loneliness - Stories

In a world where humans and orcs are forced to live in symbiosis, not everyone can choose for themselves how to live their life. And often enough it's forced to take an unexpected turn, same for Susanna and Dremakk. Some turns are negotiable, though...

A note on this story: it is written in the dense, melancholy register of 19th-century Gothic fiction, and does not shy from grief, loneliness, or loss along its way to its ending.

For a hundred and fifty years, Jack has walked a county that has forgotten him, a farm boy who bartered his soul at a crossroads and paid twice over for it. Refused by Heaven, unclaimed by Hell, he has only a stolen coal to light his way, and windows he can watch but never touch.

Then he finds Julian's: nineteen, ill, certain no one would notice if he stopped waking. As October nears Halloween, the veil thins, and an old bargain comes due.

Before Admirer X and Menorah, twelve-year-old Elijah Silverman loves books, mysteries and the certainty that every puzzle has an answer. At Oakfield, he expects difficult classes, a brilliant library and very little peace and quiet. He does not expect things to start disappearing.

As suspicion spreads through the Year Seven dormitory, Elijah finds himself drawn into his first real mystery.

An elderly man hires Hollis to drive him across England to a retirement home. But the journey becomes a pilgrimage through a hidden life—a lost lover, a family's betrayal, and a final, defiant act. As Arthur's story unfolds, Hollis sees his own fears reflected back. A quiet, devastating story about the cost of waiting too long to be brave.

He climbed through the wrong window. She wasn't there. Her younger brother was—and he'd been waiting.

Andy is a three-hundred-year-old vampire used to being the predator. Lucas is a teenage boy who's been watching him for weeks, planning this exact moment. One kiss, and the ancient monster learns what it means to be truly consumed.

The hunter becomes the hunted. The cold becomes a thousand degrees. And the Vampire is the one Enthralled.

Johnny Day the top surfer in the California surf scene. He is the top surfer until finds there is more to his life then surfing.