The people who lived here before me planted flowers in the front yard, and now I’m the butterfly man. The kids stop on the way to school and look at them while their parents tug on their arms. If I come out to go to work, they ask me quesitons. I don’t know anything about butterflies, so I ask them what they think, and then I resolve to buy a book about butterflies but I never do. I don’t look after the flowers, but they seem to keep growing anyway. I’m not a very good butterfly man. But I’m glad it’s what I am.

The lights all went out very suddenly. For a moment, before my eyes adjusted, I thought I had died. Then the world reappeared, in soft greys and gentle edges, seen best where I wasn’t quite looking. I turned off all the switches, so I would not be dazzled.

On the day he finally caught a pigeon, he realised he had no idea what to do with it. Better hold on to it, he thought. Just in case. It flapped and wriggled and shat in his hands, but if he let go, it would fly away, and it would all be for nothing. One day somebody asked if it had a name. No, he said. It’s not mine. I’m just holding on to it until I work out what to do with it.

Grieving, she cursed them with love in her heart. Not to die: to be transformed, into birds, squirrels, mice, rabbits. Creatures of the earth who would not hurt her again. And she smiled as she felt the feathers sprout from her skin.

She pulled up a flower and began plucking petals. Loves me, loves me not. Loves me, loves me not. A mile away, thinking of her, he felt his heart go back and forth.

There was a doorway to another world at the bottom of Cedric’s toaster, which wasn’t terribly helpful. Sometimes when he peered down there to extract a stuck crumpet he saw strange creatures cavorting. He once attempted a conversation with a sort of leopard-man, but the thing didn’t seem to hear him. He worried about insects with unseen diseases passing up through the slots and starting a pandemic of which he would be the first victim, so he kept the toaster covered when not in use, and trusted in the heating elements when it was. He supposed that a scientist or an explorer would send down endoscopes or tiny robots. Cedric was just grateful not to have to empty the crumb tray.

There was once a miller who boasted around the kingdom that his daughter could spin straw into gold. The king sent soldiers and had the miller and his daughter brought to the castle. There he had prepared a huge room full of straw. “Spin this into gold for me,” he said, “or I will have your heads.”

The next day, the king returned and found the straw woven into beautiful crowns. “These are not gold,” he said. “No,” said the miller, “but look how much more like gold they are today than they were yesterday. But we cannot spin gold with so little straw and just one wheel. We will need much, much more.”

So the king sent his soldiers to gather more straw, and more spinning wheels. The next day, the miller presented him with a single gold coin. “This coin would not even buy the spinning wheels I provided you,” said the king. “No,” said the miller, “but this is just the beginning. We will need much more straw, and all the spinning wheels in the kingdom, perhaps more. And also some gold would help.”

So the king sent his soldiers to bring all the straw and all the spinning wheels in the kingdom, and he set the people of the kingdom to work building more spinning wheels, and he opened up his treasury to the miller. The miller, who always seemed to be a day or two away from finally spinning all that straw into gold, became rich and powerful and loved. Outside the castle window, a funny little man named Rumplestiltskin watched, waiting for the day the king’s patience ran out.

When I go to leave the house I find my suitcase is too heavy to lift. I open it up and take things out: a couple of books; a battery pack. I close it up again. Still I cannot lift it. My train leaves in half an hour. I open the case again and heave everything out onto the bed. I do it in one great armful. It is not difficult. My things are light. I re-pack, just the essentials: half the clothes and my washbag. I fasten the case. It is heavier than before. Leave it, I think. I have my phone and my wallet and my keys and my tickets. I can buy what I need when I get there. I go to the front door, and find I cannot turn the handle.

When I was six I could turn a perfect cartwheel. Legs straight up, one smooth motion. It felt like magic. I’ve no idea how it looked from the outside. I know I knocked mum’s best vase of the mantelpiece once. These days, all I can imagine is how it would look from the outside. I don’t know what it feels like at all. My mum’s best vase, with the chip glued back into the neck, sits on my mantelpiece now. I take it down and wrap it safely in a blanket before I begin.

Two snowmen are standing in a field. One says to the other: “Can you smell carrots?” The other says: “Wow! A talking snowman!” Both laugh so hard their heads fall off. They look up at the sky and at their own towering bodies for a while. Before long, a passing crow spots their currant eyes: rare sustenance in the frozen landscape. It snatches them up, one, two, three, four, and the snowmen become part of it. Over a day or two, the snow melts, but the snowmen melt last. Their heads disappear first, and then their bodies. It tickles when a mouse nibbles at their fallen carrot noses. They are absorbed into the soil to nourish the spring bulbs just coming through. They evaporate into clouds, and fall as rain, and begin again. A little of them is in each of next year’s snowmen, each of next year’s flowers, each of next year’s people. From time to time they remember the carrot thing, and giggle.

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The woman at the corner shop let me buy cigarettes because she knew they were for my mum. The man didn’t. He never even said no: just pretended he hadn’t heard me. It made me feel so stupid. I would peek through the window as I went down the street, trying to see behind the counter, hoping that the man was there.

Edith could devour books. She could swallow down the pages and absorb the words. It gave her heartburn to do it, but it was quick and it was thorough, and when she was finished she knew the book like she had read it ten times over. But she didn’t do it often. It left nothing over for anyone else. And besides, nobody was writing books for people like her.

There was an honesty box for the eggs. Sometimes, he took eggs and didn’t pay. Sometimes, he paid and didn’t take eggs. It was all the same to the chickens, he thought. Particularly since he always came back later and stole the money anyway.