Scrape-art

by Kate Inglis

I fell in love with a baby and I couldn't figure it.

It wasn't the highly practiced detached indifference of the past five years: yeah cute whatever. He could have been mine, you know those babies? The ones who look at you all still and goggle-eyed and they could have been yours. I held him under the guise of helping his mother but I wasn't helping his mother. I was helping myself. I looked over my shoulder and they were all busy so I put my nose to the top of his head for a sniff. Just to check. Yes. Ggrrrmph and I felt a string of drool ooze down across one knuckle, then another. Raaaaaaagh.

The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death

by Jill Lepore

In Man Versus Death, being clever helps, but the best you can hope for is to prolong the game. Death always wins. Death is a bastard. Death cheats.

The Patron Saint of Liars

by Ann Patchett

Yesterday I doubted what she had said about me, but today I believed.

"Maybe she won't know," I said. "She'll be asleep and they'll take the baby away from her and she'll never know."

"You always know," Sister Evangeline said.

The Flight of Gemma Hardy

by Margot Livesey

Why did I always need to be valiant? Why couldn't I have a home, like other people?

The Naming

by Alison Croggon

"Come Maerad. It is better far to put away fear than to be driven by it. You know that."

Yes, I know that, Maerad thought sardonically. But I'm tired of having to be brave when really I'm so terrified I scarce know what to do. She swallowed hard, and then stood and drew her sword.

Six Word Story

by Ernest Hemingway

For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.

The Princetta

by Anne-Laure Bondoux

The waves lapping at the rocks made their perpetual murmur. Above the ship the sun was still shining, but down below, the crew was crushed by the weight of a terrible truth: in both the Known and the Unknown Worlds, living things could die, suffer, love, hate, struggle or surrender. Only nature itself never changed. Despite tragedy and torment, there would always be the waves, and the sun would always rise and set.