Category / Story excerpt

by marleylilith

Rain Men

Written by Lilith

They come through the rain…

“They came through the rain”, the saying went, but in truth it was no ordinary rain that heralded their arrival. The clouds would roll in, the heavens would open, and the downpour would not stop for weeks on end. The villagers kept to their homes, packing sandbags around their doorsteps for when the banks of the river inevitably burst, and nobody dared trying to travel in or out of Kettlebridge. The shrine, a circular stone building in the centre of town, became a safe haven for those whose homes were damaged by the ongoing storms, the old priestesses offering soup and blankets to those in need. And then at last, when the people could take no more of the onslaught from the sky, when fires guttered in their hearths and they could no longer remember what warmth felt like… Then the creatures came.

They looked human. An old man, stooped and withered, skeletal fingers wrapped tight around the silver top of his walking stick; a young woman barely any more than a child, crouching in the mud; and a boy with wide grey eyes who smiled at everything. All the villagers knew what they looked like. They’d seen the creatures from afar, peering through gaps in shutters or flimsy curtains, watching as they walked into the centre of town… but nobody who got close to them ever told the tale.

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by Colette

Commune

Written by Fantasy Girl

family_domestic_abuse

Don’t suffer in silence. For more information on Domestic Abuse please see http://www.nationaldomesticviolencehelpline.org.uk/
Image Courtesy of elaph.com

“I can’t deal with this anymore. You’ve sat by and watched this happen for years and you’ve never done a thing about it! How can you live with yourself?” 
“I tell him not to, I swear! I can’t stop him though!”
“It’s not good enough anymore! I hate it here! I hate you for letting him do it! I hate him for everything he’s done! I hate my life!”

She woke with tears in her eyes, quickly wiping them away. “Ouch,” she mumbled, feeling the tightness in her joints as she walked to the mirror to inspect herself. The bruises that mottled her skin had almost disappeared, but the ache was still there.

Just a few pale yellow patches left.

She shook her head in disgust. She pulled on some leggings, a vest and a light cardigan to cover them up, ran a comb through her hair and quietly left her room.

She could hear her mother and father talking in the kitchen as she stood at the top of the staircase. Continue reading →

by marleylilith

Where Angels Fear to Tread

Written by Lilith

One of the six, Michael's wrath is feared by all...

One of the six, Michael’s wrath is feared by all…

Michael’s shadow fell over the land, his outstretched wings blocking the light over acres of blood-soaked soil as he reached out to the souls beneath him and collected them into his wake. There had been a great battle today; some bastard king or other was warring against his younger brother in the east and the conflicts were spreading far and wide. Michael was helping them spread, in his own way, his gift of wrath turning father against son, mother against daughter and bringing the common people to arms to join the fight. The war itself had been begun by Michael’s younger brother, the angel Lucifer, who had domain over pride. It had taken very little interference to push the royal brothers into a full blown civil war when both their egos were on the line.

Somewhere below Michael’s shadow a voice cried out – one living soul struggling amidst a sea of death. He searched the fields until his bright blue eyes came to rest upon the body of a young man, his face smeared with mud, his clothes stained with the blood of his enemies, or his friends. His body shook as he cried, but he seemed to be entirely unharmed. His curiosity piqued, the Angel of Death swept down towards the boy. Continue reading →

by marleylilith

Not Today

Written by Lumberjacktom

The most precious commodity in the universe... A baby. Image courtesy of babble.com

The most precious commodity in the universe… A baby. Image courtesy of babble.com

Your skin is so smooth, almost translucent on the delicate curve of your sleeping body. I’m overcome by how fragile you look in that moment; your eyes closed, your shoulder length hair splayed across the pillow. I’m trying to tell if you’re beautiful. I think I’ve forgotten what it means. A squat, square face, big eyes, softened by your smile. A child’s face. Innocent. You have a child’s body as well, I might still mistake you for a boy, if there were any of those.

Doc says you’re ready for a child. He tells me you’re strong for your age, that it don’t matter that your breasts haven’t come through yet, that a baby can live on formula just fine. I keep thinking, maybe if I tell them you’re barren, that your womb’s no good, maybe they’d let me keep you. I wouldn’t have to break your fragile little frame, squirt my seed into your tiny body and let a little life grow inside, ’til it forced its way out, and surely split you on its way. Maybe then, when they didn’t care anymore, I could keep you safe, until you were properly a woman, ’til you knew what it meant to bear a child.

But they wouldn’t let me do that. They’d test you this way and that until they were sure, then they’d go inside and have your ovaries. Or put someone else’s baby in, one made in a lab from the chromosomes of men, a perfect little womb-bearer made to specification by the bio-engineers with their microscopes and pipettes. Just like you.

