Well if this don't shame me into doing something...

[muninnhuginn]

Nowt will.

World Split Open

"D’you know what the equator is?" Matthew’s new friend asked him out of the blue.

Winghorn

Flash of sunlight lighting a long golden tooth; a ringing voice:

"Approchez venez voir! Messieurs dames, venez voir--"

The barker’s words are unfamiliar to many passersby, but their import is clear. Like the showman’s appearance, itself something of a tall story, the invitation is the standard compound of vague but enticing promises of the exotic, the rare, the unique; the disabled, diseased, deformed.

Warcop in Warthermaske

The giantess stood. Her hands, nestled deep in capacious pockets, cradled their precious cargo. Her legs straddled the valley. Silent, her tranquil brow furrowed by three parallel lines, she surveyed her surroundings.

Unholy Band

Felix Wormold, known to her few friends as "Spider", eventually met Duke Velten in the gatehouse to his estate.

Actually this is a cheat as it's the beginning of chapter one, but there's a prologue that stinks to high heaven and reads like a David Attenborough nature documentary.

Wallessdeep

His father hamstrung him on the first night of his initiation.

A Catch, Dropped

Mist twined its way up her ankles and calves. It snaked yellowly and to cross-gartered her legs with insubstantial ribbons.

Just before a frost-stilled dawn, she had stood in the burial field and begun to summon the mist.

The One Not Taken

"I was a dancer long ago."

A mere hesitation, the slightest break in your stride, is all she requires to continue her litany.

"I knew The Earth Dance, see."

If you pause at the sound of her voice, she will lift to the sun a face that’s collapsed into itself like the abandoned shafts of worked-out mines.

"Smelled the Dragon’s breath."

untitled

Moebius stripped.

Then, consigning the disposable paper robe to the floor, he strolled under the shower. Water flowed instantaneously. He showered slowly with an extreme nonchalance. He ignored the traces of blood and antiseptic dressing that gathered around his feet

"Slumber If You Can"

The second time she died, she planted a forest.

"just a memorial," she’d explained. "An investment. Check it out with the experts."

Trap-Door

Robin had read all about it in comic books. Had seen the movie remakes. Had even endured endless bowls of cardboard cereal to collect crumb-dusted plastic figures.

Robin knew the schtick.

The spider bite.

The agonising transformation. (Nods to Jekyll and Hyde, there, Robin thought.)

The augmented senses, the bulked-out body.

The novel powers.

Which were all very well in the big city: where the sole reason for skyscrapers’ existence was to provide clear routes for the highest swinger in town; where the walls of corporate behemoths ached for someone to scale them; where the roofs of financial fortresses were arranged for profitable leaping.

But, Robin thought, but....

Shiny Happy People

Danni’s hair glittered.

She looked as if she’d wandered through a shower of gold dust--except that gold dust doesn’t scuttle along hair shafts and anchor itself firmly at the root. Disconcerted, Danni stared in the mirror and watched the slight but constant motion as her infestation settled in. She resisted the temptation to scratch.

Bags of Trouble

Some things really shouldn’t be bought mail order.

Bill-Sticker

"Shit-head. Shit-head. Shhhh."

A man in the unmistakeable garb of the rough sleeper shambles along. He sticks to the shaded side of the narrow street where successive upper stories threaten to step outwards to reach across the path below in true medieval fashion. The man obstinately refuses to quit the footpath. His irregular pace forces oncoming pedestrians, and those behind him whose progress he impedes, onto the road and into direct competition with the congested flow of cycleshaws and private cyclists.

And that's without the two most recent things, still sitting around in a paper notebook somewhere.