Category: Microfiction

The magician was preparing for his greatest trick. He had escaped from watery prisons, asking his audience to hold their breath along with him, his assistant enjoying their red faced gasps as they faltered one by one. He had made an elephant vanish, a masterclass in the control of perception, the newspapers scratching their collective…

The bakery attracted people from around the world. Queues would start an hour before it opened, people jostling with impatient elbows. When they opened the doors the smell would hit everyone with a ferocity that was unmatched, sending each of them spinning into their own memories of childhoods tinged by rhubarb, dates heady with the…

She depended on her routine. She had porridge with blueberries for breakfast every day. She had a wardrobe full of pencil skirts and silk blouses that she wore to work, leaving at exactly 8:22am to walk the twenty-three minutes to her office. She finished her day at 5:37 to be home at exactly 6pm for…

“You’re not going out like that are you?” “Why not?” “Because look at yourself!” He looked in the hallway mirror and took in his too tall frame and his too wild hair. She had always said that she loved the fact that he was unconventional, and that he didn’t care what other people thought. He…

It had been five months since the accident, five months since she had an open fracture of the tibia, a collapsed lung, a ruptured spleen. Five months since she had been dead for a minute. Five months since she had first seen the dark mist in the corner of her room. Five months of watching…

What is a childhood without fully formed memories? While others can tell hour long tales of a single summer’s day, mine are like a book with all but one of the pages pulled out. My next door neighbour, stiffly poking at a plant in the garden with his cane as opera bursts from his house.…

She saved the dress for special occasions. It had never been worn. Occasionally she tried it on, admiring the drama of the green bodice and the voluminous skirt that sounded like whispers of admiration when she moved. But then she would fold it away, berating herself for ever buying it. He put his head around…

“Ooh isn’t this weather lovely?” “Have you been outside today?” “It’s sunny! It’s actually sunny!” God she loved spring. She loved how people chattered, buoyed by the change in weather, the season represented in their step when they dared to go outside without a jacket for the first time. She loved the way dogs would…

She sat beneath the pale light of the slim moon, the stars watching from their vantage point. She had always climbed on to the roof to watch the quiet unfolding of the night, the birds enjoying one final swoop to their homes, the lights in the houses winking off one by one. When the foxes…

He always had a guitar slung over his shoulder. It made people notice him, whether he was walking down a street crowded with harassed workers and staring tourists, or sitting in a bar with a whisky in front of him that he never tasted. Occasionally someone would ask if they could play it and he…