To round off the season, (well, this is the penultimate post), I’m setting myself a challenge. I’ve imagined the first lines of 26 different stories. Each starting with a different letter. The idea is that they will become a collection of 26 short stories of varying genres but with a central premise. Canterbury Tales in miniature, if you will. But not in verse. And you can imagine how each of them will develop for yourselves… It’s anybody’s guess whether I’ll actually manage it, but hey, goals are good, aren’t they? Unless they break one’s mind…

So, here goes…

Afterwards, nobody cheered.

Bright white light might right her sight tonight.

Couldn’t her teeth have fallen out by accident, or had it been the work of the evil tooth fairy?

Digging up the stash had been a mistake.

Ever since the 1st of April it hasn’t stopped raining, literally.

For some years she’d been having conversations with her big toe.

Going, going, gone.

How the lion had escaped was a mystery.

In my kitchen lives a fairy.

Joy was joyless.

Knowing that she was paranoid didn’t help.

Life carries on, supposedly.

Maybe the fire had been her fault.

Nobody was there, so where were the voices coming from?

Once upon a time, something didn’t happen.

People like me believe anything you tell us.

Quite why there was a small child in the garden was yet to be explained.

Rather than knocking at the door, he attempted to kick it in.

Sometimes a white lie is better than a piece of cake.

To flee or not to flee, that’s the conundrum.

Under the ground, deep below, dwells a memory.

Verbosity, she had to admit, was one of her many shortcomings.

What startled her was how easy it was to be someone else.

X marked the noughts and crosses board.

Youth is overrated, she mused.

Zero hour tends to be a letdown.

Watch this space!

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An alphabet of sorts