Daily Story

It didn't take long to untie a few knots, loosen a screw here and there, and put a dab of glue where glue ought not be. A little rearranging of the world to make it safer, like cutting a firebreak. The machine would start again tomorrow, even so.

Between the channels on the radio, if you listen long enough and gentle enough, there are voices whispering. Sometimes there is strange music, a melody you never quite hear properly but find yourself humming days later. It's an enchanting place, between the channels, in the static and the

Auntie Mona had the biggest tub of biscuit cutters you've ever seen, and somehow she knew exactly what was in there. One of us would name a shape, she would reach in, and there it was. A mushroom, a Pikachu, a battery, Australia. We thought: there's

After two hours in the lift, someone answered the emergency call button. You need to think more positively, they said. This idea of being trapped is keeping you in the lift. When you feel stuck, take ten deep breaths. Ask yourself: why do I believe this thought? And try to

Dad was sitting in a folding chair by the open kitchen door, looking out into the dark. He was worried he had upset the cat and she wouldn't come home. "Of course she'll come home," I said, "Don't worry." He

There was the tiniest piece of grit in the salad, and she bit down on it every time: a boulder between her teeth, the way things feel big in the mouth. When she was done chewing she rolled it to the tip of her tongue, and then to a finger.

At school I learned that if you share your chocolate with someone every day, it doesn't make them like you. It just makes them expect chocolate. Of course there's learning and learning. I still seem to end up with no chocolate and someone spreading rumours that

We put two cans on a piece of string and stretched it tight. You said I had to pull good and hard, or you wouldn't hear me. With that distance between us, with the smell of baked beans in my nose instead of the smell of your mum&

At night the postboxes came alive, great red columns stomping down the street, little red cuboids squirming out of walls like lambs from their mothers. We hadn't fed them enough. They swallowed up all the paper they could find, and when that didn't satisfy they swallowed

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