A semi-barbaric king devises a semi-barabaric (but entirely fair) method of criminal trial involving two doors, a beautiful lady and a very hungry tiger.

I won’t tell anyone about the diagnosis. Not my mother or sister. Certainly not Jake. Maybe not even Steve.

“Going souling", they used to call it. I can remember m’grandad telling me he used to do it, when he were little, going round the houses and offering to say prayers for the dead, in exchange for these little cakes, soul cakes they called ‘em.

Stella cannot remember a time before nature was her haven, her place of peace and healing. It was a big part of her life before she met her husband and the father of her two children.

Nothing is as visceral as holding a handful of human ash. I resist the impulse to sift it between my fingers as I walk. Everyone, from the mourners to the pastor, are far away and yet too close.

Three o’clock on a Thursday was an odd time for a visit, but it was the only downtime between my part-time jobs that suited Jo. More unusual than the time was the prospect of a one-to-one rendezvous in my bedsit with someone about my age and attractive.

She was not unused to calls of distress, the groans of the feverish, or the cloying stench of broken bodies and all their expulsions, but never so many at a time and never so twisted and ripped.

His fingers moved over the strings of his violin with ease and without effort. The bridge, the neck, the strings, and the bow was an extension of his talent as well as his soul.

My mother is the weather. As a child, I was the core target to which she would unleash her hailstorms and earthquakes that tore me down and broke me into pieces.

A flash bursts from behind me, projecting shadows onto the pavement. We turn and all share the same vision. An orange mushroom cloud billows on the horizon, but it continues to rise into the sky.