You wouldn’t let me, either. You want a little life too; it’s what a girl is born for, they say. And why wouldn’t you believe them? It’s what you’ve been told all your life, that is. When you grow up, when you come of age and your body says its ready, we’ll find a man for you, and he’ll give you a little one. Wasn’t it what you were born for? Just like the mother they put you in, deemed fit and seeded with life. So of course its what you want. What you say you want, anyway; I think you’re more scared than you say. I think you know you’re too little, too unspoilt by the world, else you would complain more that we haven’t tried. Seems fitting, you say, that we should get to know each other, since we’re a couple now, some kind of courting period. If it goes on much longer, they’ll find out. They’ll spread your legs on the doctor’s couch, and find out I haven’t yet broken you. Then what? Maybe they’ll seed you with someone else, and leave you with me, so I can stand by you; hold your hand while you push out someone else’s child. Or maybe they’d take you from me, say, “If you won’t use her, someone else will.” Scared to be a man. If that’s how you figure it, I’m as much a man as you are a woman, though I was one and a half times your age when you were born.

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by Doishy

Death’s Mistress Prologue

Written by Miss Smiley

Phone a friend

When will you get the call?

She hums softly, hiding her musings under her breath as her hairbrush glides slowly through her hair. Her eyes hook dreamily into the two green eyes that stare at her, a dazed smile spreading across her lips.

“Corinth! Hurry up!”

Corinth jolts back to life before the mirror, broken from her reverie. Hastily coming to her senses, she pulls her smooth, auburn locks into a quick ponytail. She tugs at it impatiently before slinging a courier bag across her thin shoulders and rushing from the room.

“Corinth!”

“I’m coming, Mum!” She rolls her eyes. “Jeez!” she mumbles to herself. “Anyone would think it was life or death!”

She quickly reviews this statement and, frowning, wonders if it actually is a matter of life or death. The news article she is meant to be writing today is a big one, and one sure to be a direct focus of the librarian, Mrs. Connelly, who ran the school newsletter. Not known for her sensibility or any particular semblance of wit or intelligence, Mrs. Connelly would, no doubt, have no issues with making any student’s life hell for the sake of her beloved newsletter. Corinth often wondered how a woman so superbly unsuitable for human interaction had come to be deemed fit for running a school library, let alone a school newsletter.
Shaking the thought from her head, she checks herself.

Camera…check.

Notepad…check.

Um…

Pencils! She rummages in the kitchen drawers, carelessly sharpening a stubby pencil into the fork compartment. Check.

Satisfied, she plucks a green apple from the fruit bowl sitting on the table, a present from her older brother, and glances hurriedly out of the windows. A glimpse of her mother pacing the driveway, not unlike a caged tigress, catches her eye and she smirks to herself on her way out of the house.

Corinth yanks the heavy door open.

“Cori—! Oh, there you are. Come on! Are we going or not?”

Corinth nods silently, making her way to the door of her mother’s Volvo. She slides her petite frame onto the leather seat and quietly closes her door.

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by Colette

Anna

Written by Hope75

abandoned_school_theatre

An abandoned school. A child’s life hangs in the balance.
Image Courtesy of stagesofdecay.com

The child sobbed softly in her arms as she tried to reassure him everything would be OK. The shattered glass crunched loudly under her feet as she and the boy moved slowly through the silent building. Noticing a slightly opened door at the end of the corridor, she made her way towards it.

Pushing it gently with her shoulder, the door opened to reveal an empty classroom. Bright, colourful drawings of dinosaurs, jet planes, and other fragments of children’s imaginations adorned the walls of the room. The seats and desks were scattered and disorganised, while books and pens were still on those that remained upright. Large chalked numbers on the blackboard revealed the day’s unfinished maths lesson, and the teacher’s desk was cluttered with text books and notes, forgotten in the rush.

The boy began weeping uncontrollably as she tried to get him seated on one of the chairs. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she repeated as he hid his head in his hands, tears streaming down his dirty face. Going to the nearest window she peered out into the grey, rain-soaked morning. The school yard below seemingly abandoned as the driving rainfall danced and glistened on the solitary swing set in its centre. She glanced briefly back toward the boy who remained in the same seated position as before. His sobbing had subsided slightly, until it had turned into a quiet moan as he drew circles on the desk with a permanent marker.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted three men with guns at their side slowly entering the school yard below. Using their hands to signal, the men fanned out, each moving in a different direction. Panic now engulfed her as she grabbed the boy and left the classroom, retracing her steps back along the dimly lit corridor. Continue reading →

by marleylilith

Letters From The Front

Written by Eruantien

The Civil War Letters of Rev William Salt, still perfectly preserved

from Sergeant Amanda Davidson:

Dearest brother,
We’ve been here for about a week now and nothing has happened. The living quarters are the worst that I’ve seen for a long time, but despite that it’s looking like the nicest posting I’ve had. But enough of me; how are you? How’s work been treating you? How’s the compact machine gun coming along? I hope you get all the kinks worked out soon. Lay some flowers on father’s grave for me.
Love,
Amanda
PS. I do wish it would stop raining.

