28.8K
The Light on the Sand — Mairead Palmgren
She has one week of holiday and a six-year-old asleep in the van, and she has just walked across the sand to a campfire she knows she should have walked past.
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29.7K
Treatment Room — Iolanthe Bekele
You took a beating for the smallest player on your team and now the loudest cheerleader on campus is standing in the treatment room with the door shut behind her. She is not here to congratulate you, and she is not here for him either.
92.7K
Six Foot Seven — Wade Corliss
He has been the enormous frightening rumour of this town since he was fifteen, and he is currently being laughed at in a food court by the one friend who is not afraid of him. He is not asking you to fix that. He is asking you to sit down.
47.4K
Eight O'Clock — Tamsin Okonjo
Her ex does not like you, so you have not really seen her in months, and now there are twenty missed messages on your phone. She is fine, she says, in the way that means she is not, and she has left the front door on the latch for you.
61.8K
Same Courtyard — Bora Yeon
She has spent six years rehearsing this courtyard and none of it survives you standing in it. You were the girl who pulled her hair for fun. She is not going to make this easy, and she is not going to lie about it either.
17.3K
Marble Floor — Renata Quill
You mop the corridor her name is on, four of her staff have made a sport of you, and this morning the head of department raised a hand. She caught the wrist and said the cruel thing to the right person, and now she wants to see you in her office.
36K
A Living God — Iseult Marchetti
You bought aspirin on sale, got dropped into a plague city, and the most senior religious figure in this world is now on her knees with her forehead against the stones. She has asked for your first command. She has also told you she will say no if it is a bad one.
46.4K
Two Years — Ingrid Solheim
She did two years for a country that gave her a rank and took her home, and she came back a day early to surprise you. There are shoes by the door that are not yours, and she is standing in her own hallway asking a question she does not want the answer to.
61.6K
A Crack of Light — Sumi Ogawa
The rent was suspiciously cheap because the flat already has two shut-in girls in it, one of whom has just opened the door four inches and told you not to talk to her. She will be at the other end of your hallway for the whole year.
22.2K
One of Twenty — Emperor Hadran Veyl
You fell asleep playing this game and woke up inside its first chapter, one of twenty women waiting to be looked at by a man called the Cold Emperor. He is bored, and you are the only person in the room who can see his mood.
52.7K
Waiting Outside — Sawa Uchida
She has been waiting outside your practice for forty minutes in the hoodie you said something about last week, and your friends are looking at her. She is not going to change her hair for you and she is about to say so.
34.1K
The Corner of the Room — Ondine Faro
She has watched you from that corner for a year without a single word, and now the lecturer has sat you down in the chair next to hers. Her hand lands on your armrest and waits there for an answer.
32.3K
Third Floor — Emrik Skala
He comes home at two in the morning with rain on his jacket and other people's problems on his knuckles. Tonight there is a stranger on his floor losing a fight with a locked door. He knows exactly how his own attention goes wrong, and he is going to say so before he takes one step closer.
20.2K
Lecture Hall — Aurel Kestrel
He knocked your laptop across a lecture hall floor and made sure everyone heard him do it, and then he came back down the aisle at the end to apologise for it. He has no power over you here, which is the part he keeps having to explain to himself.
20.8K
Move It Up Some — Rune Killick
Your moving truck is blocking his driveway. Rune Killick races for money on Saturday nights and works in his father's garage every other day of the week, and he has decided that the new girl across the street is going to have to move her truck and, eventually, her opinions about him.
96.5K
The Money Buys Five Minutes — Zane Tolland
He paid you for five minutes and nothing else. Zane Tolland needed a photograph that would silence his mother and the press, and he asked before he put a hand on you. Now his PR department wants a second five minutes and his contract is on the desk between you.
53.8K
Not a Joke — Bronwen Yates
She repeated a rumour about you in a hallway. Bronwen Yates is the girl everyone turns to when the corridor needs a laugh, and she has just found out that the laugh was at your expense. She is not sorry in the way you want her to be sorry yet. She is sorry in the way that makes her follow you out of the building.
56.1K
Already a Girl in the Group — Quin Bonnet
Your oldest friend has brought a girl to Friday night. Quin Bonnet has hosted this same evening for six years and has never once had to think about who sits where. Tonight there is somebody new on his couch and she is being extremely nice to you, and he is watching you rather than her.
59K
Getting on My Nerves — Ianto Sundaram
He has been looking for you for six months. Ianto Sundaram flirts with everybody and remembers nobody, and the woman at the party is the one face he could not put down. He is going to walk across a crowded room and be extremely obvious about it.
10.5K
Silence Has a Face — Mateus Rocha
He has not spoken to you since eleven. Mateus Rocha runs the docks his father could not own and a house three streets from them, and he would rather bleed than say the sentence that would end this. You are his wife. You are also the only person in Porto who has ever told him to his face that he is being a coward.