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

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

Stories about being a fly, adopting a cat, buying a fruit machine, and doing karaoke in a town where nobody knows you.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Stories about tides, nesting, a fantasy world come to life, and being locked in a portable toilet by your so-called friends.

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

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, "

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'

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

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

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

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

Stories about new flags, talking birds, rain and time and many, many cats.

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

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

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-

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

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

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

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

Stories about fox, grain, and chicken; clouds that look like clouds; buttons; an electric fence; and the time you brought a goat home.

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

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

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