Chapter 1
Worms
“The early bird gets the worm.”
Today I realised that I have not thought about worms for a long time. I have not considered the pink earthworm in many years and today I remembered them. Segmented, searching, saddled. I imagine holding one like I hold my pen between fingers and thumb. It is plump and juicy. It wriggles and writhes. Forgetting them for so long, it is as if I didn’t even know they existed. And yet of course they do and today I thought about worms.
Chapter 2
Apples and oranges
“An apple a day…”
Rhadeep Singh enters the greengrocer’s to buy twelve apples and five oranges. As he contemplates if he has enough money to also buy some pears he suddenly realises he is not real, but actually the subject of a Mathematics question in a student’s exam paper. Knowing that fictional maths fruit does not taste as nice as real fruit, he puts down the apples and oranges and leaves.
Chapter 3
The bigfoot
“There’s something in the woods.”
Carl Carlsen owned a hunting store that sold guns, rifles, knives, ammunition and all sorts of hunting supplies. He also never believed in the Bigfoot until one day, walking into his store, bold as brass, came the Bigfoot. The Bigfoot bought several items of camouflage gear. Carl Carlsen never saw the Bigfoot again.
Chapter 4
The yeti
“Abominable!”
Adam Adamski was a businessman who never believed in the Yeti until one walked right into his store to purchase 12 feet of 2 inch copper tubing. Adam Adamski wondered what the Yeti needed the tubing for.
Chapter 5
The gravity experiment
“Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.”
Gregor Gregorovich had read that any animal smaller that a cat would survive a fall from a tall building. He had read that a mouse would land and scuttle away because the force of the impact would not be large enough to inflict injury. He had also read that an animal large enough, say a horse, would land with a splash.
Gregor Gregorovich decided to experiment. From the roof of his twenty storey apartment building he threw a mouse. Halfway down, an eagle swooped and caught the mouse, carrying it off to its nest of chicks.
Then Gregor Gregorovich threw his cat from the roof. A little more than halfway down, the cat sprouted wings and flew away.
Frustrated, Gregor Gregorovich flung his own baby boy from the roof. The baby landed and bounced right back up to the fifteenth floor window where Gregor Gregorovich’s wife caught the baby boy and began to suckle him.
Finally, Gregor Gregorovich pushed his horse from the roof. It landed, not with a splash, but rather shattered into a million pieces. An old lady began to sweep up the shards. She looked up and saw Gregor Gregorovich peering down at her.
“Gravity,” she called up to him, “only works if you truly believe.”
Chapter 6
The circle of life
“Ah zabenya”
Joe sent a text to Gemma.
Gemma snap chatted a screenshot to Paul
Paul direct messaged Louise.
Louise tweeted Lee.
Lee posted on Emily’s Facebook page.
Emily read this and went mental.
Emily was apoplectic with rage.
Emily slapped Lee.
Lee spat on Louise.
Louise kicked Paul in the balls.
Paul dumped Gemma.
Gemma kissed Joe.
Chapter 7
Sky blue
“We shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.”
Summer Davies is a woman who hates the colour blue. She despises it with a passion rarely seen outside religious zealotry. Summer Davies hates blue.
Nothing in her house is blue, no clothes, no plates or mugs, no linen. Summer Davies even wears orange tinted glasses when she goes outside so the blue of the sky does not enrage her.
Not once, since her fourth birthday, has she seen the colour blue. And now I realise that I am writing her story in blue ink and she won’t even read it. I should re-write this whole sorry episode in red.
Summer Davies hates blue but she doesn’t mind red.
Chapter 8
The past is unpredictable
“The past is a foreign country.”
Thomas Thomason lives in a place where the future is known but the past is uncertain. Not uncertain as if people don’t remember it, but unpredictable, subject to change.
For example, yesterday Thomas Thomason used to be a plumber, today Thomas Thomason used to be a teacher. Last Tuesday he was the only son of immigrant parents but by Wednesday he was the second of our boys born to parents whose heritage could be traced back one hundred generations.
Needless to say this is all very confusing to Thomas Thomason who looks forward to his death next year.
Chapter 9
Heat
“It’s getting hot in here.”
It was a hot day in Green End, the hottest that John Fitz could remember. The sun beat down, the air was thick and hazy, waves of shimmering mirage quivered above the tarmac roads.
It was so hot that as John Fitz stood in his garden he began to melt. First his earlobe drooped longer, stretching as it melted, then his entire ear slid down the side of his head and plopped not the grass. The other ear was quick to follow. The John Fritz’s nose slipped down over his lips, over his chin and down his shirt front onto his right shoe. Next, his arms melted, growing longer and thinner until his fingers touched the tips of the grass leaves.
Within the hour, all that was left of John Fitz was his clothes, greasy with melted human.
Chapter 10
The loch ness monster
“We’re going to need a bigger boat.”
Did Sam Samuels ever tell you about the time he saw the Loch Ness monster? No? Well then, I will tell you the story.
Many years ago, when Sam Samuels was a mere lad of seventeen, on a windy winter’s night, rain driving horizontally in his face, the cold chill boring deep into the core of his being, Sam Samuels walked past the Loch Ness monster on Shirley High Street. As they passed each other, the Loch Ness monster tipped his cap and walked off into the night.
Chapter 11
The duality of light
“Let there be light.”
Mia Miasson wondered why physics had yet to invent a word that addressed the duality of light. Old concepts like particles and waves were simply inadequate. A word, she felt, must be coined to represent the capricious nature of quantum objects such as the photon.
What a whimsical little bastard the photon is. What a bunch of two-faced perfidious gets those photon streams are.
Mia Miasson hated them. The despised photon, one moment pretending to be a wave and the next, a particle. Showing off properties of both, making, if Mia Miasson was to be frank about it, a goddamn exhibition of itself. That mother-fucking photon is a Janus.
Chapter 12
Immortality
“Gunna live forever.”
LilyJane Johnson first realised she was immortal when she was struck by a lorry. Smack right bang in the middle of its front end, the driver said at 30mph but probably somewhat over 45, as she stepped right out in front of it. Wallop, crunch, snap, splat she should have been dead.
Since then, and for experimental purposes only, LilyJane Johnson has electrocuted herself, jumped from high rise buildings, shot herself in the face, the temple and the heart, rigged a guillotine to chop her own head off, self immolated, poison infected, drug overdosed, wrist sliced, rope hanged, ocean drowned and all to no avail.
LilyJane Johnson is bored but her favourite TV programme is Bake Off.
