The following is a featured 100-word story from the June Writing Challenge.
The gallery had walls of marble—great gray slabs with veins of silver. A sea of ceramic tiles coated the floor. There was a girl on her knees before the king, a man clad in gold and velvet with a cape the color of blood, spilling across the ground. Enclosed between his gloved fingers was a blade, menacingly sharp, its tip hovering just above the girl. It would create no echo as it hit its mark. Kings always hit their mark.
But when the blade was thrust down, it landed in the expanse of tiles, breaking just a single square.