It started with a feeling. An itching between my shoulder blades as though someone was watching me. Someone nearby. Someone bad.

Anyone else might have shrugged it off, told themselves not to be so paranoid, but I was not 'anyone else'. I was me and I had learned long ago not to ignore this feeling. I kept walking, eyes flicking right and left, muscles tense, adrenaline fizzing.…

I'd never known such darkness.  It was complete.  Like being swallowed whole by some huge horrible creature.

You know that feeling when you wake up in a strange place and you don't know where you are for a few seconds?  It was like that.  I was panic-stricken.  I told myself the feeling would soon pass.  A familiar pair of curtains or a wall or something would come into…

"If I release you, will you calm down?" Nick shouted.

The man trapped in the headlock didn't respond. 

"I said:'If I let you go, will you calm down?!'"

Nick tightened his grip, stopping the air from reaching the man's lungs. Finally, as Nick wrenched…

When it first arrived nobody could understand the message.

It came in a series of electronic pulses, a binary code that could only be interpreted by the world’s most powerful computers. It was unscrambled into a series of mathematical codes, each more complex than the last, that could only in turn be read by the sharpest of minds. Yet even those scientists lacked insight to…

‘I knew you’d be cold,’ Mum called after me.  ‘You should’ve worn the new coat we got you.’

The New Coat! It was shiny, red, and so puffy that my arms stuck out at right angles. ‘It makes me look like a teapot!’  I yelled, my breath coming out in clouds.

Dad groaned. ‘It’s a walk in the…

I looked out across the moor.

There wasn’t much to see. Yellowish, springy grass. Clumps of heather and gorse. Small pools stained brown by peat. 

This was my first time up here alone. Dad didn’t like me coming up here at all, even if he was with me.…

What about Poppy

Eleven year old Allie has a lovely cat, who she loves, called Poppy but mum and dad have decided they’re all going to move out of the city to the countryside where dad has a new job. Allie’s quite worried about having lots of new friends and a new school but then the day before they leave Grandma says “What about Poppy? Cats don’t like moving,…

The house was very old, full of shadowy corners, quite unlike the simple two-up, two-down where Sam and his family had lived for so many years. But after Dad was gone, Mum said she wanted to move closer to Carlisle, to be near her parents and this place was all they could afford. It was stuck out in the middle of nowhere, looking like something from another time. Mum told him that she was thrilled with the place, it should have been much…

For years we had enjoyed beef in so many different ways. From juicy burgers to steaks and mince, here was a meat that formed a central part of our diets. Now, everything had changed. The cattle were fighting back. They were armed and exceptionally dangerous.

Dads are hopeless.  Mine must think I'm a five-year old.  He gave me a bucket and spade when we went to the beach.  A bucket and spade!  He doesn't realise that anything without a screen is seriously useless.  When he bought them, he was probably thinking back to his own youth when they didn't have things with keypads and screens.  I think they wrote on stone tablets or something.  Anyway, what can you do with a bucket and spade in the…

Lauren McGinley was afraid of monsters. She saw them everywhere.

 ‘Don't be silly,’ her parents told her. ‘Monsters don't exist.’

 ‘Yes, they do!’ Lauren told them back. ‘There’s one!’ 

 Lauren pointed at a slightly…

Jack watched the waves crashing over the sea wall.

“Never seen anything like it,” his dad said. “That one’s as high as two houses, look.” 

The water bounced on to the promenade and then raced back to the sand below only to be met by another wave. …

Messages through time

Deep in a dungeon

Lives a stranger, all alone…

Note from Tony - “Notice the pattern of the opening lines and try to follow it.

There are three rhyming lines of equal length to each verse and then a fourth line which is the same every time - …

That's nothing.

Get this:

I'm not pulling your leg

I'm not having you on

It really kicked off

The minute you'd gone

It's a pity you went

And missed the event

We did what we could

To try to prevent it

But you should have seen it

I think that she meant it…

Bottled up

Infuse dialogue with furnaced sand and tie tightly

Submerged words are worthless…

Mixed Messages

I should have sent a message in a bottle

Not a rabbit in a jar,…

The Story of Emily Price

There once was a girl named Emily Price

Whose eyes were blue and cold as ice.…

Waking up, sprawled on the roof of a skyscraper, would be enough to make most people freak out. Gazing down eighty floors at the teaming streets of London would be enough of a surprise to make the average teenager's leap. When Deanna Okwuru's eyes fluttered open that Monday morning, she had another shock. As her gaze travelled down her arm, she saw tawny feathers sprouting from her arms, talons curving from her usually manicured fingernails,…

The train had come to a halt. The snow whirled and stung their faces.'Line's blocked.' announced the guard gloomily. 'Can't stay here. We'll freeze. We'll have to walk.Come on.' Inverness was behind them, and although she could no longer see the hills of the Great Glen, she could sense them, looming,menacing. She didn't like this place. Never had. 'What - you mean walk to Laggan? In this?'…