Scattering

Chamber

Mark Taylor — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 06:00:23 +0100

The invitation said, 'Dr Quick will meet you in his chambers'. It had all seemed very friendly, but Carys thought that nothing good had ever happened in a chamber. Chambers were for tests and torture and bullets. She wondered which she was in for. It didn't matter. She was ready for them all.

Rules

Mark Taylor — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 06:00:29 +0100

When she went round to Marnie's house they played a game where you twisted sections of a crystal tower to make gems fall down into a treasure chest. There were rules, but Marnie wouldn't let her see them. They always had to play just twisting and twisting until all the jewels fell, and then putting them back into the tower again. One day, when she was grown and made her own rules, she found a set, with all the gems accounted for. But the instructions were not with it. She could only twist and twist.

Rude words

Mark Taylor — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 06:00:47 +0100

They spent the lesson looking up rude words in the dictionary. But something was wrong. A small agricultural holding. The part of the leg that extends from the knee to the ankle. Sticky or claggy dirt. Not one of them was rude at all. They had been tricked. They would go home and demand their parents teach them better, but they hadn't the words to show how angry they were.

Daisy chain

Mark Taylor — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 06:00:52 +0100

I was still wearing the daisy chain, and somehow I knew that when it broke I would too. But days in the sun had dried the stems until they were stiff and brittle. We did not have long left. Unless I lay down in the mud to be preserved, we would be separated soon – and the mud had dried too. As we picked our way along the crag I felt my foot twist and my body lurch. No sooner did I know I was falling than I felt myself caught: the daisy chain stretched between a jut of rock and my burned neck, seeming to grow stronger by its straining.

Empty playground

Mark Taylor — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 06:00:27 +0100

The playground is the best place to go. You sit on a swing and look at the empty climbing frame and you can't forget the way things are. In the cafés and the streets it is not so strange that you don't see children. We made them that way on purpose for a long time. So there, you just feel the quiet, and the ending of things, without really knowing it. In the playground, you can watch the slide turn to rust, and have something to grieve.

Bollards

Mark Taylor — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 06:00:46 +0100

A year after it happened, I saw they had put bollards in where the car hit him. I stopped to give them a shove, a shake, a kick. I wanted them to break loose. I wanted them to crumble into powder. If they stayed standing under my bloody knuckles it meant they worked. It meant they would have stopped it, if they had been there twelve months earlier.

Those Strange Boxes

Mark Taylor — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 06:00:54 +0100

We spray-painted empty ice cream black and strapped them partway up lamp posts. That is, Tom painted them and Lou shimmied up the streetlights. It was my job to start the rumours, but I never had to. By the end of the week I'd heard they were scanners to check you weren't rat running and pest control for plague-carrying Chinese bats. We thought one would get smashed down, they'd see it was empty but for a smear of Neapolitan, and that would be that. But the fire didn't leave much evidence. And when I said it had gone too far, Tom shrugged and said: "Maybe they've got a point."

School Trip to the Cranking Factory

Mark Taylor — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 06:00:32 +0100

We were almost done with the morning shift when the kids from the school trip arrived. They lined up along the wall and numbered off, well practiced but distracted. We kept turning the cranks. The teacher explained that they were in the main cranking room, and said a few words about how important the work was. We kept turning the cranks. It was nice to feel that we mattered, although the teacher said no more about what the cranks do than the boss tells us. We kept turning them anyway. One of the kids asked if they could have a go, and the teacher looked round at us, and Si waved him over. The rest of us kept turning the cranks. I don't know why they bring the school trips in. They'll all be turning the cranks here soon enough.

As you were leaving

Mark Taylor — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 06:00:29 +0100

Halfway to the exit, a man she half-recognised put a hand up to stop her. "Hilary, perfect," he said. "Do you think you can help me with something?" While the answer was still softening in her mouth, he led her into a meeting room, the blinds down, the lights low. She imagined a bag slipped over her head. Laid out on the table was a wooden boy, all in pieces, his eyes flicking this way and that. "I can't work it out," the man said, pulling anxiously at his lanyard. "I can't get him back together."

A universe within

Mark Taylor — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 06:00:07 +0100

Once the tube was down his throat, Frank tried not to look at the screen. He knew it would make him faint or retch or both. But curiosity overcame him: how many chances do you get to see inside yourself? He tilted his eyes down until the picture came into view. But the light on the endoscope must have failed: he saw nothing but darkness. So why were they still going? Then there was a light: a star – no, a galaxy. As the tube pushed further he saw more, great spirals and distant fires, uncountable worlds, a universe within. A voice said we're taking it out now, well done, and Frank wanted to clamp his teeth down so he could keep watching.

Under the mat

Mark Taylor — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 06:00:03 +0100

I'll leave a key under the mat for you, and one with the neighbours. I'll send you one in the post. I'll wait in, if I can, and if I can't I'll put a note on the door saying just where I'll be so you can find me. I'll leave a vase of sunflowers in the window so you know which house is mine, and a trail of petals all the way to your door. I'll leave a key in the lock for you. I'll take the door off its hinges. Please come. I can't live locked up here any longer.

