Day 2089. I’m on cooking duty today. Cooking was my favourite shift but getting out of bed is taking a lot of effort.

Well, if you can call bed to a musty sleeping bag with holes on the outer layer.

Today’s menu will be: boiled potatoes. Perhaps there’s be a prune for dessert. Most likely not.

I hear the rain pounding against the dirty windows. More rain is the last thing we need. The walls of ...

It was almost midnight when I found the body. The pier was deserted but I still felt quite exposed. The soothing drone of the waves crashing against the abandoned structure felt deafening. With my gloves on, I squatted next to the dead body and carefully searched the coat pockets. A folded piece of paper was there along with a small wooden box. Just to be sure, I checked inside the coat as well bu...

The only reason people study in a library is to flirt. I have no evidence nor doubt of this. It’s like the nerds’ dating app. Everyone’s looking around, constantly eyeing your study neighbours.

Naturally, this was the reason I was in the library too. Deer boy always chose the same corner seat on the big table closest to the door. Deer boy had big brown eyes framed by thick black eyelashes. I ofte...

Breathe in, breathe out. Okay, you’ve got this. This man must be really strange. I literally just told his aides there’s been a terrible mistake, that I am not him I am me, and they went along with it. As if it was completely ordinary for this man to come up with stuff like that. To be honest, what is anyone going to do if told of a body swap? Still, there was something about how unbothered they w...

The best of days are when the Kind Enchantress makes me tiny, a little miniature the size of a thumb. Being enormous is fun for a while, but then you quickly grow tired of having to be so careful. The last thing you want is to step on cute animals or the people you love.

When I am tiny, I can run around the house without a worry. I can ride Lily, the mouse, but she doesn’t let me grab her by the...

I can always feel the monster before I see it. But I know it is going to be there from the beginning.

It starts in the big white room, it is so big there is no walls to be seen. Just a wide, bright, white space.

I start walking, but I have no idea where I am going. After a while, I feel its presence. It’s scary, menacing, overwhelming. I feel its size. It is massive and I sense, it is expanding ...

Monday

There was the most handsome man in the train this morning. He looked like he belonged in a magazine, or in a teenager’s wall as a poster. Tall, you could tell he goes to the gym, but not too much, like fit but not a bodybuilder. What I’d give to see that torso. He reminded me of that actor that plays Superman in the tv series.

Mitch is still on leave, thank heavens for that, so had a quiet...

Of course, they were getting married in Ibiza. E-bee-tha, I hated that they pronounced it like Spanish people. Sorry you aren’t allowed to say it like that if you were born north of Andorra.

I did not want to go. If there’s one thing I hate more than posh people is drunk posh people. Fine, let’s look at the positives. There will be food, presumably good since we’ll be in Spain, and free booze. A...

“I will bring it up today, Linda.” Steve was staring at the small TV placed in front of the kitchen table, his jaw clenched. The black coffee he drinks first thing every morning is getting cold in the large mug. “There’s no point in waiting, things only seem to be getting worse. Will your sister be okay with us moving in as soon as next week?”

Linda stirred the last few drifting flakes in the cer...

The hardest part was coming back. Things remained mostly unchanged, but somehow they seemed better every time.

Hannah had painted the front fence white, that was new. The pine wood panels, once worn out and tired, now stood proudly around the quaint house. There was something about white fences that screamed doing well over here to me.

Year after year, the gap between Hannah and me had been st...