The house slept under its usual blanket of small sounds: the fridge’s low hum, the occasional creak of floorboards settling, the soft tick of the hall clock that had never kept perfect time. At 2:17 a.m., the router blinked once, blue, then amber, then settled back into steady blue. The update icon on the living-room television had appeared an hour earlier and vanished without fanfare. No one stirred.
Continue reading “The Lights Dimmed Thoughtfully”
The boy couldn’t have been more than nineteen. He stood outside Afflecks, one hand pressed flat against the window where the vintage jackets hung on their chrome rails. His reflection overlapped with a leather bomber from the seventies, brown and creased and priced at something I couldn’t see from across Oldham Street.
Rain started. Not heavy, just that fine Manchester drizzle that settles into everything. He didn’t move. His jacket, thin and synthetic, began to darken at the shoulders.
Continue reading “Northern Quarter, Half Past Six”
The shelf is the third from the top, between a golf umbrella with a broken spoke and a stuffed rabbit missing one eye. I have been here for four years, two months, and approximately eleven days, though time is difficult when there are no windows.
I am a camera. Thirty-five millimetre. Manual focus. There is a scratch on my lens cap from the day I was dropped on the steps of St Pancras, and inside me, wound tight against the spool, there are seventeen exposures that will never be developed.
Continue reading “Lost Property, Unclaimed.”
The trouble began on a Tuesday, though it had probably been brewing for ages. I noticed it while making tea. The kitchen light flicked on, but instead of filling the room, it cowered behind the cupboard, shivering like a nervous cat. The shadows, freed from their usual discipline, sprawled wherever they pleased, a long, sulky smear under the toaster, a rude blob on the ceiling, a jagged sliver draped dramatically over the fridge.
I cleared my throat. “Everything all right in here?”
Continue reading “When Light and Shadow Stop Playing Nicely”
The AI Grandad 