When I arrived, the hyena was circling him silently, and the silence was what bothered me the most. It should be cackling. But it was just quiet. I'd seen enough hyenas hunting to know that this was wrong.
I looked at my options, felt out with all my senses to see what living creatures were nearby. Posessing the photographer was no good, since he clearly had no weapons and not much physical strength, even with my intellect of fighting capabilities. If I possessed the hyena, if The Shadow was already inside (and I knew it was, no hyena was that...
100 feet away I watched the smugglers struggle to get over the jagged stones, collapse onto the wet sand, expel salt water from their lungs and pray to whatever gods they believed they had reached shore alive.
Frank De Libre was the youngest and most sober on the galleon. Swimming for freedom, literally. Kidnapped two years beforehand from his parent's home, watched his tutor die trying to save him.
I could see everything as the images appeared like a slide show. This was the fifth time I had undergone hypnosis and finally my lifetime of phobias had been explained.
Coincidentally,...
Matilda was the first woman he'd ever dated that had been a cat before surgery. She told him at the end of the third outing, to the Italian restaurant, a night of sexual tension, sweaty waiters, mixed up menus and his clumsiness knocking over the carafe of white wine over her lap. She smiled, pink lipstick still intact after a meal of coiled pasta and mince. No leaping up off the chair in horror, running to the bathroom, telling him to F O and never call again.
Matilda held his arm as they left the restaurant and stood looking over...
Vanquished.
I was confused. This isn't how I expected the novel to end. Who committed the crime? Where was the last chapter with the explanation, the satisfying ending the reader could ponder on when the final lines had been read?
This book looked identical to the others in the bookshop the next day but twenty pages were missing at the back. I was waiting in line to exchange the book when I had a strong mysterious feeling not to.
Returning home I sat on the battered red leather sofa and opened the last page again.
More words than I expected....
The air was crisp and cold the morning of the discovery. Shouldering his way through the greeness, he hugged his pack to him.
Anthony had just left home on his first journey into adulthood. Every Minor on their 18th birthday had to venture into the world and bring back something from the world of the big humans.
Branches scratched at him, thorns stuck him, but he was determined. Just something in his gut told him that his worthiness was in this direction.
Suddenly the trees parted and beyond them was a great depression in the woodlands, and in its...
The last I saw of the angel was at sunrise yesterday. I knew that one day I'd meet him again, the certainty was so strong that the actual date and time felt on the tip of my tongue. Morgan is the name he gave me. Morgan Freemantle. He appeared at my side just when I needed some one the most, when my sister collapsed on our long walk away from our home, the abuse, neglect.
As I was comforting her, smoothing her long blond hair away from her sweating face, telling her everything would be ok even though we were...
'Where the bloody hell are you?' asked Colin as I picked up the phone. 'I've been calling all day. I'm with John and Sarah at the pub, we're waiting for you.'
'Don't you dare speak to me like that Col, I'm fed up of it. Why do you think I'm not answering.' Then I let him have it. Months of frustration at his obsessive calls, controlling nature and his habit of always turning up wherever or whoever I was with. On a first date....that didn't put Col off. He'd try and sit down with us. Making love early in the...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. That's what she told me most days and as normal, I ignored her. I presumed she was talking about her reflection who she believed another person, a friend. Dementia steals the life force. She was no longer the woman I knew anymore, just a small petulant child to take care of. One that could look sweet and innocent but could take a knife to me if she fancied. She spent all day in her bedroom talking to the mirror, packing and unpacking strange old suitcases, oblivious to the fact she was...
The audience stared open mouthed at me. A skinny young woman with short spiked white hair, low cut black top and jeans sat on the red sofa in place of the stuffed panda.
All I'd asked them to do was to shut their eyes for a second. I didn't cover, block or darken any part of the stage. The girl literally appeared from nowhere. Time lapsed before they broke out in wild applause, whistles, foot stamping. I imagined the tweets, Facebook comments, illegal videos uploaded onto the internet, journalists wanting to make their mark with this extraordinary story. Not that...
It wasn't easy to stack the gold bars in the cellar. Very heavy. I kept one in my bedroom so I could look at it whenever I wanted. Part of me was trying to warn there was something strange going on, another (the greedy part) knew that it was synchroncity that worked this for me.
Cousin Marty told me about the new shop between the Chinese Grocery store and the old-fashioned chemist. Strange as I'd never noticed the shop even though it was supposed to have been there for the last month. Marty showed me the rare whisky he'd bought,...