Short story: Black box

In March The Spectator Book Club launched its inaugural short story competition in association with Barclays Wealth. The topic was invisibility, and it seemed to appeal. We received over 500 stories, most of an excellent standard. Our judging panel comprised Mark Amory, Clare Asquith, Peter Hoskin, David Blackburn and Ravi Bulchandani from Barclays Wealth. After much heated debate, five finalists were selected: Jonathan Wynne Evans, Matthew Faulkener, K.G. Barrett, Max Dunbar and Henry Kolotas. You can read the panel’s comments on the finalists’ stories at Spectator.co.uk. All our panellists were agreed, though, that Jonathan Wynne Evans’s ‘Black Box’ should be the winner.

Black box
by Jonathan Wynne Evans
Illustrated by Michael Heath

Drifting curtains of fenland rain obscured everything from 20 yards so that, pedalling round the perimeter, the only indications of intense activity were waves of clatter from each dispersal as ground crews completed the arming of the Lancasters. Met had given it clear by 2100, only an hour away.