I peered harder and saw that the explosions were fireworks,Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Night Shifts’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Gyre’
I looked at the silver mud along the banks of the river. A month ago it was filled with birds. You could see them scurrying even at night. Now they have gone. The seasons are changing and the mud is becoming bare. The gulls’ heads are taking on their summer colour. It’s as if theContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Gyre’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Darja [4]’
Get the fucking stretcher –––– here now! Get it here! Blood is pouring from –––– left of the child’s leg. Med-tent is 200 metres and watch the air – the shrapnel – it is so full. A glance, quickly, buildings at street end are rubble. Patches of street have turned red. Six bodies – roughContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Darja [4]’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Yulia [3]’
She confirmed that the meeting lasted for more than three hours. At these times pastries and coffee are merely decorative. Neither party stoops to accept a fix of sugar or caffeine. After the smiles and handshakes it is the tiniest details that count. The way one of them tilts their head towards an unnecessary interpreter;Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Yulia [3]’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Polina [2]’
Picks up a coffee, checks her Facebook at her desk and feels angry. Sits through two hour+ meetings. Emails Robin. Looks through the glass at the boys on the floor becoming animated, arms waving, pointing, voices raised. Now, now, they seem to be saying. It is to do with Russia. Before lunch the office empties.Continue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Polina [2]’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Cemfjord’
Two rectangles, side by side, colour-blocked in white and red, the line between them vertical. Two horizontal blocks of blue surround this central form; a lighter colour above, a deeper shade below, each flecked with greys and whites. The geometry, the symmetry, the palette of the image is alluring. Looking again, you notice the whiteContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Cemfjord’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Tomorrow’
The air conditioning blows against the office cold while the mice scuttle in the dust of the ducts. The flagpoles of opposing buildings are wrapped tight with their blind standards. A solitary gull circles above the white towers; above the dripping lights of theatreland. Cars choke the arteries all the way to the estuaries whereContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Tomorrow’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘People at Christmas’
I don’t always see the difference between children and adults. Rather, I don’t see adults, only children. Children everywhere, shopping with pushchairs, snoring in suits on morning trains, smoking outside bars of an evening: children all. I see them now with tinsel and antlers on their heads, Santa hats, stressing about the last days atContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘People at Christmas’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Those Who Got Out’
They fell into the light of the streets from behind the flag and the window logos the smell of roasted coffee beans never to be smelled again with outstretched arms like elated and some fast some slow and some hobbling some skipping like no one could remember how to walk faces all contorted like expressingContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Those Who Got Out’”
MW Bewick 