By: Craig Forshaw

 

By: Craig Forshaw

 

Ellen Book awoke with a start.

Her hand shot out, the lamp switched on.

The shadows were chased back to the edges of the room.

The closet, behind the curtains, under the bed: they hid from her, as shadows like to do.

Even though she was safe in the light, those terrors that get inside still danced fresh within her mind. She held the covers safe to her chin, and calmed herself down, and thought about returning to sleep.

Had she done just that, maybe things would have turned out differently. Whether they would have been better or not, though, remains to be seen.

Ellen was twelve, enjoyed reading, and was bullied at school because she was an easy target. She always thought of a good comeback long after an insult, and she always blushed and said nothing when it did happen. Nobody touched her or hurt her, but their words stung like sticks and stones, and she had shed many tears this past year.

“You’re a book!” was a favourite insult, with someone having noticed she liked reading, and her name was also Book. It was stupid, and childish, and they were always saying her name and noticing her when she wished they wouldn’t.

She didn’t want to be a little girl, any more, and her boy-band posters had given way to rock groups, her books were less about adventures and more about tragedy and doomed romances, her stuffed toys hiding under her bed where they didn’t remind her of her age.

The worst thing, though, was when she did make a friend. Melody.

Melody slept over, and went for a drink during the night.

Then she told everyone what freaks Ellen’s parents were, and that was the end of that.

But right now, Ellen was scared, and she wanted to be reassured.

Her father was away on business, and her mother worked late, too. But Mum Book usually worked at home, down in the basement, where Ellen rarely went when it was dark.

Yet, tonight, she wanted someone to tell her everything was okay.

Her feet slid out from under the sheets first, tentatively, worried that something in the shadows beneath her bed would grab her ankles. She touched the cool, prickly carpet, and quickly moved away from the bed. She turned and looked at her bed.

Nothing moved in those shadows. If there was something there, it was patient.

And that made it much, much scarier.

Ellen edged her way towards the door to the landing, and reached an arm out into the darkness. She quickly felt for the light switch.

Clck!

The light came on, and she stepped out.

The stairs were next. The light switch for the living room was at the bottom, so she would have to journey down into the darkness.

Her first step made the floorboards creak a little, but as she went further down, the only sound was her soft steps, and her breathing. Everything else was that silence that sounds like nothing, but hums in your ears, anyway.

As she neared the foot of the stairs, she could see blue light coming from the windows, and the hulking gloom that coated the sofa and the arm-chair. Black murk, thick and impenetrable, hiding horrors in her head.

There was a small bit of yellow light gathered around the basement door, beneath the stairs, but it didn’t extend far.

Ellen reached the bottom of the stairs, and reached behind the coats that were hung up, reached for the light switch, knowing something was hiding there – a spider with a baby’s face, or the hand of a serial killer, or a slime that would dissolve her hand and work its way up her arm.

Clck!

It was even worse.

The lights didn’t come on.

Ellen turned, but couldn’t see very well.

Did she want to see?

Clck! Clck!

The lights weren’t working.

She stiffened, and then calmed down. Her mind was panicking, but she told herself that there was nothing there. She didn’t believe it, deep down she knew something was there, but she told herself, and repeated it. It was a mantra, and with enough repetition, she tricked herself into thinking it was true, “There’s nothing there, there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there…”

Ellen moved quickly, for the safe zone of the yellow light on the floor, and opened the door to the cellar.

The yellow light was on the wall by the stairs, but the basement itself was black.

Why?

Ellen knew her mother was working down there. The lights should be on.

The yellow light hummed a little, and the hum hung in the air, as if to punctuate the silence, “!”

The walls by the stairs were a menagerie of monsters. There was a man head being melted by acid, and you could see his skull. There was an alien creature, sleek, black, with soulless eyes and sharp black teeth. There was a portrait of a family that had been murdered, the paper yellowing, but the eldest son’s face kept blurring, and twisting, before mutating into something demonic, and then turning normal again.

There were scythes, knives, bear-traps, and limbs, torsos, severed heads.

There were pictures of people covered in blood and smiling.

Then there were the film posters beside them, showing from where these props had come.

Ellen was about to step down onto the first step when she saw a hand reach into the yellow light at the bottom.

She heard breathing, and a pained groan as the hand tried to drag itself forward.

There was the wedding ring her mother had let her try on, once. The edge of a red shirt her mother was wearing. Those grey-blue fingernails.