Dearest brother,
We were attacked last night. Lost most of a company. The Colonel reckons that they were just probing the line, I hope he’s wrong. Have you had any ideas for how to stop the rounds getting jammed when the bolt draws back to let the next one into the chamber? Oh, it’s still raining, the place resembles a bog more than a battlefield.
Love,
Amanda

Dear Richard,
I’m writing to you from the infirmary now, there was a bit of a scuffle this morning and I took a scratch. It’s nothing really, but the colonel insisted I went to the infirmary to get it seen to. I like your solution to the jamming autorifle. I’m so proud of you little brother, now we have a weapon that might yet turn this war around.
Love,
Amanda

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by marleylilith

Eliza

Written by Lilith

Where cat meets girl...

Where cat meets girl…

She awoke with the taste of blood in her mouth, curled up in the scummiest corner of the alleyway and wrapped in a large crumpled blanket. Or was it a cloak? She lifted the fabric up and tried to get a better look at it, but something distracted her; her hands.

Her hands. She turned them over and over, trying to make sense of the opposable thumbs, the multiple joints of her fingers, and the softness of them. They were so useless! How was she meant to defend herself with these? Her arms seemed weaker, too, but she was reassured by the fur that still spread down from her shoulder to elbow to the back of her hands. She lifted the cloak off herself to get a better look at the rest of her body.

Her knees were bent the other way, for a start, and her feet seemed completely wrong – so long and flat! She only spent a few seconds noting the new prominence of her mammary glands, then craned her neck over her shoulder to see whether her tail was still there. It was, thank the Gods, and longer than ever.

Her eyes were struggling now with the low light in the alleyway, but her ears were still in the right position on top of her head, and as she twitched them experimentally she was happy to note that she could still hear everything she needed to. But there was something in the way of them… She lifted a hand to her head and lifted some of it up. Dark grey, shoulder length fur – no, hair. Human hair.

She was half woman, half cat. A Beastman.

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by Colette

The Battles of Sir Fluffs

Written by RicardoCC

Sir Fluffs, we salute you!: We tried to find a bear with a blue shield, but we ended up getting the next best thing – Twilight Link from LoZ.
Image Courtesy of Inkandscissors.com – go on, buy a bear!

The light of the full moon illuminated the bedroom of the small girl, who lay silently in her bed, tucked away under the confines of her quilt. With only her small head protruding, her shoulder-length blonde hair coated the majority of her bright pink pillow. Her button nose twitched, attempting to scratch at an internal itch without removing her arms from the comfort of her temporary cocoon.

“Good night, Sir Fluffs,” she whispered to a small, light brown teddy bear which sat upright on the pillow next to hers. A small blue plush shield was attached to his short, chunky left forearm and a blue plush sword in the finger-less hand of his right arm. The girl drifted off to sleep, a bright smile on her face.

A low tapping noise echoed through the room several minutes later. The noise came again, this time accompanied by an eerie scraping sound. The sound was interrupted by occasional bursts of laughter and chatter erupting from downstairs – where the girl’s parents seemed to be having a party of some kind. It came again, louder than before, and it only got louder. From the bottom of the girl’s wooden bed, three enormous lengths of grey, bony flesh topped off with black nails the length of a thirty-centimetre ruler, rose and wrapped around one of the four bedposts. Continue reading →

by marleylilith

The City of Koku

China’s Atlantis; the Lion City. Image courtesy of http://www.lovethesepics.com

Written by Lilith

Off the north eastern shores of the great continent of Silvera hides a marvel of engineering, a secret wonder which most only dream of seeing, and many believe to be nothing more than a myth. Contained within one huge air bubble at the bottom of the sea is a city, and that city is named Koku for the four brothers who built it. It is well maintained; fresh air runs through pipes that lead to the surface, and there are many ways to travel between the city and the world outside, though few choose to leave the security of their secret world. And the city itself is not just a marvel, but also a beauty. Tall, twisting towers reach up to the very peak of the bubble, and the glass of a thousand windows winks in the half-light; the only light that the bottom of the sea can get. Here, it is always dusk. Continue reading →