Choose a world. Change what happens.

• Murder trial and a stated killing
• Access to a household address by a neighbour on the night of a killing
• A concealment of evidence and perjury
• A conviction of the witness and a term of imprisonment
• A curfew, a tag and the threat of recall to custody
• An estrangement between married partners over a statement in a court
• Explicit sexual content between consenting adults, said out loud, with an agreed stop word
• Explicit language about a body

• A conviction and a prison sentence, and the fact of one that cannot be overturned
• A woman under examination about her own liability, deferred to a date in December
• A man injured in an industrial incident and a coroner's inquest into his injuries
• An insurance claim and civil proceedings in a public court
• A mother asking her son for money
• A town blaming a woman for telling the truth
• A household whose freehold is in one person's sole name after eight years
• A hard moral choice where no option is clean and every branch closes a door
• Sexual content between adults, with consent stated aloud, in a house that is one of the document locations

• Financial loss, redundancy, institutional complicity in a purchase, and the sale of a working life at a bad price.
• Alcohol, and two decades of not saying a thing.
• No slurs are written out. Bigotry shows through behaviour and consequence.

• Death by smoke inhalation in an institutional fire, described and not depicted
• Withdrawal of a manslaughter count without a hearing
• A care home operated for profit with residents who died in it
• Fraud worth £412,000 and a perverting-the-course-of-justice count
• A judicial review and a public hearing in open court
• A criminal case certificate surrendered and a career ended
• A marriage under sustained strain
• A man with an ankle tag, a curfew and no accommodation on a fixed date
• Two endings in which a named person is homeless on a stated morning
• Written consensual adult intimacy between a prosecutor and the man she sentenced

• Time repetition and loss of autobiographical time
• Injury without violence, and a medical record read aloud in a corridor
• A form signed in a room with five people watching
• A public record naming two people
• Explicit consensual adult intimacy, with an in-world stop word that is used
• A death is not depicted and nobody dies; a previous marriage that lasted fourteen months is stated in dialogue

• domestic horror, not supernatural horror: the threat is administrative and domestic
• descriptive violence is absent; nobody is hurt and nobody dies on any route
• explicit sexual content between two consenting married adults, written, in one scene
• consent is negotiated out loud in clauses and either person can stop it with one word
• the encounter gates no choice and no ending
• grief about a dead parent, a dead spouse and a neighbour who leaves
• social isolation and the loss of community as a subject, not as a threat
• no minors, no minors-coded characters, no ambiguity
• no instructional detail for any procedure, trade or offence
• no slurs are written out anywhere in the text
• all places, companies, offices, forms and people are fictional

• A wrongful conviction and eleven months of imprisonment that are never given back
• A custody suite, a strip search, and the specific detail of a wrist
• A written sexual scene between consenting adults in their fifties
• A professional misconduct hearing and the loss of a career
• A death in 1998, referred to and not depicted
• A housing form that asks about convictions in a tick-box
• A son who will not ask his mother a question
• A name that is said out loud four times in a book and does not repair anything

• death and mortuary settings
• body misidentification and cremated remains
• domestic abuse and coercive control recalled
• fraud, wage theft and gambling debt
• exploitation of undocumented workers
• family estrangement and grief
• alcohol use
• implied sexual history, cuts away
• bigotry shown through behaviour and consequence; no slurs written out

• A six-year financial arrangement entered into without consent and sustained by omission
• A partnership and a reputation withdrawn for something the protagonist said out loud
• A career ending and a colleague's resignation-threat described in an office
• A public reading of a private bank line in front of twenty-nine staff
• Institutional procedure shown as the thing that carries the damage rather than preventing it

• Domestic violence that is not reported to the police and never is
• A court finding about a hand on a throat, entered in a public document
• A permanent legal restraint on sexual relations between spouses, agreed to in advance
• Sexual content between adults, with consent stated aloud, in a house that is being emptied
• A professional conduct finding and a partnership put under review
• A judgment and a register entry that are public and permanent
• Institutional procedure shown as the thing that does the damage
• A marriage that continues after a document has ended it

• a first-trimester nuchal translucency measurement of 4.6 millimetres that was never acted on
• a possible genetic or chromosomal condition in a living two-year-old that is never established either way
• a medical records failure affecting six hundred and eleven women
• a referral, blood tests and a wait of eighteen to twenty-four months
• a telephone call read from a script and a batch of letters posted in one morning
• a man who made a risk small in a car park in August 2023 and said nothing about it for four hundred and sixty weeks
• a spreadsheet that ran a marriage and a formula in column ten that could not tell a fact from a stranger
• a daughter's name as the only thing about her that has never been on a form

