Writing Collection

In the Summer of 1929, Cresthill was a town thriving off its recently discovered affluence of coal. It was July 5 th , the beginning of a long day’s work down in the mines, and the foreman of the mine was first to arrive on site. He was greeted by a grisly scene; led in the entrance to the mine was the body of Tommy Gavinski, one of the youngest workers at the mine. The boy was sprawled on the floor, lying on his front. His shoes were missing, and his clothes were torn, but as the foreman’s eyes cast up to the boy’s head, there wasn’t much to see; above Tommy’s shoulders was a mess of blood, splintered bone and what remained of his brain. Cutting straight through the gore was a pickaxe, caked in blood, struck so hard into the ground it remained upright unsupported. Leading up to the mine there was only two sets of footprints – belonging to the foreman and Tommy – but leading away from the body, deep into the mine, was a set of bloody footprints. In the weeks following the incident,

It was late Tuesday night and Dakota along with her parents were driving home from school; returning from an especially disappointing parents evening filled to the brim with comments on her declining grades. She looked up out of the window, watching a full moon rise high in the sky and light up the trees and foliage that lined the road. They whipped past her eyes a blur of green and brown shapes. Finally drawing her attention back to inside the car, she noticed she was tapping her heel in her foot well, agitated by the bickering resonating from the seats in front of her; her father was borderline screaming at her mother making Dakota’s chest tighten and tremble with anger. “This is your fault, it’s not my job to look after that brat.” His voice was elevated and made Dakota’s mother look away with tears in her eyes. “I’m sat right here, dickhead .” She mumbled under her breath from the back seat . “What the hell was that?” Unfortunately, her father’s surprisingly good hearing

Jesse was stood in his house, facing his closed front door, forehead resting against its surface. Letting out a frustrated sigh, he closed his eyes and imagined himself standing up straight. He imagined himself swinging open the door and rushing out; calling out to the person who was now walking away down the street, probably already halfway to their car. He imagined himself running up, grabbing their hand, explaining everything while he fought away the tears. He imagined what it would have been like if he had done that an hour ago - while he still had the chance. But he hadn’t. He didn’t even try to stop the one person he truly loved from storming out. He just stood and watched the door slam, leaving him to an empty house. Jesse turned around, taking his head away from the door, fighting back the real tears in his eyes.

When I heard the gunshot, I knew it was over. I could almost imagine the smell of the smoke escaping the barrel, tingling in my nose. Listening to the conversation had been gut-wrenching. There was nothing I could do, nothing at all, except listen and wait. Tearing the headset away from my head I was up on my feet and running before I knew what I was doing. I was probably one of the first to know the extent of the situation, to know exactly what happened. In short, people got hurt, people died, but in the worst way possible we won. If you can even call what happened ‘winning’, the mission was still a success; the threat was eliminated. In even simpler terms: three people entered that room alive, and now, there was only one still breathing. I had to step over bodies and weave past the stray officer or paramedic to reach the end of the corridor, but even once I reached a junction I didn’t need telling where to go, all I had to do was follow the screaming. When I reached the door,

I could feel the magic emanating from behind the ancient door. Slowly, I turned the handle and entered the room. That’s when I saw it for the first time… before me, laid upon a gloriously engraved pedestal was what I had spent the last three months looking for. A gruelling three months of blood, sweat and tears. The beginning of those harsh months began with a summons; by none other than Lord Archibald Sanders. Archibald was a wealthy aristocrat who had several of his plumb fingers planted rather firmly into several pies in this corner of the kingdom. He wasn’t a well-liked man by any stretch of the imagination, and I could understand why, but he had the money and I would never turn down a pay cheque so fat that it could rival his waistline. In short, I had been hired to locate, extract and deliver the artefact directly into Archibald’s grubby hands.  Now that I was actually stood directly in front of this prized possession, all the stories and legends at the forefront of my m

The last rays of the setting sun were just disappearing below the horizon as a young man in Apartment 14a hurried through each of his rooms searching for his keys. A glint of metal caught his eye, and with a satisfied smile, he reached forward to grab them. A sudden tremor that seemed to come from all around him made his movement falter. He straightened up and glowered to himself. “That bloody man. He’ll come through that ceiling one day.” With an annoyed huff, he snatched up his keys and swiftly left the apartment. The man in the apartment above him had lived there at least as long as Aaron had lived in his own; he was a morose old man whose short-temper was notorious among the other residents. Checking the time, and seeing 18:52 flash up on his phone screen, Aaron quickened his pace and took the steps down two at a time. Not even a minute later he had reached the sub-level more commonly known as the car-park. As he passed through the door, he let his pace slow and made his way o

James Greene didn’t consider himself a particularly good person; he did bad things and he usually had bad intentions, so the fact he was stood in the 22nd-floor toilets of Canopy headquarters with an unconscious man at his feet barely fazed him. James wasn’t his real name – of course - but he had grown accustomed to the alias so much so that now when he uttered his real name, it felt almost foreign on his tongue. Only a handful of people knew his true identity, and it was a list he intended to keep short – by any means necessary.  Looking down at the janitor sprawled on the floor, James stooped down to grab his wrists and drag the man into a toilet stall. When he was changed, clad in grey overalls and a matching grey cap, he studied his appearance in the mirror in front of him. He looked almost inconspicuous, bar the black eye. The skin around his left eye was an angry purple-black and when he brought a finger up to touch it, he winced. Shrugging his shoulders, he pulled the pea

For the first time in days, Aaron was finally alone. Properly alone. No backup, no support, not even someone to talk too. The isolation was starting to pick away at his thoughts; bring up bad memories. He closed his eyes and let out a long breath, desperately trying to ward off the painful thoughts threatening to emerge – thoughts he had spent years trying to hide away in the recesses of his mind. He wanted to scoff at himself, after all, it was him, and him alone, who had decided to volunteer himself for sentry duty. He knew it was a one-man job, watching the northern edge of camp, but he still went for it. Perhaps he thought he was ‘testing the waters’ a bit – see if he could last the night. He was sat on an old garden chair. Beside him was his fully-loaded rifle, propped up against the old, yellow beer crate. There were initials carved into the wooden stock of the gun, but they weren’t his own. The three small letters stood out as pale, jagged lines against the dark, stained ma

Sam watched absentmindedly as Chang entered the information into the system; the stocky woman was hunched over the secondary console, and from where Sam stood she could see the scowl plastered across Chang’s face. Captains Log – Emiko Chang, Entry 306 Frontier 1 – Deep Space Mining Expedition – Day 371 14/06/2134 – 14:56 Current position: Asteroid belt, 257 million miles from Earth, approaching Ceres As the other woman tapped away on the keyboard, Sam’s gaze drifted across the main deck: just above the main console, Ceres was clearly visible through the windows. The colossal asteroid dwarfed the Frontier 1 spacecraft to an immeasurable degree, but to Sam, it was just as unimpressive as every other asteroid they had landed on in the past year; just another hunk of space rock with a couple million dollars’ worth of minerals and ores just below its surface. Sam was a mechanic, not a scientist, but the novelty of space travel had worn off for her months ago. “I’m not gonna l