She pulled her red gown high over her head, trying to shield herself from the oncoming terror, but to no avail. The sheer vivid colour of the gown made her stand out from the bustling crowds, no matter how much she tried to huddle into the dank doorway of the closed shop.
"Please let me in," She whispered, scratching desperately on the chipped wooden panelling, "please." Tears started to fall down her cheeks as she heard the heavy footsteps of her pursuers getting closer and closer, the people around her seeming not to notice her distress.

Suddenly the door creaked...

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I met him on the beach. He sat, fully clothed, legs ajar with a cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth, ash dropping sullenly, almost petulantly into the faded crotch of his blue jeans. His eyes were a-glaze, his raybans askew and he hadn’t seem to notice me sitting down beside him.

It was night. Behind us various Reggaeton tunes blared from various speakers, set outside the rows and rows of cocktail shacks at the side of the beach, all selling cheap and strong and just how we liked to drink it. The sky was jet and pinpricked with...

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Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.

My lost daughter. Well, actually that isn't who she was, but as soon as I first saw her I convinced myself it was. I always do.

So far there had been sixty five possibilities.

John, my second husband was a patient man. Had to be. He was rich so indulged me. Paid for our trips round the world whenever there was a possible sighting. Gave me hope when everyone tried to convince me it was time to grieve, not continue searching.

Suzie would be fifteen now....

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"Constellation of freckles."

I made a face. "Oh, that's going on the list."

She nodded with a degree of authority - she hadn't needed me to tell her it belonged on our list of paticularly purple prose, our list of phrases that were to be avoided at all costs.

"Can you even get a constellation of freckles?"

"Well, of course you can, it's an arrangement - it's the implication I resent. That freckles are like stars - who'd have starry freckles? You can't wish on a freckle."

"You could. I think that could be quite a romantic scene."

"Depends on...

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"What the hell kind of superhero costume is that?!" My dad was yelling so loud I could hear him from my room. When the blue cow suit had appeared, I'd been so excited. My brother Eddie hadn't gotten his disguise until he was twelve. Mom's quiet reply made me feel a little less anxious but it didn't seem to have much effect on Dad.

"Kendall, I'm sure it's something he'll grow into. Eight is awfully young for his powers so there's plenty of time-"

"Grow into? Who's going to take a blue cow with fangs seriously? I can see the...

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Kenya. She said her name was Kenya.

And then she laughed. I couldn't hear it, not over the music in the bar, not over the shouting of everyone around us. But I saw the laugh, starting in her stomach, and traveling up and out of her mouth.

She leaned closer and said that her parents had grown up with Black Power and Africa awareness, and decided to name her Kenya. That they had grounded her the first time she straightened her hair.

Her voice, the part of her voice I could hear, had a huskiness to it that really appealed...

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"Travel light."
"But take everything with you."
A murmur of confusion ran across the gathered crowd.
"That will only slow us down!" The young man who had been such a cool head through all of their troubles spoke firmly, with an authority far greater than his age would normally have allowed.
"We can't allow them to find anything which they could use against us." The town drunk retaliated. Or at least, that was all he had been, until the shadow began to cross the land and the war drums had begun to beat once more, since then, he had been...

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Beer - Bier - l'alcool - it's all you really wanted

You are just so damn cold, inside and out. First day of November and you wake up to snowfall. All day you stayed inside trying to forget things: forget to find a job, forget to write up resumés, forget to eat, forget to follow through. But now you're outside and it's dark; it's been dark since 17:00. You're outside and it's cold; temperatures dropping to 2°c today. Guten Morgen the world said and Guten Nacht you told yourself. The damn cold just won't go away, the umbrella doesn't hide...

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I had a dream the other night. We were sitting alone in our rooms, all of us, every single one, when suddenly —

The walls just fell away. There was no sound, no pyrotechnics; with a quiet resignation, all the matter in the world, except for our warm, breathing bodies, fell down into the void, leaving us floating purposelessly, naked.

And we all looked at each other, as the psychic frameworks that we etched into the streets, into our homes – our routines, our beaten paths, all the conventions that existed not in the world, but in the world as...

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Away.

He'd escaped.

And not in the usual way.

Home from school at 7:30pm, another long day of detention for crimes uncommitted (who ever did anything really deserving detention – and when has detention been worse than the alternative. Questions he wrestled with with his head on his desk) – home long after sunset, he pressed his head against his pillow and cried.

The tears awoke the empathy of the waters in the room. His fishbowl grew stormy. A glass of water shuddered with tsunami. The poster of the ship on the wall erupted in gale and he could feel the lash...

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