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…
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The 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…
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The 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…
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Walking 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…
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Jólakötturinn’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…
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Where 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…
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Heaven 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…
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The 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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