In a land far away, a bat stirs up a cauldron of trouble. In the sanitized new world that emerges, everything has changed. A midnight feast in the kitchen is par for the course when there’s no school tomorrow—or any tomorrow to come. A ‘status update’ on Facebook is your only communication with a sibling in a containment zone. A young girl obsesses about the masked stranger in the aisles of a supermarket, while in a deserted guesthouse, a ghost falls in love with the mother of a newborn. Neighbourhood parties on Zoom become the new normal, as the children of a dystopian world invent strange new games, and a glamorous socialite finds there is someone who can use her discarded ‘Covid Cupboard’, after all. It is even possible to commit murder and get away with it, if you’re part of the ‘essential services’ brigade. Or find new ways to use an empty swimming pool.
Part fairy tale, part nightmare, The Day Before Today is a collection of dark, delicious short fiction that will make us rethink the world we took for granted.