Falling As I begin to fall I feel nothing but speckles of rain blasting against my cheeks, and a sense of freedom that surges vividly through my body – a type of freedom which both frightens and excites at the same time. This is it; I have waited months for this exact moment. It will be over soon, and then I will never have to feel trapped again. This is taking so much longer than I'd expected. I had thought it just one little jump. One jump and it would all be over- but I'm still dropping. Still hurtling closer and closer to the rocky ground below. Why will this not end! This jump seems to just go on and on. It's almost as bad as the journey here, and that had been the worst truck journey ever. As I reminisce I shiver to think of what could of happened – we could have seriously crashed, and that would have ruined everything. I wouldn't even be doing this at all. I'm so glad that there Adriano was a competent driver. Of Argentinian descent he had started the day like any other day – as one of the unseen. One...

For just a single second she could see the spectres, but then they were gone. Rancid, blackened bones hovering just an inch from the ground. Their ragged clothes stripped from their body, revealing nothing but nightmares and madness. She shivers impulsively as they disappear; she knows that they will now begin. They spy her from the very deepest corner of their empty eyes and circle her, shrieking at her in monstrous voices that only she can hear. Louder and louder she screams, until she wakes not just the neighbours, but the neighbour’s neighbours, except there’s no-one here. She, a pathetic and roughened creature, sat cradling herself in her arms. Rocking back and forth – awaiting the very moment she can leave. It had to be today, or else she’d never do it. As she thinks back, tears start to form in her eyes; it hadn’t always been this way. She can remember before her sisters left. They had been so strong, so beautiful that the spectres couldn’t manipulate them, not the way that they did now to her. She could have gone too, but she didn’t; for some silly reason she chose to stay. She can’t even remember why...

She hadn’t always had the longest neck, and she hadn’t always been the plumpest, or the quietest, but that was who she was now: the ugly one. When she glared at her reflection in the murky water, she always felt the urge to cry, but she never did. She probably wouldn’t even be able to do that right, she thought to herself. She was useless, and everybody knew it. Even her mother seemed to realise the ugly truth. Upon finishing school one day, she watched longingly from the classroom window, as she viewed all of the more stylish, and prettier ducks leaving in their groups. How she wanted to be with them, to be one of them. They laughed, and joked, and then laughed even harder. She sat there waiting for them to leave, so that she wouldn’t have to show them her out of proportioned wings, or her overly webbed feet. It was simply more pleasant for them if they didn’t have to see her. Each outburst of giggles made it harder. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d spoken to one of them, but still they spoke about her, she knew that much for sure. She...