• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

101 Words

101 Word Short Stories

  • Subscribe
  • About
  • Submissions
  • Volunteer

Search Results for: karen tucker

Consequences

September 29, 2021 2 Comments

Paris, Prince of Troy, vacillates before the three radiant goddesses. Each desires the golden apple ‘for the fairest.’ Each offers a gift. The world’s most beautiful woman. Political power. Wisdom, finesse in warfare.

Three parallel worlds diverge:

1. Aphrodite grants him the loveliest woman, but this starts a war that destroys him and his city.

2. With Hera’s power, he tyrannises half the known world.

3. He chooses Athena for warfare, but while her gifts bring him both power and beauty, wisdom changes him in ways he did not expect.

His rule is peaceful and enlightened, and creates a Golden Age.

By Karen Tucker

Phoenix

April 30, 2021 5 Comments

Behind the curtain, two shadows dance in the flickering candlelight. Moths drawn to the flame, bumping futilely against the glass shade, two lives saved from their hearts’ desire.

The other shadow sits unmoving, rocking chair stilled, on the silent porch. No glass to keep her from harm, heart charred to a crisp by the flame of rejected love. I cannot reach her, but I smell the smoky embers of despair.

I move to sit beside her, hand on hers. After an hour, she grips it tight. Tiny stirring of micro-roots as her heart begins the long climb back to the light.

By Karen Tucker

The Farming Game

June 14, 2019 5 Comments

The Farming Game

The teenagers sat dejected beside a barren field.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Farming looks so easy,” they said, “in the game. But why doesn’t the food grow?”

“You need to work the land,” I replied. “Plough, plant, water. As my parents did.” As I did, before the farm failed. “And it takes time, unlike in the game.”

“How long?”

“Spring to Autumn.”

“We can’t harvest it today?”

I shook my head, remembering the heartbreak of losing my home and business, after my parents died. “Not in real life, or I’d still be doing it.” I sighed.

We all walked away, dejected.

By Karen Tucker

Primary Sidebar

Search Stories

The end.