• a care home resident with vascular dementia and a history of alcohol-related brain injury
• epilepsy and a stoppd anticonvulsant; a patient having seizures is described and not depicted
• occupational and professional disciplinary procedure
• a university fitness to practise procedure
• alcohol use is present as a fact about a diagnosis and a caution, and is not described

• A removal direction sought against a mother and upheld in three of the four futures
• Institutional deportation described from a notice, a determination, and an airport at dawn
• A woman of twenty-one who is the subject of a court application and is not a party to it
• A professional conduct referral and a two-year loss of a clerk's certificate
• A marriage of nine years that ends in three of the four futures
• A daughter who does not return in two of the four futures
• A hearing aid, a mould, and a cost of a hundred and ninety-five pounds
• Institutional procedure shown as the thing that does the damage

• Death of a named adult woman at 34, off-page and reported.
• A wrongful professional call with a named institution, a named file, and a closed inquiry.
• Grief kept at a remove, and two adults who cannot say the sentence for four hours.
• Frostbite and the permanent loss of the ends of two fingers.

• irreversible extinction of biological heritage
• institutional coercion and financial precarity
• professional misconduct and falsified custody records
• family grief, betrayal and estrangement
• alcohol misuse
• off-page destruction of biological material
• no instructional pathology or modification detail
• all characters are adults

• institutional abuse and coercive restraint
• falsification of care records
• failed adoption and family separation
• addiction recovery
• housing insecurity
• fatal house fire
• burns and smoke injury
• a body seen after death
• old missing-person grief
• no sexual content

If this is close to home: findahelpline.com lists free crisis lines by country.

• housing insecurity and homelessness
• coercive control and confinement recalled
• sexual coercion referenced without depiction
• addiction and pregnancy discussed
• school-place fraud
• institutional pressure and falsified safety records
• death and human remains
• family estrangement
• violence and injury where earned
• all speaking characters are adults

• animal death and livestock disease control
• graphic aftermath without instructional killing detail
• professional coercion and false certification
• financial distress and loss of a family farm
• betrayal by a trusted colleague
• alcohol use and grief
• no explicit sex; all characters are adults

• landmines and explosive remnants of war
• a demining accident
• graphic traumatic injury and amputation
• blood and medical aftermath
• wartime detention and disappearance discussed
• institutional pressure and workplace investigation
• hearing loss and disability
• grief and survivor guilt
• no instructional ordnance detail
• no slurs written out

• industrial animal slaughter and carcass inspection
• foodborne illness and hospitalisation
• repetitive-strain injury and disability
• worker compensation
• employer-tied visas and immigration enforcement
• identity-document scrutiny
• mass layoff and plant closure
• poverty and institutional pressure
• alcohol use
• sexual content implied, cuts away
• bigotry shown through behaviour and consequence; no slurs written out

• avalanche burial and death
• recovery and attempted resuscitation
• grief and survivor guilt
• public blame and workplace pressure
• economic precarity and threatened homes
• professional explosive avalanche control discussed non-instructionally
• alcohol use
• sexual intimacy implied; cuts away

• infrastructure failure and communications deprivation
• medical jeopardy
• a death from delayed emergency care, recalled
• corporate negligence and coercion
• evidence concealment and professional misconduct
• dangerous maritime work and a hand injury
• storm peril
• alcohol use
• sexual content implied, cuts away
• bigotry shown through behaviour and consequence; no slurs written out

• political corruption and clientelism
• workplace prosecution and public disgrace
• estrangement and family rupture
• poverty, unemployment and rationed healthcare
• a death from a delayed medical procedure, recalled
• alcohol use
• intimidation and doxxing of an official
• sexual content implied, cuts away
• violence where earned
• bigotry shown through behaviour and consequence; no slurs written out

• fatal wildfire and burned homes
• graphic post-fire remains
• grief and survivor guilt
• insurance non-renewal and threatened homelessness
• corporate and government negligence
• criminal jeopardy for a nineteen-year-old adult
• alcohol use
• sexual intimacy implied, cuts away
• violence discussed without instructional detail
• bigotry shown only through behaviour and consequence; no slurs written out