I was late, and getting through the tightly-packed patrons made me even more so. There was Clayton Radcliffe, adjusting his seating position at the bar before taking a long draw from his bourbon-and-coke, unlikely his first for the evening. The younger man next to him, Clayton’s late-20s son Leo, andContinue Reading

Steve, the Elf-on-the-Shelf, gazed across the deep snow surrounding Santa’s Workshop.  Thousands of similarly-clad elf dolls slowly trudged through the dim starlight on their regular evening pilgrimage. Each had an update for the big-guy-in-red, before making their way home again to a new spot in their house. Rinse and repeatContinue Reading

Lloyd’s mailbox clicked open as the key turned in the lock. Three letters were waiting. The first was his phone bill. With a sigh, Lloyd knew he would need to call the company again and ask them to stop sending physical bills. Each one cost him 60 cents. He detestedContinue Reading

Worried slightly at how long he had been waiting, Alex downed his fourth nervous shot and glanced with slightly blurred vision towards the newcomer. Finally, Alex thought. The newcomer sat beside him at the bar and casually lowered a desert-camouflage bag between them. It came to rest beside an identicalContinue Reading

Detective Patrick Gray entered the antiques store and took in the scratched and weather-worn interior. A number of New York’s finest were cataloguing evidence and speaking quietly amongst themselves. Those who noticed his arrival ceased their hushed conversations and eyed him with a mix of suspicion and sympathy. I guessContinue Reading

The elevator opened quietly. Apprehension was waiting patiently within and, as always, only one of us was happy with the reunion. Normally, I would take the stairs, or outright avoid buildings of more than half-a-dozen flights. Today, workmen were fixing the stairwell’s entry – supposedly installing a new security measure.Continue Reading

The inspector watched the last forensic investigator leave and silently saluted their gullibility. No single person should be left alone with a crime scene at such an early stage of an investigation. Still, what is the point of power left unused? Only a few hours ago, the now deathly silentContinue Reading

Corey Harris, civil engineer and architect, came to the ‘prepper’ perspective in his late-twenties. After years of research, he bought a secluded parcel of land, set deep within the tall eucalypts in the Blue Mountains. It took Corey eight years to build a four-bedroom house, which, to the casual observer,Continue Reading

Dr. James St.Clair pressed a button secreted away inside a pocket of his dinner-suit jacket. It was connected to a slim injector, and then a wrist-attached cannula, which released a customised cocktail of drugs into his bloodstream. There was enough stored in an under-arm pouch for six pre-measured injections —Continue Reading

Objectively, sprinting through a murky forest in the early hours of the morning was dangerous. Stealing trinkets from a local tyrant even more so. Callum glanced behind but failed to discern pursuit through damp fog and hazy moonlight. A tall figure burst out of the mist ahead and crashed intoContinue Reading