“I don’t know why I remained her friend. It’s not like I got anything out of it. It was the worst kind of friendship, held together by pity.”

Karin Tidbeck’s wonderful collection Jagganath was one of the first contemporary short story collections I owned – long before I ever thought about publishing one myself.

This story is deliciously horrible – about a woman who God isn’t allowing to kill herself, no matter how hard she tries. Like all the best horror stories, it’s got a brilliant sting in its tale, and an ending that makes you go ‘ah’.

First published in Swedish in Vem är Arvid Pekon, Man av Skugga Förlag, 2010, and in English in Jagannath, Cheeky Frawg, 2012; reprinted in Nightmare, 2014, where it is available to read, here