Tag: 1100 word story

The Yukon Called

Posted on by Simon J. Wood

(1150 words) Miriam Jesney was a blonde, piquant thing of nineteen summers with no relations but Gilbert, a semi-mythical brother, on the Yukon, who had not found enough gold to send her any. She earned her living – two pounds a week – as a guitarist at the splendid tea parties of the Hotel Bemrose. “Hey, Miriam, honey, what was that thing you were playing tonight?” asked Hank Malone one evening, approaching her while she sat at the hotel bar, nursing a glass of white wine. Miriam smiled. Hank was OK, a lumbering, gentle giant of a man. “Well, which one? I played quite a bit of stuff.” Hank admired Miriam’s skin. It was like pink china, and her eyes, well, those huge green eyes, were like … like crystals! “That last one, a … a rippling type of thing.” “Why, that was a study in arpeggios, just different right-hand fingerings for the same chord progression. By an Italian gentleman named Ferdinando Carulli.” “Arp … arpeggios, what’s that?” Miriam looked into Hank’s open, honest face. “Know what a chord is, Hank?” “Yeah, sure … well, no, not exactly.”

Castle Trethergowan

Posted on by Simon J. Wood

(1100 words) Every morning, come rain, come shine, I’d walk the cliff tops, watching huge waves thundering against the rocks and hearing the cries of gulls being thrown across the sky. There, across the strait, in the far distance were the twins’ cottages. The twins who’d taken something of mine. Something very precious. Through binoculars, I could see thin white spirals of smoke from their chimneys. For now, they were still breathing. Then, past the broken and missing windows of Castle Trethergowan, its ancient greenstone weathered and pitted by the centuries and now surrendered to the unstoppable force of ivy. Today, a very special day, I resisted the temptation to climb its creaking staircases to huge, empty chambers, there to gaze through moulded glass out at the moorland and heather of the lonely island. Instead, I made my way back to the farm to collect warm freshly laid eggs from the chicken run.

What I’ve Seen With Your Eyes

Posted on by Simon J. Wood

(1150 words) Bed and board taken care of for the night, it was getting on towards six o’clock, so I thought I’d buy myself a beer and go out and sit in a deck chair by the swimming pool to take a little evening sun. I went to the bar and got the beer, carried it outside, and descended through the lawns towards the pool. It was a fine garden with beds of azaleas and tall coconut palms, and the wind was blowing strongly through the tops of the palm trees, making the leaves hiss and crackle as though they were on fire. I could see clusters of big brown nuts hanging down underneath the leaves. “Hey, Johnny, Johnny Goodfellow!”

Kindness Hurts

Posted on by Simon J. Wood

(1000 words) So, there I was, just come out of the Castlehorn public ladies’ loo, when a woman stopped right in front of me. She was short and fat and clad in a flimsy two-piece summer outfit that looked as out of place as a homosexual in a monastery. Her face was bloated, and her lips were pale and thick. For all the world, she reminded me of Sheppard’s illustration of the toad, dressed as a washerwoman, in The Wind in the Willows. “‘Scuse me, Luv, I’m bursting. Could you look after Angel here whilst I pop into the ladies? I’ll be as quick as I can, and he’s as good as gold?” I looked down on a huge black dog at the end of the lead the woman was gripping with one pudgy hand. With the other, she clutched a large bag. I really didn’t fancy ‘dog sitting,’ but, having just done a ‘kindness workshop’ down at the local church, remembered their dictum, ‘Have faith in humanity.’

The Sam Wildman Story

Posted on by Simon J. Wood

(1100 words) Seen at the top clubs and casinos, always with a glamorous woman on his arm, usually a different one each time, he was ebullient, witty, handsome and, at a time when the usual darts stars were stretching their XXL nylon darts shirts to the limit with enormous beer bellies, Sam, though he liked his ‘ciggies,’ appeared slim and fit. Everyone said he was a lovely man. It was only when he was under the influence of alcohol that he became abusive, aggressive, and gargantuan-headed. As Roger Merrill, doorkeeper at the Ritz, says of him, “We all loved Sam when he was sober. He could do great impersonations – Prince Charles, The Fonz, Shirley Temple, Fred Flintstone, you name it. Then you could give him a dart and he’d put an apple on someone’s head, usually a good-looking girl, and throw the dart right into the middle of it from ten feet away!” “Did he ever miss?” I asked. “Not when he was sober.” Roger gave a wry smile. “Unfortunately, that wasn’t very often.”

Martian Holiday

Posted on by Simon J. Wood

(1100 words) “Y’know, Liz,” said Charles one evening, “there’s a guy at work, he’s got a sure-fire idea to make one helluva lotta big-time dough!” Elizabeth Soulby raised her eyebrows. “Yeah, his name is Stanley, got an uncle by the name of Matthias Dale, a big shot in the aircraft business. Anyway, seems this Mr. Dale is offering shares in the first flight to Mars!” Elizabeth Soulby raised her eyebrows even higher. “Honestly sweetheart, this Dale guy knows what he’s talking about, got contacts in the air defence business.” Elizabeth squared her shoulders and put her hands on her hips. “Well, what the hell does this guy know that NASA doesn’t know then!” Charles sighed, “Simply this, he doesn’t have a million and one regulations holding him back. And he has Fan Evans on his team.”

