Neil Gaiman – Trigger Warning (2015)

“…And I’m having a hot bath. Otherwise I’ll catch my death.”

Shadow imagined reaching out his hand and catching death in it, like a baseball, and he shivered.

“Black Dog”

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Neil Gaiman – Trigger Warning (2015)

It was one of the things he liked about the British: even when they wanted to know what was happening on the inside, they did not ask. The world on the inside remained the world on the inside.

“Black Dog”

Neil Gaiman – Trigger Warning (2015)

Outside the pub it was raining cats and dogs.
Shadow was still not entirely convinced that he was in a pub.

“Black Dog”

Neil Gaiman – Trigger Warning (2015)

…The new mother did not like the girl and treated her badly, always favoring her own daughter, who was indolent and rude. One day, her stepmother gave the girl, who was only eighteen, twenty dollars to buy her drugs. “Don’t stop on the way,” she said.

So the girl…

“Diamonds and Pearls: A Fairy Tale”

Neil Gaiman – Trigger Warning (2015)

Several days later, it was returned to me by a taxi driver who had found it on the pavement outside the café. He told me my mother had appeared to him in a dream and given him my address and her recipe for old-fashioned cheesecake.

September tale, “A Calendar of Tales”

Neil Gaiman – Trigger Warning (2015)

In May I received an anonymous Mother’s Day card. This puzzled me. I would have noticed if I had ever had children, surely?

…

In October I found a notice saying, “Normal Service Will Be Resumed as Soon as Possible. Honest,” taped to the side of the goldfish tank. Two of the goldfish appeared to have been taken and replaced by identical substitutes.

…

In April I found a note on my bedside table apologizing for the problems in service, and assuring me that henceforward all faults in the universe had been remedied forever. WE APOLOGIZE OF THE INCONVENIENTS, it concluded.

In May I received another Mother’s Day card.

May tale, “A Calendar of Tales”

Neil Gaiman – Trigger Warning (2015)

1) Jemima Glorfindel Petula Ramsay
…
27) When she started telling us that she was going to be worshipped like a god, as she was in the dawn times.

“Orange”

Neil Gaiman – Trigger Warning (2015)

You strike me as a kind person. I hope your world is kind. By which I mean, I’ve heard we see the world not as it is but as we are. A saint sees a world of saints, a killer sees only murderers and victims. I see the dead.

“My Last Landlady”

Neil Gaiman – Trigger Warning (2015)

“…They say that the cave makes you evil: that each time you visit it, each time you enter to take gold, it eats the good in your soul, so they do not enter.”

“And is that true? Does it make you evil?”

“…No. The cave feeds on something else. Not good and evil. Not really. You can take your gold, but afterwards, things are”–he paused–”things are flat. There is less beauty in a rainbow, less meaning in a sermon, less joy in a kiss…” He looked at the cave mouth and I thought I saw fear in his eyes. “Less.”

“The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains…”

Neil Gaiman – Trigger Warning (2015)

It is the curse of age, that all things are reflections of other things.

“The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains…”