Scattering

@scattering.scattering.ink.ap.brid.gy

Daily microfiction and weekly stories from Mark Taylor 🌉 bridged from ⁂ https://www.scattering.ink/, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

4 followers0 following158 stories

Longform Stories

The Egg Boiling Championship

It was my tenth year at the egg boiling championship, and I was determined to take home the golden saucepan. I had focused on the basics, of course: estimating weight by feel and volume by eye, and fi…

2d ago·1 min read·194 words

Long twilight

The days began to grow shorter, but the nights refused to fill the gap. In those in-between times that were not for sleep nor wakefulness, we stayed quietly together, and found a new kind of rest. The…

3d ago·1 min read·128 words

The Whale on the Hill

Stories about mysterious games, kissing frogs, apples, chambers, and a walk to the impossible whale skeleton on the hill.

4d ago·6 min read·1038 words

Packing

I was certain I had forgotten something. Sleeping bag, ground mat, water bottle, pants. I went through the kit list in my head, but by the time I reached the end of it, I was no longer sure about the …

4d ago·2 min read·221 words

Apple tree

When flowers began turning to fruit, I clipped off every setting apple I could find except for one. Into that one apple would go all of the sunshine of all of the days from now until the autumn. Into …

5d ago·1 min read·130 words

Kissing frogs

One hundred days of kissing frogs for nothing but chapped lips and and upset stomach, and I feel fantastic. Why? Because the secret nobody wants to hear is: you were never going to find a prince in 10…

6d ago·1 min read·172 words

Chamber

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 …

Jun 18·1 min read·107 words

Rules

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 t…

Jun 17·1 min read·191 words

Rude words

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…

Jun 16·1 min read·142 words

Daisy chain

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 l…

Jun 15·2 min read·218 words

The Audit

Stories about bollards, an audit of unused possessions, a key under the mat, and a school trip to the cranking factory.

Jun 14·8 min read·1445 words

Empty playground

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'…

Jun 14·1 min read·176 words

Bollards

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 …

Jun 13·1 min read·137 words

Those Strange Boxes

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. …

Jun 12·2 min read·205 words

School Trip to the Cranking Factory

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 tea…

Jun 11·2 min read·239 words

As you were leaving

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, …

Jun 10·1 min read·196 words

A universe within

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 yourse…

Jun 9·2 min read·223 words

Under the mat

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 …

Jun 8·2 min read·205 words

Fruit machine

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 i…

Jun 7·2 min read·255 words

Over and Out

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 tha…

Jun 6·2 min read·220 words

Adoption

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 ca…

Jun 5·2 min read·215 words

The Crack

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 t…

Jun 4·1 min read·188 words

Fly, Man

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 a…

Jun 3·1 min read·144 words

Downpour

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, a…

Jun 2·2 min read·218 words

Little Teal Mini

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…

Jun 1·1 min read·139 words

Chemical Treatment

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

May 31·6 min read·1116 words

The World-Famous Old Boot Inn

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 scr…

May 31·1 min read·153 words

Seashell Sundial

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 h…

May 30·1 min read·150 words

Tide

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 sh…

May 29·1 min read·195 words

Lies

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 toxici…

May 28·1 min read·157 words

Oceans

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, t…

May 27·1 min read·169 words

Worldbuilding

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 whi…

May 26·1 min read·157 words

Do Not Use, Birds Nesting

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 …

May 25·1 min read·163 words

The Cat Flap

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

May 24·6 min read·1081 words

Bike lane

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 t…

May 24·1 min read·148 words

Flea market

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…

May 23·2 min read·228 words

All nighter

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 gree…

May 22·1 min read·158 words

New flags

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…

May 21·1 min read·156 words

Clock watching

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…

May 20·1 min read·174 words

When the birds spoke

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, al…

May 19·1 min read·146 words

Platform

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 your…

May 18·1 min read·185 words

The Time You Brought a Goat Home

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

May 17·7 min read·1224 words

The hole

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…

May 17·1 min read·184 words

Fair share

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 s…

May 16·1 min read·164 words

Lost button

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 tor…

May 15·1 min read·172 words

Fox, chicken and grain

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…

May 14·1 min read·76 words

Electric fence

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…

May 13·1 min read·82 words

After the accident

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…

May 12·1 min read·61 words

The King's Poisoner

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…

May 11·1 min read·68 words

Medium Wave

This week, we take a trip to all your favourite holiday locations: the zoo, the bandstand, the pier, the moon, the spider's web, the regret, the campsite. Then home in time to mend a haunted radio. …

May 10·1 min read·93 words

Camping with friends

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 …

May 10·1 min read·70 words

Morning after

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, …

May 9·1 min read·80 words

Web

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. B…

May 8·1 min read·52 words

Men in the moon

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 wi…

May 7·1 min read·70 words

Doughnut bandits

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…

May 6·1 min read·83 words

The Last Concert

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, bu…

May 5·1 min read·84 words

A Day at the Zoo

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…

May 4·1 min read·69 words

Separate Containers

Stories about sourness wars, living under the sea, a stupid argument and a trip to the tip.

