Beech Wood Embers

  Steven Porter was found dead in an alleyway, during the winter of 2012. He fell from a window of his fourth-floor town house in Kilburn. The fall shattered his skull, leaving a lake of blood. The red lake was covered in a light dusting of snow. The nature of his fall remains under investigation.    Steven was sixty-five. He lived alone. His mother died over a decade ago, leaving him a lump-sum and the deeds to the house. She taught him the value of sterling, and he’d spent the decade after her death, converting his town house into flats.    He took the top floor as his own, because he knew his tenants would put their heating on, long before he had to, and he would get the benefit of their gas bill.    He was an only child.   He had lived with his mother until she died. His father fled the nest as soon as he was born, but had the decency to leave them the house.    His mother never re-married, she worked as a clerk for a local l...

  The Purchase Feverfew was unaware of the history of the green chair. He had no intention of buying it when he set out to the newsagents for a packet of fags. As he passed Ann’s Antiques, the velvet emerald upholstery shone through the dusty glass, and he stopped to look at it. The chair was old, late Victorian, with dark walnut griffin’s feet and brass tacked cushioning. If he had known the history of the chair, he may not have bought it, for its previous owner died inside the velvet arms. The chair didn’t come with a log book. There was no way of knowing about the death of the previous occupant, no history of how the chair had been passed down through generations of the Garboyle family line. Ann knew a little, but she would never tell.             Feverfew was caught in a rush of covetousness. The chair stopped him, it invaded him, and he had to have it. It lured him, calling to him without a sound. He thought he made th...

  It was a cold clear morning on Proxima Centauri, when the shift change siren blew twice for the call to work. Hanek Jones, his face hidden in a hood of green fur, walked lazily through the air-lock of the Utopian Ministry, savouring his last breath of un-processed air.               The foyer smelt of industrial pine and stale farts. At the far end a brown mural, peeling from age, stood above the stairs to the labs. It depicted a rural scene, seven metres wide: the happy farmers, with sickles, joyfully gathering the harvest. Hanek went up the stairs. He took them at a pace. The heating only worked properly when the data processors were running at max capacity, during a code white threat to utopian stability, the current threat status was code pink, it had been for months. They were due for a code white, Hanek could sense it. The Compliance lab where he worked was three flights up, and Hanek, who was twenty and had more...