GAME ONE

Read the stories, guess which one is AI. Answer revealed at the bottom

STORY 1

The glass felt cold against Brendan’s forehead. His school tie was twisted sideways where he’d been pulling at it. Rain blurred the street outside into grey nothing.

Mum’s lighter clicked. The ashtray overflowed with lipstick-stained ends. The kitchen smelled of smoke, and the tuna pasta that she hadn’t bothered to heat the property.

Headlights appeared down the road. Brendan’s toes curled in his socks. The car drove straight past, its red tail lights dissolving in the rain.

The microwave clock said 7:41. Dad had said six.

Brendan’s knees ached from standing so long. Outside, the rain fell heavily and quietly. No sounds. No movement. Just the occasional hiss of Mum’s cigarette burning down.

At half-nine, the streetlight flickered. Brendan watched the water run down the glass.

When the clock hit midnight, Brendan stepped back. The carpet fibres sprang up slowly where his feet had been.

Mum lit a fresh cigarette off the old one. The glow showed her chipped nail polish for a second before she shook the match out.

Brendan didn’t look at her as he passed. The stairs creaked on the third and seventh steps. His bed smelled slightly of damp.

Downstairs, the rain kept on. The TV stayed dark. Just the quiet pop of another cigarette being crushed into the pile.

STORY 2

he key stuck at the usual spot, just shy of turning. Danny knew the trick, lift slightly while nudging it clockwise, but today the mechanism refused. The paint around the lock was fresher, a bright white against the door’s eggshell. Someone had taken the time to tape off the hinges, not just slap paint over the screws like he used to.

Inside, the telly droned. It was Pointless, or maybe The Chase. That host who’d been around forever, his voice a background hum to a thousand afternoons. The volume dipped sharply, then rose again, like someone had fumbled the remote. A chair creaked. A mug clinked against wood.

He tried the key again. Same one he’d had since the move, edges worn smooth from his pocket. The fob had snapped off last summer during a drunken stumble out of the Prince of Wales, leaving just the jagged plastic stump. If he squinted, he could still make out the faded outline of the Orient badge, that piss poor football club he’d followed as a kid, back when loyalty felt like a choice.

A floorboard groaned near the door. Danny froze. The letterbox flap was bent where the postie always jammed parcels too thick for the slot. A red bill poked out, probably Southern Water. They’d been hounding him for months over a twelve quid discrepancy.

“Suppose you changed the locks, then,” he said to the peeling paint. His voice sounded strange to his own ears, like he’d been shouting earlier and forgotten.

Silence. Then the chain rattled, not the quick slam of someone startled, but the slow drag of metal on metal. The gap narrowed to a sliver. From the hallway, the scent of Lenor Unstoppables, that sickly sweet lavender she swore by. A shadow moved across the crack, then stopped.

Danny’s thumb found the broken fob in his pocket. He could’ve sworn he heard breathing. Could’ve knocked again. Could’ve said her name.

Instead, he turned and sat on the step, fishing for the cigarettes he’d quit six months back. The neighbour’s cat yowled from the fence. Somewhere down the road, a wheelie bin clattered.

The door stayed shut.

Story 3

Every Friday at 3 p.m., the bell above Blooms & Thyme chimed, and Eileen the florist received the same order: a bouquet of black dahlias for the mayor’s wife, paid in cash with no sender’s name.

But today, the flowers were different.

The usual white ribbon was replaced with a frayed red one, and tucked between the stems was a polaroid. It showed the town’s abandoned lighthouse, its door pried open, a brass key glinting on the steps. Eileen recognised that key. The mayor wore it on his chain at every town meeting, calling it a “sentimental relic.”

That night, Eileen drove to the cliffs. The lighthouse door swung open with a nudge, revealing a desk stacked with ledgers. Inside were records of every “donation” to the town’s “restoration fund,” cash that had supposedly vanished when the contractor went bankrupt. Yet here were deposits dated after the project’s collapse, each matched to a donor’s name.

At the bottom of the pile lay a dried black dahlia, its petals brittle as old bones. Pressed beneath it was a newspaper clipping: Mayor’s First Wife Dies in Tragic Fall, Lighthouse Closed Indefinitely (1987).

The next morning, Eileen arranged one final bouquet: black dahlias, red ribbon, and the ledger’s first page folded like a note. She addressed it to the editor of the Harbor Gazette.

When the bell chimed at 3 p.m., it wasn’t the usual courier. The mayor’s wife stood there, her cheeks pale. “You weren’t supposed to see that photo,” she whispered. “I just wanted someone to know.”

STORY 4

Janet sat by the bus window, her reflection blurred against the glass. Gary sat a few rows back, as usual. They never sat together, but they’d known each other forever, same school, same classes, same bus route. Today, Gary decided he’d ask her out.

He’d been planning it all morning. They were 13 now, too old for childish games. But when the bus stopped, Janet was gone before he could speak.

Tomorrow, he told himself, trying to ignore the knot in his stomach.

The next day, Janet wasn’t on the bus. At school, Gary found Kevin surrounded by a group of kids, their faces grim.

“What’s going on?” Gary asked, though he already felt a chill in his chest.

“Janet’s dead,” Kevin said flatly.

Gary froze. “What?”

“A lorry hit her yesterday. She was crossing the road with her friends.”

Gary’s chest tightened. Janet was gone. Just like that. He wanted to scream, to cry, but he couldn’t. Boys didn’t cry over girls.

Later, he heard the rest. Janet had been teasing her friends about Kevin, yes, Kevin who’d asked her out that morning. She’d been laughing, her cheeks flushed, when the lorry struck.

Gary sat alone on the bus that afternoon, staring at Janet’s empty seat. He wondered if she’d have said yes if he’d asked her first. He wondered if it would have changed anything.

But he’d never know.

STORY 5

Brenda sat in her car. It was a beautifully sunny day, and everything felt right. She was positive this was the right thing to do. Her adopted parents had now passed away, but they had always given their blessing for her to look for her birth parents.

The lady at the adoption service, the one that helps children find their birth parents, had been super helpful. Brenda was 58, so it was a bit more complicated given how much time had passed. However, they had managed to find a name and an address.

After many unanswered letters to her birth mother, Brenda turned to the adoption service for help. They provided her with more details: her father had run away to Canada in the early ’80s, and that was where the trail ended. Her mother, however, had stayed fairly close. The service also told her about an older sister, Sarah, who seemed to have stayed with their mother all these years. In fact, it appeared that Sarah had become their mother’s carer.

Brenda parked her car three doors down and across the street from her birth mother’s house. She walked toward the house, her heart pounding. The house was nothing special, just a mid-terrace home with a small garden. No flowers, just a well-kept lawn. She wasn’t a messy woman, Brenda thought.

When she reached the door, Brenda pressed the fancy camera doorbell. It rang loudly, echoing in the quiet street.

The door opened, and there stood a woman Brenda assumed was her older sister, someone she had never met before.

“My mum died six months ago,” the woman said in a calm, steady voice. Then she closed the door.

Brenda stood there, silent.

Click below for Answer

The answer was Story 3

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