The dream had been wonderful, yet it would never be real. He lay there in bed trying desperately to fall back into the illusion of beauty he had been so rudely awoken from. He just couldn't get back to sleep.

Sunlight drifted through his open window and explored his room. He watched as dust motes floated around on the breeze, dancing in and out of the rays that had invaded his deep sleep.

A quick glance at the old wooden clock above the door told him he had no time to sit alone and depressed in his bed and long...

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Gradually. Ever so gradually, he noticed her work routine. She'd come into the shop below the CCTV camera that gave him his vantage point. She'd stop, check her skirt, then turn and wave. Wave straight at him, it seemed.

Once when he spilt his coffee he swore she looked up, about to greet the camera (or him?) and then the smile vanished. As if she had seen what had happened and was sorry for his stained pants.

In trawling through the back footage, looking for a pattern. Something to identify who had planted the device that had wrecked half the...

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Groggy from the lack of sleep I got the previous night because of a runny nose and a running mind jumping from one work thought to the next, I walked into the office kitchen to grab some hot tea to soothe a sore throat. As I was about to pour some hot water from the water cooler, my colleague dispensed some water for herself.

"Getting some water?"

"Yeah," I said.

"I heard you were sick the other day. I hope you're feeling better," she said with sympathetic eyebrows.

"Uh, a little bit, thanks."

"I love water."

"That's good."

"I actually...

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An old sepia photo can be a bullet. It can tear through the lineup of neurons, neatly lined up like socks on a bed. It can make you aware that you are your latest incarnation. That you have been here before.

A mother and her child. Doesn't that child look familiar? Who remembers his own birth? Especially when it was 70 years ago? Today I am 27. I have been 27 many times now, projecting myself a year into the future so that I could live as 27 for a year, then my past self projecting himself a year into...

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"Knives."

"Yeah. And?"

"Pepper. Salt. Ducks. Ivory, but don't tell anybody."

"Seriously? Knives?"

He handed me the duffle bag. "Knives. And everything you need to know is in there, too."

"Everything?"

"Everything. The molecular structure of Ferrous Oxide. The length of a stick. The speed of light under water."

"What about the temperature of Jupiters core? The average age of a bitch collie in its first heat? Foreign exchange rates for all currencies against Bhutan?"

"All of that. Plus the phone numbers of every Mossad agent, and their email address and blog addresses. Oh, and the starting lineup of the...

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The bird took off. The mail was delivered. A red car drove past. An old man with a cane walked past on the sidewalk.

Every day, these things happened in exactly the same way, at exactly the same times.

Other things were the same, too: the news, the conversations she had, the expressions on the faces of the people she met. The bus to work was always four minutes late, like clockwork.

But there were differences, too.

After about ten days, she started to notice things disappearing. First it was her keys, then her couch. Then the maple tree in...

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Fireman? Firewoman? Fire...person?

Esme sighed as she approached her firetruck. The trouble with magic, she reflected, was that while it got you where you need to be quickly, that sometimes meant that you skipped over important parts of the path.

It had been a simple enough spell of purpose; she paid her fifteen hundred dollars, and in return she got given her perfect career. The career that she would enjoy the most, be most suited for...the career that would make her happy.

Purpose was a popular spell-type, and it had definitely resulted in a happier populace, but no one had...

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She could tell I was faking it. She can always tell when I'm faking it. Something about the way my eyelids droop slightly, the way I chew at my bottom lip before I talk.
"It looks lovely."
"It doesn't. You're lying." Somehow, she always knows.
"Okay, it doesn't. It's a hideous dress. But you do. You always look lovely."
"Creep." She smiles, and swats at me with the scarf she's about to wrap around her shoulders instead of a coat.
I love the way she looks when she gets ready. How she frowns at the mirror when she puts on...

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Maggie knew it was only a matter of time before she was caught. It was inevitable, as certain as the rising of the sun each morning over India's beautiful river.

She wasn't cut out for this sort of thing. She KNEW that. But when she saw it there, dark and rich and beautiful she knew she just had to have it, come what may. So now she sat in her seat, shivering, sweat beading on her forehead as the plane taxied for a landing. The bag shifted inside her blouse, it's contents conforming to the shape of her body as...

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Absent. The roots were absent but you could still see them. When you burn a stump, you often end up with a chunk of its heart that doesn't turn to ash. The interesting thing is how the fire always seems to follow the roots, no matter how deep they go, burning away every trace of them. Sometimes, even a year later, a fire can rekindle from deep in the earth where it was banked in some hidden location. Looking down from above, you can see the faithful reproduction of the root system only it's just air. Hollows that disappear into...

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