He set the plate before her. She forced a smile, painted lips curving upwards to reveal tips of white teeth. This was his proposal, the setting down of that plate. If she refused to eat, she could leave whenever she wanted without fuss. If she chose to taste of his food, then his actions would be without consequence.

"Are you going to eat?" He asked, sitting down opposite her and picking up his wine glass by the stem with long fingers.
"Are you not?" She replies, voice quiet and on the point of breaking over every sound.
"This is for...

It was the fall that surprised me the most. The fact that it took so long that I could actually be afraid of the action of falling. The wind was stinging my face and making my eyes water, I was screaming but the noise of the explosion had taken out my hearing. The people strapped in around me were mere shadows, forms with fuzzy outlines and indiscernible features, mouths open in silent noise.

I forced my head back round, my throat filling with bile as the ground suddenly rushed up to meet us, my fingers twisting in the belt around...

Ten! The crowd rose their voices to join the leader. Nine!Feet were stamped, hands raised in celebration. Eight! Faces were upturned towards Big Ben, the hands counting their lives. Seven! Some had tears beginning to roll down their cheeks. Six! Someone was screaming, but the sound was muffled by the bodies. Five! The mass chanting, the crowd undulating back and forth. Four! Liquid spattered down, someone's beer bottle flying out over the crowd, still full. Three! The chanting was getting louder. Two! Everyone was suddenly still. One. It was a whisper, Big Ben rang out as the hands came together...

They gathered in the woods. Huddled together, shoulders pressed against each other for warm and support and that deep basic desire for some sort of human contact.
"It's good to see you again John," an unclean, wirey man nodded to his fellow and they clapsed hands.
"You too. Have you news?"
"None. There hasn't been much activity the past month." The man nodded grimly as he listened.
"One of our nests got hit, we lost a few, but the rest of us are fine."
"How about the rest of you?" The other members of the circle, three men and one...

Pleasure. Burn. They're the only two words on the whole page - in the whole book if he was honest - that he had read and actually remembered. The rest was a jumble of names, bad descriptions, inplausible mixes of action and consequence.

Pleasure, the word just rolled off the tongue, almost like a cat unfurling itself and stretching lazily, purring as it spots some new distraction.

Burn, more akin to an explosion, though with the same purring quality, it flooded into his ears a lot more passionately than pleasure did, filled his mind with images, tortorous landscapes with dark...

She cradled the faun's head as it mewed pathetically, legs shaking as it attempted to get up.
"Shh," she cooed to it softly, running her hands down it's glossy coat.
"What is it?" A small voice spoke behind her, making her turn and open up her arms to the small girl stood nervously at the edge of the clearing.
"That's a baby deer." Another voice answered, the familiar form of her husband appearing behind the small child. "It's the first one I've seen for around forty years."
"Are they from before the war?" The small girl asked as she approached...

The day after tomorrow, this will all be over.

"You always say that," she whispers, as she tucks her feet up under herself and wraps her arms around her knees.

"One day it'll be true." He answers, heavy boots clunking on the wooden floorboards as he made his way over to the girl. "I got you something to eat." He handed her a sandwich and leant against the wall to watch her.

"How many days has it been?"
"It would be easier to tell you in weeks."
"Just let me go, please." They had discussed this many times, the talk...

She opened the envelope and screamed. The paper didn't so much as drop to the floor as simply fall apart in her hands, clear liquid eating its way out of the corners and seeping everywhere, floor, clothes skin.

She screamed again as the contents of the envelope liquidated the very flesh from her hands. She turned sharply as the back door banged, meeting the horrified eyes of her husband through a blur of tears.

"Holy fuck," was all that he whispered as he grabbed the 'phone from the side and dialled 999, barking orders for an ambulance.

"Why would they...

The lamp wouldn't turn on.

Goddamn electricity company, Rob grumbled to himself, angrily flicked the switch a few more times just to make sure. This was the third power cut they had had this week, and it wasn't exactly the warmest of months to be sitting in a house at night. And without light flooding the streets and houses, the chance of an attack increased by about a thousand percent.

Night was falling, most people were already in their houses, door and windows securely bolted and nailed shut, wooden shutters and planks covering every possible entrance. Rob shut his own...

Write as you please,
In six minutes,
Like a breeze.

I fear that,
Without a prompt,
The words won't flow,
Compet-
ently.

So I'll leave you this poem,
With it's oddities and misrhymes,
Mismatched verse and rhythms,
Lines that run out of time.

Words that make no sense,
Lines that are too dense,
And of course you must remember,
In this chilly month of September,
That poetry doesn't have to rhyme.