Within

by John Xero

Within, the Darklings wait.

They nibble at the toes of your consciousness. They are a part of you. They live beneath the rotting, splintered floorboards of that cabin you like to call ‘me’.

They gather in the depths of your mind, where your deepest thoughts flow, places you’re afraid to go. They will take all the goodness they find and bury it as far as they can behind your fears, your flaws, and your selfishness, because happiness, hope and love blind them, burn them.

Be at peace and learn, become your own holy warrior. Only you can defeat your Darklings.




John Xero is the editor at 101 Fiction.

Please come back this Friday 1st June for the first contributor 101, Dismissed, by Peter Newman.

Ravenous

by John Xero

The radio wolves hunt in invisible packs. They are prowling, predatory creatures of air and electromagnetic waves.

That soft, crackling interference on your phone is their footsteps in fresh snow. That high-pitched whine you hear, sometimes, is their distant howl.

They circle closer, waiting to attack...

And when they do they will pass through you, paws and claws and teeth of trickery, nothing but the faintest flicker in the fields that encircle the Earth. But they will strip the brainwaves from you, rip your soul right out.

Don’t blame them, they are what they are. Symptoms of the system. Hungry.

Listen

by John Xero

We are the dancers of the Eternal Ballet. You have seen us; we are all around you. And you are one of us.

The Celestial Organ stretches across dimensions. Each key is the size of a continent. It has more stops, pulls and pedals than all the cities that have ever existed.

To call the player ‘God’ would be erroneous, he merely plays for pleasure. There is beauty and there is discordance and it delights him that we dance to his tune.

His is the music that shapes the world. We just feel and follow, rhythm beating in our hearts.

Testimony

by John Xero


Ruby droplets glistened like dew in the dead girl’s hair; her green eyes, glassy as marbles, stared at nothing. The room was spattered with other people’s blood, blood that hadn’t coagulated.

“Captain Harrison? Ma’am? We’ve evacuated the floor.”

They were alone. Harri sighed. This part was never easy.

She pried the girl’s jaws open and the sergeant passed her a sterilised blade. As she carefully cut away the tongue, viscous, dark blood oozed from the fresh wound.

Harri stuffed the thick muscle into her mouth and began chewing. The dead girl spoke to her, in stained memories and crawling whispers.

Sand

by John Xero

Keiji dances in the sand. He plays a game with the waves and laughs when he loses.

Keiji is thin, skinny, but not too skinny for his age. His sun-bleached hair is medium length and his skin is a beautiful, glowing bronze; not so unusual for a boy who spends all his time on the beach. His dark eyes shimmer like rock pools.

The soft sand sighs beneath his feet. It is white sand, hot in the late-day sun.

His mother calls to him but he does not go. The sand whispers his name, but the waves wash it away.

Editorial: Open for Submissions

101 Fiction is now open for submissions!

Hit the submissions link above for guidelines and the submissions form itself.

Editorial posts like this will be few and far between, reserved for important announcements and the like. 101 Fiction is all about the tiny, tiny stories.

As such, here are ten of my favourites from the past year or so, oldest to newest.

Pan - "His soft skin was pale as driftwood..."
Doors - "He dreams a vast emptiness..."
Acolyte - "I denounce my body..."
Torn - "Madame Fox cries tears of black tar..."
Inheritance - "Rose remembered how grandmother’s magic shimmered..."
Orbital - "A tiger stalked the empty corridors of Genesis station..."
Beetles - "Professor Hamilton pressed his back to the sandy wall..."
Poet - "Youth is fleeting beauty, rose petals on the wind..."
Honey - "Spanish boys taste like honey..."
Colonisation - "I thought Private Jones was dead..."

Fairytale

by John Xero

Billy believed in fairies.

Not just your garden-variety, hand-sized, dainty flutter mites, clinging to the old ways. Billy believed in them all. The impassioned evangelists, decrying modern modes. The concrete kissing, urban-bred outcasts. The rainbow-chasing freefolk, dancing on the wind.

