Jim the Writer

a literary blog

Jim Anderson

If the gods be merciful

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The good people of Kal were fixing to burn another witch. The event would close the Festival of the Tyrant’s Demise. “Third one this week,” Proffer said as we watched the wood-stack grow. “They must like the smell. The evil–”

“Judge not, lest you be judged,” I said hastily. And in a lower voice: “Be careful, my friend.”

Proffer narrowed his eyes, but spoke more softly. “You’re right, of course. I’m sorry.”

“We’ll move on before the lighting.”

He sighed, and glanced toward the great temple. “Do you think she has confessed?”

“If the gods be merciful,” I said.

I wrote this fiction for the 100 Word Challenge: “Tyrant” at Thin Spiral Notebook.

See Part II of this story: Her name is Future

Loathsome, tiresome exercise

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Photo of Mark Twain
Mark Twain, 1907. Photo by A.F. Bradley

When it comes to exercise, I’m a Mark Twain kind of guy. At his 70th birthday party, feted by 170 people in the Red Room at Delmonico’s in New York City, Twain said, “I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; I was always tired” (The New York Times, Dec. 6, 1905). [Read more…] about Loathsome, tiresome exercise

What Else You Can’t Do

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He had no music in him, never had.

In fourth grade, before the Christmas pageant, a desperate teacher ordered him to lip-sync “The Little Drummer Boy.” Decades later, a grown man, it still made him sad.

“You can’t dance,” a woman told him over the booming bass at a grad school party. “It makes me wonder what else you can’t do.” A nasty sly smile. A mean drunk, he thought. He wanted her anyway.

He wanted to sing “Drummer Boy.” He wanted to dance. He wanted the music to lift him up and waft him away, but it never did.

I wrote this story for the 100 Word Challenge: “Music” at Thin Spiral Notebook.

The Presence

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poster: 100 words of fictionThe wind chimes were driving him nuts.

“They’re pretty,” his wife said, without looking up from her book.

“Pretty loud!”

“Go take them down, then.”

“All right, I will.”

He set aside his laptop, leaned forward in his chair, and then stopped. It seemed too easy. He studied his wife for a moment, sensing a trap.

“Really? That would be OK with you?”

“Sure. Go ahead. What’s to stop you?”

“Your mom! This could be her way of haunting me.”

His wife laughed. “She has other ways to do that.”

“Oh? Such as?”

“Take down her chimes, and you’ll see.”

I wrote this story for the 100 Word Challenge #407 at Velvet Verbosity.

Another Cold Morning in the Tower

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As always, he’d put the kettle on for tea. She awoke to the whistle. Today I will escape, she resolved, throwing off the bedclothes.

She encased herself in her royal-blue robe and waited. The sad-faced jailer appeared. He set the breakfast tray on her table, and then dragged out the ornate chair.

“Tea again? I prefer milk.”

“Yes, but tea is what we have.”

“And sugar instead of honey.”

“Again, we make do, my lady.”

He bowed deeply to her.

“I will escape today, jailer.”

“There is always hope.”

“Yes,” she said. “There always is.”

She drank the honeyed tea.

I wrote this story for the 100 Word Challenge #406 at Velvet Verbosity.