“Do you want to go on a quest?” She asks.

“What’s the quest for?”

“Technically it’s for a square.”

“A square?”

“Well digital squares are the only true squares, because a paper square includes the thickness of the ink so technically has depth and is a cuboid.”

“What?”

“The square is symbolic: an icon as a decorative badge of victory. ( Read more... )

“You can do whatever you want to me,” he says, “It doesn’t matter.”

The words hit her hard and for several moments the world loses all cohesion. She can’t breathe. She wants to scream. Who did this to you? Who hurt you? Who made you think it was okay for people to hurt you? But he’s just looking at her with confusion. As though the words aren’t ( Read more... )

Ellie is good at pretending. She watches and listens and mimics what others say, mimics what others do. By the time she reaches adulthood she can feign compassion and caring like a pro. She doesn’t tell anyone about her desire to rend and maim and kill, to taste blood on her lips and feel broken flesh beneath her fingers.

She puts on her face in ( Read more... )

Yana enters her new master’s home, keeping her head down and fighting the urge to fidget. It’s a new place. There will be new rules. And she’s never good enough. Never follows them properly. She’s too stupid. So stupid. She doesn’t do things right and has to be punished. And that still never works, her masters always tire of her and sell her off. ( Read more... )

A four-foot box, a foot for every year
- Seamus Heaney

Juanita screams. It’s not a cry. It’s a feral, angry thing. A mother lion reaching out to tear her too-young child from death’s maw.

*

Andy, almost catatonic, paws ineffectually at his clothes. Juanita, already dressed, pins the last strand of hair into place and then helps her partner ( Read more... )

Lydia has worked at the Uber-mart for a long time. She’s been there through loves lost and found, through raising kids and babysitting grandkids. She’s been there for countless birthdays and anniversaries, births and deaths (those of both personal and work families). Innumerable people have come and gone; retirements, graduations, promotions. She’s ( Read more... )

Daria grows in a world of whispers and taunts, her nose pressed up to the frosted glass, outside looking in. Here’s the thing: any defining feature she may have -any quirky twist of personality, any beauty or ugliness, any kindness or wickedness, any passions or dislikes- slips past others; are stripped away against the only thing they care to ( Read more... )

II

Noctem

The knock on the door comes a little after sunset.

Pippa sighs upon seeing who it is. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Jacob nods. “I know. I’m sorry. I had to see you. I missed you.”

“I’m not inviting you in.”

“Then I’ll wait out here.”

Pippa walks away from the open door. “I need a cigarette.”

( Read more... )

Gia’s drinking black coffee in a cosy olive-walled café when she first sees him. The hairs at her nape stand on end inexplicably and cause her to turn. He’s wearing a trench-coat and his fedora is pulled down over his face, its wide brim shadows his mouth and chin from view. He’s here for her. The thought springs to her mind wildly, like church- ( Read more... )

Love is always enough.

It’s Elle’s mantra, sitting in their tiny, cold flat. Broke and hungry. She snaps sometimes. Terry snaps sometimes. Words meted out harsh in compromises. They don’t go out, there’s no money. And the cupboards are filled with non-perishables.

But as stressed as Elle is, lying in bed with Terry on a warm summer morning; she ( Read more... )