There was a different kind of light in those days. It was a bright, brilliant white; it's how you knew what white was. It made crisp shadows that didn't change their size as they moved. In the morning and the evening it turned deep gold, and

The night after I was supposed to leave I found a feather on my pillow, long and black with hints of green where it met the light. A magical thing, I supposed, but when I touched it to my face I could smell the bird on it, as earthly as

Stories about building a fence, destroying the dunes, futile resistance, running out of salt, and the mouse brining a cat in.

Tired of all the waste she piled upon the world, she learned to make rope from old clothes. It came out sturdy, but beautiful too, all the colours swirling down the length of it like a stick of rock. She hung it from stout iron hooks in the garage, and

As the motor whirred and my passport began to disappear into the shredder, I wondered when it would start to feel real. Not halfway, and not when the blades started struggling. Not when there was so little left that to grab it would have cost me my fingers. Not when

After half-full mugs of gritty soup, she was handed a scrap of wood shaped like a rifle. "Don't let anyone get a proper look," the man in the cap told her, "and if they get too close, whack 'em with the fat end.

In the end, it was the salt that ran out first. It was a victory, of sorts: nobody imagined we would outlast the supply. Perhaps if we had, we might have stretched it out longer. Before too long, we were sore, and tired, and confused, and somebody said: this is

I was woken at three in the morning by a squeaking at my bedroom door. The mouse had brought a cat in. She wanted to show it off, and I couldn't fault her for that. The cat looked back and forth between us and gave a pitiful little

"I sometimes think about how you could study a single grain of sand all your life, and you'd never know all there was to know about it." He was rolling something between finger and thumb as he said it. It might have been sand, but it

The wind blew from the ocean across the hills, and it made you want to blow with it. I pulled up a big fistful of coarse grass, and watched the sand disappear from the roots, stripped by hungry air until the skeleton was showing. Then I opened my fist, and

If I have timed things right, this is just the right moment for you to be infuriated by an early mention of Christmas. If you are reading this on the website, the picture of Christmas presents should have you frothing and spitting. If you got this by email, you should

Two yards from the bus stop and twenty from the school, a man crouches, one hand bracing on the railing. Behind him is a girl almost as tall as he is, with a fluffy blue hairband and delight in her eyes. She climbs onto his back, and he stands, face

Some days it was hard to think what to write in his gratitude journal. Grateful for my arms, grateful for my legs, grateful for my head. The first time it worked: he fell asleep tingling with how golden it was just to be. The next time he had to go

We inherited a frame with no painting. It was a beautiful thing, hand carved, with all the little faults that a human hand creates. We never could agree what should go in it. Every painting we both liked was the wrong size. We hung it on the wall just as

One end of the yarn was tied to Lena's gatepost, and had been since the house was her parents'. It ran snug across the wall and into a hedge, emerging at the other end and soaring off to tangle with the telephone wires. Here and there, in

Inside Grandma's bag was Grandma's purse, and inside Grandma's purse were two ten franc pieces covered in indelible scarlet ink. Her real purse was kept elsewhere, away from thieving hands: when she gave us money, which she often did, it was a long and

I saw the last of the summer sun light up an aeroplane, and I imagined that aeroplane exploding, right there in the sky while I watched. The fireball would hang in the sky, and debris and people would rain down on us. We would think of nothing else for weeks.

They call it "aphantasia", and it's nice to have a word, but it's not quite right or me. I can picture nothing in my mind's eye except an old breaker's yard. That I can see vividly. It is out of

Stories about a video shop out of time, shedding skin, moon dust, what a cow looks like, and the thing that fell out of Wilson's ear.

Everyone tried not to look at the thing that fell out of Wilson's ear. They looked at their laptops, or the presentation on the big screen, or the nervous young associate speaking in front of it. But then the thing that fell out of Wilson's ear

Everyone at my wedding wore grey. Grey suits, grey dresses. Even the babies were in little grey babygros. As they gathered in the church, clouds gathered in the sky. They all said it was a coincidence. They all said they were mortified. I thought that was worse than if it

I followed the trail of pebbles, though I had found it in the middle and I didn't know which way it led. To a home or a frontier; to a safe place or a dangerous one. It didn't much matter: the home would not be mine

I drew the cow all right angles, the way I imagined them. I hadn't seen many animals that weren't people or rats, and to me a cow seemed to have more to do with machines than anything living. I showed it to the children, and they

Coral has moon dust in her lungs, and one day it will kill her. She doesn't seem to mind. But it has made her fearful: she obsesses over healthy food and handwashing; she will not swim with us in the ocean or ride her motorcycle. Coral, who always

I shed my skin on a Thursday evening. I had been itching for it all week, feeling the squeeze of it when I sat down or bent my arms. I should have waited for the weekend, but I felt like I would burst. I rang in sick on Friday, with

Liam's dad is stupider than my dad, just like Liam is stupider than me. He never gets my riddles. You have to tell him everything twice, and then he just pretends to understand to shut you up. So how is it that he can tell you any kind

Stories about a maze tattoo, a spiral staircase, tending a grave, a hermit crab, and things stuck to lampposts.

Since there's nobody else to do it, I tend his grave. Pull the weeds, clean the bird mess. Sometimes I bring flowers, since there's nobody else to do it. I bring a soft brush to clean inside the lettering, and I bring a flask of tea.

Hot buttered toast. They all had hot buttered toast, and they got it from somewhere. They got it from somewhere, and none of them thought to tell me. They all just licked there greasy fingers, and I sat there, not even hungry, but feeling stupid that I hadn't

Ro's tattoo was one big maze. It started at the left side of his heart and walked his whole body to arrive back at the right. I always thought one day I would find the way through, but there were so many wrong turns, so many false passages