The pavement melted into the street like a giant piece of cheddar. Under the shed, the two men in their thirties slumped in dented plastic chairs by the no less dented table outside a small canteen. The washed-out A-board beside the entrance read:

LUNCH AT MADDY’S — CHEAPER THAN CHEAP!

A girl in a striped apron appeared and took their order for a single small beer.

“Look at all th...

It was snowing heavily outside, but not inside. There, sunshine danced between thick oak crowns, creating soft pools of light where it hit the cool ground. A girl walked down the narrow path, her feet tangling in underskirts, her skin white as snow, her cheeks cranberry red. Inside her basket, penny buns and brittlegils were waiting to become a perfect casserole for her seven friends.

She rehe...

"Don't be like your grandma Georgina," Mom would hiss and slap me with a teen mag I forgot to bring for her inspection. She couldn't afford a new pair of shoes or repair our leaky fridge, yet the two of us had a deal: pocket money for me in return for some control over my interests. So I didn't mind her going through my mags and tearing away those ridiculous horoscopes (Aries are in love, Tauruses...

Write a scene from the perspective of a half-eaten gingerbread cookie....

'So, who’s going to die today?'

Write a story that starts with this line....

The floodlights were blinding. It was as if a hundred daggers hit McLaren's eyes simultaneously, but knowing he was being filmed, he couldn't even rub them to ease the pain. Instead, he glanced at his wristwatch while the host announced the q-and-a's. Ten minutes before it's time to take his usual pill. McLaren took a deep breath, put on his "camera" smile and turned towards a black void of a hal...

Jake glanced at his wristwatch that glimmered slate silver in the moonlight. Just a minute to

midnight. Just a minute – and everything will finally be over. He clenched the baseball bat tighter. It was studded with runes and scriptures of the unknown (and possibly never-existent) languages. The man was dressed in colourful rags and a tin foil hat, and small amulets hanging from his neck were jing...

"Back in my day," said the Slender-Death, waving about a Coco Loco in a hairy shell, "they didn't have all those fancy treatments that they do now. It took only a spoonful of bacteria to kill half a continent, and now? Goddamned antibiotics save hundreds of thousands of people each day!"

The Slender-Death, the Stocky-Death and the Petite-Death were reclining in blue and white striped loungers by t...

He could barely sit still at the precinct all day, so when the wall clock finally struck five, the detective hastily killed his PC with an unfinished solitaire game on the screen, pulled on his rumpled old jacket, and grabbed the keys. Then, he saw James Gardner, his best friend and son of the chief of the homicide division, poking his head in the door.

"Hey. Old man said he wanted to see you."

Ca...

She might have seen all of it.

Travis stood rooted to the spot inside his apartment. He looked through the exposed window, which had been left wide open to draw fresh air during the July heat. The window was facing another, a nine- storey building just across the road, -- 30 yards, 50 maybe -- where a lady in her seventies was staring back at Travis.

Blood rushed to his brain. He needed to do some...