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Short story category: 10 Minutes

Day two I dread to think how many flies I’ve swallowed since we came here. The air boils with them so that you can hardly breathe. They find their way through the mesh on the cabin windows. They swoop on uncovered food. Their corpses collect under lamps and in the plastic shells of ceiling lights

Frunk Tilberscruddy was out of lemons. Several times this morning he had despaired about a lack of citrus to curl his gums. He’d thrice wrenched around his purple hiker’s bag, but all that grazed his fingers were a large sack of coins and a bushel of crushed bananas the same colour as his pack.

Six minutes and thirty-three seconds. That was the amount of time it took a spark to wind its way down and around the forty-inch fuses attached to the nine cherry-red two-stick dynamite charges that Frank Rasmussen was carrying in his dusty leather satchel. Frank had been excavating mines long enoug

Leah gave the junior manager on reception a curt smile as she pressed her plastic pass to the turnstile and moved through. ‘Swimming today, Mrs Dawson?’ ‘Yes please.’ ‘No problem. The pool is busy today so let me just check. Ah yes, there’s space. Please go ahead.’ In all t

Your father insisted on driving you to the cinema tonight. If you were going to go out it had to be under his conditions, and this was one of them. It’s embarrassing that after three years of living alone at university your father has to chauffeur you around, especially for a date, but you know th

'Hey! You’re not even waving!’ Annie’s voice had an air of authority, but with a wry undertone. She was wearing the biggest smile and waving frantically as we walked past the window of 1 Croft Road. ‘Oh, sorry!’ I was suddenly ripped from my mini mind-drift and gave a clumsy left-handed

Although there had been a time in her life before Mei had loved Hagane, she struggled to remember it. Habit does such a good job of erasing the past. Though they were still young, married only a few years and yet without child, Mei had almost forgotten what life was like back in her old family home.

I have this recurring dream, maybe twice a week. Or, maybe because it has recurred for so many months, it’s only once a week but it seems like twice a week. Whatever. The dream arrives like the slow-motion appearance of a wild-eyed merry-go-round horse emerging from the swirling fog of sleep, and