The serpent wrapped itself around my wrist like a piece of clothing, curling up and up to my shoulder. With my free arm I grabbed my broken, fallen sword and stabbed at the beast, but its skin was too tough to break under the pressure of a cracked weapon. My arm wasn’t, though, and it snapped with the pressure.

I fell to my knees and looked wildly for a weapon. The cave was damp, my eyes were te...

Rain drops pelted the back of her black hoodie, she’d not been prepared. Of course, her grandma had told her before she’d left for school. But that was nearly half a day ago. Rain wasn’t her weakness, school was.

Each and every day was hell. A little rain would not make that much of a difference. Soggy cloths over the continued bully if she’d taken the bus. Of course as she watched it cruse past ...

Two years ago, I watched my family be murdered for no reason. Mistaken identity. I looked at their corpses and threw my old life behind.

I found the best gunfighter in the country. Sobered him up. Paid him generously to teach me.

I was a rich girl with prospects of marriage and raising a family. I had never touched a gun. I believed that people were fundamentally good.

All of this had to ch...

Riverboat Junction was always a special place. For generations before colonization, the Wyandot fished for bony sweet fish in its rivulets. After Reconstruction, families of the enslaved settled on the rich soil and planted fruit trees. At the turn of the century their land was stolen and flooded for irrigation for the large commercial agriculture. Then after a little creative rebranding the metha...

'Well done Julie, you absolute superstar. You've saved that little boy.' Mitzi gushes whilst sloshing red wine into my obnoxiously large fish bowl glass.

'Well - it wasn't just me. It was a collaborative effort you know? When multidisciplinary teams communicate right. It works well. It's how it should be."

"Too right my darling. You've got all these teams - police, social workers, doctors, teacher...

i whispered words that i didn’t mean

and scraped the walls of my heart’s lining

with tears that burned like acid

beauty is pain, and it’s never placid

i balanced my heart on the tip of a pin

it was unstable, god it had been

a long time coming but now i felt

i could truly call myself

the slayer of monsters...

It had been a long time coming, but now I felt I could truly call myself the slayer of monster.

For years and years I had to tolerate the monster that betrayed my innocence. Not knowing how to deal with it I suffered for years. So many tears and outburst of anger, so many times taking my anger out others who didn’t deserve this unknown out of nowhere wrath of mine. This monster could not be tamed ...

I writhed under his grip. His breath smelled of whiskey and cigarettes, and spittle was dripping from his open mouth onto my forehead. I tried desperately to scream for help, but with his hands around my neck, all that managed to escape was a whimper.

“Now you’re really done for, kid”, he growled. “The numbers. Now.”

I was starting to black out. The ceiling was vignetted with black edges closin...

Blood dripped down my head as the creature pinned me against a tree and let out roar in my face and showed me it’s row upon rows of teeth. I could fell it’s warm breath upon me. The smell was horrible.

The monster stopped and let me go, and I fell to the ground. My sword was right in front of the monster and a dagger was attached to my belt. I wrapped my hands around the dagger and stood up. It ...

Since I was a child I knew something was terribly wrong with me, whether that be some unusual mental thing, or a physical change in my brain. People were different from me, or maybe, I was the different one? I felt odd and out of place for a little girl who was supposed to be just like everyone else. Whether my outlandish style and way of life caused that, or followed it, didn’t matter, as either ...