Tag Archives: writing

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: ‘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: ‘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: ‘The Storming of Beake Street’

A thin blue line unravels through the back streets, broadens, becomes a gushing force, a flood, across the hunting fields where gelders and nailers worked, land then acquired by the Queen’s Messenger Thomas Beake, by the old houses intended for tradesmen and lower middle-class occupation, whereat the Venetian painter Antonio Canaletto lodged in a roomContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Storming of Beake Street’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘(Slight Return)’

‘When you leave you never go back, even if you think you might: it’s impossible.’ With these words he left: took a job somewhere abroad. He never visited, or if he did he kept it quiet. Of course we saw updates online: places he went; achievements; petty squabbles. ‘All as the world turns,’ an oldContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘(Slight Return)’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘Like Pollen’

Cow parsley, she calls it. Hollow green stems rising out above lush green grass. I had always known it as Queen Anne’s Lace. White caps of tiny flowers like little parasols, umbrellas. The May rains have come and gone. We take the dogs out down the lanes. They know the hawthorn and the giant rhubarbContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Like Pollen’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘Plato Laughed’

Argue it hard, said Socrates, puffing on a pipe. Argue it well. Argue it endlessly. Because they will forget. They will muscle in ideas, weedle out flaws, overstate detail, underestimate the nuances. But most of all they will forget. They will forget the logic, deny experience, erase memory, bury the truths of our lives. TheyContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Plato Laughed’”

100-Word Fiction: ‘Abstinence’

Not obese, not even chubby, he decided to commence a diet plan, not for health or vanity reasons but because he thought the world overly plentiful with, as he put it, junk. He committed to two days of abstinence from food a week. He felt great. Then he turned his attention to his job andContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Abstinence’”