Spilling Ink Review is proud to announce the winning entries for the
No-Entry-Fee
Impromtu August 2010
What Can You Say in 100 Words or Less? Competition
The Prize??
The following submissions will be included in our annual print anthology tentatively due for release February, 2011.

Congratulations Winners!

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The Beginning

By Viccy Adams

As the bird flew away, Annie wondered if she would always be alone and hungry. When the last of the leaves blew out of the trees, Annie swam in the fish-empty lake until her fingers purpled. A tent appeared on the hillside; Annie licked her lips and started walking.

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Inmate

By Nick Boreham

It was a cold Saturday morning in April. The asylum inmate sat strapped to a chair in the Essex market place, her head in a scold’s bridle, the wind flapping her nightdress against her bare legs. She was about sixty. On the pavement in front of her, a bowl contained a boiled potato and a spoonful of mushy peas. Next to it a placard posed the question: Can A Human Being Exist Like This?

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Exit

By Brindley Hallam Dennis

He pushed his way to the back of the house.
+++++I’m going outside for a smoke, he told her.
+++++Light from the bay-window spilled over his shoulder. He shrugged it off, strode to the gate, out across the road, into the field.
+++++Here in darkness, where light from the window had not followed, and the lights of the town did not reach, and there was no moon, he smoked his cigarette.
+++++Silence.
+++++The glow of his cigarette faded. He looked across towards the house, beyond the wilderness of grass. Blood pulsed in his ears, clicks of metal turning.

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The Trouble with Robots…

By Benjamin Judge

Is their insistence on wearing silly hats. There are times when a fez just isn’t acceptable head wear. Try telling that to a robot!
+++++The one that arrived this morning had a top hat on that was about three foot tall. He looked like a metal Cat in the Hat. He stayed about twenty minutes; dismantled the vacuum cleaner, ate a couple of vases and said something unforgivable to my cleaner. Bloody British Robot Corporation.
+++++One of those vases had a picture of Bradley Walsh on. You can’t just find them in the shops you know.

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Convert, Perceive

By Sam Porter

There was a thin, balding man who liked to make simple things complicated. Nice became nasty. Kind became selfish. He said short people were stumpy, tall people gangly, but he loved his I.T. technician, said he was a ‘wonderful little man’. Others heard this and said, “Aren’t Canadians lovely?”
+++++One day, the I.T. technician made a mistake and I know this because the balding man shouted, “That stupid fucking little Indian. That stinky, nasty, Indian midget wiped my files.”
+++++See, to him, it wasn’t a mistake, but sabotage.

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Miranda in Red

 

(inspired by Krzysztof Kieslowski’s version of The Tempest)

By Hila Shachar

Prologue: a condensed tempest, Miranda in a bob, red coat swinging. She turns a scattered visage. He asks, what is a tempest? Red not blue, a violent restless unkempt minus. I will corrode you.
+++++You, who I cannot see through. Swathed and cradled, you turned opaque and said, I’m blue.
+++++So I tore you up and said, this one will do. You murdering myth, a shipwrecked bride of salinity. Princess, (skin crisp, sweating fog), listen.
+++++Epilogue: she answers, Shakespeare! Good old chap. You were on to a thing or two.
+++++Ah, you.

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Chiller

By Stephen R. Smith

June lifted the freezer lid and tossed a handful of photographs inside.
+++++“You said ‘Fuck me if I’m lying’?” She met his stare, watched his confidence melt away.
+++++“I could untie your hands so you could look,” she leaned closer, “but I won’t.”
+++++As the freezer lid dropped she added, “You’re fucked now, aren’t you?”

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Long Time No See

By Charlie Taylor

I didn’t know him, the white haired man walking down the stairs.
+++++“Long time, no see,” he said. “How’s it going?”
+++++“Fine,” I said to the stranger before me. “Just fine. Yourself? How long has it been? 30 years?”
+++++“32,” he said.
+++++“32 years? My goodness. What happened to our youth?”
+++++I searched his face and, well-hidden behind his polite middle class, middle aged smile, I thought I saw the shadow of a punk student I used to know.
+++++“Odd,” he said as we made for the bar, “but I nearly didn’t recognise you, you’ve changed so much.”