Somewhere in Düsseltal
The young woman pays Frau Manuela Grobbel the 200€ deposit. Well, she follows Frau Grobbel through the house with the money scrunched in her hands like a Monopoly player about to pass GO. Her name is Ebba. After paying the deposit, she receives a ring with two scratched silver keys. One is for the
Basic Space
Editor’s Note: Basic Space is the runner up of the Hilary 2020 500 Words Competition. Judge Natalie Haynes writes regarding the piece that it “shows enormous potential and is probably the best piece of writing at a sentence-level”. “Psychoanalysis is about what two people can sa
Dreaming
Editors’ Note: Dreaming is the winner of the Hilary 2020 500 Words Competition. Judge Natalie Haynes writes that the piece “combines a wonderful clarity and a capacity to illuminate an ordinary scenario: the imagination has created something incisive, emotional and warm.” Tonight
The Lion
The first night my father was gone wasn’t the worst of it but it was bad: the three of us in the big bed, wide awake until dawn. I still remember each long hour. February, and the restless dreamless night stretched on forever, my mother rubbing her freezing feet on us, my brother crawling deep [&h
Les Uzetiens
Marie Moreau, wife of the fishmonger, was fifty-four years old, childless, stout, and unimaginative, and had lived at number 31, Rue Jean Jaurès, for each of those fifty-four years. For her, the sweetest moment of the day was her cigarette on the balcony of her late mother’s house, forbidden when
Fisherman
My little eyes are whittled wide. They slip through clouded water, sleekly oiled, starved of tide, to find the feinting fish. My whetted nets will drip with jewels that dart and dive at every angle. I need to strip them of their silver-plated scales, roam like a fishing hook to every fissure, nook,
i dont want this to end
“i dont want this to end” was the runner-up in The Isis’ ‘500 Words’ competition in Michaelmas 2019. Oliver Hodges, author of “i dont want this to end”, is a student at St Edmund Hall. *** i dont want this to end but im here now and im sorry and i want to make […]
Echo
“Echo” was the winner of The Isis’ ‘500 Words’ competition in Michaelmas 2019. Judge Julian Barnes called it ‘kaleidoscopic’ and the entry which stayed “longest and most intriguingly in the memory”. Ronnie Angel Pope, author of “Echo”, is a student at Universität Basel and Car
Placebo
A book belonging to Alexander Smoakes was open on the table, and he was staring at a word he didn’t know. Smoakes became angry, the seeping kind. He did not feel himself getting angry, but became it, because this was the kind of seeping anger you cannot notice in yourself at all. It bit at [&h