The Written Word Group

Bishop and Knight had been given a suitcase full of cash by Kathleen Hinkley to find her young brother. Who somehow had been swept up by a secret organization called Cicada 3301. They had made no progress. Dead ends everywhere. They’d pulled in favours from every nook spook and hack journalist they knew. And nada, nothing, not a sausage. Knight had gone through the Mercadona supermarket CCTV camera angles from Garrucha. And nothing. Which led him to believe the kid had never gone there. Which meant he’d been snatched or gone voluntary with someone, somewhere else. The information about Garrucha had come from Kath Hinkley’s seventeen-year-old brother Chad. So, it was a ruse, misdirection. A meeting with Jiang, a Beijing agent, in the depths of one of those monstrous China warehouses on the way to Vera City, revealed nothing about the case. He did reveal though, that Kath Hinkley was a CIA asset. Which made them double check the briefcase holding the cash. And they found a micro-bu...

I met her at a gallery opening—the kind where the wine is dry, the chatter drier, and no one under forty admits to not understanding the art. She stood out—not because she was loud or loud-looking, but because she moved like someone who’d long since made peace with herself. She offered her name like it was optional. I was twenty-six and still apologising for my existence. Recently broken up with, newly freelance, barely formed. When she asked what I did, I muttered something about design. She said, "That’s cute," and walked away. But not far. We crossed paths again by a sculpture of a rusted bird in flight. She touched its wing, like she was checking it for heat, and said, “Do you think it would hurt more to fall, or to stay still forever?” I didn’t know what to say. She liked that. The third time, I asked if she wanted to grab a drink. She smirked. “No. But you’ll come to mine.” Her flat looked down over the city with the air of a queen bored with her kingdom. No overhea...

 Jacob Manifestova hauled his emaciated body off his hard wooden bunk. He stood for a moment, swaying and shivering in his threadbare striped jacket and trousers. He shuffled across the floor of the hut, opened the door and stumbled out into the cold, grey light of dawn.  SS Guard Hoffman, with rifle slung over his shoulder was waiting to escort him. They passed the large imposing metal gates to the compound and he looked up at the grim ironic message exblazoned across the top, "Arbeit Machts Frei". They reached Crematoria 1 and he was shoved inside, passing another prisoner whose shift was just ending. He gazed along the line of ovens, which operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, now waiting insatiably to be fed A trolley, piled high with naked corpses was wheeled in. The oven door was opened and he stepped back as a blast of intense heat hit him. A loud shout from behind him spurred him and another inmate into action. They slipped on face masks and, grasping an arm and an ...

I Remember. I remember, oh yes, I remember. I remember the warm sun on my face, the blue sky, the birds singing in the green trees. I remember the sound of the Ocean crashing on the shore, the smell of ozone in the air. I remember the aroma of baking bread, of freshly brewed coffee, of onions sizzling in the pan. Yeah, I remember.  I remember the softness of her hair on my face, her perfume, the warmth of her mouth on mine, her body pressed against me. I remember every curve of her, every line, every secret place as my lips scorched across her skin, kissing, tasting, exploring. I remember her whispering my name, and her cry of passion as she clung to me. How I remember my lost love.  I remember the betrayal and how it ended. I remember the confrontation, the struggle, the red mist descending, the madness which overtook me. I remember the glint of the blade, the feel of the knife in my hand and the look on his face as I plunged it into him again and again and the blood and the ...

It was a sunny and beautiful day so took my baby girl for a stroll down to Parque Palermo in Buenos Aires. Normally we would stay for a couple of hours feeding the ducks and meandering in the woods. When I suddenly saw the change of that blue sky turning into a menacing gray cloud which definitely meant heavy rain. We hurried home, I knew this humid sub tropical rain as we often referred to ‘the Monsoon from the Amazonia', could easily soak us right through in seconds. I once experienced being soaked by this kind of rain, and after it stopped the dampness of your clothes turned into steem, a sticky and uncomfortable experience that I didn't want to encounter again. We had just missed the rain and as I walked into the foyer of the Hotel Rich in Buenos Aires, pushing my baby girl in the pram, Ester from reception called out: “Hola Maria Elena there's correspondence for you” waving the envelope. “Ah thanks” I approach the desk and saw a letter with a foreign stamp on i...