Thoughts too short to be stories

A goddess grants a wish to anyone who can make her laugh. Your village has been trying for two hundred years. Your grandfather came closest.

The river keeps whatever is confessed to it. This summer the river is drying up.

Your name is in your grandfather's diary, in his handwriting, dated eleven years before you were born.

Every child in the family is told the same bedtime story. You have just learned that it is a confession.

The neighbour's clock is four minutes fast. So is her news.

You inherit a shop, its stock, and a ledger of debts owed to your father by people who are all still alive and still on this street.

For one hour after a funeral, the dead can be asked a single question. Your family has spent three days arguing about what to ask.

Every marriage in this town lasts exactly as long as the couple's first phone call. Yours rang for nine hours. Your sister's for four minutes.

From the day you turn thirty you can hear every lie told about you. Not to you. About you.

Once a year the village agrees to forget one person completely. This year the lot falls on your mother, and only you seem to remember drawing it.

A retired constable has written the neighbourhood's love letters for forty years. This morning someone asks him to write one to his own wife.

The temple's oldest priest has not believed in God since he was nineteen. He has never told anyone. The festival is tomorrow and the crowd is already gathering.

You are the only one in the family who knows the ancestral house was sold last year. The wedding is being planned in its courtyard.

Your daughter's imaginary friend keeps describing a house in detail. It is the one you lived in before she was born.

The missing-person poster at the bus stop carries your face, your name, and a date three weeks from now.

You have put food out for the same stray for a year. Today there is money under the bowl.

The lift stops at a floor that is not on the panel. Everyone who steps out there is someone you owe an apology.

Every mirror in the house has been covered since the funeral. This morning one of the sheets was folded, not fallen.

Your mother has started calling you by your dead sister's name. She is not confused. She is testing you.

Your parents separated two years ago and told no one. Every festival they still arrive together, and leave in different autos.

Your father never once said he was proud of you. A stranger tells you he reads your book aloud on the train, to anyone who will sit still for it.

The building's WhatsApp group has decided, unanimously, that you are having an affair. You have never been more single, and every correction makes it worse.

You are the only one who can see that the new son-in-law is terrified of your grandmother. She has noticed too. She is enjoying it.

The railways run one train a year that arrives before it departs. You are holding a confirmed ticket.

A company sells memory storage by subscription. Your grandmother's plan lapses on Friday and nobody in the family can cover the renewal.

The traffic signals began answering questions three weeks ago. Only on red, and only truthfully.

Someone has been swapping your tiffin at the office every day for a month. You have started cooking for whoever is getting yours.

The power cut comes at seven every evening, and the whole street has begun to look forward to it.