October Sky

A long time ago a petite boy and girl stood up to their calves in the icy cold waters of the Never Ending Sea with nothing more than a rickety old boat and a few sacks full of clothing and food. The boy wrapped his stick-like arms around himself in desperation to shelter them from the biting wind. However, a shudder still weaved its way up his spine as he began to push the vessel farther out of the shallow cover surrounded by dizzily high cliffs stained with ashes. Crimson Cliffs was located at…

there. His tummy grumbles in dissatisfaction. He slowly gets to his feet and takes stock of the situation. He glances to the east and he sees the sun starting to slowly work its way up in the sky. If he wasn’t homeless and stark raving hungry he would be happy, the sky was a perfect blue and not a cloud in the sky. The early morning rush hour has started where people start to go to work on this fine morning. Today is the day where he can quietly borrow a footy, but people just walk past and…

Darkness, all I could see was a black hole of twilight devouring what was left of the rim of light far beneath the cage. An ice cold breeze threw me upward. My heart was pounding; I could feel my heart leaving my rib cage, faster, and faster. The chains attached to the cage rattled as the vibrations flustered my thoughts. I was rising, the light below had disappeared. The upward motion sent my stomach across the cage. I started crawling to my stomach, reaching for food and water like a beast to…

The moon hung high in the sky. A perfect silver disk, bleaching the land into a ghost-like replica of daytime. Its supine rays endowing the island with an eerie glow, it seemed to radiate a cold majesty, its beauty bordering hypnotic. The name Ariel sprang unbidden to mind, she seemed to resemble the moon in every way possible. Her eyes cold and distant. Her skin pale, almost devoid of colour. I stared at the long winding stairs, the polished wood shone in the soft light of the chandelier above,…

The aggressive ping ding of bloated raindrops on the tin roof muddled our minds. Diving recklessly through the air, thousands of plump little kamikaze pilots assaulted the ancient cinder block building. Suddenly, a flood of electric energy breached the solid blackness, with a deafening crackle in hot pursuit. No, this is not the beginning of a low-budget horror movie or gritty crime thriller. This is the end of a long day at a leadership training course for teenagers. I was Assistant Senior…

Ahead of them lay the Pilliga forest. They were close to the turn off and had encountered no roadblocks. The two had begun to relax. In the distance they saw a shifting black mass rising over the tops of the forest. Storm pointed ahead. “Birds. A lot of them!” “What do you think they are?” “All sorts. Looks like they took fright.” They watched as the sheet of black specks wheeled and spun, spreading out and pulling back. The cloud of birds spread like a vast quantity of oil across the surface…

It was a cold day in November 1959. Fog was covering the ground of the cemetery but every once in a while, the drops of rain and people passing by would separate the fog to reveal soft mushy ground, covered with a light layer of snow. You could hear the thump every time someone took a step, as everyone in the area gathered around a gravestone. “Shame she died” said a cop. His uniform was soaked and covered in food stains and he looked like he hadn’t exercised in a year. “Yeah, but it wasn’t a…

Both images were taken this year during Spring Break or Semana Santa, how we call it back in Nicaragua. I miss the days at the beach, the sun touches my skin, the breeze hitting me with sand, but most of all, I miss the colorful sunsets at the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua. Every time my family and I would make a trip to the beach, I would photograph the sunset and the clouds changing colors. It would be my favourite part of the beach. On that particular day of the week of Semana Santa I…

ocean shore, the tide tickled their feet with feathers of seaweed and sand. It was a sleepy morning in Iceland, the sky was painted in shades of violets and gold. This created a horizon that softly embraced the rocky terrain of the coastline. Oskar, as an imaginative child, who marveled at the marriage of sky and land. “ I do wonder, sometimes, if we are both part of land and sky.” “ Well, we must, for we touch both land and air, “ added Edda “ If I skip a stone, Why does It not…

The ultra neon green nerf gun felt warm and clammy in his hand. He had covered it in mud to make it less visible and he was glad for it now. Michael Thorn, age 7, was on stakeout. He heard footsteps on the other side of the fence. 10...9...8...7… “WHAT THE HECK?” he yelled as a dark blue dart hit the small of his back. Alex ran away in hysterics. She laughed as Michael tried to chase her around the park. He finally caught up to her and pushed her into the sand. “WHAT’D YOU DO THAT FOR?”…