And blood.

“Huh… huh… hel… help…” came a tired plea, struggling to escape dying lips, barely heard.

Then, the hand vanished.

Yanked away. Sudden.

There was nothing.

Not until Ellen heard a sound from the basement. It was a clakclakclak sound, but something about it she heard as being a voice. Something was talking.

She shook, and felt like she was going to wet herself.

The word, “Mum,” formed on her lips, but went unspoken.

Tears prepared to flood her cheeks.

Then, from the murky living room behind her, came the reply.

Clakclakclak!

She didn’t realise it then, but the only thing that saved Ellen was that she didn’t care what waited in the shadows, she wasn’t curious or brave, she was a scared little girl and she ran.

She ran through the darkness.

She unlocked the door.

She left her home and ran for the neighbours.

And she would always be running from the dreams of shadows, and the cellar, and a hand reaching out of the dark, for the rest of her days.

By: Craig Forshaw
Title by Steve Clarke

 

They were called Seedlings. People no taller than a centimetre, living amongst the tall blades of grass in the garden.

They almost burned to death on the day Olivia discovered them with her magnifying glass. She tried to apologise, but they didn’t understand her.

So, Olivia just watched them.

They had houses, about five centimetres high, dotted around the twelve-inch settlement, but Olivia didn’t know what they had used to build them. They would be awake when Olivia arrived in the morning, and went to sleep several times a day. It wasn’t until she was watching a nature documentary, years later, that she realised that time passes more slowly for smaller creatures. An entire day must be tiring for the Seedlings.

They wore silver suits that reflected in the sunlight like the top of a bottle of milk. The children had a game where one of them would have to touch the others with a blue glove, and they would freeze in place. When only one person was left, the others would unfreeze and fall about laughing.

Olivia laughed, too.

She wondered whether they had always been here, or whether they were spacemen, because of their suits.

One day, she awoke to the sound of the leaf-blower.

Autumn was here.

Her father, oblivious, swung the blower towards them.

When Olivia arrived, they were gone. Only a miniature shoe remained.

On her knees, she cried, though she didn’t know them.

By: Craig Forshaw

 

The road had given way to a dirt track, when he entered the woods, and yet the dirt was hard, and every step made Robert Carter’s feet ache. His clothes were caked in dust and muck from his journey, and his shoes were worn down to the soles of his feet. He longed for rest, but daren’t sleep by the roadside; many wanderers had found themselves victims of the current trend of blaming every problem in the country on those who suffered the most, and at least three of his fellow travellers had been set on fire as they slept in the past few weeks.

It was dark, and the moonlight barely poked through the black canopy of trees that hovered above him. When he had been a child he had been scared of the woods near his home, where the older boys went, and where something terrible had happened one summer. Now, though, he was older, and wiser – or, at least, less afraid.

Robert came upon an old tree, in a musty clearing. It was a cool night, but when he pulled his jacket tight around himself his old bones were warmed, and he felt comfortable and sleepy.

He looked up, towards the canopy, and the sky, barely visible, beyond.

His eyes slowly adjusted, and he noticed something tied to a nearby branch.

He stood, then, and walked beneath it.

Reaching out a hand, he pulled on it. It could have been a bell-rope in an old mansion, but the only thing this would ring would be a man’s neck.

It was a noose.

Robert thought of those other travellers who had met a bad end on the road, and didn’t want to be anywhere near something so ominous. It could have been there for years, or for a day. It could have been long-since out of use, or it could have been strung up to be employed in fiendish endeavours this very night.

Just then, an owl hooted in the woods. His mother had always said that owls were evil, and that they seemed to know the dark things that go on in the woods. But this seemed to be an owl of good fortune.

He turned in the direction of the noise, and saw, in the distance, a mansion. Abandoned, boarded-up, crumbling; your basic ABC of somewhere he could bed down in safety for the night.

Robert picked up his tired feet, and approached the mansion.

As he got closer, he noticed that the building seemed somehow off. From one angle it looked completely different than it did when he looked at it from another. Windows and alcoves vanished, ghastly gargoyles seemed to move around the roof, and the creepers advanced or shrank every time he looked away. The building was one giant seeing-eye puzzle, but the only secret image that appeared to Robert was that it was a mansion in need of repair.

And abandoned.

