One morning in early spring, at a time when people still looked at blue skies and said things to each other like ‘what lovely weather’, a man met an alien standing on the doorstep right next to the bookshop on the corner of the high street. Something about the alien’s casual demeanour made the man stop and stare. They locked eyes. The feeling seemed mutual. He followed the alien, taking the stair...

Brown rice, ground into the rug, isn’t what I want to see when I walk into the living room.

They tell you that you should discipline your children. On the other hand, they tell you that you should try not to overreact. Pick your battles.

‘Dad, can we have Computer Tea? We’re against Three-F tomorrow for Mathmo-Marauder and they’re gonna thrash us’.

They say it’s educational. But they tell you n...

Your first word was Door.

First, that is, after the hoped-for Mama and Dada;

A curious experiment in sound,

Out on a limb:

Door.

Your lips would take milky leave of home sweet home,

The dam of your tongue poised to

Flick the inner soft pink roof;

Rage, fear, delight,

Flame-fanned by chesty bellows,

Birthed in dark dungeons of breath:

Door.

Flexed fingers, outstretched arm:

You loved to make a ...

He had already left the hospital, and he still had no idea about how he would tell her.

‘Your Mum isn’t coming back’.

Too harsh.

‘Mum isn’t coming back’. More personal. Too personal for him, too … what was the word? … evasive for her. Evasive yet brutal: not an ideal combination for a three-year-old.

‘Mum has gone to heaven’. No way. He’d spent too many years in the back of ambulances, in hospi...

I was waiting to hear about the Decision when the killings really started kicking off in the garden.

Then there were the scary dreams about the future, like everything got mixed up somehow. I was trying to find the bus to Ipswich and I was being chased by a growling monster with sharp teeth, and I knew they were really sharp, even though the monster was behind me. The doctor on shift gave me so...

Priests live there in a vast labyrinth. They annotate the volumes which line the endless bookshelves: prayers to placate the gods; the necessary and proper maintenance of the temple buildings; daily routines, both corporeal and spiritual.

In the grandest library of them all, the story of the temple itself is recorded in seven volumes, bound in gold and vermillion, with florid illustrations and fa...

He was looking into the drawer, full of dusty buttons and treasury tags, when the doorbell rang. His heart leapt: the removal van was early. Pushing past the piles of boxes in the hall, he opened the door instead to an empty front garden, a parcel on the step, a letter balanced precariously on top. The postman’s cheery whistle had already merged with the birdsong on the suburban street.

The parce...

From: toph@abcpublications.org.uk

To: henry.forrest@thu.ac.uk

Subject: your new editor

17/02/19 at 0930

Hi there Henry,

Please allow me to introduce myself.

I’m a new appointment at ABC, replacing Ms. Jacqueline Wagner, with whom I believe you have worked for many years. I never had the pleasure of meeting her, which saddens me because it is unlikely that I ever shall; no doubt you have heard th...

I am dying. I am no longer young: if I bend my head towards my chest, I see that the end of my long beard contains traces of white. Death is no stranger to me, nor I to him; we have glimpsed one other many times with sharp mutual recognition. Now I am reconciled to his soft presence around the places where I sleep, where I eat, where I make love to my wives. Perhaps, in the final hours of my malin...