by Leo Gillard Yes, it was the end. But was it a triumph? The whole city was alight, though not literally. That was the fate of cities elsewhere, but not here. The war, that long, seven years of conflict, had come to an end, and the city was full of celebration. Citizens and returning soldiers […]
Read more
by Leo Gillard There was, Pan noticed, someone watching them from across the street. Tall, muscular, and probably very slightly over the age for military service. It was almost always people like that who caused trouble, so they weren’t surprised when the call came. ‘Coward!’ the voice called, from over the road, in a position […]
Read more
by Leo Gillard On a normal day, Bel woke up when an alarm went off. Sometimes that alarm was just his alarm clock, sometimes it was the gas warning, sometimes a medication alert, sometimes a car on the street below or the house across the road, and sometimes it was an air raid alert. That […]
Read more
by Leo Gillard Annie woke up to the sound of an emergency alert on her phone – the screen lit up, the ever familiar sound of an alarm played. The proximity of the strike was three miles, enough to justify hurrying everyone into the shelter at five in the morning. Normally those things were accurate, […]
Read more
by Leo Gillard Arin realised, now, that things were going to be okay in the end. Maybe they would have always been fine. Maybe Kieran was always going to pull through and come out the other side. Maybe it only seemed like that now, when he had a different perspective. It did seem sort of […]
Read more
by Leo Gillard Kieran was perfectly aware that his life had… not exactly gone as planned. That he was stuck in something he couldn’t quite see the end of, couldn’t reach the bottom of to push himself back up again. He’d gone down the wrong path, somewhere along the line, and he’d sunk somewhere without […]
Read more
by Leo Gillard Laila could see that he was on the edge of something; something she didn’t want to see come to pass. Actually, they could all see it. Kieran was standing on the edge he’d been standing on for years now. Yet it… it almost wasn’t him she worried for. Everyone knew that Kieran […]
Read more
by Leo Gillard He’d never dared think about something like hope. Hope was for fools, for those reaching out in the dark, expecting nothing but still seeing everything, somehow. He didn’t have the luxury to entertain something so trivial, so baseless, so- Orion hoped for many things. He knew the hope was futile. He hated […]
Read more
by Leo Gillard Content warning: implied/referenced emotional abuse The sky was dark, and as Zach sat on the chair next to the radiator, he could watch snow falling. The street they lived on was always pretty poorly lit at night, but the light from the single streetlamp he could spot illuminated the flakes as they […]
Read more
by Leo Gillard The sunlight was streaming through the trees, dappling the ground with ever-shifting patterns. As they walked, Sasha in front and Zach next to him just behind her, leaves steadily fell from the trees with every gust of wind. Further off in the distance, Arthur could hear Willow somewhere in the stream. Well, […]
Read more
by Leo Gillard It was mid-June, and the sun was probably burning the back of Sasha’s neck by now. She’d regret it later, but right now she couldn’t bring herself to care all that much. No, her priority was the ground in front of her: weaving her fingers through the warm earth, rooting out the […]
Read more
by Leo Gillard ‘Ready?’ Arthur asked, his eyes fixed on the building in front of them. It was… small. The garden was covered in weeds, the grass overgrown, leaves still on the ground from autumn. The house itself was built of red brick, a squat-looking bungalow with shuttered windows, the blue paint of the door […]
Read more
by Leo Gillard He’d always been the object of desire. Not… not always in the way he was now, of course, but people had always wanted something. And they felt like they could get it from him, or because of him. When he’d been young, it had been about power. Then again, maybe it was […]
Read more
The Poor Print 