Fruit machine

Mark Taylor — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 06:00:08 +0100

Kev got the fruit machine at auction, with fourteen pounds still in the cash drawer, which made for a nice little discount. When he had fixed it up and changed the lock he persuaded Maeve to have it in the corner of the lounge bar, with a fifty-fifty split on the takings, since it would be drinking her customers' beer money. It made a tidy profit, and sometimes Kev sat in the opposite corner and watched. He liked to see it earning for him while he had a quiet drink. He even liked to see it pay out: the cheers, the celebratory rounds. But there was that one older fella, who came in Friday lunchtimes and posted up until the bell rang or his money ran out. Kev didn't like to watch that, or to empty the cash drawer afterwards. He started paying Maeve's lad to do it. He started drinking over the road instead.

Over and Out

Mark Taylor — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 06:00:16 +0100

There wasn't much left at the yard sale by the time I arrived. A kid's bike helmet. A dog bowl. I bought the single walkie-talkie, price one pound. Somehow its being completely useless didn't make that feel any less of a bargain. At home I changed the batteries and saw the light come on, and that was that, I supposed. But almost straight away it crackled into life with a message I couldn't make out. "Receiving," I replied, "Please identify. Over." It was worth a pound to talk that way. A moment later the voice was back: "I just got this walkie talkie from some kid for 50p." I threw mine at the wall, and the fresh batteries rolled away. He didn't even say "Over."

Adoption

Mark Taylor — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 06:00:37 +0100

I never slept more than an hour at a time. Every sound was a burglar. Every silence was someone hiding in the dark. My hair was greying. My hands were swollen. One morning Jackie knocked on my door carrying a cardboard box with holes punched in it. Inside was a cat who looked almost as rough as I did. Jackie went back to her car for food and bowls and a handwritten sheet of instructions, and then she left. That night, I didn't sleep thirty minutes at a time. Every silence was the cat, frightened, hiding, not eating. But now, every noise is just little Fernando, and I sleep right through. And the burglars didn't take anything that mattered.

The Crack

Mark Taylor — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 06:00:11 +0100

Nobody was looking at the crack. A few hadn't noticed, but most had chosen to look away. Of those, some were afraid they would see it get bigger and some were afraid it would become theirs to attend to. I had been of all three types in my time. They all had me smooth on the surface and cracked somewhere beneath. So now I look, ready for painful truth, ready to bear responsibility. Or so I thought. Tell me – being the only one brave enough to look - shouldn't that be enough?

Fly, Man

Mark Taylor — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 06:00:16 +0100

When I was a fly I was often waved away from picnics and al-fresco tables, from all the places where the good food was. Now I am a man it is much the same, though once in a while I am invited to sit and have my glass filled. And sometimes, too, there is still that kind of generosity I feared before: the kind that drowns you in syrup and wine.

Downpour

Mark Taylor — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 06:00:28 +0100

Outside, people were hurrying along beneath newspapers. This confused Graham, since few people take a newspaper these days, and since it wasn't raining. He waited impatiently for the lift to arrive, and to carry him down, and to open its doors on the ground floor. Then he stepped outside. There was neither rain nor beating sun, and as Graham walked he tried to catch someone's eye, but with their hurry and the newspaper drooping over their faces it was difficult. After a minute or so, he began to feel a prickling, first at the back of his neck, then his shoulders, then his scalp. He rushed for the bin, for the locked door of the newsagents, for any sort of cover he could find, but there was nothing left.

Little Teal Mini

Mark Taylor — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 06:00:15 +0100

Everyone is jealous of my little teal Mini. I see it when I'm driving, when I'm parking up, when I'm out washing it. One day someone's going to put a key down that beautiful paintwork. One day someone in the oncoming lane is going to pull across and smash into me, just so I can't have it anymore. I hope they do it soon. I hate that colour.

The World-Famous Old Boot Inn

Mark Taylor — Sun, 31 May 2026 06:00:14 +0100

They left the hotel with a little stack of leaflets. The UK's funnest day out. The World-Famous Old Boot Inn. Kit wanted to go to all of them. He was already plotting a route. But Alex was pulling scraps off the corners, tearing them into smaller and smaller pieces. The map didn't match the roads. The opening dates didn't match the calendar. And who in the world had heard of the Old Boot Inn?

Seashell Sundial

Mark Taylor — Sat, 30 May 2026 06:00:21 +0100

Down on the beach a boy in green swimmers was building a sundial. He had stuck a long driftwood branch into the wet sand and set seashells round it as the shadow moved, a different one each hour. As he pushed a crab claw into place I asked him, "How do you know what number each shell is?" He shrugged. "Doesn't matter," he said. "They'll all wash away before the sun comes back round."

Tide

Mark Taylor — Fri, 29 May 2026 06:00:46 +0100

The tide forgot to come in. I waved the tide tables at it, pointed to my watch and the sands and the mud. I looked up at the moon, pale and whole in the blue sky, still pulling at us. I can wait, I shouted at the sea. I've got all day. I was outwaited. The next day it came back, not crawling but crashing. I spat in a wave, but I didn't mean it. The tide took me in its arms and told me all about the pretty mermaid that had kept it out so long.