May 3·1 min read·19 words

Living nightmares

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 t…

May 3·1 min read·68 words

Secret language

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. …

May 2·1 min read·60 words

Punishment

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 …

May 1·1 min read·65 words

Helicopter

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 …

Apr 30·1 min read·74 words

Submarine

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 i…

Apr 29·1 min read·99 words

On the grid

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 h…

Apr 28·1 min read·96 words

Sour

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 s…

Apr 27·1 min read·81 words

Limited Visibility

Stories about breaking, painting, laundry, and a bridge bathed in fog.

Apr 26·1 min read·13 words

Laundry day

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…

Apr 26·1 min read·68 words

Skylight

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 …

Apr 25·1 min read·57 words

After the demolition

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 sha…

Apr 24·1 min read·60 words

Winding up

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 t…

Apr 23·1 min read·100 words

Office birthday

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 birthda…

Apr 22·1 min read·65 words

Learning to paint

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…

Apr 21·1 min read·100 words

Time machine

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 jo…

Apr 20·1 min read·72 words

Ossified

Stories about being unpopular with mosquitos, drowning in cherry blossom, being a skeleton, and the Creature in the pipes.

Apr 19·1 min read·20 words

Pipes

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 ca…

Apr 19·1 min read·61 words

Graph

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 c…

Apr 18·1 min read·67 words

Ladybirds

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 ladyb…

Apr 17·1 min read·61 words

Unbitten

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 wh…

Apr 16·1 min read·67 words

Dandelion clocks

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 di…

Apr 15·1 min read·47 words

Cherry blossom

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…

Apr 14·1 min read·89 words

Offerings

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 thro…

Apr 13·1 min read·81 words

Only As Prescribed

Stories about paste sandwiches, pine cones, eating stars and stealing medicine.

Apr 12·1 min read·14 words

Meetup

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. S…

Apr 12·1 min read·80 words

Stump and tree

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 …

Apr 11·1 min read·65 words

Paste

"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 yo…

Apr 10·1 min read·91 words

Pine cones

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 eac…

Apr 9·1 min read·85 words

Good words

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 …

Apr 8·1 min read·71 words

Cereal

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 nigh…

Apr 7·1 min read·62 words

Holiday traffic

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 …

Apr 6·1 min read·70 words

Dad Dancing

Stories about clownfish, frogs, fairies, a migraine, and why it's actually a very beautiful thing to be a terrible dancer.

Apr 5·1 min read·22 words

Mess

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…

Apr 5·1 min read·61 words

Acorn boy

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 pal…

Apr 4·1 min read·74 words

Space

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…

Apr 3·1 min read·64 words

Frogs

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 breath…

Apr 2·1 min read·86 words

Beehive

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 …

Apr 1·1 min read·64 words

Migraine

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…

Mar 31·1 min read·87 words

Clownfish

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.

Mar 30·1 min read·36 words

The Tour Guide

A fox on the bus, a tour of the gallery, a pancake on the ceiling, something in the woods.

Mar 29·1 min read·22 words

Something in the woods

Scratched in charcoal on the gate were the words "THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE WOODS". Reading them made me feel better about things. I tried to imagine the woods without anything in them, and it felt li…

Mar 29·1 min read·65 words

Pancake

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 co…

Mar 28·1 min read·71 words

Razor blade

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 han…

Mar 27·1 min read·74 words

Bus fox

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…

Mar 26·1 min read·98 words

Best teacher ever

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 be…

Mar 25·1 min read·99 words

A mind like a gun

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 n…

Mar 24·1 min read·100 words

Cooking lessons

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 spi…

Mar 23·1 min read·90 words

The Last Two Stars

Stories about a garden, a rollercoaster, a mayfly, and a satellite falling to Earth.

