After a depressing rejection, botanist Carmen moves in with two lodgers: a mad astrophysicist, and what appears to be an inter-dimensional hell demon. It isn't the ideal trio, but they make it work. From accidentally dating racists, to defending their home against the friendly neighborhood Estonian mafioso, the lodgers bond to form an unlikely (and dysfunctional) family. [written in 2017]

There is an intangible magic to the secret double-lives of strangers on trains. She spends her journeys gazing out at city lights outside the window of the train. He watches strangers on the seats around him. Two strangers living off the stories of strangers, with only one journey to find their own. {Written 2013.}

A young man and a woman sit on a hilltop, doomed to watch the same scene play out before their eyes again and again. For how long? Until they remember. {Written 2013.}

She was invincible and unfixable. She was the woman you'd been warned about since you could walk. She was the smile that robbed a million dollars, and twice as many hearts. {Written 2013.}

This woman could have been a spy, a duchess and the lover of a young cameraman all at once. She was a conjurer of a thousand stories, each unique to every observer; the elusive face behind any tale you put to her. {Written 2013.}

A quiet afternoon is infinitely more interesting when you add a young man who claims to be a time-traveler, a half-completed shopping list, and an unhealthy amount of sarcasm. {Written 2014}

"Every fairytale begins in the rain." When you run into an old bookshop in the middle of Paris to escape a storm, who knows who you might meet there. {Written 2014.}

A fear of flying is one thing. Being seated next to a Tetris-addict who claims to be the Reaper is quite another. "He pulled out a business card. Where his profession should have been stated, the card read 'Destroyer of Worlds'. Nodding slowly, I pocketed the card." [check out the new spin off: http://www.wattpad.com/story/19632442-reaper-man] Copyright S.Ranasinghe 2013 HG Wells Short Story Competition [shortlisted]