An expansive absence of colour fills my view. A single, naked bulb – pure, cold – blurs into my opening eyes. This is not my flat. The realisation rocks me like a shot of tequila.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

Saturday. Ged’s day. Best day of the week. When Jean usually pops over to see her sister. If I play my cards right we’ll hardly see each other till tomorrow.

Today was her birthday – sixty-six years old going on ninety – and she was spending it the same way she had spent every other day except Sunday for the past thirty-two years.

Twenty years after the death of his only pet, Jonah found himself wondering how he may share some similarities with the disgusting, stupid-looking creature his parents gifted him.

The world to Kieran Gilchrist had never made complete sense, even more so when he found his mum and dad stone-cold dead in their bed one rainy morning.

He wasn’t wanted in this country. But as a volunteer in the hospital, he could serve and he could belong.

His mind was a spring that was rapidly unwinding. As it spun, the only thoughts Chip had, involved ways to get more pills.

Pandemic, protests, and presidency. But here it was, the countdown to New Year. New Year in New York. Times Square at New Year.

Anthony blinked and looked up in a vague haze. A face was staring down at him. It was a face he didn’t know.

Aside from that Glaswegian Friend of the Earth, Dougie Macleod didn’t have a lot of time for the other men on the rig. He kept his head down and got his work done.

Even though Miss Parker is nice, I don’t always like our visits. She has so many words while I have none.