Mar 22·1 min read·18 words

Ephemeroptera

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 wa…

Mar 22·1 min read·59 words

Evacuation

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 o…

Mar 21·1 min read·64 words

Puzzle box

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 a…

Mar 20·1 min read·74 words

Rollercoaster

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 l…

Mar 19·1 min read·68 words

After the flood

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 …

Mar 18·1 min read·93 words

Old leaves

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 …

Mar 17·1 min read·91 words

Garden

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, every…

Mar 16·1 min read·100 words

Of The World

Stories about a weighted suit, a big wet dog, an out-of-reach blackberry and a visit to the Emotion Recycling Centre.

Mar 15·1 min read·23 words

Blackberrying

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 c…

Mar 15·1 min read·77 words

Big wet dog

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 th…

Mar 14·1 min read·103 words

In the new world

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 dissolve…

Mar 13·1 min read·90 words

Emotion Recycling Centre

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 s…

Mar 12·1 min read·98 words

Wearing out

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 c…

Mar 11·1 min read·72 words

Times when it it hard to tie a tie

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…

Mar 10·1 min read·99 words

School reunion

Julia didn't know anybody at the school reunion. She could make out the shape of the class: who has been the popular kids, who had kept under the radar, who had become unexpectedly hot. But that was a…

Mar 9·1 min read·92 words

Widdershins

Stories about ice cream, chalk, birds' eggs, and the sun turning back in the sky.

Mar 8·1 min read·16 words

The Creature in the Lake

There was something new in the little lake by the playground. Something like a seal or a walrus, huge and whiskered. Something you could imagine might let the children ride on its back. It ate the bag…

Mar 8·1 min read·85 words

Break in

I am a grown-up now, and I can play in quarries and on building sites if I take care not to get caught. I can't climb fences like I once could, but I can buy bolt cutters with my Screwfix card. I am a…

Mar 7·1 min read·103 words

Drum

Grandad had that drum up on the wall his whole life, and it felt like I spent my whole childhood staring at it. The fading paint, the real hide stretched so taut it looked alive. I imagined all the th…

Mar 6·1 min read·103 words

Egg collection

In my parents' house there is a drawer of birds' eggs resting in crumpled paper, perfect and protected and cold and dead. I keep them half from pride and half from shame. Even as a boy I knew better. …

Mar 5·1 min read·64 words

Ninety-nine

When she passed the cone back, he found she had taken the entire Flake. There was a little tunnel where it had been, a negative space flecked with chocolate crumbs. Her usual selfishness. He turned to…

Mar 4·1 min read·62 words

Rolling shelves

I woke in a vast library of rolling shelves, which slid past me propelled by mechanisms unseen. A title caught my eye, and I tried to chase it down, but another bookcase cut across between us, and by …

Mar 3·1 min read·92 words

The chalk factory

Kit had a good job, making sticks of chalk for mathematicians to turn into ideas. It had troubled him at first that for the things he made to do their good work they had to be reduced to dust. But the…

Mar 2·1 min read·94 words

Lungs, Larynx, Lips

Stories about rivers, leaflets, a hollow book, and (regrettably) "AI".

Mar 1·1 min read·13 words

On a cloud

I stepped out onto the cloud. I knew from childhood computer games that it would hold me: the trick is to jump each time you sink, until you make it to the important cloud where you don't sink at all.…

Mar 1·1 min read·88 words

Skip

The driver shook my arm, although I wasn't sleeping. "You can't be in there, mate." "Why not?" I said. "It's my skip. There was nothing in the terms about it." I was a little more brusque than I inte…

Feb 28·1 min read·96 words

Revolt

In the streets they were calling for impossible things: lush forests unbound by fences, great public halls full of books to read for free, a teacher for every child. Decent enough folk, turned feral b…

Feb 27·1 min read·76 words

The Legacy of Mrs Clements

After Mrs Clements' passing, a hollow book was found among her possessions, and in its hand-cut void a silver key and an inscrutable map. Her heirs and their hangers-on spent many years searching for …

Feb 26·1 min read·79 words

Leafleting

I had forty leaflets left before I could go home and I knew down to the roots of my teeth that I could chuck them all in the bin and the world wouldn't change. They were all heading there anyway. The …

Feb 25·1 min read·96 words

No bad ideas

I wished that somebody would at least turn over the page on the flip chart. It was unbearable, to have it sitting in the corner while we were chewed out. To be asked “What have you been doing all morn…

Feb 24·1 min read·82 words

A day on the river

We spent a day on the river. It was changing faster in those days, finding broad new meanders that took us back almost to where we started, cutting through its own banks so that we never saw places we…

Feb 23·1 min read·87 words

A Bicycle for the Heart

Stories about spring, cats, a bicycle, and sitting in gum.