Had he not been so desperate for sleep, had he not hoped for a few days in a genuine, albeit abandoned, bed, had he not been so robbed of his senses by lethargy, he may have thought for a second, and may have pondered the most sensible of questions: Why was it abandoned?

But, had he thought, he would not have pushed open the rotting wooden door that barred his way.

It didn’t creak as he pushed it. Part of the wood seemed to disintegrate at his touch, but he soon found that the rest of it was unhinged, propped up against the door-frame.

He held it by either edge, and then moved it to one side.

When he was inside, he replaced it in the position it had been in, so no-one would suspect there was someone inside.

The hallway of the mansion was spacious. The floor was made of old, darkened stone slabs. The walls were darkened wooden fixtures. The roof was made of wooden beams, darkened by lack of light, and their natural shadows. His footsteps made great, hollow echoes as he walked towards the stairs.

The closer he got to the stairs, the better his eyes adjusted.

The hallway was not just abandoned, it was decaying. The floor was chipped at, and moss, and other growths, covered parts of it. In one corner an animal had been making its toilet, and there were the bones and feathers of dead birds near the door. The fixtures were crumbling, filled with holes chewed by unseen animals, and crawling with insects that made the wood seem like it was moving on its own. The roof concealed something that moved about, so quietly it was almost imperceptible, and so quickly that you could never catch more than a fleeting glimpse of some ill-defined shape.

He put a foot on the stairs, which went CREEEEEEEEAK! with every step he took.

The second step, he put his foot down slowly on the damp, thread-bare carpet.

CREEEEEEEEAK!

His raised his foot towards the third step, but as he put it down, before he felt his foot make contact on the carpet, he heard another sound.

… crick…

He held still, unbalanced, his foot dangling above the carpet.

His eyes shot around the landing above him, but from below he had a poor view.

His breath stopped, as he listened intently.

… crick…

To his left, where a door swayed a little on its loose hinges.

There was quiet. Even the thing in the rafters had held its breath.

… crick, crick, crick, crick, crick, crick…

The door swung a little quicker on its hinges, as whatever had made the noise retreated, retreated deep into the mansion.

He breathed out.

Whatever it was couldn’t be that malevolent if he had scared it away.

He put his foot down.

CREEEEEEEEAK!

Something whispered in his ear.

He spun around.

There was nothing there.

His heart was pounding.

He spun back the way he had been looking, but saw nothing.

Robert glanced back towards the door, and felt his veins turn to ice. He breathed heavily, and his hearing was dominated by the heavy beating of his heart.

In the distance, somewhere in the mansion, a clock chimed once.

One o’clock.

Robert calmed himself, and sat down on the steps.

He had heard a voice whisper in his ear, but he couldn’t understand what it was that it had said. Yorful? Olyurful? Did they even count as words?

He though for a moment, and felt silly. A grown man hearing voices, and scared of shadows.

“Hello?!” he shouted. “Here, ghosty-ghosty-ghosty!”

Nothing. No sound at all.

He shook his head, and then noticed one of the doors off to the side of the mansion led into a kitchen. He checked his bag, and took out a can of beans.

He hadn’t had hot beans for a while.

In the kitchen he found some dry wood, and newspaper, and using his own matches he lit a little fire in an old cooker. He found a clean pan in a cupboard, and washed it out in the sink. He emptied his beans into it, and set them on top of the cooker.

As he waited for his food to cook, he closed two doors to the room, and moved small cabinets in front of them to stop anyone getting in. Even if they could force the door, Robert would have a hot face-full of beans ready for them, and a pan to club them around the head with.

He then sat down in a chair, next to the warm cooker, and thought of his childhood. Then, he slumbered, and then he dreamed.

In the dream, he was chasing an owl through the woods. Then, he realised he wasn’t chasing an owl, he was being led by the owl.

Deeper and deeper into the woods they went, until he came across a pair of red shoes hanging in mid-air.

He stopped, then, and wondered why the shoes should be hanging there.

Then, he looked up.

He awoke with a start, and he heard a bell chime somewhere in the distance.

One o’clock.

He rubbed his eyes, troubled by his dream, and of his memories from his youth, from the days of an innocence long since dead.

His beans were burned, and he tipped them into the sink. Then, he drank a glass of water, and emptied another can – beans and sausages, this time – into a pan. He pinched his arm, this time, to keep himself awake.

