You know, it’s funny really. In a maximum-security prison, filled with murderers and rapists, the worst thing they can do to you is leave you completely alone. Solitary confinement. The human brain needs input, or it quickly descends into horrifying madness of its own company. In 2086 when the world…

For the past 30 days, at exactly 2:34 I’ve been awoken by a child screaming. Every single night, for 30 nights. I would say the child is around 5 or 6 years old and a female. Living in a small neighbourhood I know everyone who lives here. I could list…

My son Thomas vanished on 30th November 2004. He was 12 and had been playing football in our front garden when he disappeared off the face of the Earth. There was no media circus for Thomas, despite my best efforts to get his case some attention. He wasn’t at a…

My wife, a spoiled only-child to wealthy parents living in rural New York. We’d been married for eight months at the time and things could not have been going better. We had a house, great careers, and a couple of cars to really sew in the American dream. We’d been…

I have heterochromia. My mom has it too, only hers is sectoral heterochromia. A part of her left eye is brown while most of it is blue. Mine’s complete. My right eye is brown, the left is blue. As a kid I’d get the most excited reaction out of the…

Janelle and I couldn’t get enough of each other in the beginning. We were young and insatiable, attached at the hip in every way. When I finally proposed, she responded with a tearful yes, but soon she began asking her own question; one I was less eager to answer. She’d…

George yawned and fidgeted on the carpet. The light from my bedside lamp caught his blonde hair and made it shine like a halo. He twirled a lock from his fringe around his index finger, let it snap back into place, then started twirling it again. The kid looked bored…

Raucous music shook the window shutters as people paraded past, shouting and singing in memory of those they lost to the other world. Every year, on El Dia de Muertos, my small dilapidated shop shook. It was on the ground floor of a building so old the thundering footsteps outside…

When did you realise you’d forgotten it? I’m guessing you didn’t just smack your forehead and exclaim ‘damn’ apropos of nothing. The realisation probably didn’t dawn on you spontaneously. More likely, you reached for your phone, pawing open your pocket or handbag, and were momentarily confused by it not being…