Love is the lie that keeps us alive, At its hand we feast, beg, borrow, steal To keep us forever full. Deprived we starve to reclaim it so Desperation turns to recklessness. Animals without cause for reason We take. Take. Take What isn’t ours. Before we realise we have done it again The cycle is reborn

Recognise the last year taking off its hat all matters will work themselves out. Smile, your beautiful world's reimagined . Think not of the before but the now, marvel at the new age. This moment is the time to aim higher, love deeper, see art the other way around and laugh.
Forge paths from the sky to the deep, let pale magic unlock closed doors. Make a hundred mistakes. Simply live. Launch into a new story and see where it takes you...

Just like that, most people continued with their lives as if the clock had only temporarily stopped rather than having been frozen. I did not. I was stuck in a time loop and her parents began to move anti-clockwise. Her parents frantically searched through the past to try and uncover where she might be, whereas I kept going back to the police, as well as the internet, asking every possible question there was to ask and enforcing the importance of finding her.

I eventually came to the cold realisation that no one, other than myself and her family, cared about her or was putting in enough effort to track her down. I was going to have to take on the role of Sherlock and find her myself. I was going to start by logging on to her social media accounts, however I suddenly remembered that she deleted them 6 months ago as part of the new mental wellness regime she began.

I actually started by looking through her room, with her parents permission, but had no luck. I spent 2 days looking before I became overwhelmed by the feelings that come with failure. I spent the next day in my room, playing all of the video games we used to play. I began playing sims 4 when it hit me, the river, we always go there when we have a lot on our minds. I ran over to the backside and there she was...

The clock struck midnight and she realised she had to sprint to the coach before the spell broke otherwise he would uncover her stereotypically female background. She reached the 200 steps and shouted “who the hell thought 200 steps was a good idea? I’m in heels!” Thinking on her feet, she reached under her extremely puffy dress, slipped off shoes and picked them up before running down the steps barefoot, all the while saying “this dress is too big, I literally can’t see the steps in front of me, I’m going to fall” Sure enough she did.

Crash! She tripped and the shoes broke into thousands of tiny little pieces. She felt a sharp pain in her hand, when she looked down she saw pieces of glass stuck there and blood beginning too ooze out of her skin. The coachman ran up the steps to help her and she was inside the coach when the prince turned up.

“Damn it! She’s leaving, I’ve fallen in love with a girl I’ve just met and she’s leaving...I will never recover from this, hello darkness my old friend...” the prince cried. It was at that moment that Josephine happened to walk by, he looked over at her, she stared back and beckoned him over. Within minutes he was down on one knee and she said yes.

As for Cinderella, she realised that she wasn’t in love with the Prince because they had just met each other at the ball and in that time, hadn’t spoken to each other once. She also realised that heels in general were not a good idea.

When she reached her house, she dealt with her hand and decided that enough was enough. She was done with people pushing her around and making decisions on her behalf, tonight she had followed her own path and she felt more confident in herself (even though broken glass was a consequence).

She confronted her evil stepmother and told her piggish stepsisters where to go. Afterwards she took what little belongings she had and headed into town. It was there that she ended up being offered an apprenticeship behind the bar of a local tavern due to her kitchen skills and quick wit.

So what happened afterwards? The evil stepmother and co are still trying to figure out how to run a house, the Prince got married to Josephine in August, which he regretted as she showed her true colours after the wedding night and Cinderella became head bar woman at the Mother Goose tavern.

She was on the streets holding a sign that said “kicked out of home because came out as gay, need a safe place to sleep, please help.” He saw her and offered her a place to stay over the Christmas holidays, to which she said yes after making sure he was not going to harm her. Three years later, she is off the streets, they are best friends and they celebrate Christmas together every year.

