Cherrypicked stories

The memory she perceives as a puzzle of irregular pieces that can be laid out and gathered in, then laid again in immeasurable patterns. Tonight, now, in her fur, she journeys to Nepal where William's blue eyes hypnotised the natives and Oneshot's hot blood united them in a way that was more profound and sacred than the vows they had exchanged at the little Norman church in St Nicholas at Wade. William had seen the leopard first, a fully grown male striding without fear through the clearing. He held his finger to her lips, pointed: He's yours, Charlie. Aim for the heart.

IT WAS a December. I distinctly remember it being cold, which given the month, was not a surprise. What was a surprise was that I was naked, with blood on my chest. It was not my blood. It was the blood of an ape, whose body I had just effortlessly cast through the window of a jewellery store.

A small settlement at the end of the Woodhead tunnel on the former Manchester to Sheffield railway line, electrified in 1954 and closed in 1981.

You off-shore, you wishbone, oh sleepy Gestapo. The tide was against us when you suggested a dip. Oh slipstream, oh yielding, oh off-duty lifeguard. I expected the stairwell to be the first place they'd look.

In which the narrator has four conversations with Raul, two short and two long, and one conversation with a girl, the details of which are not given.

Casenotes (Found playing in subject's room on night of disappearance. Song is "Pickstar by The Dentellas) Hey, hello! You seen my name? It's hanging off the gallows and it's running in the rain.

200 words.

So confident. So full of Joy Division. He'd had a number of fixations about his appearance in those days. We laughed about how he would become hysterical if I even touched his hair. He'd sliced the edges of his ears off in Borstal - talk about a short sharp shock - before taking the razor to the length of his arms. His skin was so white. DIY plastic surgery. I don't think we'd heard of compulsive disorders then. He used to be on Mogadon. It was quite unusual then. I hardly know anyone who isn't on some sort of anti-depressant now. I enquired about his manic depression. Bloated, beery and burpy with unkind eyes that he's always complained of. I'd had to constantly reassure him about - suddenly bacame starkly visible. The bulb on the end of his nose. His too curvy lips. His too big feet and strangely immobile hair.

Insa I would say Andaw's hiding something, but the man's a walking goldfish bowl. Every line on his face, every blemish, the suspect swelling of one pectoral muscle slash breast, it's all a kind of confession. That or a zoo he is cursed to carry with him, each of the exhibits screeching his misdoings. He'll only say he can't talk about it for my sake. I for my part tell him most things about myself, stopping just short of where I like to be nibbled.