You kick a can down the wet cobbled street. The end of the road bends away like a mars bar left over a radiator; the houses follow along to either side. The can clanks along and comes to rest under the wheel of a red parked VolksWagen. At the end of the street you can see the skyline of the town, painted into the bowl between two hills. It’s early morning, but you haven’t been to sleep, so as far as you’re concerned it’s very late at night. A light frost sleeps on the windows, and quiet wisps of steam breath snake around your nose and mouth, before bursting into weak plumes. You follow the path of the can down to the car, and bend down the wheel to pick it up. You grab the wet, half crushed drink container and trip on the yellow gaze of a dark cat, crouching on the pavement beside the car, waiting for you to show her the way home.

She lay her stomach flat over the seat of the chair and craned her head downwards, holding the  sharp-edged chair legs with her hands and counterbalancing herself with outstretched toes. Her hair dangled and blew in the breeze from the open door and flicked in her eyes. She brushed it away with one hand, and contnued to curve her line of sight to the underneath of the large wooden stool, at which point she realised she could have just picked up the chair and turned it upside down, and so got up, did so, and, sure enough, found the envelope.

She draws a line in white chalk across the centre of the room, perpendicular to the dark wooden boards. A beam of sunlit dust brushes one side of the partition and leaves the other untouched. She crumbles and crushes the chalk in her hand, lets it fall to the floor on the darkened side, and lays herself down.

A hot wet smell slithered out of the open pipe and rubbed itself uninvited against her nostrils. A centipede scuttled around the base of the cistern in a hurry. Maybe it was late for dinner. How many legs do centipedes have? she thought. It went by too quickly for her to count. Probably more than me. Holding her nose, biting her lip, closing her eyes and ears, she slid herself onto the edge of the opening, and let herself slide into the dark.

I’ll meet you at the railroad tracks. By the big tree, next to the wind, below the sun. Just near the dead raccoon. I hope it’s still there. In case it’s not, check for signs. Bones, little ones: raccoons have tiny fingers and few toes. Specks of blood or entrails. Or ants who have followed a promising trail only to find nothing left. Bits of stripey fur. Or stripey bits of fur? I’m not sure how raccoons work.

Little leaf sighed a contented sigh as the last of her skin turned to brown. The softening amber sunlight pulled the blankets of night closer as the edges of the autumn air grew sharp and cold. She’d had a green and pleasant summer, was happy with her work, and accepted with grace that it was over and that things must move on. She yawned gently and pulled the sides of her body inwards, edges crackling slightly as she curled up to rest, and let go.

Helena lived on the fourteenth floor of a very tall building. The designers had intended it to have forty floors, but had, unexpectedly, come up against a law regarding population density in the area, and near the end of the project had suddenly been disallowed to proceed with the full build. And so, instead of tearing the whole thing down, they knocked every other floor away to make each one double height. The entrance to the flat was on the floor labelled ‘seven’, but the lift said ‘fourteen’, and there was nothing on the odd-numbered floors. Why didn’t they just give two floors to each flat? she’d asked the thin, spotty, nervous-looking estate agent, or a mezzanine? He actually looked quite ill, she had been a bit worried. Well, um, I’m not really sure miss, I think they couldn’t afford any more stairs. She didn’t accept this answer, but she liked the light, and decided to be content with not knowing.

You stride back to the table with the second round, making sure you appear cool and confident and aloof and devil-may-care all at once, and arching your back slightly so your bum and chest stick out, in opposite directions, as if each were being pulled by two threads held by sparring scotsmen engaged in a tug of war. The second round’s usually a given, unless they’re really horrible, or weird, or at least 50% older than their pictures. The third round, and anything after that, is to be won. You set the two pints down, and as you do he quickly slides a cardboard coaster under each. ‘Smooth,’ you say.  He smiles at your comment, and then takes the two empty glasses and swings them round onto the next table, which is piled up with used plates and screwed-up napkins and is waiting to be cleared. And as he does so you notice that he has a single red button sewn into the sleeve of his navy blue shirt. All the others are navy blue. A normal colour for a navy blue shirt. “Why the red button?” you ask. “Well…  it’s a red button. Could be for interactive content. Or it could be self-destruct. Wanna push it?”

The doors to the supermarket had been tricky at best for a few years, and no one could afford to replace them, least of all these days. One particularly unfortunate week they were stuck open for a total of three days before anyone could get them working again. It just so happened that this was the week of the great fog, which seized its chance and snuck through to languish and bathe among the aisles, and in the absence of any air conditioning to speak of, remained there several days after they’d managed to fix the doors. Visibility was about two metres in the biscuit aisle, and it wasn’t uncommon to come across a confused, elderly villager who’d got stuck looking for pickles and had been lost for several hours.

This year winter arrived on a Wednesday. Suddenly and, though technically invited, in a brusk and careless manner that showed a certain lack of respect. Tuesday had been mild, with wise and weary trees nodding respectfully in the sepia afternoon light as Carl wandered slowly home, enjoying the sort of weather that’s finally put its party days behind it and figured out what it really wants in life. A red squirrel chirped good evening, as a little family of redwings packed up their bags for their annual journey. And then Wednesday woke up and took a big, cold, windy wet shit over everything. Screw you Wednesday.