Lies

Mark Taylor — Thu, 28 May 2026 06:00:09 +0100

We believed her, at first: that dolphins were witches' creatures, unlucky to see; that to watch a sunset meant death by morning. We accepted that the beauty of a flower was in proportion to its toxicity, and that the same was true of the laughter of friends. But she pushed beyond her strength. She said that wholesome food and dreams should both be bitter, and brewed tea that fulfilled both oughts. We could not swallow it. We opened.

Oceans

Mark Taylor — Wed, 27 May 2026 06:00:13 +0100

It was all mist and drizzle on the day I learned how much of the Earth is covered by sea. I sat by the cold shore I had been dragged away to two cold summers ago, and thought how much sense it made, that almost all the world was grey and empty like that. But the next morning's sun burned sky and sea blue, and I saw silver clouds in the water, and horizons where there had been fog, and the promise of islands.

Worldbuilding

Mark Taylor — Tue, 26 May 2026 06:00:56 +0100

I emerged from the hollow of the tree into a land I had long imagined. I saw at once it was all wrong: the mile-high cliffs, the million golden birds. I had known nothing of the scale of the world while I was in it. This place I had dreamed up could not keep itself together and still hold people like me. Yet there was the ground beneath my feet, firm and true, and blanketed with singing flowers.

Do Not Use, Birds Nesting

Mark Taylor — Mon, 25 May 2026 06:00:10 +0100

Doreen printed an A4 sign for the cigarette bin: "Do not use, Birds Nesting". It was kind, and it was an excuse to use the laminator. Next year they were back again. Doreen thought she recognised one of last year's chicks, now laying. She persuaded management to install a second cigarette bin. The year after, both were occupied, and she suggested they buy nest boxes instead. Everyone had quit by then, anyway. They spent their breaks watching the birds.

Bike lane

Mark Taylor — Sun, 24 May 2026 06:00:25 +0100

As good as their word, the new council ripped out the bike lane, leaving a yawning crevasse down each side of the road, a wound in the skin of the world that none could see the bottom of. A child or two fell in; they should not have been playing near the road in any case. The voters were delighted. But, they asked after a week or two, where were they to park?

Flea market

Mark Taylor — Sat, 23 May 2026 06:00:19 +0100

Something rattled in the vase when I picked it up, but the light wasn't good enough to see it down the neck. I had to buy it. Seven pounds! The man on the stall – the boy – was twitching at the cheeks trying not to laugh. When the deal was done I turned the vase over and shook it, right there over his trestle table, but nothing came. I laid it in the bottom of my shopping bag and swung it against the wall of the church, and then I went home. It's in the hallway now, waiting for me to look through the shards, to slice my thumb open searching, and decide whether what I find was worth the breaking.

All nighter

Mark Taylor — Fri, 22 May 2026 06:00:31 +0100

We drifted between McDonald's and the university library. We were not hungry for fries or learning but they were the only places open 24 hours. At McDonald's the crew and the security guy started greeting us by name. They dropped in an extra nugget, another half-scoop of chips. At the library, there was nobody, and the lights went off everywhere we weren't, and our fingers were too greasy to handle all the books we didn't want to read.

New flags

Mark Taylor — Thu, 21 May 2026 06:00:18 +0100

There were new flags flying, slow-stitched and unique. You couldn't rally under them on a battlefield or dress in their colours – they were all the colours, made to clothe all who were in rags. On the third night, a boy with blood on his boots climbed the city gate and tied the old flag there with his bootlaces. But that flag was everyone's, too, and it soon grew flowers and feathers and threads in every shade.

Clock watching

Mark Taylor — Wed, 20 May 2026 06:00:01 +0100

Dr Popovik turned a little dial on the lectern, and slowly the clock wound back. It was a cruel trick, she knew, and self-defeating. She had her bit of fun, and the students got grumpier and harder to teach, and she reached for the dial again to keep herself going. She couldn't give it up. The looks on their faces, baffled, aghast, were just too much. And on the second row there was this girl, who saw ten more minutes left than she expected, and smiled.

When the birds spoke

Mark Taylor — Tue, 19 May 2026 06:00:30 +0100

When the birds spoke we learned they had names for us too. Not as many as we might have liked: not as many as we had for them, or for each other. A little brown one, a sparrow or a wren, I thought, alighted on my shoulder. I asked her what they called me. "Oh, I don't know," she said, "I'm terrible at names. But I love the way you sing."

Platform

Mark Taylor — Mon, 18 May 2026 06:00:30 +0100

It looked like rain, so we walked up to the train station. There you can stand on the ridge, under the big canopy that covers the platforms, and watch the rain fall all around without getting wet yourself. But it's no good if you get rained on walking up there. You have to go before the rain comes, or step off a train. After an hour's joy there the rain showed no sign of relenting. It would be a wet walk home. So we caught the next train, without checking its destination.

The hole

Mark Taylor — Sun, 17 May 2026 06:00:48 +0100

I took a walk in the moonlight to drop the things that shamed me into the hole. It was a good hole, deep and dark with a steep, sharp edge. We all used it, and all let each other pretend we didn't. As I walked home the moon went in and a steady rain fell, and things began to float past me in the gutter: a letter, a bottle, a photograph. We would clean it up in the morning without exchanging even a glance. We never needed the hole at all.

