Is my Wife a Zombie?
How often have you found yourself thinking, ‘Is my Wife a Zombie?’ Don’t panic, the chances are your loved one is not a zombie. These creatures, which raise themselves from the undead, are uncommon. However, given how disruptive a freshly…
Read MoreThe Heron Brief
What has a heron to do with the most devastating political decision of the last 50 years…? A forbidding grey shadow swung over the reed brushes. With a final thrash and stretch of wings the heron hung, catching the air…
Read MoreThe Boy in the Phone
Lisa enters the weirdest love tangle ever with two versions of the same boy. Her phone starts showing a dark world full of grotesque creatures – except one is a boy, who looks like Calen! Only it can’t be school…
Read MoreWalking with Hares
A leveret to lie in wait for you before the plague village church’s door. A wreath of bitter cress and mallow for it to bide upon. A cold grey bundle on the silent stone to greet you on your marriage…
Read MoreJólakötturinn’s gift
A 500 word Xmas story with snow, presents and death-threats. ‘…it flew straight into the aurora; never came out the other side.’ ‘Long title?’ ‘That’s not the title; it’s the first line of dialogue spoken by the child.’ ‘Then it…
Read MoreWhere Agrasset Lies
Invent the maddest first sentence ever and then write the story that leads up to that scene. When I finally escaped the charge of the Desert Djinn, Zhod the Unsettling he was scrutinising the interior of his loincloth for a…
Read MoreHeaven Scent
The slender trail weaved steeply upwards. On all sides mountains clawed at the dusk. The village dwindled before him; earth and stone structures increasingly basic, derelict, and abandoned. Not even the black shaggy goats strayed this far. The path narrowed…
Read MoreThe Doll with a Bruise
Octopuses are hard to love. They kill almost anything you put in a tank with them, including other octopuses. They’re notorious escape artists, they’re smart and they rip lives apart. I don’t make them happy. I think of them as…
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