That House

(Inspired by a photo I took in Oban Bay, looking at the Isle of Kerrera) April 2017

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…just an empty chest of memories. It had gained life when a young couple moved to the Island. Both were ambitious and happy, enjoying the breeze at sunset and observing every gesture of every people in the small town. There was never anything that could separate them. No conflicts, only a…

By Inês Reis

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On the Dark Road

…swiped his key card and went into the bedroom. The room was small and basic but it was clean and the bed looked comfortable. That, he decided, was what really mattered. He was in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the Lake District. He wasn’t even sure of the name of the tiny village in which he’d found himself. After a bloody awful week at work he’d booked the first two days of the following week off...

By Chris Platt

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Slay It Forward

Many rural high schoolers are dying to move away after…

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…acks a bridge, and holds very little land. There’s no town square, no village hall with signs and lights that say hey-we’re-an-inviting-town-downright-bursting-with-tourism-potential. Yet, very few young people want to leave. College plans are cancelled. Instead graduates favor quick marriages, and children. Lots of lots of…

By Steven Roisum

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The Secret of the Carter Children

…break meant magical days spent roaming the Yorkshire countryside that their terraced street backed on to. Since the death of their mother three years earlier, their father had paid them little attention. He busied himself with work and his friends. He barely bothered with his children. When not at the factory, Father would be off playing golf or hiking with his pals. He would often take himself off for…

By Chris Platt

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The Latecomer

…has no etiquette; he has built an excessively conceited and self-absorbed personality; he always delays; he is so indifferent.” They went on cursing and backbiting on me one clam evening for the delay I had done in attending the birthday party of my 10-year-old niece at her home at Devkota Chowk, Biratnagar. When your foot is exposed to injury by a thorn prick, your entire focus centers on the thorn only until the problem…

By Bimal Kishore Shrivastwa

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The Dig

…had been interested in nature and wildlife since he was a kid. Childhood trips to nature reserves and summers spent in darkest North Wales, had given Paul a love of the wilderness and the great outdoors. In his teens he had discovered the efforts being made to preserve wildlife. He had been hooked instantly. And now, in his late-twenties, he spent a lot of his free time joining in with bat-surveys or counting newts…

By Chris Platt

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Goodnight Shark

Sometimes there is no answer to that question we ask our parent.

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…toe touch of the cold December water. Lazy waves lap at the shoreline, but farther out, the ocean changes from calm bright blue to dark chop. Water reaches the top ruffles of my navy-blue swimsuit. My foot lands on a hard-shelled something. Below are black…

By Margo Rife

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The Mausoleum

…was the resting place for citizens who had died as early as 1795 and as late as 2020. Most of the tombstones were modest, and in recent years small plaques in the ground had become more popular than large tombstones or obelisks. No one these days put up a mausoleum, but a few dotted the landscape of the old…

By Anita G. Gorman

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