Some time ago I wrote a story for a Reader’s Digest competition. The story had to have exactly one hundred words.

Here is the story. It has exactly one hundred words, the computer tells me, but it is not exactly as it was sent off to Reader’s Digest, but very close. Unfortunately I did not keep a copy.

“They have found him dead in THE VALLEY!”

It was one day before Christmas, when the sad news spread like wildfire through the little remote village in the mountains of Switzerland.

Sepp was one of the best mountain climbers in the village, and was missing for quite some time. Now everybody asked the question, “What happened?”

Christmas Day Ida rushed into her neighbor’s house, where she found her gossiping with Lotte and drinking tea with the latest news, “They found a paper in one of Sepp’s pockets on which was written, “The tongue has the power of life and death.”