Casey woke up naked. What the fuck? Then she remembered the events of the previous evening. Oh God, what have I done! She buried her face in her hands and tried to think of a way to make anything positive of it. She tried to console herself with the thought that it was only him who saw it and she didn’t even know who he was. She made an effort to shrug it off and set about doing “normal things,” like putting her pyjamas o...

The tall crowd crushed in from all directions. A jostling melee of bodies. Strange faces jumping into her own. The world still spinning as she pushed through the scrum. ‘Well done, Sophie the Brave.’ A drunk, fat man clapped her on the back as she burst out of the crowd and staggered onto the grassy thoroughfare. Her legs seemed to be stuck together. Oh yea, the safety clip on her dress. She removed it, but still couldn’t...

After Casey had her breakfast and dressed, she stared at her underwear drawer and wondered if she should take a pair of panties with her just in case. The new rule was “skirts & dresses only. No panties, ever,” so she had to be prepared for an upskirt request at any time. She guessed it couldn’t hurt to be prepared, and they wouldn’t take up any space anyway. She couldn’t take the chance of putting them on, though. While...

Casey rose much later than usual to find her mother was already packing up the breakfast things. She realised she only had time for a quick bite anyway if she was going to make the track to get some laps in before class, so she grabbed a granola bar. The memory of everything that had happened the day before had dulled somewhat but still lingered. “Morning, Casey. Was that Jolene’s car I saw last night?” her mother asked a...

"Curiosity is the lust of the mind." Thomas Hobbes CHAPTER 1 Reverend Thaddeus Morrow, Rector of the Morris Island Free Church of the Revelation, gets to his feet and surveys his congregation. They are sweating freely. This pleases him. The wooden shutters of the Church are wide open, but the day is windless. The heat of the late summer rises off the marsh outside and seeps in like a miasma. Not a person makes a move to m...

Casey Reine had lived her whole life in Port Wiluma. It wasn’t a bad place to live as far as towns go. With a population of around 150,000, it had all the perks of city living, such as home-delivered pizza, shopping malls, and movie theatres, while lacking most of the hustle and bustle of big city life. While it was a coastal town, it failed to draw surfers due to an offshore reef that sheltered the mainland from the larg...

His eyes swirled black magic… and Sophie fell right in. Like being sucked into a whirlpool and dragged under. The Circus Master’s demonic expression remained fixed as the spell bound tighter and tighter. Dmitri bustled to the front of the stage. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have a volunteer.’ He beckoned with theatrical dynamism. ‘Come on my love. Aren’t you pretty.’ Hand half-hiding his mouth to dramatise the stage whisper....

‘These pills are fucking nothing! Knew he was a bull-shitter. Told you they’d be tic-tacs.’ ‘You said they’d be Rohypnol.’ ‘Then at least I’d be fucked!’ Tanya laughed at her own joke, the hilarity escalating as she realised her serendipitously-distasteful double-entendre. Such a big, dirty guffaw of a laugh – always uplifting – could throw you right up in the air. She jaunted off-kilter, bumping against Annie, who bounce...

This day needed to be over; scratch that, this whole week needed to be over. The hotel was sold out for the third weekend in a row and I was stuck on rotation with Marcy. Marcy barely knew how to make a keycard even after working here for five years. She spent more time on her cellphone than she actually did working. So it should not have been a surprise to me as she moaned on her cellphone to one of her many boyfriends f...

Chapter Forty Jane wasn’t sure how a person should dress to be kidnapped. She thought it over while lying in her bed, still halfway between sleep and waking. She thought about her previous encounter with ‘Mr. Bad Man’...and found herself curled up under the sheets and hugging herself in a mixture of anticipation and fear. Not a real, serious kind of fear, but the pleasurable kind, like the anxiety she’d experienced before...

When I was in college, aged seventeen, I was always conscious of my long legs, thinking of myself as awkward and gangly. I was a late bloomer, both physically and sexually. I had never had a crush on any of the boys and was still a virgin. At this stage of my life, I lacked confidence. One Friday evening after the last lesson of the week, which was games, specifically netball. I was told I had to play as an attacker due t...

Yasmine had made a mistake: a costly, dire mistake. She’d whispered a plea in the night to a passing knight – save me from the dragon, and I will do anything you want – but she’d never imagined this outcome. It had been a shot in the dark, a last hurrah sort of thing, her last hope in escaping the tyrant clutches of the crimson drake who had kept her prisoner in a tall, inaccessible tower in the depths of a dark, mysterio...

"Are you sure you want me to go?" "I've told you this already, Cassandra. Why are you questioning me?” I look down. The authority is clear in his voice and I know I've overstepped. "I'm sorry, I guess I was just checking. You don't normally take me with you on business trips”. "This time, it worked out with the other partners and my mother coming to stay with the children. Although, none of that should matter seeing as I'...

A light breeze whispers softly past your face as you walk the shady trail through the hills. The sun, though bright and hot, is softened by the thick canopy of branches from all the trees around you. You breathe in deeply, letting your lungs fill with the cool mountain air, as you feel the stress from the week start to melt away. A hawk cries in the distance drawing your attention further up the mountain trail. From a dis...