Daily stories

We used to buy liquorice from the shop up the road, all of us except Mae. We would hang around on the road or in someone's bedroom pretending we liked it, all of us screwing up our faces as our tongues turned black and Mae shook her head slowly. Later on we bought cigarettes, and then vodka. Mae just kept on buying ten white chocolate mice and a can of Vimto. We all wanted to copy her, but we were scared to do it. We copied each other instead.

The mouse stares at Mike. Mike stares at the mouse. He has seen this play out in movies: a man sat awake in the quiet of the night, connecting for a moment with a little creature that cannot comprehend him but somehow seems to. Usually the man speaks some pithy quip or weary solemnity, but Mike's mind is blank. He is no better at talking to mice than anyone else. The mouse gives a little squeak, and turns away. Yet again, Mike feels that he is not the hero of the scene.

The Incredible Clockwork Boy wouldn't come out. One too many punters had made a joke about winding him up, and he had stomped off stage as hard as his delicate legs could manage. "Oh, he's ticked off now," a voice shouted as he went. He sat in his dressing room, door closed but not locked, and laid a hand over the keyhole in his chest. They key hung on the wall like a brass skull. Such a difficult thing, always to say: "I want to live tomorrow. Please help me."

The fireworks stood in the air, burning like a migraine, more bursting every moment. Soon it would be so bright it would look like daytime. The sound was constant too, every bang turning to a drone. We screamed out at the night to stop letting them off, to give the sparks a chance to fall to earth, but nobody could hear. Behind a cloud, the moon began to burst.

There are new things in the sky, smooth white disks stacked atop each other, that seem to hover in place. I never see them move, except to rise higher until they are too far away to see. They either don't have lights, or they don't come out at night. And they hum, a more sonorous sound than a jet engine. I suppose you already know about them. I suppose everybody does. By now I'm sure people can't remember what life was like without them. You can forget how fast things change, if you don't look up.

"Wood splits. Concrete cracks. Metal rusts. Why not build in wonderful plastic?" The poster must have been there for decades. We knew we would never get it off in one piece, so we set up lights and took good photographs. We knew that someone, somewhere, would want it preserved. Then we lifted the corner, and the whole thing peeled away, pristine as the day it was pasted up. A moment later the wall collapsed. The photos didn't come out. We drifted apart.

She brought him cake soaked in syrup, too sticky to eat. It made him angry, although he knew it shouldn't. He watched the sugar crystallise on the paper bag, then threw it away, untasted. The next day she brought him gingerbread, warm and fragrant. But that made him angry too.

In quiet moments I heard music, but there was never enough quiet to hear it properly. What brief phrases I made out seemed to dissolve when the noise returned and pushed them out. Notes scattered into engine pings and cat cries and distant drilling. Finally I sealed myself in the house, cotton wool in my ears, manuscript paper on my lap. I wrote down that strange music, then collapsed into a sleep that left me dry-mouthed and weak-limbed. The next day I played it for Andrea. 'That's the theme from the Muppet Show,' she said.

I found myself on that narrow borderline, where I seemed comfortable enough until my clothes started to wear out, where I could survive until any little thing went wrong. It felt like I had tripped but hadn't started falling yet. I was at all times reaching out, grabbing at the air, calling for the wind to hold me up. On borrowed time, they say. I was defaulting.

The stories have all got mixed up. You pull a sword from the stone and all the evils of the world fly out. You kiss a frog and it turns into a wolf. There you go, trying to put them all back in order and only getting yourself more muddled. There are fairies in the mountains and dragons in the woods. It's no good trying to mend things now. There are new stories to learn.