stevecook23

I knew I should never have agreed to go to the old Hickory mansion. I mean, good grief,  listen to how it sounds. Like something out of a children’s TV programme, or a bad horror flick. But at the time, it wasn’t about whether I was in some terrible cliché or even just trespassing. It was about finding the woman in the red dress. A little explanation. There were three of us sharing a roll-up round the back of Tesco the first time we saw her. Me, and Barry, and Lola. She was Barry’s girlfriend at the time, the source of the tobacco and the papers and the pixie-tampons – those little cotton filters you use when you

040 – Rated Sprinting for the inner chamber, Eve gasped out “Tic, what’s ahead?” Her boots echoed off the stone walls, undoubtedly announcing her presence to von Due, but that didn’t matter now. There was some sort of vivid blue light emanating from the doorway at the end of the corridor: it could already be too late. A humming sound was getting louder the closer she got. “I’m only picking up the energy ahead; it’s masking everything else,” Tic warbled. “It’s like staring into the sun- eek!” Suddenly he was frozen in mid-air, lightning crackling over him as he screeched

039 – Dreams An explosion rocked the city. A plume of flame and dusty mingled with black smoke roared out into the night, shaking the buildings to their foundations. Eve stopped running long enough to turn and look at the destruction as the smoke gushed out of the hole torn into the roof. The awe of the watching crowd of restaurant-goers turned to panic as pieces of terracotta tile, some needle-sharp and others bigger than Eve’s head, started to rain down onto the cobbles. They scattered, heading for inns or houses, sheds, anything to get away from the scene. Sidestepping into a nearby restaurant porch, Eve surveyed the scene, he

Eve took a deep breath, surveying the scene. Ahead, the stone bridge ended abruptly, but on either side there were metal railings, the remains of the previous expedition. The cold sandstone walls seemed to loom over her, just on the edge of the lanternlight, flickering shadows moving in the corners. She moved closer to the end of the bridge and looked down. The chamber seemed to plummet into blackness. The walls were bare, but the doors through which they had come were covered in an amazing sculpture; ten people with their mouths open, possibly amazed or awed. Possibly screaming. Eve took a step back from the sheer drop, hoping they weren&rsq

Abandoned Anila looked around, trying to pierce the darkness. The moon was hiding behind a thick blanket of clouds and every window that looked on to the village square was dark. “All the sensible people are in bed,” she muttered to herself, then gave a bitter laugh. She moved closer to the double doors of the large building she stood before, the writing that had once been painted on them worn away with the years. The handles were chained together and then secured with a large padlock that had long since grown rusty. With a final look around, Anila took out the small knife that she kept sheathed at the small of her back. Flipping

I recently discovered something that both annoyed me and made me feel slightly stupid. The word ‘segue’ is not pronounced ‘seeg’. It is, instead, pronounced ‘segway’. Now at this point, I really really hope that a few of you are thinking ‘the Segway; isn’t that just the wheeled alternative to walking around that debuted in the early noughties?’ Well, sadly, no. It turns out that segway is the correct pronunciation of the word segue, which means to move seamlessly from one topic to another. The thing is, I was never vagway about how to pronounce segway. I always pronounced it the seeg wa

"It broke." I stared at Jenick for a moment, marvelling at his calmness. Then I really looked; his eyes were a little too focused, as if willing me to accept the lie. "What do you mean, 'It broke'? You were eight hundred feet down, oxygen leaking out; that line didn't just break." I turned the smooth air-hose over in my hands. "What I said. It just broke. And then I swam back up to the surface." He shrugged and turned away. "No biggie." I found the break; a single line scored into the hose, large enough to start a deadly oxygen leak; somehow he had made it back to the surface without any panic or, apparently, any need to inform us about it.

The chamber was almost featureless. A darkness shrouded the whole area except for one area in the middle, where a green plant grew. It was immense, five enormous seed-pods hanging from its branches. The leaves of the plant were broad and a deep green, and small flowers sat at each of the places where the pods joined the main plant. The light that illuminated the plant seemed to have no source, or perhaps more appropriately the plant was the source. Four of the pods were empty, husks apparently blown open from the inside. The final one had some sort of wriggling form inside it; the pod was green, rapidly becoming brown as whatever was propaga