The park held all my best memories of childhood.

Through the short-cut horsegrass my friends and I would run without a care, up and down the slope that led into the beckoning woods.

In the ragged bushes and sharp brambles we would play, crawling like army soldiers through barbed wire, hiding like animals from each other.

All the while the woods watched, looming over all.

Tall, straight trees a...

There are many stories about the Red Hood.

Well acclaimed is her viciousness in battle, her cleverness in developing the W.O.L.F. virus that can hack any behemoth in minutes, her fearlessness as she rides her stolen vehicles into battle.

But few tell the story of when she was a girl, living on the outskirts, scraping by as many of us do.

She was working for the rebellion even then, so they say,...

It’s quiet.

That’s the first thing you notice, the first thing that creeps up the back of your skull and makes you wonder if something is wrong.

A busy shopping centre like this should be loud, no matter how late into the night.

Now the only thing that fills the eerie silence is the faint buzz of electricity and the hum of the air-conditioning. The bustle and regular sounds of people somehow sl...

Betty was the only one uncertain about the creek when Tom suggested it. She went anyway, of course.

After school the four of them walked until they found the creek - the first time for Betty and Kai and Jane, second time for Tom - finding a spot where the greenery was thick and there was an old log to sit on.

They made that their spot. Nobody went to the creek near the sparkling water and the ro...

“Aren’t they gorgeous?” Sel asked, as soon as they returned home. Cteno had been in the middle of eating her lunch when the knock at the door came, and just slowly munched on her sandwich as she looked over their shoulder at the creature in tow. The creature at their heels looked almost like a starved dog, long and scrawny and limbs crouching as it walked, wreathed with thick black fur that gliste...

It began as all bad days do: with a restless itch in the back of his mind like a forewarning.

You’d think so long of having such in tune intuition would have helped him pick up when something bad was coming, but all he did was shake his head in a daze, smooth the prickling fur on the back of his neck, and set about his day.

Even when storm clouds dragged in across the sky and brought a dampener ...