He believed in them and he told people about them, and he got bullied. He got beaten and left to bleed away into the dirt. He nearly died, that day. But the fairies believed in Billy. They put aside their differences and they brought him back.

Billy knows now, what he must do. The bullies will believe, as they bleed.

303: Angelic, Retribution, Guardian.

by John Xero

You may have seen me mention Lily Childs' Friday Prediction here before. Through her the ancient black tome speaks three words which must be incorporated in a story of less than one hundred. It's a great challenge, a wonderful little community and many of my 101s have germinated there. Sadly the Prediction will be closing in a few weeks, I urge you to hop on over and give it a go while you still can.

This week, three 101s that were all born from the same three words.

Angelic

“I will scratch out your eyes and curdle your blood,” the cherub screeched from its gravestone perch, clenching a chubby, broken-nailed fist.

The thing looked like a podgy child about two years old, but for the disdainful snarl of its lips, its bloodshot eyes, and its wings, with feathers fading from black to white as if soot-stained.

Unimpressed, John Harley locked eyes with it, “War’s over Anaeus. Give it up.”

The cherub stretched its wings wide in threat, “I will gut you.”

“I don’t think so.”

Harley pulled the trigger.

Roaring buckshot ripped through Anaeus, shredding flesh and feather alike.

-----

Retribution

The plague first presented as a raised rash from spine to shoulders that itched irresistibly. The few survivors were called Cherubim for their angry, red wings of ripped, scarred skin.

Without thinking, Ellen scratched her back. She flinched as a scab tore beneath her fingernails. She felt the fresh, wet blood well up.

The only survivors were all carriers. As the death toll rose, Humanity’s compassion curdled; the Cherubim were locked away.

Ellen waited for the blood to congeal, another feather to her wings. Then she dressed and strolled calmly into London’s Safezone, a serene angel of vengeance and death.

-----

Guardian

Orlov hung over London in a web of tubes that pumped curdled fluids through his transmuted body.

“Sp(ai)der mechs at Marble Arch,” the interface whispered in his mind.

He saw scuttling machines clambering over the broken buildings and cracked tarmac of Oxford Street. He heard the New Baker Street Irregulars panicking.

Orlov remembered being human.

“Launch cherub bombers,” he commanded.

London span into twenty Londons as his consciousness fragmented between the bombers. The Orlov/ Cherubs swept down from the clouds and unleashed a hailstorm of micro-explosives that ripped through the sp(ai)der mechs. The Irregulars cheered.

“Thank you,” the interface whispered.

(The three words were: cherub, curdle and rip)

Wolf

by John Xero

“What’s the time, Mr Wolf?”

So goes the invocation. Children chant it, their innocent tongues taunting with wicked words. What is the time? How long I have been imprisoned below, barely alive, while they play?

A scraped knee, a snagged shin, a scratch... Tiny, sweet offerings of blood, just enough to keep me aware but sluggish, delirious.

Then last night, a full moon, and a murder. Delicious panic and pain and pooling blood, a whole life seeping deep down, nourishing me, revitalising me, reviving me.

Now I wait. And soon, the children will return. Soon, it will be dinner time.

Homecoming

by John Xero

London sprawls across the horizon, taunting us with its rude, bustling health, drawing us in with coy insinuations, with promises of revenge. The journey has not been easy but we are finally home.

Whatever the scientists shot us full of is rotting our insides away. I can feel it in spikes and jabs of bright pain, in a growing, pervasive ache. We are the walking dead, but we refuse to lie down, our symphony is not done yet.

We were built to win, and we won. We were trained to fight, and we have brought the war home with us.

Knight

by John Xero

His armour is detachment.

His steed is the music he rode in on, the rhythmic, heavy thunder of hooves.

His dragon is a writhing, tenebrous thing. It has a thousand eyes that watch him by day and judge him. It has a hundred mouths that flicker with tongues of barbed comment, and cruel claws which rake him with doubt.

