Tea & Noodles

We had a solider living across the road from me when I was growing up. Saving many during the war even though we lost. New regimes immediately followed like a virus, sweeping a broken country to serve a new government. People like him were tucked away, lucky to not be a prisoner of war. He stayed hidden in plain sight, keeping his thoughts and opinions to himself; he like most were lucky to have his body as intact as his brain. Maybe it was why he never tried to defend us all again.... My brother was eleven when he was shot outside his front lawn. Murdered on the spot by corrupt police. I remember standing on the other side of the street with my parents; they were screaming for justice, but what is justice now but only a burning reminder of what the war cost us. He spoke to me, only once. “ Am I as hated as it appears?” he asked, standing at a bus stop consuming a cigarette. Worn and thin, battered down by this new life, skin like old milk and bags under glass eyes...

Amy's heart couldn't pound any faster as she flew across the concrete and towards the steel gate. She whizzed past cotton jumpers and rag tag shirts and ties, she could hear her shoes scraping the ground as she got closer and closer to the exit. The small message had came so quickly that even as she ran she could barely process what she knew to be the joy that awaited her at the end of her sprint. If her little legs could run any faster she felt like she'd be flying, soaring, a bundle of feathers twisting in flight as she skidded round the corner of the gate and out into the street. Her hair knotting as it twisted against the wind. By this point her face was going as red as her scarlet hair, flowing out behind her, her flag of recognition as faces turned to watch her approach. One face she'd been waiting to see in particular. One minute she was one person, the next she was merged with another. Their limbs thrust out in greeting as she and her greet...

My name is Peter King, and I am committing a crime. A crime of what you ask? This I cannot tell you. That would divulge the secret of my success in this ugly world. I'm not what you'd call a criminal though; that's all I can tell you about the current situation. In my life I have seen that a crime can be justified as two things. The first is a crime that is something that is considered by the state, government, religion to be wrong. This means of course that it could be anything from parking on the yellow line to stabbing my girlfriend in the neck with a kitchen knife. The second is a more personal definition of crime. A wrong thing. A crime that is considered evil – whether is it illegal or not, to be the wrong colour, a different sexuality. Depending on the person, and the peoples it effects it is still considered as such a crime. I guess, in the scheme of things it is up to you to see what my crime is defined by. Rain is pouring down the back of m...