Feb 22·1 min read·15 words

Gum

I was at the bus shelter with the missing roof, waiting, and I had just sat in gum. I knew that I had sat in gum because a minute before I had looked at the foul grey blob of it clinging to the seat a…

Feb 22·1 min read·109 words

Cat faceoff

The cats stared at each other and I stared at the cats. Slowly, like a leaf towards the sun, one of them turned away. I couldn't say if it was an entente or a surrender. They stayed near each other a …

Feb 21·1 min read·80 words

Leaving the city

The city receded. Cities, like mountains, don't look smaller as you move away. Instead you see the unbearable scale of them, and they look bigger than ever. As we passed out of sight of it, it seemed …

Feb 20·1 min read·60 words

Balcony

I found him shivering on the balcony. "I had to get out," he explained, "but I should have gone for the front door." Twenty minutes later and I would have found him climbing down the building. I got h…

Feb 19·1 min read·78 words

Blossom

I saw the first hints of blossom, like the branch-tips had been dipped in violet ink. Too soon. I need a few more weeks to hide in the dark, to numb my toes. I am not ready for brighter days just yet.…

Feb 18·1 min read·63 words

In administration

When I got back home the windows were boarded over. Not a repossession: the notice on the door showed my life was no longer a going concern. I worried about where I would sleep and what I would eat, b…

Feb 17·1 min read·90 words

Diary

The writing was smaller than usual, and neater too. It sat right in the middle of an empty page, like a signpost. “I know you read my diary.” He thought: she can't know. He thought: it’s a joke, it’s …

Feb 16·1 min read·60 words

A Body in Motion

Stories about picking snowdrops, climbing trees, running away, and a daughter on the moon.

Feb 15·1 min read·18 words

Lunar expedition

At night I looked up at the moon, where my daughter was. On the clearest nights I imagined I could see the strange buildings she lived and worked in, the threads of her days pulled out across the surf…

Feb 15·1 min read·75 words

Tree

I lived up in that tree when I was a kid. I carved my initials and felt guilty every time I looked at them. I thought I'd cry when I saw it cut down. I thought I'd ask for a little chunk of it, the br…

Feb 14·1 min read·93 words

Snowdrop

I bent to pick a snowdrop, but the stem didn't snap. It drew up out of the soil, impossibly long, and as I pulled I felt the earth begin to tremble with the movement. Up came stones and worms and the …

Feb 13·1 min read·83 words

The Jar of Shavings

He kept the shavings from his woodcuts in an amber glass jar: all the negative space, the places the ink didn't touch. When he shook it he fancied he could see all the choices he hadn't made, all the …

Feb 12·1 min read·74 words

VIPs

Mr Manscombe told us that the visitors were important. Well, if they so important as all that, why did they all drive such boring cars? Black, black, and black. If I was important I'd get a car in an …

Feb 11·1 min read·95 words

Old Eyes

The crew had been carefully selected: no illnesses, no unstable personalities, no physical deficiencies. Caitlin was the one exception, her expertise being irreplaceable: if her glasses broke in the n…

Feb 10·1 min read·86 words

Skull Island

After ten weeks' journey we came to Skull Island, where we had important business. We found the man we were looking for in a cabin on the hill, the only dwelling in evidence. Our captain took up the m…

Feb 9·1 min read·92 words

The Puffin Guide to Drawing

Stories about playing chess with an incomplete set, drawing puffins, and getting punched in the face.

Feb 8·1 min read·21 words

Mending

She had all her broken things arranged on the kitchen table: phones, friendships, hopes, hoover. Clothes and cares all gone into holes. She set to work with needle and thread and screwdriver and solde…

Feb 8·1 min read·88 words

Churchgoing

I went back to the old church most days. You could find me on my knees, head bowed. I had dropped something very precious there, and in the dim light it was hard to search for. Of course, I knew I wou…

Feb 7·1 min read·71 words

Chess

We didn't have all the pieces, so we had to invent our own rules. Two scrappy little armies, one of them mostly pawns, but the pawns were so battered you could tell each one apart. We gave them names,…

Feb 6·1 min read·84 words

Amateur dramatics

Glyn did amateur dramatics in his old school hall, under the direction of his old school drama teacher. It felt like a nightmare, sometimes, standing around before rehearsal under those same fluoresce…

Feb 5·1 min read·66 words