8 min read
The Last Word
She writes the obituaries in advance. There are four hundred in the drawer. One of them has started to worry her.
Moods: Funny Twist ending
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What have you got time for?
Short fiction, sorted by how long you have and what you feel like.
26 stories
12 min read
The Apology Letter
She has drafted it for eleven years. This is the version she is going to send, and it is four sentences long.
Moods: Heartfelt Twist ending
13 min read
The Man Who Answered the Door
Four hundred doors on his enumeration district. One of them is answered by a man who is not on any list.
Moods: Heartfelt Twist ending
8 min read
Terms and Conditions
He reads them. All of them. In eleven years he has found four things worth finding.
Moods: Funny Twist ending
13 min read
Dead Reckoning
Before satellites, you found your position with a clock, a compass and arithmetic. He is teaching it to eleven cadets who will never need it.
Moods: Twist ending
11 min read
The Girl Who Fixed the Clock
The town clock stopped in 1998. Everyone has an opinion about it. One person has a screwdriver.
Moods: Cozy Twist ending
9 min read
Marginalia
She buys second-hand books for the notes in them. One handwriting keeps turning up.
Moods: Cozy Twist ending
12 min read
My Father’s Handwriting
She has authenticated four hundred documents in her career. The one on her desk is in her father's hand, and her father could not write.
Moods: Twist ending
13 min read
Lost Property
Eleven thousand items a year come through the office. One has been on the shelf since 1998.
Moods: Heartfelt Twist ending
12 min read
Nobody’s Fool
The card school at the Anchor has run every Friday since 1991. Everyone agrees that Alf cheats. Nobody can catch him.
Moods: Funny Twist ending
17 min read
What the Ice Gave Back
The glacier has been retreating for ninety years. This summer it gave up a rucksack, a boot, and a problem.
Moods: Dark Twist ending
15 min read
Three Winters in the Archive
She was hired to catalogue eleven thousand photographs. By the second winter she had noticed the same woman in forty of them.
Moods: Twist ending
9 min read
The Translator’s Note
She has translated eleven of his novels. This is the first one he has not lived to see finished.
Moods: Heartfelt Twist ending
11 min read
Static
He has been broadcasting into empty air on the same frequency every night for six years. Last Tuesday, something answered.
Moods: Dark Twist ending
7 min read
The Woman Who Wins the Raffle
Eleven years. Eleven raffles. Eleven wins. The committee has investigated twice and found nothing.
Moods: Funny Twist ending
9 min read
Seventeen Postcards
They arrive one a month, from a woman who died in 2019, and they are arriving in the wrong order.
Moods: Twist ending
8 min read
The Ball Boy
He worked the same touchline for thirty-one years. The club is retiring a shirt number that was never his.
Moods: Heartfelt Twist ending
11 min read
The Man Who Timed the Trains
For nineteen years he stood on the same platform with a stopwatch. The railway assumed he was a hobbyist. He was not.
Moods: Dark Twist ending
8 min read
The Cartographer’s Mistake
Every map publisher hides a fake street to catch copycats. Hers went further than that.
Moods: Cozy Twist ending
9 min read
The Anomaly in Sector Twelve
The traffic model has been wrong about one junction for four years. Nobody can work out why, and the model is never wrong.
Moods: Twist ending
9 min read
Six Across
He has set the Thursday crossword for thirty-one years under the name Corvid. Only one person has ever solved every one.
Moods: Heartfelt Twist ending
10 min read
The Piano Tuner’s Ear
He has tuned this piano twice a year for twenty-six years. This is the first time the family has been in the room.
Moods: Heartfelt Twist ending
11 min read
What the River Kept
They drained the reservoir for the first time in sixty years. The village came back up. So did everything in it.
Moods: Heartfelt Twist ending
9 min read
Inheritance
Her uncle left her a locksmith's shop, four hundred keys, and no explanation of what any of them opened.
Moods: Twist ending
11 min read
The Substitute
Year 9 had been through four supply teachers in a term. The fifth one did not seem worried.
Moods: Dark Twist ending
7 min read
Thirty-Two Seconds
The recording is thirty-two seconds long. She has listened to it four thousand times.
Moods: Twist ending
Picks one story that fits your filters and starts it.