Fair share

Mark Taylor — Sat, 16 May 2026 06:00:35 +0100

I slice the cake and you choose and that is fair. You slice the cake and I choose and that is fair. I slice the cake while you watch me and set the angle of my cut by the angle of your eyebrows. You slice the cake and keep hold of the knife while I choose, turning it this way and that. You wipe the blade with a napkin and I eat my little portion and agree, yes, this is fair.

Lost button

Mark Taylor — Fri, 15 May 2026 06:00:17 +0100

He looked all through the button drawer, but while it seemed that every shape and size and colour and finish could be found there, none of them were close to matching. He brushed a finger over the torn threads that tendriled from his coat. Then he heard that tobacco-torn voice at his shoulder, as her hand reached in and took out something bright and pearlescent: "You'll never match the old, you daft thing. And why bother if you could? Look for something new and beautiful."

Fox, chicken and grain

Mark Taylor — Thu, 14 May 2026 06:00:39 +0100

I was over the river with the chicken when the strangest thing happened. The fox took the sack of grain between its teeth and dragged it away. By the time I got the boat back over they were far enough gone that I couldn't follow the trail. I crossed once more, and picked up a feather from where my chicken used to be. I had thought I had it all worked out.

Electric fence

Mark Taylor — Wed, 13 May 2026 06:00:03 +0100

We all lined up for a turn touching the electric fence. The lining up was part of the bravado: pushing to go first, or laughing to show you weren't scared while the boys in front of you shrieked. When it was my go, I laid my hand on good and firm, thinking it wouldn't hurt any more, but I'd impress the others. I felt nothing. The fence was dead. But I yelped and snatched my hand back all the same.

After the accident

Mark Taylor — Tue, 12 May 2026 06:00:02 +0100

Not much changed after the accident, except that clouds only looked like clouds. There were no faces in the wallpaper or songs in the wind. At times I would lie my healed skull on the heather and look up at the shapeless clouds, and breathe in the moor, and the smell would remind me of nothing at all.

The King's Poisoner

Mark Taylor — Mon, 11 May 2026 06:00:14 +0100

It's a good life, being the King's poisoner. Well paid, with room and board on top, and the freedom to pursue my research, my healing. Very rarely am I called upon to poison anyone. We have other ways of handling such things these days. When I am needed, of course I serve. If I did not, another poisoner would, and who would make my medicines?

Camping with friends

Mark Taylor — Sun, 10 May 2026 06:00:54 +0100

When breakfast was ready Jamie was still snoring away in his five-quid tent. Even from outside you could see the droplets where his breath had condensed on the plastic sheet. We grabbed a corner each and shook to make it rain, but on he snored. The zip wouldn't pull so we ripped the seam open. Inside was a snoring speaker, and a tunnel leading far and away.

Morning after

Mark Taylor — Sat, 09 May 2026 06:00:53 +0100

The next morning I didn't remember, but I could feel it, the way you feel the grit in your eye long after it washes away, the way you taste the dirt in your mouth after you spit it out. I had a long, hot bath, a walk in the park, a cinema trip, another drink. But there's no more forgetting what's forgotten. When the teeth of my fear closed on me, there was nothing left but to remember.

Web

Mark Taylor — Fri, 08 May 2026 06:00:10 +0100

We were caught twice over: once by the shrinking, and again by the web. Fear not, I said. A barrier has fallen. We can reason with the spider now. We can show it all that we understand of the world. But of the world we were caught in, we understood nothing.

Men in the moon

Mark Taylor — Thu, 07 May 2026 06:00:20 +0100

I lived on the new moon and he lived on the old. I had only footprints and broken things to tell me what he had learned. What are we to do, so far from home but always tied to it? What are we to do with just thirty days in the sun? It is dark for him now, and I never met him. A small mercy.

Doughnut bandits

Mark Taylor — Wed, 06 May 2026 06:00:28 +0100

Ben and Emily loitered on the pier, mugging people of their doughnuts. Just one from each bag, mind, and if you said no they let you be. But very few said no. Most admired the cheek of it, and besides, a bag of five was too many. After another success they licked the sugar from their lips and their fingers, ready for the next. They were starting to feel queasy, but neither wanted to be the one to call a stop.

The Last Concert

Mark Taylor — Tue, 05 May 2026 06:00:59 +0100

The band played on as the bandstand sank into the lake. One last show, by the light of headtorches and battery-powered lanterns: the warden, as angry as anyone, would have let them play regardless, but there was a general will to spare him the trouble. When their boots were full of water and mud and unfunded splinters, they waded out, instruments held over their heads like rifles. There was one final round of applause, barely heard over the cracking of timber.

A Day at the Zoo

Mark Taylor — Mon, 04 May 2026 06:00:27 +0100

We had a wonderful day at the old zoo, seeing all the different habitats. We felt the heat of the reptile house and bathed our feet where the penguins once swam. It's astonishing to think that so many different creatures lived so close to us. We ate the last of our honey on dense, dry bread, and looked at the photographs, faded but beautiful.

Living nightmares

Mark Taylor — Sun, 03 May 2026 06:00:30 +0100

For just one week I lived my nightmares. Went to work in my pants and let deadlines breeze past my bare skin. Sent the wrong words to the wrong people. When they asked me to leave, I drove home from the back seat. When such absurd fears become real, they lose their hold over you. I sleep dreamlessly now, but I hope to wake up soon.