He found a plate, cleaned it, and then ate his beans and sausages with a spork from a Swiss-army knife. When it was finished, he cleaned the plate and the pan, and put them in his bag. They would be useful on the road.

He turned towards the door, and noticed that it had opened a gap.

Robert pondered this. It had been closed, held tight by the cabinet, but now it was open a gap.

CRASH!

A pan fell from a cupboard behind him.

He jumped out of his skin, and spun on the pan, and seeing what it was he calmed down.

Just a pan, he thought.

SLAM!

Behind him, the door was now closed.

There was no gap.

He frowned. He walked closer, and then tested the door to see if he could make a gap in it, between the cabinet and the door-frame, but found there was no space.

But, the only way for this to be the case was if the cabinet inside the room had moved.

He had planned to head upstairs and find himself a bed for the night. The kitchen was stocked with pots and pans, so there were probably beds. Beds were harder to move, after all.

Now, though, he felt he would be safer inside the barricaded kitchen.

He had searched the cupboards, and found various table-cloths, and he had his sleeping-bag inside his own rucksack. He could fold up a few clothes for a pillow, put a few beneath him for comfort, and use the cooker for a little extra warmth.

Then, in the morning, he could search through the mansion, and banish the terrors in the darkness with the cold reason of daylight.

He dreamed of owls, again, but this time they were leading him up the stairs of the mansion. The stairs didn’t creak this time, though it was dark.

At the top, there was door. By the door, was a table. On the table, rested the owl. It hooted at Robert, and then nodded towards the door.

When Robert refused to take a step forward, the owl hooted again, and nodded twice more.

Robert edged forward, and put his hand on the cool metal door-handle.

He breathed in, and opened the door.

Beyond it was a mirror, but the reflection was not of the mansion. It was not of an old man, and a dark hallway, and an owl on a table.

Instead, Robert’s reflection was a small boy, in the harsh light of day. Behind him, an owl flew off into the distance. Hanging in front of Robert were his mother’s red shoes.

And her feet were in them.

And her legs, covered with white stockings.

Robert couldn’t see any more.

But he heard a voice, a female voice, say, “Help…” It was more a croak, like them could barely get the words out.

Little Robert looked up, and then tugged at her stockings.

Then, he grabbed her legs in his arms, and jumped up.

When he came down, there was a crack, and he didn’t hear the croak again.

He came around from his sleep, and his eyesight was blurry. Tears were in his eyes, and he sobbed a little in the darkness.

After he calmed down, he sat up, and pondered thoughtlessness. His mind was blank, and he concentrated on that blankness, and, eventually, he felt numb enough that he could pretend that it had never happened, again.

Then, the clock in the distance chimed once.

One o’clock.

One o’clock, again? he thought.

Robert rose from the bed he had made for himself, and picked up the pan on the cooker. The handle was cool, but the pan was hot enough to burn anyone he hit with it.

He went to the window, and looked outside.

The tree he had rested under was closer than his walk to the mansion made it seem. Impossibly so.

It was right outside.

The noose swayed gently in the breeze, not a care in the world.

He thought, then, about the clock chiming one, constantly.

It had been after midnight when he had arrived, and he had been sleeping for hours and hours. It should have been daylight hours ago.

He went to his bag, and rooted through it for his watch. He took it out.

It said, two minutes past one.

On a hunch, he wound it round until it was thirty seconds to two.

Then he watched it, and the second hand ticked.

Ticked.

Ten seconds.

Ticked.

Five seconds.

Ticked.

One second.

Then, somewhere in the mansion, the clock chimed once.

Robert was frantic, now, and he went to the door that led to the hallway. He pushed the cabinet out of the way, and pulled at the handle.

It would not move.

He pulled and pulled and pulled.

It would not move.

He ran to his makeshift bed, and put his things in his bag. He put it on his back, and held the pan in one hand.

When he turned around, the door he had tried to open began opening and closing violently. SLAM! SLAM! SLAM! The cabinet flew across the floor, and landed at his feet.

Then it seemed to start bleeding, and spread across the floor, towards him.

Robert turned to the other door, which led deeper into the mansion, and flung it open.

He raced through a drawing room, thick with cobwebs and large spiders.

In one chair sat a skeleton, its mouth hanging open, its ragged, shredded clothes still on his corpse.

He pushed through, and found himself in a corridor.

He looked in the direction of the hallway, and saw a dead end.

