A foreigner who frequents a local café is so mysteriously quiet that rumours start to spread about him. Image generated with OpenAI When people do not provide information about themselves, others will do so. Rumours inevitably pile up one after the other. There is some malice, but mostly genuine curiosity and a desire to slot the man into some sort of role that will define him within the town. This man's name is Karvon Kleet - this is confirmed by Jim the postman. His name sounds foreign, everybody agrees. And he looks foreign, what with the wide forehead and jet-black hair, and the ..read more

Alice helps an old Welshman cross the bridge into Bangor, and even though she doesn't believe he is who he claims to be, his stories might just alter the course of her life. Image generated with OpenAI Queen Guinevere Meets the Wizard Merlin When I first saw him, I was not sure if he was trying to kill himself or just exceedingly drunk. He was lying precariously on the edge of the Menai Bridge, with one leg dangling over the edge, whilst the Straits crashed noisily, far below. As I got nearer to the man, I could hear him moaning; there were no clear words, just a low keening sound ..read more

In the style of a Victorian "penny dreadful", this story tells of a paramedic whose luck changes when he finds an old penny. Image generated with OpenAI I took the dreadful penny from a dead man's car. It's a 1987 penny with a little nick on the Queen's nose. The man had come right out through the windscreen. Seven years as a paramedic and I'd never seen anything like it. He flew twenty feet and still had enough velocity when he hit the lamppost to split his head open like a watermelon. The medical textbook says it best: "When presented with a pulseless patient, medical profession ..read more

Serena goes to increasingly extreme lengths to get her next fix, but is there such a thing as too far? Image generated with OpenAI He always looks the same, just as he did the last time she saw him. She wishes he looked like his profile picture had, smiling in the woods with a Frenchie in his lap, his eyes bright and full of life. Or as he looked on the Riverwalk, shy, reaching for her hand with a sly grin. Instead, as she stands in her underwear, frozen at one end of the hallway, she sees him as he died. One eye is grey, waxy. The other has disappeared under what's left of his swoll ..read more

Norman purchases a mute companion that only wants to please him. Image generated with OpenAI I was chosen. He knew I was better than the others. The best. I had been on display for weeks now, ever since I was first brought onto the main floor of The Mile, and could already sense when a man's relentless gaze led to one of us getting a ticket out of here. It wasn't a firsthand experience, but I suppose you learn by observing. And this time, his gaze, his thoughts and desires were fixed on me. Of course, he pretended to be undecided, strutting through the aisles while all of us stood m ..read more

Hendricks goes to great lengths to prepare the perfect dinner for Charles - it's a pity that Gemma is coming too. Image generated with OpenAI The cellar air tasted cool and rank. Hendricks selected a horizontal bottle from the wine rack and blew dust from the label; an aged Montepulciano D'Abruzzo. He carried the bottle upstairs to the kitchen and twisted the cork out upon a round table laid for three people. Fumes breathed from the bottle. Charles and Gemma would not arrive for several hours. To prevent dust from settling within the polished wine glasses, Hendricks overturned them b ..read more

Jake is forbidden from travelling beyond his garden, out where life is cheap and monsters roam, but he simply must get some more Red Bull. Image generated with OpenAI I wasn't always an adventurer. In fact, I hardly left the house. I would shut myself up in the living room and play video games all day. But Daddy used to let me out on Fridays to play handball with the other kids after my homeschool ended. I was in front of the concrete slab, throwing my handball against the wall. The sun set in the dark sky, and the kid I was playing with left. A ball flew over the wall from the oth ..read more

When Max returns to Pratonero, he is forced to stay longer than intended, and face the trauma of his past. Image generated with OpenAI A single raindrop, an imperceptible veil of fog, even a hint of mist would contribute to creating the right atmosphere for the situation. Instead, there is only the autumn sun carrying out its task as a routine, perhaps with too much zeal. Then again, why expect the opposite? If life were a movie, the soundtrack would be enough to inform us what is about to happen. And who knows, maybe we could even lull the conviction that we choose the music oursel ..read more

An autistic girl called Jack tends to a mysterious plant growing in her back garden to try and escape from a memory she can't bring herself to voice. Image generated with OpenAI There's a new plant in the garden. New as in no one planted it, no one's put anything there since Grandma died. Her roses have all withered, her lilacs choked with weeds, flower petals rotting into the dirt like little girls' skins. The rabbits sneak in from the woods and pick over the carnage until Dad chases them away, shouting and waving his arms. But there's a new plant in the garden. Jack can see it po ..read more

Jeremy Astor becomes obsessed with making the high school basketball team, but at what cost? Image generated with OpenAI Jeremy "Automatic" Astor stood at the free throw line. Two shots were forthcoming; two points would win the game. Even so, it was not the orange lip of the rim that was the focus of his attention. Nor was it the 400 chanting fans. Rather, Jeremy was attempting to calculate the odds of a game ending on a technical foul; and then the further odds that the resulting foul shots should determine the outcome of that game; and then the odds that the game in question shoul ..read more