Short Stories

I've become very interested in short stories of limited words. In this case 223 words. My biggest problem is that I will often use ten words when two will do. So, I have been experimenting with fewer words. I think that this can have a very powerful impact. This short story was inspired when I was driving home on a wet, wintry December evening. It was gloomy and spotting with rain and I saw someone briefly standing on a bridge. Then I was gone in the stream of traffic but the man stayed with me.

The Man on The Bridge.

The car was on the side of the bridge. All its doors and the boot were open; it crouched there like a wounded bird of prey.

The man stood on the bridge with his back to the traffic. His hands tucked inside his zipper jacket. There was no rail and the cold wind pushed at his back.

The cars below streaming past, their headlights in the fading light - spots of red fire - small beacons of hell. At his back cars speeding in the relentless rush hour.

All these people, he thought, trying to get home. I wonder if any of them see me? Over to his left the lonely cry of a train. That must be the 6.40 and he wondered if she was on it.

But his reverie did not last long. His thoughts were like the dying embers of a once raging fire. Soon, he hoped they would go out all together.

His face, dark and half hidden under his hood, was blank like life had already gone. All it would take, his tired brain, concluded, was one person in the streaming, flowing masses, to stop. One word, one touch.

But he knew from bitter experience that it would not happen and certainly not now, not these days.

Maybe, tonight he would actually do it.