At the other end of the corridor was a grandfather clock.

Hanging from the roof there was a noose, and a skeleton in red shoes hung there.

It swayed, as though someone had pushed it aside.

The floor made a slight creaking noise, which grew louder as something approached.

… crick, crick, crick, crick, crick, crick, crick…

Whatever was there, it was now stood before Robert.

He sank to his knees, and a single bead of sweat ran down his forehead.

Then, there was no sound, save his own rapid breathing.

An impossible shadow seemed to gather on the walls around the grandfather clock, plunging the corridor into further darkness. The floor became sticky, as a thick red liquid, like blood, rose from beneath the floorboards.

The skeleton seemed to drop from the noose when the shadows passed it, and carried the noose towards him.

It was the only visible spot in the approaching darkness.

His pants were soaked. The clock chimed one.

“Your fault,” whispered a voice in his ear, “All your fault.”

The darkness engulfed him.

Robert screamed.

Outside, an owl hooted, and the noose stopped swaying in the breeze.

By: Craig Forshaw
Title by John Grimbledeston

 

The sound was almost a description of his sporting philosophy. It was disgusting, messy, and unhygienic to some. But, to Unctuous Slaver, the sound was like the grunting, “urgh,” of a javelin thrower, the protestations of American tennis players, or the glorious disruption of a lady streaker. It was a pity there weren’t streakers here, but it takes a particular person to bare their flesh to the elements in front of a bunch of men hawking across the asphalt.

HOCK–FU! Distance spitting.

This was Unctuous Slaver’s tenth year, eighth as winner, at the Twelfth Great Boston Distance Spitting Tournament. The prize was the Goggins’ Golden Spittoon. It wasn’t really gold, but distance spitting wasn’t a sport, either. Not that it bothered Unctuous.

He popped a switch-blade comb, using it on his oily, black hair.

“Nice,” he nodded to himself, as a youngster held a mirror.

“Windy today, Mr. Slaver!” said a young man in a suit, carrying a clipboard with the competitors names on.

“Mr. Slaver,” he repeated, mocking him, disgusted. “Everyone wants a piece o’ the champ.”

He stretched his neck muscles.

Unctuous strode forward. The loudspeaker announced, “Here he is, folks, the Sultan of Spit!”

He was confident. Too confident.

There would be no great expectorations today.

HOCK!

He coughed up a loogie, held it in his mouth.

The wind picked up…

FU!

And the elements matched the letters, delivering the message to the champ, as the loogie swung backwards.

 

By: Craig Forshaw
Title by Graham McKnight

 

CA-SSSSSHHHHHH!

The chair flew out the comic shop window.

Brian stood panting, as Bill and Simon edged away from him.

Then Brian turned, fury in his bulging, red eyes. He began to growl through his bushy beard. He gritted his teeth. His eyes darted between them.

Bill. Then Simon. Then Bill.

Who’d move first?

“What’s going on?” asked a woman at the window.

“WHAT’S GOING ON?” he bellowed. “WITNESSES MUST DIE!”

He pounced on her, and sank his teeth into her neck. Blood gushed forth. He held a chunk of flesh in his jaws, before swallowing it. Others took one look at him, and began to scream and flee.

Simon was the first to run, but Brian’s gaze shot directly at him, and stopped him cold.

Blood dripping down his beard, he looking like a terrible cannibal wizard, in an itchy brown jumper and jeans.

He approached, and leaned close to Simon’s face, to whisper in his ear.

“Do… you… think… you… are… clever?” he asked. Simon felt foetid breath and spittle with every word.

Simon looked at Bill.

Bill’s eyes screamed, “For God’s sakes, just say no!”

“I think you need to calm down, Brian,” he said. “It was only a game.”

“I never lose!” he said, jabbing a finger in Simon’s face.

Then, he stamped his foot like a little girl, and stormed out through the window.

“We’re never playing a board game with him again,” said Bill.

 

By: Craig Forshaw
Title by Graham McKnight

 

How do you become smarter?” repeated Uncle Bart, rocking backwards and forwards on the legs of his chair, and gazing absently upwards at the study roof. In one hand he swirled a glass of sherry. His jumper was moth-eaten, despite his wealth. His hair was grey, and wild. “How do you become smarter?” he repeated again.

Finally, he slowly lowered his chair back to the floor, smacked his lips together, and patted the seat next to him to motion for me to sit by him.

