I wake to my father sobbing and my mother holding my hand tight. I know what this means. My tears fall before my eyes open.

I’ve been marked.

I grip my mother tight. Around me my siblings stir, woken by the fuss.

Even little Lilia understands when she sees my face. While my questing fingertips can’t detect the interlocked spirals on my forehead I don’t remember not knowing what they look like....

Though the Al-Temple hadn’t opened its doors for years now, the tower’s chimes still marked every service. Bell-Tender Heath made sure of it.

His feet tromped the worn filigree stairs in perfect time with the tick tick tick of the clockwork pillar, the heart of the tower, from which all the bells took their cue. Springs and gears and turn-screws spiralling in delicate choreography. Each deity re...

I just wanted to clear my head. That’s all. A quick walk down the canal path to the shops and back. Get my blood pumping a little, buy myself a sweet treat, fill my lungs with fresh air, all that good stuff. Make my therapist proud.

The lack of other people didn’t bother me. I was actually relieved. That’s part of why I went out when I did - mid-afternoon, after lunch but before schools ended. Fi...

If only more parenting books thought to mention signs of demonic possession. Perhaps Graham should’ve realised something was amiss, though he’d been pulled a dozen ways trying to balance mourning the loss of his wife, looking after his newborn son, and learning how to run a household solo. All with the looming deadline of his paternity leave running out.

Mary’s death had been a shock. Her pregnan...

Whirrrr bump whir bump thump

I’m trying. I’m trying really hard.

“Find joy”, they say. “Embrace whimsy”. “Seek out positive emotions”.

So here I am. Sitting in a bumper car, trying to recapture the glee and aimless joy which came so naturally as a child.

My friends are laughing all around. Some trying to turn this into a wacky team game. The others treating it like gladiatorial combat.

Then ther...

It was hours after the last school bus, yet Jimmy-Jims wasn’t home. Teddy finally left his post at the window and crawled under the bed to snuggle against Lurk, who wrapped a comforting scaly arm around the distraught stuffy and mumbled reassurances.

After another anxious, dusty age a whisper came. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Hello?” Teddy crawled to peep out. “Who’s there?”

The voice wasn’t JJ,...

Agatha had always sworn she’d never do this. That she wouldn’t be the one to steal away the last scrap of family her brother had. Yet, here she was. Her possessions crammed into a battered backpack and her final goodbye left on the mat in an envelope recycled from the last utility bill.

How depressing, that after so many years resenting her parents she took after them.

No, that wasn’t fair to mo...

“Ok! See you soon!” Maggie trilled into her phone, then the moment the call ended her face contorted with panic and she sprinted into the kitchen, where her husband was humming along with the radio and leisurely washing lunch dishes. “ANDREW!”

He jumped and looked up, his full name alerting him that this was an emergency. “What’s wrong-”

“My parents are visiting!”

“Oh? When-”

“They’re at the town ...

If I’d known it was Gory’s bag I never woulda opened it. That guy’s the meanest, scariest hoodlum this town’s ever seen. Also the best Rabble Runner ever. Since he took charge the other gangs have clear moved out.

Maybe I shouldn’t have opened that bag even thinking it was Tom’s. But Gory had been pressuring me to “prove myself”, like he might kick me out. I CAN'T lose the Rabblers. I’d be dog-m...

When Lucy declared she was giving up on dating, her friends were entirely sympathetic. They all understood where she was coming from; it often felt pointless, hopeless even, especially online dating. Many of them had made similar declarations in the past, and some still held to it.

Lucy’s renewed interest in robotics didn’t strike them as odd either… at first.

But when her increasingly low conta...