101 Words

101 Word Short Stories

Disconnect

Disconnect
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“I must look like a psychopath,” she thought, with no phone in hand on the train. She perused the scene. Men hung on the handles to steady themselves, staring at their phones, their bodies swaying with the motion of the train. Women sat similarly unaware of others, only diving deeper into their life online. A child held his own device, larger than his head, completely absorbed in a game. The train settled quickly into a station, and she succumbed to the boredom of life offline. She scrolled down, over, up—unaware, as they all were, that a pregnant woman stood, crying.

— Karen Toralba

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  2. Good observation of people so absorbed with their own lives, they do not see the misery of others. But, why the choice of “psychopath?” Just because she is observing people does not make her a psychopath, I people watch all the time. This is how a writer learns about mannerisms and behavior. I would use a different word —eavesdropper or anachcramism.

  3. Great attention to detail, and a poignant ending. I appreciate that you gave this site a little variety by keeping this all in one paragraph vs. spacing it out more.

    The word “psychopath” works for me here, because it’s the character’s word, not the word of a disinterested narrator. Though I do not think she’s a psychopath or would even look like a psychopath, people get weirdly self-conscious, so it does not seem that odd to me that someone would self-consciously choose an extreme and “out there” word.

    Nice job!

    • Wonderful. I think about this all of the time. And even now, as I writing on my smartphone. I have been looking at a lot of photographs from the fifties through the sixties. The most striking thing I noticed, besides the unfortunate hair cuts, was that people actually looked at each other. No ones head was down. They were at rest or they were walking but all they looked present. Thx. Great story. A big punch in 101 words