Clang! the bell went, signalling the start of the hunt. Clang! the sound reverberating through his bones.

All around a silence fell on his ears. Then, steadily, the noises began to rise. Shouts and cries, screams piercing the air.

He saw it almost too late but managed to collapse his body as the sword swept in front of him. Hot pain lashed across his face where then edge of the sword managed to...

I wake to pain. Thick fog hung over my head like a heavy blanket of ooze, suffocating me, trapping me in my bed, unable to lift even a finger to escape.

I drift in and out of sleep, my mind unable to focus on one thing at a time. I dream of falling and standing up, of running down filthy, dark corridors as voices echo around me.

“We’re coming for you, Daniel,” they whisper to me, but is reaches...

“A large Big Mac, extra fries. Actually, make it two. I’ll get a large strawberry milkshake as well. Actually, make it XL. Can I get a nine-piece chicken select on the side. And I’ll get an apple pie too.”

I looked at the people around me while my server punched in the order and caught eyes with the kid standing with his mum to my side. I could see in them a sort of... pity. Not jealously at the ...

Here we go again, I thought. Might as well make myself comfortable.

I’ve no idea where I gained this power. It just kind of happened. I was biking down the Grey Lane, the rush of wind whipping my floppy this way and that, the bumpy road bouncing the bike on my backside almost painfully, and as I rounded a corner I screamed as I went headfirst into another biker.

My sight vanished, all went qui...

There is a skeleton in my closest but no one had ever seen it. I keep it well hidden, like the solitary spot on a teenage girl’s otherwise immaculate face. No one knows about my dirty secret, no one needs to know of course, I’m not stupid like the others who got themselves found out, they had shown someone the skeleton in their closest. But not mine. I’m just a plain boy after all.

It was hidden...

I say jump, they say how high.

“Please, join me on your feet for prayer.” They all stand, scraping back their chairs in a cacophony of grating noise.

I say pray, they say what prayer.

I lead them in our prayer, me speaking, them repeating like a parrot learning how to speak.

I say drink this, they say how much.

I stand before one, Joseph I remember his name to be, waiting with eager anticipat...

Standing under the shower I could barely feel the almost scorching touch of the water.

It hadn’t been 24 hours yet since Julie came back into my life. I had day-dreamed about that moment over and over, imaging that when she opened that she would fling her arms around mine and life would continue as it had been.

But now, sitting with my back against grimy tiles, steaming water pattering against ...

“How does he do it?” I said aloud, studying my whiteboard that was a map of pins and notes.

“What, Sir?” my assistant said.

“Oh, nothing, just thinking out loud.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, Conway?”

“Why do you refer to them as ‘he’”? We don’t actually have a positive confirmation on gender, yet.”

I couldn’t actually answer that question. It was a feeling I had had, a feeling I didn’t even know I had. Ev...

I’ve never seen a doctor about my mental state - I’ve never even told anyone about it before - but I guess a doctor’s opinion would be formed along the lines of me having mild depression. Now, I don’t know whether I have it or not, but I used to be outgoing, I used to enjoy the company of people, and with the thoughts I harbour, I would not put it past this being the doctor’s diagnostic.

Now, eve...

All I could smell was my shoes, worn from years of wear and smelling like that was the case. I’d never really noticed the smell before but now, here in the wardrobe, scrunched up into a tight ball, I could smell and hear more than I think I ever could before.

I heard the scuffle. I heard the shouts. I heard the gunfire and the screams and the commands. And then I heard nothing but empty, oppressi...