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Here in Saint Lizard, the one road starts on the cliff by the lighthouse and crawls in circles down to the sea. We have enough town to justify a strange-shaped road, but not enough to justify two roads.
Uncle Joe’s liver and heart weren’t original equipment, but they squashed out flatter 'n a pancake along with the rest of Uncle Joe when a boulder rolled off the side of the abandoned quarry.
- Length: 3 pages
- Age Rating: PG
I reach the Styx, whose sluggish waters remain inky even in the bright of day. Just as my guide said there would be, a queue of people in white chitons similar to mine line the river banks.
- Length: 16 pages
- Age Rating: PG
“So.” she began. “The thing is. You’re a shadoweater. From a long line of shadoweaters. Me, your nan, her mum, stretching all the way back as far as anyone can go ...”
- Length: 6 pages
- Age Rating: PG
Sandra performed her little charade in front of the mirror and morphed into the Gisela character on a whim. She had a small tickle of flirtatious laughter down pat.
A flash bursts from behind me, projecting shadows onto the pavement. We turn and all share the same vision. An orange mushroom cloud billows on the horizon, but it continues to rise into the sky.
- Length: 12 pages
- Age Rating: PG
Where am I? She wonders. None of the details of the room feel familiar.
She gets up. Slowly. It feels like her body is bound; it is almost suffocating.
Why do I ache so much?
- Length: 4 pages
- Age Rating: PG
A cruise ship musician, aggrieved at the prospect of losing his
livelihood to a backing track, turns to alcohol for consolation.
- Length: 11 pages
- Age Rating: 15
Lawrence looked out the balcony to the city beyond. Skyscrapers of glass and shining metal twisted up, looming like a giant’s fingers prepared to crush them all in the palm of his hand.
- Length: 22 pages
- Age Rating: 15
They wanted to believe. And they certainly weren’t going to deny their son every advantage for his future.
- Length: 17 pages
- Age Rating: PG
In his head, this all made sense. The next-door neighbour’s garden was the goal – just a simple chip to cover four yards and a metre fence in the middle. Easy.
- Length: 15 pages
- Age Rating: PG
Sadly Broke is never silent. As the moon steals behind the Bus Station, not all who populate the new town are asleep.
- Length: 5 pages
- Age Rating: PG
I dream of one day having a house that my mom and sister and I can all live in. I want one just like the gray house on the corner.
- Length: 6 pages
- Age Rating: U
I won’t tell anyone about the diagnosis.
Not my mother or sister. Certainly not Jake. Maybe not even Steve.
My mother is the weather. As a child, I was the core target to which she would unleash her hailstorms and earthquakes that tore me down and broke me into pieces.
- Length: 12 pages
- Age Rating: PG
A game of Scrabble has serious consequences.
A semi-barbaric king devises a semi-barabaric (but entirely fair) method of criminal trial involving two doors, a beautiful lady and a very hungry tiger.
Sandra performed her little charade in front of the mirror and morphed into the Gisela character on a whim. She had a small tickle of flirtatious laughter down pat.
I won’t tell anyone about the diagnosis.
Not my mother or sister. Certainly not Jake. Maybe not even Steve.
“Going souling", they used to call it. I can remember m’grandad telling me he used to do it, when he were little, going round the houses and offering to say prayers for the dead, in exchange for these little cakes, soul cakes they called ‘em.
Stella cannot remember a time before nature was her haven, her place of peace and healing. It was a big part of her life before she met her husband and the father of her two children.
“We left the map behind,” said Annie as they were five hours away from Anstruther, pulling into their own driveway. “We need to go back.”
- Length: 7 pages
- Age Rating: U
- Genre:
Nothing is as visceral as holding a handful of human ash.
I resist the impulse to sift it between my fingers as I walk. Everyone, from the mourners to the pastor, are far away and yet too close.
- Length: 9 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Fiction
Three o’clock on a Thursday was an odd time for a visit, but it was the only downtime between my part-time jobs that suited Jo. More unusual than the time was the prospect of a one-to-one rendezvous in my bedsit with someone about my age and attractive.
- Length: 6 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Fiction
She was not unused to calls of distress, the groans of the feverish, or the cloying stench of broken bodies and all their expulsions, but never so many at a time and never so twisted and ripped.
- Length: 20 pages
- Age Rating: PG
- Genre: Fiction
