Thieving Hands

Luana Wu (9) | STAFF REPORTER

It was one of those days. By “those days,” I meant the days when the prince would come gallivanting down the streets, with a whole parade of horses and men behind him. The soldiers were waving banners of the country’s flag on them, while the prince was throwing coins into the crowd. Much to my annoyance, people pushed and shoved to get them. There was nothing better than free money, but maybe if the crown took better care of its citizens, then maybe everyone wouldn’t be so desperate for some coins.  read more

One Way Or Another

Elizabeth Rossi (11) | STAFF REPORTER

Deadbolts, check. Door chains, check. Peephole covered, check.

The buzz of a rerun Tuesday night sitcom filled the dank living room with a cyclical laugh track. In the dingy kitchen, painted by the acidic yellowed bulb of the ceiling light was a kettle upon the stove. The gaseous flames, indigo and abstract, licked wildly as they sparked beneath the griddle but hardly bathed the iron in heat, seemingly taking their time with the matter. Pinned against the decoloured wallpaper, its peels having curled forward from age, stood the grandfather clock, rigid and familiar. It’d been a week since the last incident when their security cameras had stopped working. Then the time before that, their garage doors had opened while they were away at work.  read more

Autumn Avenue

Paria Shahir (9) | STAFF REPORTER

I strolled down a pathway of leaves, hand in hand with the wind. This valley, secluded from the rest of the world, is formed from opposite rows of trees, standing as fleets moored to the earth and unshaken against the herald of battle ushered in by the breeze. As I drifted down carelessly, a gust of frenzied wind sprung from behind. The wind, once my companion, snaked its way out of my hand, and right then, whispered the news of a distant deluge approaching from above. read more

Sweetened Teeth

Elizabeth Rossi (11) | STAFF REPORTER

The hallucinations were the same as always. The same three-eyed felines and one too many winged birds slinking between the branches outside her window, singing away. Pollen and dust clouded the creases of her walls and furniture in a hydrodip smog. Her hands wove around the stem of one of the cocooned buds, too young to flower. The plant couldn’t help its innate hunger to spread, seemingly starved and equally as determined to leave no surface within the basement untouched.   read more