“Dear boy, the only way to get smarter is a healthy diet of pure smarts. That is the only way. You see, it is actually knowing things which gives a man an encyclopedia of resources to draw on from his own, as it is, grey matter.”

“But how do I do that?” I asked, then coughed. The air was musty in this cluttered old house. Books were piled up against the walls, making wallpaper an exotic sight.

“The body likes to absorb vitamins and minerals, dear boy, and water. But there is a way to get it to absorb the knowledge, too, but you have to trick it. When you get your vitamin supplements, you crush them into powder, and pour then into the blender, with water. Then, get a few pages a really clever book, and throw them in, too. Hit the switch, open wide, and swallow the whole concoction.”

I looked at Uncle Bart, incredulous. He was insane.

 

By: Craig Forshaw
Title by Steven Anstey

 

Jagged black scratching her face, leaping out of nowhere as she ran, ran, ran for the light in the wood. Behind her were the rurring, wailing, screaching sounds as the unseeable things rushed forwards after her. After a while, it seemed like the branches were reaching out towards her, to embrace her, to touch her, to grasp her in their sharp, splintered grip.

The light ahead was bright, but so distant, so far away. Was it a car, a cabin, or even a store? The light ahead was a single point that burned into her eyes.

What was chasing her, with its unseen teeth rendering and ripping and rubbing together? She hadn’t seen it, and couldn’t bare to look and see it, again. Had she seen it once, and now couldn’t face it?

She was unsure, uncertain of things, of all thing but one – the light in the wood was sanctuary and salvation, and the thing behind was damnation in its salavation for her flesh and form.

On she would run, on and on and on.

But then she realised something horrible.

She had been running forever, or as near to forever as the human mind could imagine. Forever suffering, forever straining, forever running. Why was she always running from them? Surely she’d had breakfast? Or driven, today? Or even scratched her itchy toes?

The voice came from behind, carried on a cacophony of crashing, gnashing teeth, “You’ve been running because your body was long ago ours to feed on, and now we feed on only your tormented soul!”

She screamed, and screamed, and her jaw hung loose, and she screamed.

 

By: Craig Forshaw
Title by Steve Clarke

 

It is funny, the things that people forget that they had and then lost during their lifetime.

She thought this as she lay on her death bed.

For that matter, a death bed is a funny idea. What is it that really changes when the person dies? In life they were weight on its back, and in death they are just more of the same. Death doesn’t change a bed; only the living do that.

Her thoughts became idle for a moment, and then, with some anxiousness, she began to muse on her original line of thought: things possessed, prized, and lost, forgotten.

But how could she muse upon such things, when to forget them is to have them ripped from your mind and cast into the black abyss of history?

She reached over to the bedside, to an old photo, and looked at herself as she had been in her twenties. A body full of the power and passion and personality of youth. It was but a dear shadow now, and she was but a dried husk, a skin to be shed, the final peeling coat of paint.

Then she saw her lips, and she wondered for a moment.

Because those were not her lips. When did she lose those lips and forget about them? Once she had been so proud of those lips. Where had they gone to? How could she have treated them so badly?

She leaned back, and drifted into a ponderous slumber.

By: Craig Forshaw
Title by Mat Averall

 

Once upon a time, the son of the King was told he was a mong.

“But I don’t even understand what that means,” he protested.

“Shut up, mong!” said the Prince of another kingdom.

Then they pushed him into the mud.

The son of the King hated boarding school. At home he had servants, and attendants, and advisors, and that eunuch who pulled funny faces for him.

“You have to learn to be an autonomous learner,” said his father. “I read it in the new guidelines from the Wizards Guild of Teachers.”

So, off he went to Dungcock’s Academy for Little Princes.

In the stories his mother read him, the Prince would solve a mystery, and be held up on people’s shoulders. But Dungcock’s Academy stank of stale farts and sweat, and his fellow classmates were more likely to kick him in the shins than to hold him aloft.

He had sent a carrier pigeon home, with word of the intolerable conditions, but the Prince of Bastard’s Fall, showing off, had shot it dead with a flintlock pistol he had received for his birthday.

He picked himself up out of the mud, and thought of what the Princes of his stories would do…

They would win over his fellow classmates.

“Very well,” he said to the other boys. “If I am a mong, I will be the best mong I can be!”

Then they pushed him back into the mud.

And kicked him.

Repeatedly.