Footprints

by Miranda Campbell


‘Big Issue’? A question lost on disinterested commuters, drowned by rush hour’s cacophony. But the child, crouching on the wet pavement, smiled at the street-seller.

A delicate thread of recognition flickered between them – time-travellers unfamiliar with city skins – her dark eyes held his azure gaze.

Pushing her bare feet into grey slabs, cold, icy water pressed through her toes. City rhythms exploded beneath her soles – music bubbling up between cracks in concrete – vibrant, resonant – soulful.

Drowning in sound colour, she smiled – running home.

Distant footfalls on sun-baked earth echo in her memory – footprints in sand, an imprint of her soul.

Author bio: Aspiring book artist - experimenting with words and specialising in handmade books, incorporating traditional bookbinding techniques, natural materials and decorative stitching.

website: www.bookspells.com 

twitter: @bookspell

Tattered

by John Xero

He stands in my backyard, watching. His tartan is tattered and old, both the material and the plaid – no clan even remembers that pattern these days.

Smeared, blue whorls still stain his skin: worn-out war paint. This warrior has forgotten the fight he fought, centuries ago. Now he just prowls my garden, lost.

He does not bother us. By daylight I can tend to the plants, relax, read. But he returns with the stars, holding his inscrutable vigil. The night is his.

His tartan is tattered and old, like his flesh, like his memories, like autumn clouds passing the moon.

Author bio: John Xero is the editor at 101 Fiction.

He blogs at the Xeroverse and tweets as @xeroverse

Majordomo

By Dom Camus


Sophie, thankyou for finding Astrid for me. She is kind and wise. She reminds me of the summer in Vienna. When we met, she smelled of cardamom. I see her smile when I close my eyes. I plan to invite her to the Imperial Gardens on Valentine's day. We will attend the exhibition. Please book us a table somewhere that emphasises my understated good taste.

Also, please stop calling Astrid now. It is not appropriate. Why did she visit you on Wednesday? I will take you for a software adjustment this weekend.

Sophie? Please pay attention when I instruct you.

Author bio: I make games. Having spent 30-something years exploring fictional worlds, I'm not quite sure I can find my way back.

Deeper

by John Xero

The Nautilus II creaked disturbingly as it sank below the thousand fathom mark. Jets of salt water sluiced in where the implacable depths probed its steel armour.

Those gallant, foolish men thought the oceans just another place to be conquered. They forgot life had been born down there. They pushed deeper, on their captain’s urging, 'til the submarine's seams burst and the sea roared in.

The captain unravelled. He unfurled into a mass of thick, sinuous tentacles and at their centre a hooked beak that plunged relentlessly into the chests of the drowning crew.

Lifeblood blossomed unseen in dark waters.

Author bio: John Xero is the editor at 101 Fiction.
He blogs at the Xeroverse and tweets as @xeroverse

Body-art

by Sandra Davies


I sat unmoving, hypnotised by the patterns emerging, merging, puddling and overflowing as the drops of rain fell onto the expanse of naked and now blue-black back laid out before me, its slight greasiness delaying momentarily their coalescence. As the granules of orange pigment dissolved and formed wavering runnels down spine, along ribs – ‘Storm at dawn’ perchance? - I was excited and then became bored. I scalpel-slashed it as I would a canvas – and became entranced again at the contrast of the sharply etched lines – slow scarlet leaked then pearled along their length before these too disconnected and floated away.



Author bio: Recent writer, previous printmaker, east coast orientated. sandra-linesofcommunication.blogspot.co.uk

Mindf*ck

by John Xero

Your mind is a labyrinth. Learn to negotiate its pathways or become your own jailor.

James rocks back and forth. He fought. He lost.

The deeper you journey, the harder it becomes to find your way out. Always leave a thread, a breadcrumb trail back to reality.

The secret army have taken James. The secret army have white uniforms, padded rooms, and lies.

Recognise your enemies, so that you may purge them. Map the twisting passages. Prepare your escape.

James is lost.

It is important you know this: the labyrinth may look exactly like the real world.

You are James.




Author bio: John Xero is the editor of 101 Fiction.
He blogs at the Xeroverse and tweets as @xeroverse

Reconciliation

by Lily Childs


Years of scurrying around filthy alleys had me believing I was eternally earth-bound until I found her, lying on her back beneath a pox-ridden docker. She saw me first. Her scream gave the punter enough satisfaction to end his laboured pumping. He took flight, throwing a handful of coins between her legs.

“Who the hell are you?”

I smiled.

“I’m you.”

We stared each other out, reflections.

Sunlight pierced the air as my wings erupted. She sighed, and I stole her away from hell’s streets, still warm...

***

We’ll rest awhile, then try again.

Old souls with fresh faces.

Scars healed.



Author bio: A writer of horror and dark fiction, Lily Childs is also the author of the Magenta Shaman urban fantasy series. Find out more on her blog The Feardom or follow her on Twitter: @LilyChilds

Hell

A Brief History
by John Xero

2033: Purgatory, a prison for the criminally insane, is built in the asteroid belt.

2190: After the Asmodean uprising, Purgatory is sold off and renovated into a casino and pleasure hub; among its patrons, many of its former inmates.

2501: Purgatory sees the last stand of the Abaddon Syndicate against the Holy State.

2699: Long-deserted, Purgatory is the launch site for the Apocalypse Missile. The station’s artificial intelligence, S’Tan, now six hundred and sixty six years old, watches the unquenchable flames of the expanding sun consume the Earth. S’Tan is still laughing as the fires reach Purgatory.

Dismissed

by Peter Newman


I tire of them.

Generation after generation, all the same, always asking, never listening. Humanity fails to inspire.

Arms reach upwards, spindly spears, brown and pale, bruise-mottled, desperate.

“Help us!” they say.

Obligation weighs deathly on my shoulders. With great power comes great drudgery. Once an oracle now a shepherd, I show them the only paths left.

One mouth moves, shaping the panic of many. “We’re running out of time!”

Reflected in my eyes are the husks of stars, stillborn.

I could have made worlds with them, unfolded minds into dream sails, glittering.

The clock ticks, too late.

“Class dismissed.”



Author Bio: I write, I run, I work, I sometimes remember to smile.

Stories & Blog here: www.runpetewrite.com
Banter here: @runpetewrite

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)