"You had me at 'ox bow lake'." The girl laughed, twirling a strand of silky blonde hair around her finger and leaning towards David, giving him a tantalising glimpse of her cleavage. He swallowed hard, trying to stay calm. This girl...Megan? Mary? Melissa! Anyway, she was a student, one of his students, and he knew her game. There was at least one every year, the girl who attempted to coast through university on looks alone. Invariably she would behave just like this, taking front row seats in every lecture she attended but spending more time trying to make eye contact...

I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead. And it's absolutely nothing like I expected.

In all of the near-death experience stories I was told they talked about the light. So much so that I thought that I should walk into it, if only to see what was on the other side. Only there was nothing there, not as far as I've seen anyway. There's just the light.

I keep thinking that if I keep walking, maybe something will appear. But I've been walking and...

Stupid, insignificant human! Does he not realise his days are numbered? As soon as he releases me from this cardboard prison, he will die! Now I just need to get him to let me out. Perhaps mewing pathetically will do the trick. I do hate to degrade myself in such a manner, but if needs must...

I tell you, my life was perfect before he came along. The Owners used to feed me, tickle me under the chin until I purred, and let me take over the Big Bed during the day. Sometimes even at night too. Mmmm. Those were...

She'd have preferred the electric chair. She'd have preferred anything really, hanging, lethal injection, even one of those weird medieval punishments like hang, draw and quartering. Anything to get her out of this tedium.

The irony was that she'd chosen this. Chosen to run, the alternative being prison or worse. But wasn't she already in prison? Stuck in this dark, damp room, determined to live out the rest of her days without ever seeing the sun. Actually, it was probably worse than prison. At least in prison there were other prisoners to talk to. Here the only human contact she...

In the darkened room, the bishop waited, staring out of the window into the dying sun. In the half-light, the Gothic buildings of the Old Town appeared as if bathed in blood. They would be soon.

The princess would come. Oh she might have sworn an oath of loyalty to her brother but in the end words were meaningless. Actions were what really counted. And in a kingdom where son could kill father, could sister not kill brother also?

She had already proved her ability. It was well known that she was one of the most able poisoners in the...

The children were not at school. It was an odd feeling. This freedom was what they had longed for, begged for every school night since forever. To be freed from school for as long as they wanted, to be allowed to play video games all day, to eat chocolate for breakfast and ice-cream for lunch and to make as much mess as they liked without ever ever being shouted at.

It had been exciting for the first two days, fun for the following three. But by now the heady freedom had dissolved into an aching boredom with a great emptiness...

She stumbled blindly through the woods, images of every horror movie she'd ever seen flashing through her mind. Admittedly there were very few of them, but they all seemed to involve people getting lost in the woods and meeting an untimely end. The Blair Witch Project had been the most recent, and she hadn't been able to sleep for weeks after watching it. But this was only a game.

Only a game. She kept repeating the words under her breath, letting them calm her. Only a game. None of this was real. Her best friend, lying motionless on the ground...