“We got it! We’re going!” Mom is at the kitchen window, waving a letter. I’ve only seen her like this this when reciting lines for Pepper’s Gameshow.Last week she stood giggling in front of the mirror, waving her hand as if to say, “Oh, stop!” She took a breath and recited: “Pepper, I’ve waited my entire life for this moment.

The chubby olive-skinned boy wearing orange armbands and blue goggles on top of his head tried to jump ahead of Luna on the path that led to the queue for the Aqua Loop. Though she was walking slowly and calmly like an adult should, she still did not want him to go on the ride before her, and even if

It wasn’t until the eve of her thirtieth birthday that Louise learned she had died as a young girl. She was certain she had never met the woman who told her this, and yet at first there was nothing unpleasant about the encounter, despite the circumstances.This is how it happened.An hour or more after falling exhausted into bed, Louise was

“Dead!” Mama is wailing at Papa, “Dead, dead at twenty-seven! And -” a great indrawn breath which thrusts out her formidable chin, “not married!”“Is that all you can -” Papa stops, turns away, and puts his face in his hands. I’d like to think it was grief that stopped his speech, but I know better. He was just scared of

I saw the first one while walking in Castle Park one sunny May morning. Dressed in jeans and a denim jacket, floating in the air just above a horse chestnut tree. She was upright, her slender arms opened a little each side as if in a half-arsed ballet pose. Her face was tilted back a bit, staring skywards. From where

My parents believe that when two people have sex their souls intertwine and they become one person. They think when you get to heaven the person you had sex with is still part of you, so you have to choose wisely. They pull bible verses out to back this up. They can pull bible verses out to back up anything.I

The first time Jessica became aware of her approaching transformation, she was in her back room, as she so often was now that her centenary was drawing near. She was just finishing afternoon tea when, as she placed her teacup back into its saucer, there was the sudden, overwhelming sensation that her fingers were no longer arthritic pegs but lithe

I came to you to learn of spells. Magics and enchantments and incantations. To summon demons to do my bidding. To cast bones and learn of futures. Commune with spirits long dead and ask them of truths only they could know. With rites and rituals, I wished to forge blood packs with Bartleby and Mephistopheles. I wanted to trade in

Something has been calling me away from all the places that never deserved to be my home. I remember that steady droning wail under the deafening demands of life back home. The voice grew hoarse and faint before I found the courage to follow it and now, I’m sitting in the rear seat of a passenger carriage belonging to some

Some years ago, in what now seems an impossibly pre-internet age, I was commissioned to write a guidebook to Vienna. I knew the city well, having spent two years there as a postgraduate studying the architecture of the Vienna Secession. Although my PhD remained unfinished, my time there left me with fluent German and a thorough knowledge of the city’s