Meagan always painted her the same way: nude and spread-eagled on a bed of buttery pink flowers, red feathers sprouting from bare shoulders, cheeks flushed by pollen. The spectre of a sneeze dances in the endless, liminal space between the bridge of her nose and the oval of her lips. She is stunning in her…
Marty is maybe twenty people from the teal void that fills the humming doorframe when he waves to the woman with the clipboard. She is wearing a grey suit and her hair is cut short. She smiles as she comes over.“I don’t think I can do this,” he says. He keeps his voice low, but…
Harriet was going slowly along the road, avoiding putting her feet on any cracks in the pavement, when she heard the man screaming. It was a long, loud scream – the kind of scream you might call blood-curdling – and she stumbled to a halt. Setting her foot down just before a crack she looked…
My parents said I didn’t need to be afraid of the monsters in Lake Reema, because the Lady trapped them under ice. “That’s why we hold this festival,” they’d say and stamp the ice, before heading to the feasting table. It never worked. Each time they dragged me out onto the lake ice, I’d…
The end of a long, lonely year has arrived. But no one realises it apart from me. To everyone else, it has been just another Monday. The world is frozen like a painting. Leaves hover in mid-air, stuttering towards the ground while the neighbour’s stride unwinds at a glacial pace. My watch is stuck at…
The bell chimed as the front door swung open. My head snapped up from my crossword to find a man about my age with the most striking face and killer jawline. Fuck, that’s a shame. He wore a bomber jacket, jeans with a distressed knee, and black Chucks. From what I could tell, he bore…
The glade stretched out before me, bathed beneath a dappled azure sky. Flowers blossomed in the high grass, crimson poppies and sunshine flares of dandelions peering through thick tangles of green. The day was warm and the air was full of the scent of the forest, which waited, cloaked in shade, through a gap in…
Dalisay squeezed through the cluster of banyan trees the dwendehad told her to keep an eye out for. Then she grimaced. Past the curtains of their impenetrable vines, stood the severed waist of a woman. The manananggal must still be on the prowl. Dalisay’s mother used to terrorize her nights with tales about them. About…
Not again. On the day of the ceremony. Talk about bad timing. I stare at the barrier floating in front of me, willing it to go away. It stubbornly remains. It materialized when I got tangled trying to put on my formal armor. It always happens when I get angry or nervous, losing control in…
On the day Kudryavka met The Universe, she had an itchy nose. It had started the moment she stepped into the capsule. Something about the pressurised air always made her bristle, and the cramped space made all the vibrations louder against her skin. Her nose itched, and she resisted the urge to fidget, staying still…
