I dream of one day having a house that my mom and sister and I can all live in. I want one just like the gray house on the corner.

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

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.

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.

Lancastrian Nights, a true story, tells the wonderous tale of a chance meeting and highlights the magic of life.

Sitting on the plane to Chicago, Mila wondered when exactly the idea had taken hold of her. Did the idea have an infancy or a childhood, or did it ground itself in the soil of her imagination like a full-grown poison tree?

Peter was tired. After 10 years of holding together the paperwork for “Johnson, A.P. – SSN 555-66-33xx,” his tensile strength was fading; he could feel his molecules beginning to degrade.

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.

People told tales of long, long ago, when they used to enjoy Halloween, dressing up, knocking on doors showing off their fine costumes, playing something called Trick or Treat and, it used to be fun, but not anymore.

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.