Since childhood, on the worst nights, a tall figure in a wide-brimmed hat stands in my bedroom doorway. I described him age seven. My daughter, now, has just described him to me. Word for word.
It was meant for my sister. It went to Derek, 58, in operations, who has a moustache and a fishing boat.
My timesheet showed hours I never worked. Late nights, weekends, all under my login. The truth got me fired for fraud I did not commit, and I still do not know who did.
Same name, same birthday, seats 14A and 14B on a flight neither of us was originally booked on — the airline's apology podium gave the universe its stage.
The registrar was in the wrong building. The flowers were in a locked van. My best friend fixed both and told me the day was "going great".
Every firstborn in my family for four generations has been forbidden from the water. Grandma called it the promise. I called it superstition -- until I read the church record.
A man ignored the painted fire lane and the honking to park right at the store doors. He came out to find a fire truck had needed that exact spot, and had treated his car accordingly.
Small things move: mugs turned handle-out, chairs pushed in, the fruit bowl an inch left. Then one morning the entire kitchen table was rotated ninety degrees, in a locked house, alone.
She brought a full three-tier cake. In a car. To someone else's wedding. And she asked the venue to put it on the cake table.
In a secondhand bookshop two countries from home I opened a battered novel to find marginalia in a hand I knew — and a name, rank and date that made the shop go quiet.
He had two drafts on his phone. He read the honest one. The room went silent, then the groom stood up and hugged him.
My four-year-old refused to sleep, saying the man in the attic was waiting to be let down. We had no attic access in her room. When we finally opened the old sealed hatch, we found a small chair facing it.
My top-floor flat has a spare bedroom I've never furnished. Every few weeks I come home to find its door — which I keep shut — standing open, and the room a few degrees colder than the rest.
On holiday my little one led us up a lane to a house he had never seen and asked where his grandmother had gone. He has a birthmark on his hand shaped like a small key. The woman who answered the door went white.
The reason given: "your energy is off". The actual reason arrived, by accident, forty minutes later.
A basement dorm with no windows, a lock that did not lock, and a smell I still cannot describe. Then the overnight coach I had booked to escape it left the depot fourteen minutes early with my bag on it.
I meant to text one friend privately to complain about a plan. I sent it to the group chat that contained every single person the complaint was about. Then I watched the typing dots.
I flew nine thousand kilometres to Tokyo, checked into a capsule hotel at 2 a.m., and the cough from the next capsule belonged to the man from the flat next to mine back home.
Two-for-one wine made me brave enough to tell my date he was not the man in the photos. He confessed the face belonged to his cousin. Then the catfish ghosted me before I could ghost him.
It was white. It was floor-length. It had a small train. She called it oyster and dared the room to argue.
