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Examples of short chapters: LAUREN BEUKES You think of a city as a map, all knotted up in the bondage of grid lines by town planners. But really, it's a language - alive, untidy, ungrammatical. The meaning of things rearranges, so the scramble of the docks turns hipster cool and the faded glam of the inner city gives way to tenement blocks rotting from the inside. It develops its own accent, its own slang. And sometimes it drops a sentence. Sometimes the sentence finds you. And won't shut up. I'm walking through the gardens on my way to an exhibition on Pancho Guedes, the crazy post-modern Mozambican architect, because that's my major if you hadn't guessed (only 3 ½ years to go) when a voice drifts down out of a tree and says, "Hey, wait up". A girl drops down from the branches where she's been perching like some tree frog in black amongst the squirrels and starts strolling along behind me, imitating my walk like a bad mime. I turn, irritated. "What are you doing?" "Attaching," she says. "It's what the dead do when they get lonely." RICHARD DE NOOY FYI - Shark and I are going over the wall tonight. This better be the right fckn no. otherwise someones gonna shit their pants. Dont reply cos the feds r probably tapping. Im not sure how long we need. Gotta see some ppl before we see you. T has a couple of pieces ready. Tell him to sit tight. And K will need to cough my cut. Tell him. Hope uv got those addresses. If not, get them and dont fckn move. And get some meat for Shark. The fckrs hiding a circus in his pants. More soon. SARAH LOTZ It almost hurts to look at what he's done to her. Slashes and scrapes across her stomach; hair pulled out in jagged chunks leaving bald Os. And the make-up! It's almost as brutal as the damage. Bright green eye-shadow and orange lipstick. Even though I know she can't hear me I whisper in her ear that I'm sorry. Steve looks over at me and shakes his head. He says she's the worst he's ever seen. I don't think I can bear to send her back. But what choice do I have? I reach for the silicone and get to work. SAM WILSON Here's the truth, a badger is no substitute for a parachute. I hoped I wouldn't have to prove it while accelerating towards the ground at two hundred kilometers per hour holding nothing but an irate striped mammal. Dawn was breaking, the horizon was banded with pink and orange, and the honey badger, which I'd named "Bastard", had just peed through the cage and soaked my legs. I was a kilometer up, there was thick fog below, and I was almost out of aviation fuel. I needed a plan, and fast.