Behind the Brown Curtain

Posted on by Simon J. Wood

(1100 words) It was evening on a cold, windy New Year’s Eve as Stephen Stein made his way along the drab downtown high street. There were few people about and the shops were closing or closed. He caught a glimpse of himself reflected in a dark store window. A wild mop of straggly grey hair, a thick beard of matching grey with touches of white, a black greatcoat, stained and smelly, and heavy brown boots, scuffed by hundreds of hours of tramping the streets. Stein adjusted an incongruous chequered yellow scarf at his neck, brand new, it even had the price tag – thirty pounds. He’d found it in a bin, put out for collection. Now he rolled it and put it in a pocket in case someone had second thoughts and came looking for it. “Hi Stevie boy, Happy New Year!” It was Robbie, the owner of the laundromat, a genuinely kind-hearted guy and one of the only people in this small town full of small-minded people who’d give him the time of day. Stein pulled his gaze away from the window and his eyes glinted at the twenty-pound note held out to him. “Get yourself some whisky on me.”

Sea Sicko

Posted on by Simon J. Wood

(1100 words) “Commemorated we were. Commemorated by the king!” said the captain, sweeping an arm out and knocking a glass of water onto the floor, so that it shattered and made everyone jump. “What king was that?” asked Maurice Henry, as an orderly attended to the mess. Captain Sugar puffed on a long cigar. “Why, the king of Liberia of course! On account of us picking up the biggest load in Trinidad in 2014. February it was, eleven thousand containers. Can you imagine it, eleven thousand! Like a fifty-mile long freight train!” “Grandpa, can we go now?” Maurice, just about to ask what the king of Liberia had to do with Trinidad, looked down at his granddaughter, Phoebe. He could see she was tired, in no mood to hear another night’s boastful stories from Captain Sugar. He looked at the captain and raised his eyebrows.

Behind the Brown Curtain

Posted on by Simon J. Wood

(1100 words) It was evening on a cold, windy New Year’s Eve as Stephen Stein made his way along the drab downtown high street. There were few people about and the shops were closing or closed. Stein caught a glimpse of himself reflected in a dark store window. A wild mop of straggly grey hair, a thick beard of matching grey with touches of white, a black greatcoat, stained and smelly, and heavy brown boots, scuffed by hundreds of hours of tramping the streets. Stein adjusted an incongruous chequered yellow scarf at his neck, brand new, it even had the price tag – thirty pounds. He’d found it in a bin, put out for collection. Now he rolled it and put it in a pocket in case someone had second thoughts and came looking for it. “Hi Stevie boy, Happy New Year!” It was Robbie, the owner of the laundromat, a genuinely kind-hearted guy and one of the only people in this small town full of small-minded people who’d give him the time of day. Stein pulled his gaze away from the window and his eyes glinted at the twenty-pound note held out to him.

Wish Upon a Star

Posted on by Simon J. Wood

(1100 words)

I headed upstairs to the reference library, further annoyed. There was just one other person there, a down-and-out type reading The Sun, having chosen to eschew the nearby pile of ‘erudite’ newspapers.
I went to an interesting section on ‘supernatural’ subjects: ghosts, UFO’s, angels, demons and the like. Perusing the shelves, I noticed a large tome with Demonology in red gothic lettering on the pale blue spine. There was no dust jacket. Seating myself on a comfortable chair, I began to read. Well, seems there was something called The Lesser Key of Solomon, an anonymous 17th century ‘grimoire’ apparently, that included the ‘conjuration of demons’ ...

Goodbye Bernie, Hello Samantha

Posted on by Simon J. Wood

(1100 words)

“Say it ain’t so, Joe, please say it ain’t so,” Samantha Muir sang whilst hanging out leather belts in the Ladies’ Clothing department of Jacksons. “That's not what I wanna hear, Joe. Ain't I got a right to know?” She hesitated. Why was she singing that? Her mind flashed back to a scene when she was nine years old, her little brother Joe coming to her with blood pouring from his nose. An older boy, Terry, had punched him in the face at the bus stop after school.

“Excuse me, young lady, are you serving or dreaming?”

Pie in the Sky

Posted on by Simon J. Wood

(1100 words)

“Well, lookee here, we’ve got ourselves a midget!” laughed Tanner Sutherland, standing behind her in the dinner queue on her first day.
She turned around. “Well, lookee here, we’ve got ourselves an ugly moron!”
There was laughter and a few soldiers gathered around to watch the scene. Tanner’s face was red with rage. “There shouldn’t be no women in our army, especially not little shortarses, you’d be no good in close combat.”
Rowena pulled out of the queue and stood facing Tanner, balancing lightly on the balls of her feet.
“Hey, lay off her, Tanner,” said Norton Breakspear, “it’s brains, not brawn we need in the Corps. You seem to be lacking in the first department, bud.”
Tanner ignored him. “Looks like we got us a feisty one!”
Rowena knew she’d have her work cut out to beat up this creep. “Tell you what, soldier, you know anything about pie-eating?”