I play my grandmother’s memory loss in a game for closeness.
‘Gene Richards,’ she says.  ‘I was thinking about him the other day.’
‘He wasn’t at the funeral, was he?’ I say, because we had this conversation …

Crompton was about to be assaulted with questions like the one that had undone his predecessor. Someone had asked why there weren’t enough helicopters to provide air cover for the boys in Helmand. He hadn’t …

By Cynthia Allen
There is surely no more poignant sight than that of a dead woman’s clothes, hanging disconsolately, waiting for their inevitable eviction.

By Sophie Klimt

Every year around Christmas Uncle Ike would show upon our doorstep, wheezingly drunk, with his sleeping bag on his shoulder. In the morning we would wander downstairs to the frying smell …

She lowers the dolly carefully into the tin bath. The water is tepid and a lot had been spilled between the two of them getting the tub outside, especially on the final heave onto the …

Uncle Spaso’s dog Sila waded through the snow ahead of us. She would disappear for a while, only to emerge again right in front of us, happily wagging her tail. Uncle Spaso said the dog …

by Anthea Morrison

I’m hoping for a glimpse of the delights we have been promised, but the surface of the sea is opaque and gives nothing away. The sun beats down just like it’s supposed to …

A companion piece to ‘Fast in Water’ by Josh Raymond

After mum’s first seizure she thought it was blasphemous to say ‘For the love of God,’ and so instead she said ‘For the love of …

A companion piece to Free Swim by Evie Wyld

I am going to bash Marcus Jennings after school. I will go up to him in the corridor with my hands out wide like an aeroplane, …

by William Boyd
Bethany Mellmoth steps forward and takes a bow. “Big round of applause for my beautiful assistant, Bethany!”  Hunter Doig cries. A few people clap dutifully but they are more interested in Hunter in …

by Spencer Brown
They came from the skies, in a ship that was clearly expensive. It soared silently through the clouds, coming to rest above Shropley.
The villagers assembled on the green; this was the most exciting thing …

Part of the Photo Stories series co-edited by Clare Wigfall. Authors work from a photograph to produce a story of about 1000 words.

‘Have you seen it?’ I asked.
‘Why exactly are you calling, …

by David Vann
The late night lonesome stare at the fish tank, the only well-lit place in the world.  The fish were sleeping.  One on top of the other, like firewood or humans, the orange-and-black clown …

by Idil Sukan
Jet, jet silver, silverblue, sapphire, amber sapphire, ampalosapphire, shadow silver, shadow pearl, ambergold: the subtle rainbow of fur colours from black to brown to grey to beige to white. The words return to …

Identical Fugitive Octopus
He drove to the edge of the city and parked the Subaru
in a long street he remembered from previous visits.
Nothing had changed. The small shop that sold
lace collars and haberdashery was still there
and …

by Kitty Fitzgerald
Father Kerrigan would have bet the bones of St Ignatius that he would only once in his life hear a confession like the one Alice Noonan had made to him several years before. …

by William Boyd
My appetite has dulled. She’s drinking G and T, and the smell, the ice and lemon jostling for space, the way the gin slides like oil up through the tonic, all have me …

by Sunita Soliar
‘I suppose I was entirely ridiculous!’ she laughed. He had always liked her laugh when she was young. It had been carefree and easy and it saddened him to hear this contrived cheer.
‘Your …

by Michael Fontana

I ran a pawnshop next to the bone-yard, just past the railroad tracks.  It sounded like a blues lyric but wasn’t.  You live in a town in the Ozarks long enough and you …

by Davey Spens
The carriage was packed like a tin of sardines. At each station, a dozen more bodies crammed in, so by the time the train reached Charing Cross, there wasn’t room to sneeze. The …