Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances

by Neil Gaiman

There are stories I read as a child I wished, once I had read them, that I had never encountered, because I was not ready for them and they upset me: stories which contained helplessness, in which people were embarrassed, or mutilated, in which adults were made vulnerable and parents could be of no assistance. They troubled me and haunted my nightmares and my daydreams, worried and upset me on profound levels, but they also taught me that, if I was going to read fiction, sometimes I would only know what my comfort zone was by leaving it; and now, as an adult, I would not erase the experience of having read them if I could.

I get to make mistakes and to go on small adventures, and there is something about the process of putting together a collection like this that is both scary and eye-opening: when I put stories together themes reoccur, reshape and become clear. I learn what I’ve been writing about for the previous decade.

SHADDER Some creatures hunt. Some creatures forage. The Shadder lurk. Sometimes, admittedly, they skulk. But mostly, they just lurk. The Shadder do not make webs. The world is their web. The Shadder do not dig pits. If you are here you have already fallen. There are animals that chase you down, run fast as the wind, tirelessly, to sink their fangs into you, to drag you down. The Shadder do not chase. They simply go to the place where you will be, when the chase is over, and they wait for you there, somewhere dark and indeterminate. They find the last place you would look, and abide there, as long as they need to abide, until it becomes the last place that you look and you see them. You cannot hide from the Shadder. They were there first. You cannot outrun the Shadder. They are waiting at your journey’s end. You cannot fight the Shadder, because they are patient, and they will tarry until the last day of all, the day that the fight has gone out of you, the day that you are done with fighting, the day the last punch has been thrown, the last knife-blow struck, the last cruel word spoken. Then, and only then, will the Shadder come out. They eat nothing that is not ready to be eaten. Look behind you.

Writers live in houses other people built.

you stumble out from under the canvas awning, and the water of the rain runs down your face like someone else’s tears.

Icarus! It’s not as if I have forgotten all names. I remember Icarus. He flew too close to the sun. In the stories, though, it’s worth it. Always worth it to have tried, even if you fail, even if you fall like a meteor forever. Better to have flamed in the darkness, to have inspired others, to have lived, than to have sat in the darkness, cursing the people who borrowed, but did not return, your candle.

He was glad they were back in England, glad they were home, where there was not enough Time to crush you, to suffocate you, to make you dust.

Truly we are all composed of miracles.

ONCE UPON THE OLDEN times, when the trees walked and the stars danced,

She was waiting for him, in the place where flowers die.

The Duke contemplated losing his head to this woman, and found the prospect less disturbing than he would have expected.

IT WAS THE CLOSEST kingdom to the queen’s, as the crow flies, but not even the crows flew it. The high mountain range that served as the border between the two kingdoms discouraged crows as much as it discouraged people, and it was considered unpassable.

Shadow was not certain how old she was. Her hair was white, but she seemed younger than her hair.

He had watched a man die in prison, stabbed in a pointless argument. He remembered the way that the blood had puddled about the man’s body, lying in the back corner of the exercise yard. The sight had troubled Shadow, but he had forced himself to look, and to keep looking. To look away would somehow have felt disrespectful.

He sat on his bed, and stared out of the window at the rain puddling its way down the windowpane, and felt the seconds of his life counting off, never to come back.

“You’re very good. Are you a professional artist?” “I dabble,” she said. Shadow had spent enough time talking to the English to know that this meant either that she dabbled, or that her work was regularly hung in the National Gallery or the Tate Modern.

“You really have nothing to be embarrassed about,” said Shadow, reflecting that the English found embarrassment wherever they looked for it.

Moira swore like someone who was not very good at it.