Secret language

Mark Taylor — Sat, 02 May 2026 06:00:56 +0100

For my birthday she gave me a book about secret languages. What it means to wear a certain flower or colour or perfume. How the way a letter is folded might show love, respect, contempt, forgiveness. I turned the pages and looked at the reused silver gift wrap it came in, and I wondered: what does this mean?

Punishment

Mark Taylor — Fri, 01 May 2026 06:00:36 +0100

When Sadie was bad they sat her in front of the mirror. To stare into the mirror at any other time would have been dreadful vanity, but to do it in shame was quite different. It fascinated her to see her iris move, her nostrils twitch with breath, her skin curve and fold: so much complexity, and not a wisp of badness in it.

Helicopter

Mark Taylor — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 06:00:59 +0100

We spent a happy afternoon arguing about the helicopter, he that it was a model close by, I that it was real but distant. We talked about flight time and engine noise and rotor speed and all sorts of other things we knew nothing about, and the wronger we felt the harder we argued, until the sun began to set and we compromised. It was a half-scale helicopter, monkey-piloted, a middling way away.

Submarine

Mark Taylor — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 06:00:42 +0100

In my eighth year under the sea I began to dream about leaks. I knew that I was dreaming because I saw the water coming in, heard the trickle, felt the wetness in my socks. If there was truly a leak it would be over faster than waking, my little world smeared flat by the weight of the ocean. I worried that a slow leak in my dreams meant death slowly growing in my body. I did not want to die sealed up tight. Give me the catastrophe, that I might feed the deep like a whale fall.

On the grid

Mark Taylor — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 06:00:29 +0100

I wished to live in grids from the first time my birthday was marked on a calendar, from noughts and crosses to chess to go. In school I loved when they brought out graph paper in maths, or even for handwriting practice: fitting all those curls and scratches into perfect squares. I hated when they brought it with the scrap paper for a wet playtime, and it got drawn on howsoever. I dream of enclosed fields, of a square apartment on an American city block, a pixel-perfect image of the world. Or failing that, I might make do with prison.

Sour

Mark Taylor — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 06:00:56 +0100

The sweetshops had grown more competitive all through summer, carrying on long after the children calmed. The sourest sweets in the village, the country, the country, the world. The proprietors were seen on social media with tears in their eyes and smiling, bleeding mouths. A boy went in for jelly babies and they added a scoop of citric acid to the bag. By the end of the holidays, both were closed: one owner bankrupt, one laid out with chronic indigestion.

Laundry day

Mark Taylor — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 06:00:59 +0100

Laundry day, all heat and steam and detergent, cracking hands so they threaten bloodstains on shirts. Everything cleaner than when it was new, and a slick film on the fingers that makes you shudder at your own touch. Soap in the air, mouth, eyes, like we are being cleaned from the world. But fresh sheets tonight, and sharp collars on Sunday, to calm our red skin.

Skylight

Mark Taylor — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 06:00:44 +0100

There was no big crash when it shattered, only a sound like hailstones pattering across the lobby, and the hum of the outside pouring in. Everything was much brighter, suddenly. I hadn't realised how dirty the skylights were. It made you want to look up, straight up, with wide open eyes to watch the falling glass.

After the demolition

Mark Taylor — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 06:00:37 +0100

After the demolition there was so much sky in the sky that the dust didn't seem to matter. We sat in evening sun where once we were in shadow. We had learned how these things that seem part of the shape of the world can vanish like an ebb tide. Nobody had lived there anywhere, we thought.

Winding up

Mark Taylor — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 06:00:49 +0100

I put the key into its hole and turn until the spring tightens. Straight away an unseen mechanism takes up the tension, easing it away little by little. The next day, I put the key into its hole and turn until the spring tightens. The mechanism clicks, and somewhere I will never go, something happens. If, one day, I do not turn the key, the spring will slacken and the mechanism will slow and stop. I would never do it. But I might, any day now, put the key into its hole and turn and turn and turn until something snaps.

Office birthday

Mark Taylor — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 06:00:03 +0100

On my birthday I took a pass-the-parcel to work. We spend the team meeting passing unwanted crap around the table anyway: we might as well get a Chewit when the music stops. It was a wonderful birthday, an unexpected afternoon in the sun. And if management or the bomb squad ask any difficult questions, I will say: I am older now, and wiser.

Learning to paint

Mark Taylor — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 06:00:39 +0100

I learned to paint one colour at a time, squeezing the last of the blue from the tube as I saved up for orange. At first it annoyed me to see the red of my tomatoes and have only the green of the vine to paint with. In time I found there was a little of each hue in everything. At last I sold a painting, and with the little money I made I bought five pretty little tubes. I squeezed a little blob from each, and watched them on the palette, daring me to mix them.

Time machine

Mark Taylor — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 06:00:10 +0100

While the machine warmed up, we watched increasingly complicated time-travel movies and challenged each other to explain them. We thought we were preparing our minds. But we were wrong to believe a journey in the machine would be explicable. Now our worlds all have different histories, and my mother was a pine tree, and my heart is younger than my head when it had always been the other way around.

Pipes

Mark Taylor — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 06:00:18 +0100

There was a shudder in the walls every morning in the old house. "Don't worry," my uncle said, "it's just the pipes, where the Creature lives." He was always like that. He didn't know how much kids can believe. He didn't know I'd crawl out of bed before dawn and sit by the radiator, looking for something to talk to.

