101 Words

101 Word Short Stories

Search Results for: the one who listened

The One Who Listened

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“Help me, please,” the little girl begs.

The businessmen glance at her, then past her. Not their problem.

“Please, he’ll beat me again!”

They keep walking past.

Another well-dressed man enters the building and then sees her. “Stop being melodramatic, Lucy. You deserved a swat.”

She shakes her head, tears forming.

A blue-haired girl leaves her chair and kneels in front of Lucy. “You okay?”

Lucy risks a glance upwards, then slowly shakes her head.

Years later, Lucy finally asks, “Why did you believe me? No one else did.”

The punk looks up at the stars. “No one believed me either…”

By Aelth Faye

Cornbread

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Granmama said, “Jimbo, you gonna die you don’t stop eatin’ that cornbread.”

Jimbo was so big and ornery, he never listened to his granmama.  He never listened to anybody. Not one soul in that town thought he’d stay on the right side of the law.

And now here he was sitting in the state penitentiary mess hall, looking at his empty plate. His stomach growled. That cornbread was on Rooster Johnston’s plate next to the chicken fried steak and beans. Jimbo grabbed it. Rooster punched him in the throat, broke his windpipe.

“I warned that boy,” Granmama cried at the funeral.

By Joe Greco

Ersatz

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“Sticks and stones will make my bones and words can always break you,” sang Hex as she pressed moss onto her forearm in the moonlight. But her flesh, while soft, was green. Hex added leaf after leaf. “Skin smells good,” she murmured, “but they will know.” She climbed a drainpipe and listened to Alice’s bedtime story. With each word, a leaf turned to skin and the moss to muscle. The light clicked off. Hex snuck inside and stared at little Alice in bed and whispered in a rustling voice, “Sticks and stones will take your bones, and I’ll be pretty instead.”

By Patrick ten Brink

You Changed Me

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“Hi, Lucy. I haven’t heard from you much lately. I don’t even know if you remember me. I know that I only knew you for that one week, but you changed my life. I had friends before you, but you were the first person to actually show an interest in me. To care about my life. The first person who wanted to hear what I said and listened. You inspired me. I just wanted you to know how much you mean to me. Thank you so much.”

“No,” I whisper as the voicemail ends, “I’m sorry I didn’t answer. So sorry.”

By AEK

A Veteran Scrapper

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Elias Simpkins, no stranger to police, woke from his induced coma weeks after the explosion. He resembled the NICU preemies—fire-engine red, hairless. A neighbor found him writhing across the street, hair on fire, face scorched, one arm bent backwards like the limb of a pipe cleaner man.

Memory returned like drips of wet sand squeezed from a fist. One image: a basement crisscrossed with copper missed by the others.

From his unbandaged eye, he watched the morphine drip as he listened to hospital noise and sipped water.

He remembered: his crescent wrench uncoupling pipes…a loud CLICK.

Fumes.

Oh shit!

By Robb T. White

Angel Wings

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Darcy didn’t believe in miracles. Never carried a rabbit’s foot. Stepped on cracks all the time.

Then one dark December day, a pair of angel wings mysteriously appeared on her doorstep.

“Must be somebody’s idea of a joke,” she mumbled, taking them inside.

At 1:32, she awoke to the strains of a harp, somewhere off in the distance. Intently, she listened.

At 3:28, a bright beam of light flooded her bedroom. She lay motionless, mesmerized by its beauty.

And then, promptly at 4:37, she took flight.

A short briefing followed. “You have arrived safely, Darcy. You can uncross your fingers now.”

By Susan Gale Wickes

Jean Didn’t Listen

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A chubby boy with rosy cheeks and freckles roller skated to Jean. He looked Rockwellian.

“Which ya doin’?” he asked.

“Looking at a house I might buy,” Jean answered.

“Which one?” he continued. “I know all about deez houses.”

Jean pointed to a rowhouse with a boarded storefront.

“It’s got roaches,” he said. “Don’t buy it.”

Before she moved in, her friends helped her scrub the panelled walls. Then, they sat on the worn carpet to eat.

Roaches crept from wall trenches and marched down the painted panels. “Oh, brother,” Sue moaned through a mouthful of pizza.

Jean should have listened.

By Susan Fairfax Reid