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- Herausgeber: Arachne Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
A man carries his girlfriend in the left-hand breast pocket of his shirt. During World War II, a young soldier searches the houses and barns of the families with whom he grew up. An astronaut wonders whether she can adapt to life back on earth. In her second collection of short fiction, 100neHundred, Laura Besley explores a kaleidoscope of emotions through 100 stories of exactly 100 words. So much of life is packed into these stories, precious moments and sad ones, humour and grief, gorgeous nuggets of hope and stinging barbs of hurt. Ellie Hawkes Laura has created beautiful snapshots, each one alive with precision and emotion. Each story excels in its originality, each one a complete tale, each carefully crafted without a word to spare.Bookbound With this collection I soon lost track of how many 'wows' I was uttering.. Morgen Bailey
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Winter
Arrhythmia
The Monthly Checker (Part I)
Doppelgänger
At Sea
Left Hanging
Inspection Day
Murder, Suicide or Both
Mother Tongue
Recording Temperatures in Earth’s Thermosphere
Place of Rest
The Corrosion of a Marriage
Filling in The Blanks
Blue on A Red Day
The Second Son
One Half of a Whole
If Only
Between Words
Strife
Pangs
Modern Romance
Interwoven
Out of Sight
First Light
Weekend Dad
A Calendar Year
Spring
The Monthly Checker (Part II)
A Hundred Days of Solitude
A Hop, Skip and a Jump
Wish List
Invisible
That Friday Feeling
Lowest Ebb
Ripple Effect
Empathy
The Old Songs
Reunion
On the Edge
By Myself
Death in Suburbia
Almost Everything
Paper Trail
As One
How to be Normal
Weightlessness
The Sneeze
Chameleon
Speed Reading
Guiding Light
Love is Love
Early Warning
Summer
Animal Kingdom
Breathe
Radio Silence
Raining Colours
The New People
Formalities
Out of The Box
Myopia
Hindsight
Not Waving
Blink
Suitcases
Outsiders
Advice
On Repeat
Money Talks
Winning Numbers
Too Many Words
Karma
Candy Floss
Potluck Shopping
Birthing
Awakening
Reckoning
The Pupa Stage in the Lifecycle of Audrey Brown
Autumn
Empty Nest
Be Prepared
Daily Shop
Alternate Weekends
How the Camera Lies
Autumn Colours
Cat and Mouse
Housewife 500
Celebrity Crush
A Life Half-Lived
Mrs Potter
A Storm in an Hourglass
Flying Solo
Buried Secrets
Life Goes On
Don’t Look Ahead
Eeny Meeny
Five Digit Pin
Selective Hearing
Beneath the Surface
Mercy
Just Ask
Leap Year
Conversion
Support Network
WINTER
Arrhythmia
Dave carries his girlfriend in the left-hand breast pocket of his shirt, thinking – for he is a thoughtful man – that she’ll find the steady rhythm of his heart comforting.
In the early days, she used to pummel him with her dainty fists, little bursts of energy banging out messages he couldn’t decipher. Instead, he pretended it was her heartbeat; blindly seeking his own comfort.
As the days grow shorter and colder, they live in silence. His heartbeat is muffled by knitted layers. She sleeps most of the day, fists clenched, and still hugging her knees to her body for warmth.
The Monthly Checker (part I)
Because I had grown up here, amidst these fields and people, it fell to me to check the barns and outhouses of the farms for things, or people, that shouldn’t be there.
On the first of the month, I would go to the Brauns; on the second, the Müllers; on the third the Hubers; until I had completed the monthly cycle again. All through the war.
I suppose doing it that way it’s possible they knew I was coming, could move or hide things, or people, but I don’t suppose they would’ve dared.
I certainly never found anything, nor anyone.
Doppelgänger
I almost didn’t see the you who wasn’t you.
I was walking past the outdoor tables of the French café, and just at the last second, I caught a familiar hand gesture, and I looked again.
It couldn’t have been you though, my love, because your other hand was clasping the hand of the woman opposite.
Your heads were too close. She was laughing, that abandoned laughing you do when you’re totally in the moment, totally in love.
I walked on, heels tapping out a staccato rhythm, as I no longer wanted to look at the you who wasn’t you.
At Sea
Darkness descends and my wait begins.
On tiptoes I peer out of the back window of the house, scanning the swell of the waves, looking for a speck of colour in the shape of my husband’s fishing boat.
When we met, in a pub delicately balanced on the cliffs, he romanced me with stories of his trade. I wanted him, to be a part of him, for our children to grow up like him. The reality is that he is at sea more often than on land.
Will he return again tonight or finally, inevitably, be claimed by the sea?
Left Hanging
Whenever I phone the benefits office, I have pen and paper ready because if I don’t take notes, I’ll forget what I need to do.
I’m told that my benefits will be cut at the end of the month. My mind ricochets between my incomings and outgoings.
‘Fuck,’ I say.
‘I have a couple of suggestions,’ the advisor says.
I’d forgotten she was there.
After we hang up, I look down at my ‘to do’ list.
- use food banks
- use candles instead of lights
- soak feet in bowl of warm water and mustard, as a pamper treatment
Inspection Day
‘Dan, you know what day it is today, don’t you?’
He glances at the corner of his computer screen and carries on typing. ‘The twenty-third. Why?’
‘That means we’re being inspected today.’
The clacking of keys stops. ‘What? Today?’
‘Yes,’ I nod.
‘I’m not ready. Are you?’
‘Of course not. You can never be ready.’
‘What should we do?’
‘Just carry on working until they get here. And hope for the best.’
Silence descends. It is cold, like marble, with black lines of tension running through it. Everyone in the open plan office stands, heads bowed.
‘They’re here,’ I whisper.
Murder, Suicide or Both
If only we lived in America. I could wander into a supermarket, buy a gun, and put a bullet through his skull. Bang. What can I do here in good ol’ Blighty? Knife or poison. A knife would never work. I’d probably miss the major artery and he’d stab me to death instead. So, poison it is.
I dish up, one portion bigger than the other, and sprinkle sodium cyanide carefully and evenly over one. After putting the plates on the table, he takes one look at them, snorts, and swaps them around. My heart pounds.
We both start eating.
Mother Tongue
Before: she loved reading, when the curves, dots and dashes on the page spoke to her.
Before: she read to her own children, every night before bed.
Before: she taught other people’s children how to read.
Before she fled her fatherland under a hazy night sky; before she spent weeks, then months, in a camp trying to feed her children, trying to stop them from getting sick; before she was deposited in an alien country and sounds were hurled at her, sounds that meant nothing; before she could no longer read the words, not to herself, nor to her children.