Graph

Mark Taylor — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 06:00:07 +0100

Through slatted blinds I read the landscape plotted out on graph paper: the treetops rising steadily on the horizon; the sky squeezed out by rising land; and at the end of the x axis, one big square column, a mode far from the median. I understood, until he pulled the cord and the blinds rattled up, and I could no longer see the shape of things.

Ladybirds

Mark Taylor — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 06:00:38 +0100

All week we gambled on ladybird spots, betting chocolate bars and pints and twenty pound notes. On the last night we found a wildlife book in Gary's room, in among his winnings, with the page on ladybirds turned down at the corner. 7-spot, 2-spot, 4-spot. I'd always thought it was random. Serves us right, I suppose, for not being curious.

Unbitten

Mark Taylor — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 06:00:28 +0100

The mosquitoes were biting, but they weren't biting me. Was it something in my blood, or the scent of my skin? Was there some poison in my veins that they could taste even before landing? I slapped where they should have been, and scratched until I made the welts I was missing. I scratched until the blood came, and I saw what was wrong with it.

Dandelion clocks

Mark Taylor — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 06:00:58 +0100

We were blowing dandelion clocks all afternoon, the seeds streaming from the stems and never running out. There would be weeds all over our mother's perfect lawn, making it more beautiful. But they didn't grow, for we blew and blew and never found the time.

Cherry blossom

Mark Taylor — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 06:00:34 +0100

A person can drown in as little as an inch of cherry blossom. Nose and throat plugged, and you imagine that if you can cough it up it will make a fluttering pink cloud, but all it makes is a thick wet splat. All the beauty was gone when you tried to breathe it, and you only tried to breathe it because there was nothing else left. You have spoiled the spring insisting on air, but air is better than beauty, and it will be summer soon.

Offerings

Mark Taylor — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 06:00:38 +0100

Dad said you must always give the seagulls one chip, as an offering. Mum said you mustn't encourage them. So chips at the seaside meant a choice about who to betray. There was no third option: to throw half a chip, or one soaked to inedibility in vinegar, would betray them both. It was only going back home, fully grown and accustomed to making my own choices, that I noticed: she always threw them a chip, and he never did.

Meetup

Mark Taylor — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 06:00:13 +0100

When they met up on a Saturday they only played the games she couldn't win, and then they made fun of her for caring. She practised until she could beat them, and they made fun of her for that, too. She brought new games, ones where you worked together to solve problems or make something beautiful. She knew what would happen. But she was storing up all the awful things about them, ready for the lonely Saturdays to come.

Stump and tree

Mark Taylor — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 06:00:23 +0100

The stump I like to sit on was once her favourite tree. I sat on it and thought of time worked backwards. How angry I would be to see them come and put that trunk over my seat. How I would resent her for playing in the branches and getting younger by it. How the rest of us would come undone, too.

Paste

Mark Taylor — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 06:00:08 +0100

"What's in the sandwiches?" she asked, and he said "Paste", and after a minute or so of waiting for him to elaborate she said "What kind? Wallpaper?" Chewingly he answered with a question: "What do you know about wallpaper paste? We've never redecorated since you were born." And that was true, the house was faded almost to grey. She peeled up one damp slice that left a layer of itself clinging to the paste like a half-stripped wall. Sniffed. "I think it's fish." He shrugged. It was the jar they had left at the back of the fridge, label soaked off. He hoped it was fish, if that's what it smelled of.

Pine cones

Mark Taylor — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 06:00:13 +0100

We knew that Auntie Lisa must be rich because there was a huge bowl of pine cones in her hallway, and pine cones were rare and precious to us. Dad said that she picked them all up herself, one for each walk she went on, but nobody could have walked that far or that often. Not with a bad leg and a stick. We cleared her house one warm October. For all her riches, that bowl was the one thing we fought over.

Good words

Mark Taylor — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 06:00:50 +0100

In a little note on his phone, Kev wrote down all the words he found redolent but didn't quite know the meaning of. Mangrove. Bucolic. Redolent. One day things would get desperate, and he would start looking them up. Behind one of them would be an escape. Now, while there was hope, he read it and was grateful that there were things in the world deserving of such names.

Cereal

Mark Taylor — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 06:00:35 +0100

Breakfast was stars in milk, the two galaxies swimming together. The brilliance of the stars showed the true yellow in the milk, just as the dark left where we filled our bowl showed how blue the night had been. There were stars left up there still. The sky still lived. But we were hungry, and one bowl could not fill us.

Holiday traffic

Mark Taylor — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 06:00:54 +0100

Danielle set off at eleven o' clock on the bank holiday, hoping to catch the traffic. With luck she would get five hours, sat on her own, phone in the glovebox, while the queues raged around her. She would put the traffic report on the radio and enjoy being part of the problem. But something terrible must have happened, and she made it there in two hours flat.

Mess

Mark Taylor — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 06:00:35 +0100

I got a little dab of ink on my finger, which spread to my page and my sleeve and my face. I got mustard on my shirt and ketchup at the corner of my mouth. I slipped walking through the park, grass on one knee, mud on the other. I was a disaster, more colourful than I have ever been.

