Mark Taylor

By the time they discovered what I had stolen, I had the redundancy money out in cash and I was well beyond their reach. It was a good payout, ex gratia, as they say, which means “don't ask any awkward questions”. Nothing like what the other lot would

The city was unchanged, although it had been twenty years since he walked there. The same signs on the same buildings; the same fashions in the same shops. On the steps of the station he saw the coffee he had spilled running for the train. He looked at his hands,

They will put adverts in, Nell told me. They will put adverts in your electronic eyes that you can't look away from, and adverts in your brain-chip that you don't even know are adverts. You will suddenly crave an ice-cold Coca Cola, and it will feel

Zia trained crows and I trained squirrels, and that's how we kept in touch: his messages dropped on the table where I left pumpkin seeds, mine carried off in little grey paws. Most of our friendship was badmouthing the other's choice of familiar, all in good

Someone set a great flywheel spinning where my heart should be, ready to shake me to pieces if I tried to stop still, ready to tear the fingers from anyone who touched me. You could hear it whirring in quiet moments, a long low groan echoing up my throat. Every

Something roared and ripped in the return chute, but it was deep enough in the dark that I could pretend ignorance. They were good books, most of them. One I hadn't read before it came due, and that was a shame. But the system is what it is,

Mr Grey's summer club cost a pebble to get in. Sometimes the kids painted their pebbles gold or silver, or drew little pictures on them, or wrote messages. But you didn't have to. It just cost a pebble, found in the park or in the gutter

Orla watered his plants while he was on holiday, because he had asked and she was nosy. She looked in everything: the books on his shelves, the post on his doormat, the way he rolled his socks. It was a kind of power, like knowing his true name. She didn&

Under the ice, he had two moments of certainty. The first came when the panic was about to overwhelm him, and he knew that if he let it go then he would live. The second came when he tasted the cold in his throat, and he knew that he would