When I watch a nature documentary I am torn between predator and prey. I want the cute little thing to escape. I want the majestic hunter to feed its young. I don’t know what to feel. When I watch my neighbour’s cat hunting birds for fun, I cheer for it all the way. It won’t eat them. Usually it doesn’t even kill them properly. It takes them back and leaves them twitching next to its overflowing food bowl, and I smile. I don’t care about the birds at all.

As part of the pact, I spend each Thursday as a decorative glass bead. I have negotiated a compressed working week with my employer, so this is not a huge problem, though somehow it seems that delivery of any parcel sent to me is attempted on a Thursday, while I am a bead. On Wednesday nights I check that the oven is off and I close my bedroom doors and windows. I wonder what colour of bead I will be. I wonder if I am always the same. Sometimes, I hear a magpie pecking at the window.

I shoplifted a few times, for fun. It seemed like the sort of thing a person ought to have tried. Just to show you’ve got it in you. I took a pack of birthday candles once, and burned them all down to the end, one after the other, like I was chain-smoking. It’s easy, when your belly’s full and you look well off and you don’t need to do it. It was easy, then, and now it isn’t.

She floated away on a candyfloss cloud, until she reached the colder air, where water condenses. Before long the floss was sticky and heavy, and she began to fall, sugar-wrapped and helpless. Just as she was giving up, the birds smelled her sweetness, and carried her away.

With a little trickery, you can manipulate a line of ants so that it forms a circle, and the ants march around and around and around with no way to stop. You can stare at the endlessly turning circle until the edges of your vision start to fade and your head droops. You can wake up in an underground chamber, a good source of food and warmth for the larvae. You can close your eyes and hope to be reborn in the diffuse mind of the colony.

When we started playing chess by post I didn’t know how much the price of stamps would go up. I didn’t know how hard it would become to find time to write. But I knew we would never switch to email, or text, or playing online. I didn’t know the game would stretch out this long. I didn’t know we would end up on different continents. I didn’t know we would start losing our grip on the rules. I have known for a long time that you have me beaten, and that I will never resign, and that I would swim the ocean with an envelope between my teeth to deliver my next move.

He carved foul words into ancient oaks; disturbed nesting birds; muddied streams and set fires. He beat the bushes and pulled up new shoots. When he ran out of ideas, he cursed the sun and the moon. Offend the spirits of the forest enough, and they will curse you: they will transform you into a tree, and you can live rooted in that earth for eternity.

For twenty minutes, there was no heartbreak; no grief; no self-doubt. He did not fear climate change or war or disease. For twenty minutes he lived in pure, unmediated connection with his physical self. The world dissolved. And for forty seconds, once he had reached the toilet and fumbled with latch and belt, he felt truly happy, before it all came rushing back.

Mister Crimvis Squib couldn’t remember which bin it was that week. He had lost the little leaflet, and it was too dark to see the other bins on the street, and he had lost the little leaflet. He put out his fullest bin, and covered it in tin foil. When the sun rose, the shiny surface would reflect the colour of his neighbour’s bins. He didn’t know why they had all the different colours, but he didn’t want to get it wrong.

I have been trying for weeks to befriend the crows that live near my house. I have offered them peanuts, raisins, dog food. I am reliable and respectful. I only wish to be brought a paperclip, or a dropped earring, or a button, or a screw. I only wish to hear them caw to me with fondness. I fear these crows have already been befriended by my enemies.

He got on the bus before I could stop him. I don’t know what the driver was thinking. They must have seen me, running and screaming. Or perhaps they never checked their mirrors. I ran at a full sprint, counting on traffic, all the way to the next stop. I staggered on, breathing like the air brakes, vomit in my throat, legs good for nothing. The bus was empty.

He was already having a bad day when the seagull stole his chips. Grabbed up the whole tray in its grubby beak and flew off with it, not dropping so much as a grain of salt. He couldn’t even be angry. Sometimes, the world simply shows you what you deserve.

She strolled down the beach, and shared her chips with him.

I have to press the button or else I’ll never know. Maybe I can’t bear to know, but I definitely can’t bear not knowing, so I have to press the button. I don’t konw if I can do it. It feels like jumping off a bridge. But I have to. I count down from five and at zero, without thinking, I press the button. And I never find out.

I hope the plane crashes. I hope it comes down in the ocean and we have to use the life jackets. I hope I am one of the few who stays calm, the one the crew ask to help his fellow passengers. I don’t want anybody to get hurt. I hope the plane crashes and we all make it home with an incredible story and a payout for emotional distress. I hope the plane crashes, and it is one of those near-death experiences that shocks you back into life. Plane travel, they say, is extremely safe. I wish I knew how to do something dangerous.