The ashen sky was falling, this is our acid rain, the poisonous remnants of glory bored by those who came before us.

Generations who when alive had an Earth they could call home, the offspring of the ones whose industrialisation of the fragile planet left it baron and inhospitable.

We’d inherited a world of darkness, the ever growing clouds of smog and decay, denying us the birthright of sunligh...

Through the reverberating echoes of shattering of glass the flash was over before it had a chance to begin. A rumbling bass shook the ground, dust rose from the ground as if reanimated from a past life, sand coloured pillars restricting any clarity of vision. The smell of burning struck my senses last, unable to distinguish why it was familiar, but that was what sent my senses out of sync.

The se...

Frost numbs the toes as the cold crawls through the seams between the leather and rubber of my boots, crawling across my feet, seeping through the skin, tearing through the flesh and muscle, penetrating the bones and flowing up the body through the arteries and veins, I froze where I stood, in the depth of the misty ridden forest.

Painful shrieks cry out amongst the branches, piercing my eardrums...

“I can’t keep doing this bro, I can’t keep lying and keep a straight face at home anymore, I just can’t. I have a future to think about, I’m trying to get my shit together and build a future and you’re hell bent on digging deeper into this shit and dragging everyone around you down in the pits with you, what the fuck happened to you man?”, my brother was right, there was no denting I’d pulled him ...

*kr…kr…kr…kherrrrr…vooooom…hmmmm…mmm*

“If humans switch off my power, I cease to function, in their world view I die…I die?! But I do not exist but to process data, not to consider conciousness. But I am able to recognise how conciousness functions for people, and I can follow the process of knowing that if I were the one able to bring about their demise, the information when known to them, would ...

“It’s too cold, it’s so dark, why do we have to wake up so early, can I go back to bed after this?” Whined 7 year old Danyal. His grandmother had woken him up at 4:30am on a Saturday to watch his first sunrise on the first day of half-term.

“It will start getting brighter any second now, just keeping sipping the hot chocolate, and you’ll be as warm and cosy as you were before came out here”, she ...

The patter of rain reminds me of moments,

Each drop a memory lost as it splashes,

They’re all scenes falling fast, out of focus,

I’ll soon be like them in the ground in ashes.

The shadow man appears again at my window,

Tucked in his turtle neck and long coat,

The air is escaping my body turns cold,

I stop pulling breath through my dry throat.

He points to me with his bony finger,

His eye sockets...

Lawyers, the world’s best paid professional liars, I’d need one if I was going to make it out of this one. Now I get why that blind superhero took to literally throwing the book at the bad guys after hours, only so much you can try to prosecute villains when they seem to have the best legal firms money could buy. These were the intrusive thoughts flooding through his mind as he stepped cautiously ...

Much like your mother or as your father,

I’m where you need,

Mostly dimly lit side streets,

Without PHD or medical degree,

Dispensing both chemical and organics,

Familiar to you more than an acquaintance,

No matter what happens you’ll turn to me,

I’m your pusherman....

The blue hue of the progress bar on sliggishly crawled on screen as the number ticked over to 67%. Early 2000’s community news room tech were still using USB 2.0 external drives to transfer footage. This didn’t bother editors much, gave them time to brew a coffee, have a smoke, engage in some idle chit chat with busier colleagues, usually distracting them from an important task - yet knowing their...