Cellos make little nicks in the dark and we breathe together. The afternoon was a failure. This plain gesture, togetherness, makes quick use of industrious forgetfulness. I cannot keep you behind this gate beyond the third movement. We mean to create more than one monologue to accompany the flutist. The children upstairs, our occupancy momentarily set. I position your fingers behind my neck as talisman for strings. The tent is down. This igloo explodes into every shard of routine that has, before this moment, set what stands for you and for me, aflame, sparks falling into pockets, to the ground.

From Guest Contributor Kelli Allen

Kelli Allen’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the US and internationally. She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has won awards for her poetry, prose, and scholarly work. She served as Managing Editor of Natural Bridge and holds an MFA from the University of Missouri St. Louis. She is the director of the River Styx Hungry Young Poets Series and founded the Graduate Writers Reading Series for UMSL. She is currently a Professor of Humanities and Creative Writing at Lindenwood University. Allen is the author of two chapbooks and one flash fiction collection. Her full-length poetry collection, Otherwise, Soft White Ash, arrived from John Gosslee Books in 2012 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

I always said I was scared of nothing. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, or death, or even lizards, mice and cockroaches. I didn’t disbelieve in ghosts, but they’d done nothing to make me believe. Nor was I frightened of Judgement Day, because I am a conscientious person. Until the moment I heard the sound of footsteps approaching my room, I was truly scared of nothing. But when his shadow crept into the bedroom and his sinewy hands stifled my scream before tearing off every scrap of modesty on my being from that moment on, I became scared of everything.

From Guest Contributor Namitha Varma

Namitha Varma is a media professional based in Mangaluru, India. She has publishing credits in over 15 literary journals including Sahitya Akademi’s journal Indian Literature, eFiction India, Hackwriters, MadSwirl, FIVE Poetry, Microfiction Monday Magazine, and Postcard Shorts. Her micropoem has been read out on NPR Radio as part of the National Poetry Month 2014, and a poem of hers features in the Authorspress anthology ‘Resonating Strings.’ She blogs on narcissistwrites.blogspot.com and tweets via @namithavr.

My Grandfather’s house is becoming more and more cluttered. I’m afraid he is becoming a hoarder.

“I have painful memories.”

From guest contributor Barry O’Farrell

Barry O’Farrell is an actor living in Brisbane, Australia. Barry’s stories may also be found in Cyclamens & Swords, 50 Words Stories, and here at A Story In 100 Words.

The firemen backed out of the room, choking on the gut-churning scent. The old woman lay splayed across the floor, one purple foot twisted out from under the quilted bathrobe, the other in a pink slipper, the lamb’s wool gripping the foot it could no longer warm, by her side a bloated miniature dachshund and a cat curled and frozen on the cushion of the kitchen chair. A cockatoo danced back and forth on his perch, still calling to the woman on the floor, to the dog in whining vigil, to the three weeks of silence in the house.

From Guest Contributor Diane de Anda

“Ugh, Dad you cannot send me to that school!” I squealed.

I hesitated. I saw nothing.

From Guest Contributor Joshua Wallis

Joshua is a home-school student from the United kingdom, who loathed reading literature until recently! He is looking forward to reading works of great novelists and insightful 100-word stories in the coming years.

“They’d both die for you, you know,” he said.

Her pockets were already full of stones.

From Guest Contributor Peter Hynes

Peter’s stories have appeared in such publications as Flesh & Blood, The Malahat Review, Transversions, Dark Tales, Wicked Hollow, Rain Crow, Not One Of Us, Aiofe’s Kiss, Horror Library Vol 2, and On Spec.

My pager summons me to the Master Observation Analysis Lab (MOAL).

“It’s in our own solar system!”

From Guest Contributor Barry O’Farrell

Barry is an actor living in Brisbane, Australia. Barry’s other stories can be found on Cyclamens & Swords, 50 Word Stories and of course here at A Story In 100 Words.

The pale-eyed, reed-thin child had asked a question, timidly, adding a please.

The elder, blissfully ignorant, failed to imagine the aftermath.

From Guest Contributor Sayantika Mandal

An avid reader and an aspiring writer, Sayantika Mandal graduated with honors in English from Presidency College, Kolkata and pursued a post-graduate diploma in English Journalism. After a two-year stint as a copy editor in the national daily Hindustan Times, she left to pursue her dream of being a full-time author.

The lone imagineer of the radioactive sand cloud that froze Florida in death and time worked for Disney. Tourists, natives, gangsters, and gators were rendered untouchable beneath a toxic sheet of glass. The reflection burned up satellites and crisped drones mid-air, and it was agreed the whole place should be forgotten, for now. So they forgot the flamingos and the dancing girls and the cigar factories in Tampa where the son cubano played on. Nobody remembered to forget the island past Key West where an old man sold boat rides to Havana for five dollars and a bottle of rum.

From Guest Contributor Courtney Watson

It started to rain as I got down from the ramshackle bus at the edge of the nondescript town. “Which way is the Nowhere Inn?” I asked the man hidden behind the newspaper. There was no response.

It was time for me to return to my nightmarish home.

From Guest Contributor Sourya Chowdhury

Sourya is a sports journalist based in New Delhi