Tag: escape
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IN A MANILA MARKET
All kinds of strap shoes hang in rows. Black, red, white, tan. Thoughts coalesce. Her shoes on the bedroom closet. Shoes for every occasion. Imelda Marcos-scale collection. He burned them all. The clothes too. The closet, the bedroom, the house. All up in flames. It had to look real. They found the charred remains. They…
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SUMMITS NOT RIGHT
‘Summits not right,’ he muttered in his mysterious way. I misunderstood his local dialect. ‘Something’s not right?’ ‘Yes,’ he pointed up to the top of the hill, where I could just make out the wall of a lookout tower. ‘There’s something wrong at the summit.’ ‘What’s wrong?’ I could see no sign of anything untoward.…
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CHAINED
The chains tightened their grip. If she could just break free before he returned. How long had she been trapped here? It felt like her whole life. But there was a time before, when she was carefree and wild and full of joy. That had been taken from her, beaten from her. She tried once…
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THE HOBGOBLIN’S FEAST
After seven days he came upon a clearing in the forest. Ten small hutches had been made, with moss and twigs for roofs, arranged in a circle around a campfire. ‘You have been busy,’ he said, poking at the dying embers. They were still warm, they couldn’t be far. He raised his large nose into…
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BLOODHOUND LAW
The steamboat Yellowstone sat at the dock. The new boat for the American Fur Company was due to depart up the Mississippi later that day. Grafton Edgefield looked out between wooden planks. He hadn’t eaten since he’d arrived in St. Louis three days ago. His clothes were in pieces, his bare feet shredded. He’d avoided the slave…
Iain Kelly 