Daily Story

We burned the warehouse when there were fires burning everywhere, and fireworks in the streets. It caught easily, no petrol to leave a residue. One firework through the window. Of course we knew just where to throw it. We planned it all out, but the insurance company never questioned any

It was a dismal old cookbook, everything brown and grey and set in jelly, but it was all we had left of her. We made it all. Every grim dish of hard-boiled pork, every sickly marshmallow salad. It didn't bring back so much as a whisper of her.

A year later, I made my way to the appointed place. The Green Knight was waiting in the dawn mist, axe in hand. I knelt, and bared my neck, and he struck my head clean off. He posted it that afternoon, Epic Beheading Prank GONE WRONG! Knight Gets Karma After

The pumpkin wouldn't rot. We had promised Benjamin that it could stay on the step until it started to smell, but it looked better than ever. The scuffs I made trying to get the top off had healed up. It must have been the cold weather. One day,

A week into the job, I still hadn't met a person. I was working my way through the induction training: uncanny voiceovers about health and safety and data protection, backed up by questions a block of wood could answer. Automated emails delivered accounts, reassurances, and promises of tasks

The alarm had been ringing for twenty minutes, but nobody knew what it was for. "It has the rhythm of catastrophe," opined Jeremy, "but not the timbre." Jenny closed her eyes and raised a finger for quiet. "I heard something like this once before,"

The ghost-hunter had a battered buzzing gadget, a metal thing from the seventies with a chunky handle to support the weight of its huge batteries, and a wand on a coiled wire. He said the tricky thing was calibrating it. The dead are everywhere, you see, so it takes just

A nail half in. A board primed and unpainted. A window open, just to let the air in, with the snow blowing through. Pencil marks on walls and a dust sheet on the floor. A glass, empty but for the fine white residue that clings to it. A radio still

The continental buffet breakfast was truly unlimited. You turned, or blinked, or just shifted your attention, and all the bread and cheese and meat and pastry was back in place like you had got up early for once. We did what we could, filling bags and touring the city to

I didn't think school fairs gave goldfish as prizes any more, but apparently this one did. All the parents were holding a fish in a bag, most of them pulling a face to say I don't really agree with this, but the kids were so excited.