The last hike
It was to be their last hike together. They had decided their relationship was over and they were in the kitchen preparing their rucksacks. Family members had been informed that a separation process had begun. Eileen had spoken to two girlfriends about her new lover, Leonard, and Eric had started gathering funds to climb in...
Dogs both big and small
Novels are weighty tomes. Short stories fill a few pages. When we pick up a novel that’s as thick as a brick, or open the first book of a series whose volumes might reach our waist if stacked on the floor, we tremble with awe. Compared to a novel, a short story seems as inconsequential...
A view of the hills
The Mayor read a letter. It had been written by a student named Yangyang in Class Two of the third grade at Green Primary School. The full text is as follows: Dear Uncle Mayor, How do you do? I have two things to tell you. One is good and the other is bad. First the...
One day he will stay
It’s been two days, no word. She can still feel him. His touch is still on her. Her cunt still aches. His stale body odour still clings to her. It’s been two days since she was ensnared in his embrace; naked, and crushed under his weight. Inside he came and her body got to work...
Water
He entered the bathroom completely naked, in harsh silence. Only the red washcloth hung from his shoulders, giving his hunched back some colour. I led him to the shower cabinet, trying to steady his slow steps. To support him. There wasn’t room for both of us inside, so I stayed out as he stepped in....
About Fiction 500
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Ernest Hemingway (attrib.) ‘Flash fiction’, ‘micro fiction’, ‘sudden fiction’, ‘micro-stories’, ‘postcard fiction’, ‘short shorts’, ‘short short stories’. Whatever name you know it by, small but perfectly formed fiction has a long tradition from Aesop’s Fables, Japanese haiku and Arabian Sufism through Chekhov and Kafka, Borges and Cortázar, H.P. Lovecraft,...