Hi Diary, Jingle here. The run up to Christmas is always hectic down at the workshop, everything changes and picks up speed. First of all, the head elf becomes increasingly more lax about uniform standards but incredibly strict about every other rule. The other day Crackle stumbled in half asleep, with his hat missing and his striped knee-high socks at different lengths and he didn’t even get a warning. That same day Flogo turned up half an hour late because he accidentally overslept and the head elf was so furious that he made him stay 5 hours later than usual.

If you couldn’t already tell, sleep becomes a major problem for us elves in December because we always run behind in gift production. Why? Because we spend most of the year taking it chill and generally underestimating how much time we have to create the toys, by the time we reach November we pick up the pace slightly but aren’t too fussed and in December we are all in a major panic! Every year we say we will start early and every single year we run into the same problem.

At this point you are probably wondering where Santa is in all of this? Unsurprisingly he is “training”, which means he’s either down the nearest pub trying to build up his alcohol tolerance so he can drink all of the booze people leave for him and still be able to function enough to drive a sleigh or he’s eating everything in sight so he can eat everything people up out for him without getting sick. His husband is most likely with him, cheering him on by shouting “Yass queen sleigh!”

I’m writing this whilst I should be sleeping, I’m going to regret this in the morning but for now, I’m justifying by saying that I need to vent because there’s no one in the workshop I can talk to. (Note to elf: read up on psychology and sociology)

I hate my job, it’s too repetitive, I need some variety in my life. I work in letter response. you thought Santa responded to all of his letters? As if! I sit there all day responding to people who write self absorbed letters and who add something like “world peace” to their wish list just to clear their guilty conscience. News flash, if you want to clear your conscience, don’t write a letter and send it to us, go and see a fake Santa and tell him your long list of wants. By doing that, not only are you putting a human in a job but also letting me fulfil my dream of being a toy designer (which is what I’m actually trained in)

I would explain more about why I’m doing a job I’m not qualified to do but that’s an entire entry in itself. I want to get a full two hours of sleep before my shift and be at my desk on time so that’s all for now.

He is the key. The key to my freedom. I see him from across the bar drinking a dry martini, there’s no one with him and to be honest, he looks utterly drained. His suit is black with gold lace details, his hair slicked back to make him look like a gangster, he is definitely covered in money. I flick my golden hair back and strut towards him, deliberately exaggerating all of my feminine wiles which I know he won’t be able to resist. I sit at the stool next to him and the performance begins, I adorn the saddest face I can create, I pretend to suddenly notice that my bag has been opened by “someone else” and proceed to silently cry.

He leans over and asks me what happened so I tell him that I have been mugged so I no longer have the money to afford a cab back home, let alone a drink. He buys me a Bloody Mary and I begin the usual chat up routine, by the end of my spiel he insists on driving me home. During the drive, I lift up certain parts of my dress “accidentally” and observe the look on his face as he tries to defy his lust filled urges. At this stage, I fake a phone call from a room mate and pretty cry all over again. He asks me what’s wrong and I tell him that my room mate has locked me out of our shared for some obscure reason, as a result he offers to take me to his mansion. I gush but tell him that I wouldn’t want to impose, he insists so I say yes. He has fallen into my trap.

He wants to take me on a grand tour of his house, I suggest that he takes me on a grand tour of his bedroom and things only get better from there...

By the time I’m finished with him, he will be ruined. I slip out of bed and replace my body with a pillow, he barely stirs. I discover he’s a recent bachelor so my job is automatically made easier, I take whatever I can get a hold of: wallets and jewellery and slip them into the hidden pockets in my dress. I then wake up the sleeping butler and ask him to call me a cab. When the cab arrives, I take it all the way to 7th Avenue and tip the driver with measly change as to not arouse suspicion. I then head over to the nearest coach station and board a coach to Ohio.

A few days later, I read a news report about the man. The tabloids claim that the valuables that “supposedly” went missing were part of his own insurance scam and that he may be facing jail time for fraud. That same day, I find myself at a bar. I see her from across the bar drinking a cocktail,there’s no one with her...