His weapons are forged in the fire of his heart, and here, ‘neath night’s banner, he dances.

His fight with the dragon is eternal, but in these moments of grace and energy he is winning and he is nothing but happy.

Z-word

by John Xero

“Don’t say it. I know you’re thinking it.”

Ryan smiled broadly. “Thinking what?”

Elliot knew that smile; it was infuriating, and far too cute. “You know what. The Z-word.”

“Oh, that. Actually, I was remembering the last time we were up here.”

Elliot coughed and looked away, feeling his cheeks redden. “That was eleven years ago.”

“So? A boy remembers his first kiss.”

“The one that set him straight? And stop smiling.”

The sunset was beautiful. Hungered moans drifted up from the street below.

“Why wouldn’t I smile? I couldn’t wish for better company at the end of the world.”

Warsmith

by John Xero

Sweat, soot, grime and beating, beating insistence. Oppressive heat and a fierce orange, bright in a room of darkness. A sparking, clanging heart.

You. Will. Live.

His thick apron armours against the flicker of fire demons. He wields a hammer of heavy iron: a brutal, simple weapon of purpose. Corded muscle lashes out as he beats metal into obedience, into life. Swords and bucklers, daggers, shields, breastplates, helms and gauntlets.

You. Will. Save.

You. Will. Harm.

The grail is lost. We men, we breaths of thought in cold metal, are all lost without it.

Find. The. Grail.

Win. The. War.

(Originally written for Lily Childs' Friday Prediction) 

Hangman

by John Xero

“It is done, my lord.”

His lord? How insincere. But then, if he could genuinely conceive of fealty he would be of no use to me. He thinks he will feign subservience and be done with me once I grant him his apotheosis. Fool.

He holds the newspaper high. The headline is his, again; they have dubbed him The Hangman of Headley. Proud fool.

He thinks I am deceived by his false obeisance but his pride blinds him to the truth. With each child hanged his soul shrivels. Soon enough he will be empty and I will ride his husk.





(Originally written for Lily Childs' Friday Prediction)

Colonisation

by John Xero


“I thought Private Jones was dead.”

“He was. Is.”

“Right, well, he’s looking remarkably awake for a corpse.”

They looked at Jones through the reinforced glass. Jones looked back. He was unusually pale and the whites of his eyes were grey. Black tears ran down his cheeks.

“Is he crying?”

“It’s a side effect, waste material.”

“Waste material?”

“He’s been colonised by alien bacteria that breed in necrotised flesh. The individual cells network. They only take a few days to achieve sentience.”

“Didn’t we send the rest of his squad home in body bags?”

“I’m afraid so, Colonel.”

Jones smiled.

Monsters

by John Xero

Burnt out, a building becomes an exposed corpse. Blackened ribs of brick and broken wood. Empty windows like dead eyes. Ghosts of ash drifting, dissipating on a mournful wind.

The Institute of Advanced Necrological Research had been our home; the place we were raised, so to speak.

Doctor Frankie told us this day would come, the pitchforks and torches of yore replaced by shotguns and gasoline. In the ruins of her office I find the charred painting of her infamous forebear and I am resolved. We are children of the grave and we will find the monsters that did this.

(Originally written for Lily Childs' Friday Prediction)

Sanctuary

by John Xero

Find somewhere high, somewhere safe. Hide.

The white noise of the monsoon-born storm transcended anything Simon had experienced in England, it was deafening and terrible, biblical. The walls rattled and shook and he feared the chapel would be torn apart.

The locals had warned him of such weather, and the things it drove above ground: things better left unseen, unimagined.

He shivered and pulled the blanket around himself. Superstitious nonsense.

He almost missed the rough shouting, half-stolen by the storm. Then there was a heavy, urgent thumping on the doors. He went to unbar them. Some company would be good.

(Originally written for Lily Childs' Friday Prediction)