Acorn boy

Mark Taylor — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 06:00:23 +0100

The fairies sealed her son inside an acorn, and so she sat and watched all through the autumn, trying to see which one was him. She gathered them in sacks, and threw sharp stones at squirrels. Her palms itched through the winter as the acorns cooled under the soil. In twenty years there will be a forest where there had been nothing, and she will sit under the branches and remember him.

Space

Mark Taylor — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 06:00:38 +0100

Danny wouldn't let us paint or put up wallpaper. "It makes the room smaller," he said. "We've little enough room as it is." He took the walls back to brick and ripped up the carpets and stood there in all his space. But he left those heavy curtains that blocked off the whole bay window, and the bracken growing over the front door.

Frogs

Mark Taylor — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 06:00:26 +0100

Caring for the frogs in the garden kept me afloat, for a while. I sloped the edge of the pond for them, dropped logs in the water as resting places, and felt I was building up somewhere I could breathe. When they moved into the house it got harder: puddles on the carpet, tadpoles in the bath. I didn't want pondweed in my bed and those strange eyes watching me. I didn't want to wake choking on frogspawn. I didn't know what I was choosing.

Beehive

Mark Taylor — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 06:00:50 +0100

We lived in sliding frames, like kept bees. When they needed something from us they pulled us out and scraped us open. The little that was left they gave back for us to rebuild. A bee in smoke is too busy escaping the fire to use her stinger. The arrangement is for the good of everyone, the keeper says from behind his mask.

Migraine

Mark Taylor — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 06:00:43 +0100

Behind my eye the migraine sits, angry that it cannot push the ball out if its socket and escape to purer air. It has such colour and such shape to it, it seems a pity it should be locked up inside my drab old skull. I put a hand to my face to comfort it, and whisper to it in the dark, knowing it will not outlive the day. Darling migraine, you will miss all the beauty of this world except your own: jagged, iridescent, painful.

Clownfish

Mark Taylor — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 06:00:56 +0100

I dreamed I was a clownfish, tucked up safe in my anemone. I woke tasting brine, the night sweats running over my lips, but I was safe. I wondered what unfelt poison was protecting me.

Pancake

Mark Taylor — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 06:00:50 +0000

Brian came back into the kitchen, and through glances and smothered smiles we all agreed not to mention the pancake stuck to the ceiling. He took up his place by the cooker, and we waited for it to come down on him. It stayed up there for forty days. By the time it fell, Brian was gone, and I was going, and it landed, mid-viewing, on the landlord's bald head.

Razor blade

Mark Taylor — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 06:00:29 +0000

Between her driving licence and her Tesco Clubcard she kept a razor blade. She imagined a thief sliced to the bone, his blood staining the cash like a bank vault's dye packs. She began leaving her handbag open in bars and walking home alone. She left her wallet on the wall outside the supermarket. It came back to her in the post three days later, with a rust-brown circle on the leather.

Bus fox

Mark Taylor — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 06:00:40 +0000

There was a fox on the bus, and nobody else noticed because he had somehow got hold of a broadsheet newspaper and was reading it quietly on the back seat. I could see his little amber paws holding the pages. He seemed out-of-place, to me: the back seats are for smoking and snogging and dead arms. But I suppose that is only school buses, and I have grown up now. Outside the Crown Court he folded the paper, put it on the seat beside him, and disembarked. The rest of us were appalled. He didn't even thank the driver.

Best teacher ever

Mark Taylor — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 06:00:18 +0000

The mug was filled with chocolates and said "BEST TEACHER EVER". Ted wasn't sure about it. The mug made him think of Miss Smithson and her wide, safe smile. It made him think of Mr King, who he had been scared of, but who had helped when he broke his arm in the playground. It made him think about cards that said "To a special son" and "To my wonderful wife", and about how it only seemed to be wrong to lie sometimes. He ate a piece of the chocolate, and that made him feel better.

A mind like a gun

Mark Taylor — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 06:00:08 +0000

He took a book down from the shelf, saying as he did so, "A mind, like a gun, must be kept well oiled." He had never held a gun; was not quite sure where the oil went, or what might happen if it was neglected. He had looked at pictures, and imagined what gun oil might smell like. He realised one Christmas that he was imagining the smell of his auntie's sewing machine oil, and had to change it to something more like diesel. None of that mattered, since he wouldn't read the book either.

Cooking lessons

Mark Taylor — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 06:00:08 +0000

I learned to cook sitting in my bedroom, guessing what was cooking by the smells drifting up the stairs. Later, when the house was quiet, I would slip down to the kitchen in bare feet and hold the spice jars to my nose, and learn which aroma was cumin and which was ginger and which was garlic. For years I cooked without salt or sugar, without any of the things I couldn't smell and didn't see. I had to learn all over again, but that doesn't mean forgetting.

Ephemeroptera

Mark Taylor — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 06:00:11 +0000

I dreamed I was a mayfly, skimming over the water and not knowing my brevity until wakefulness came. Then I feared to die. I thought that dreaming of a life so short might mean my body knew that it was dying, too. But a mayfly's life is longer than a dream. I woke with my wings still beating.

