Beatify

100 words on beatify for #SmallTales

Dave wanted Emma badly.
“Look, I’m no saint”, he said
“but if a saint is what you want, then you’re going to have to help me.”
Emma knew his reputation, but she decided to let him go on.
“To be a saint, first I have to be dead – and I have to be in a state of bliss.”
“But I can’t kill myself because that’s a mortal sin.”
“So the way I see it, you’re going to have to sleep with me, kill me, and then get the Pope himself to tell the world I died happy.”
“Emma. Baby. Beatify me.”

Waste

A few words for #SmallTales on the keyword Waste

Flecks of ink or pixels
Thrown against the page
Jackson Pollock pictures
Incandescent rage

Blobs with tails or swishes
Jetsam from my mind
Circles joined or severed
By sweeping looping lines

Hemingway used pencil
Graphite mixed with clay
Wrapped inside a cedar case
Shavings thrown away

I don’t scratch on paper
Fingers tap on glass
Hit delete repeatedly
My errors never last

My hours spent in writing
Are reality not faced
My accountant says, unsmiling
They’re basically a waste

The Explanation

100 words for #SmallTales on the keyword “Recipe”

The discovery, at boarding school, that he could be more alone in a roomful of people than he ever could on his own.
Years spent hiding in the library where no-one spoke or in the pub where nothing mattered.
Learning to submit to the fear of failure, rather than trying to do what he wanted to do.
Actively discouraging intimacy, making sure no friend or lover could ever touch the open nerve endings at his core.
“That,” my wife told her best friend over a large vodka, “is what makes him behave like that.”

Unemployathon

A 100 word #SmallTales story on the subject of Benefits

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and thanks for tuning in to this, the first telethon of its kind in Britain.
We’ve raised money for children, animals and global disaster victims, but now’s YOUR chance to help people in Britain without a job.
In the old days, the government used to take care of these poor unfortunates, but those days are gone. Now it’s up to YOU to feed, clothe and house them. Or maybe even employ them.

Imagine a puppy with no-one to care for it.
That’s Mrs Jones of Halifax.
Dial now or text to donate…

Invincible

100 words for #SmallTales

Mrs Fawlty’s cat Vincent had a voracious appetite for small prey.
Anything small, juicy and easy to catch. Birds, fish, rodents of all forms.
Try as he may her husband Basil could not persuade her that Vincent was anything other than a saint.
It was her unshakeable belief in her cat’s self-control that persuaded her it would be fine to buy a hamster. A hamster who lasted one hour before Vincent ate it.
“Basil ! What have you done with my hamster – you foolish man ! You’ve lost him.”
“I most certainly have not.” her husband replied, “He’s in Vince Sybil.”

The Domicile

Archives: SmallTales

Beatify

Waste

The Explanation

Unemployathon

Invincible