Samuel Loveday and the strange death of Eupham Naycroft — The mist gripped at the lowlands and slumbered across the fens. There was nothing here, nothing but the edges of reeds and the shutter of smoke and the snap of the branches. Here, in late November, the sea swept up high and the only way from Gremen Fen to Lewyck…

Claudia decides to get revenge on a girl in her class. But has she gone too far? 1908 There was a sudden sharp kick to the back of her chair, sending her abdomen hard into the desk. There was a familiar, tinny laugh and then another kick, sending the metal legs…

Short twist story — She was beautiful. That’s how most stories begin, and it is indeed how this one will begin. In the low yellow lights of the dressing room and the soft blur of the mirrors, her face gazed back at her in a gaussian shutter of ivory, chalk, shell, and ice. The…

A late-night meeting provokes marital concern — The Delaney marriage was widely regarded, literally speaking, as a joke. One only needed to open Private Eye or The Guardian to find cruel sketches of the judge and his wife scrawled in red and black ink across the political pages. The Hon. …

You’ve heard this story. Haven’t you? — I have loved and lied to many women. I have watched them, white limbed and soft with slumbering, while I carve that fast-fading beauty deep into sheets of paper. I fasten their fates and memory to the words I have chosen and trap them there, silenced as my own Pygmalion…

Don’t worry, I’m not here to slutshame a twenty-year-old girl — “Is it a bit?” My flatmate enquires, passing their phone to me on the sofa. “I mean it could be a bit. It’s a very good bit, if it is one. I mean, we’re talking about it, aren’t we?” I peer at her phone. A very revealingly dressed 20-year-old in a crop spaghetti top and tight polyester mini tube skirt poses cheerfully next to an uncomfortable looking suited septuagenarian. It’s all very Zoomer student posing with grandpa on graduation day. Except, this is Sophia Kianni, ‘influencer’, ‘Human of the…

(When he’s too polite to say it himself) — “But he could just be busy,” REDACTED pleads with me over the phone. “He works so hard. Really, he does. And I think he does like me, deep down.” I close my eyes and suppress a groan. “He doesn’t though, does he?” Working in intel, I can honestly say that we all tell ourselves little lies to stop our ego from constantly imploding. Red lipstick does work. No one noticed that you had a ladder in your tights. Everyone really respects your valuable contributions at the parish council. And of course, the…

Do bad men get what they deserve? — His mouth is hot and hard against the nape of my neck, the sharp cut of his unshaven jaw sending my body flinching against the mantlepiece. The shadows bend, licked with that wet low flame and the ghost of my form into the bloom of the wallpaper. There is nothing…