Mark Taylor

I made the wish, clear and true, and my fingers tingled. When I flexed them, they moved with freedom and precision: I felt I could have plucked a fly from the air. My hearing had changed, too. I heard tones and rhythms and melodies from the fountain where I had

"Bury me at sea!" He was drunk when he said it, and none of us knew he was dying, least of all the man himself. But he said it a lot, and he didn't say much else before he went. It fell to us to decide

The boy had to make an autumn collage, so we went out gathering leaves. Together on the ground they look so perfect; it's only when you look up close that you see all the flaws. Tears and spots and nibbled holes, and edges already rotting. I thought we&

We got the thick duvet and the big coats down from the loft. We bled all the radiators and had the boiler serviced. We cleared leaves from the gutters, piled up firewood, harvested potatoes. We started writing Christmas cards. Anything to pretend we would still be there when the winter

Fresh brewed like the day, and like the day, they had no time to drink it in. They left it on the counter, steaming, and the day drank it instead. When they came home it was half-gone, stale and strong like them. They warmed it in the microwave and swallowed

My father collected the murderous kind of spy gadget. No clever codes or microdots, just hidden knives and poison rings and beautiful things that were guns. All the most thrilling toys a boy could be forbidden. By the time he left them to me, I had outgrown my fascination. All

It grew dark, and they began to wonder what they had done with the day. Not nothing, surely: most of them were sore all over, and those that weren't were sore in the head at least. But when they looked, they couldn't see where all that

My guitar string broke. My shoelace snapped. My belt fell to pieces, and there was a little shred of torn floss stuck between my back teeth. Everything that had been stretched out too tight and narrow had given up at once. For a while I lived in slippers and elastic-waisted

"I feel like my head's turning inside out," I said, but saying it made me think of pictures I had seen and scrolled past quickly, pictures of heads turned inside out that didn't feel like anything any more. It's not my place