Evacuation

Mark Taylor — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 06:00:23 +0000

We remained calm. We walked and did not run. We awaited instruction. Somewhere in the world were serious but friendly people in reassuring uniforms who would tell us what to do, and we, for the good of all, would obey. And soon we found them. We watched them through the window of a locked door, running with the crowd and not looking back.

Puzzle box

Mark Taylor — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 06:00:51 +0000

When they opened him up they found a puzzlebox in his ribcage, halfway solved. They peeled away the blood vessels and lifted it to the light. It was hard, with gloved hands, to feel the subtle click and give of its mechanisms, and the dried-up stuff of life had stiffened its subtle joints. But they could see how close it was to being solved. How close he had been to being saved.

Rollercoaster

Mark Taylor — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 06:00:46 +0000

The rollercoaster stopped before the drop, with the harnesses digging into our shoulders and our faces tilted to the ground. I thought: how can it break down here, when all it has to do is fall? The longer we hung there, the more I hoped they would winch us back or walk us out. My need for gravity had bled out of me. But then we fell.

After the flood

Mark Taylor — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 06:00:36 +0000

After the flood, when everything was rearranged, we left things as they were. The cars haphazard in the streets looked much as they always had. Less so the ice-cream van in my garden, which gaped its serving window down into the mud and wouldn't chime no matter what we tried. I planted in the sediment that lay over the Co-op car park, recalling my Year Five topic book on the Nile. Nothing sprouted. That silt was all plastic scraps and spilled petrol and concrete, and the wrong type of shit.

Old leaves

Mark Taylor — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 06:00:27 +0000

A cluster of brown leaves had clung on all through winter and into the spring. Amy, always thoughtful of things smaller than herself, was afraid that they would stop the new leaves coming through. My voice pressed at my throat to reassure her, but I stopped, and stooped, and bore her up on my shoulders so she could reach to tear the dead leaves down. The old may fall away for the new, but doesn't always. I would not have her complacent. Let her own hands clear the way.

Garden

Mark Taylor — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 06:00:33 +0000

Through hedge archways and little doors in walls, I passed from one part of the garden to the next. Each was laid out the same, down to the flaking paint on the bench. In one it might be spring, everything in bloom: in the next it was winter, the bench recoated in white and a smiling snowman next to it. One showed the garden as it was at night, the sky always perfectly clear and full of stars. My favourite to walk in held a frosty morning, with the sun risen just enough to sparkle on the grass but not thaw it, and everything silent but the birds. I walked and walked, but could never find it.

Blackberrying

Mark Taylor — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 06:00:48 +0000

Right in the middle of the brambles, where neither arms nor birds could reach, was the plumpest blackberry I had ever seen. I came back with my scratched arms and my thick gloves and my secateurs. I cut and cut, but my prize only seemed to retreat deeper into the prickles. My gloves tore and my secateurs broke and my arms bled. When I gave up and turned around, the briar had closed up behind me.

Big wet dog

Mark Taylor — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 06:00:44 +0000

On rainy days there was always a big wet dog in the café, so much damp fur spilling over its eyes and nose that infrequent customers generally mistook it for a coat. Nobody brought it: it whined at the door when the rain started, and walked in circles near it when the sun came out, and on dry days it was never seen. If the rain lasted past closing, it slept by the radiator. All the people of the café knew that one day it would rain and the dog would not come, and they would share an unspoken grief. But they were wrong. The big wet dog outlasted all of them.

In the new world

Mark Taylor — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 06:00:46 +0000

In the new world, we made our homes in the mouths of huge carnivorous plants. They seemed not to notice us. We were like nothing else in that strange country. The plants were good hosts: they dissolved the carapaces of the local creatures and, getting all they needed from those tough parts, returned the meat to us. Back home, I found I could not sleep without the sweet scent of their lure, the gentle pulse of their motion, the prickle of their hairs at my back.

Emotion Recycling Centre

Mark Taylor — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 06:00:05 +0000

I set off early to the emotion recycling centre , so it would be quiet. At the barrier a man in hi-vis waved me down. "What have you got?" he asked.

"Anger, regret. A bit of old grief. Oh, and some shame."

"We can't take shame," he said.

I was only really there for the shame. "Where am I supposed to take it, then?" I asked him.

He just shrugged. "It's hazardous. You'll need a specialist service. The rest is OK." And he waved me through.

I dropped my feelings in the relevant containers, and then I glanced around for cameras and fluorescent tabards, before throwing my shame in the place marked "General malaise". I know it was wrong. But I didn't feel too bad about it.

Wearing out

Mark Taylor — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 06:00:22 +0000

Once or twice in the time it takes to wear out a pair of shoes, I might allow myself a small act of destruction. A key dragged along the side of a car, or the last page torn out of a library book. A cigarette lighter held in just the right place. It steadies something in me. But haven't you noticed, the way shoes wear out so quickly these days?

Times when it it hard to tie a tie

Mark Taylor — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 06:00:22 +0000

There are times when it is hard to tie a tie. In grief or in excitement. When the fingers are numb with cold or slick with sweat. When someone is watching. When your neck is swollen and painful. While driving. When laughing. When you have recently had a cord pulled tight around your throat until your vision clouded. With your arm in a cast. When nobody ever taught you. When an angry ex has shredded all your ties with the kitchen scissors. When you once knew how, but have forgotten.