She remembered traipsing: after older siblings, cooler classmates, busy parents. A large part of her childhood seemed to have been spent on the end of an invisible skein, pulling her by her upturned face, causing her gait to become awkward.
She couldn’t remember, though, what it was; the quality they had and she lacked, what kept her pleading for a fix.
She did remember the gleam in their eyes.
They’d enjoyed her dogged desperation; they’d gloried in it. She remembered understanding that.
The other thing she couldn’t recall was when the sharp edge in her psyche had severed the leash.

This was inspired by a prompt from my friend Alicia. Well, kind of. The original prompt has undergone some changes.
As a content note I should mention that today’s offering was also influenced by discussion of the privatization of the prison system and state sanctioned/deniable torture.

“Relax.”
It’s less reassurance, more instruction. I feel neither willing nor able to comply.
“It’s normal for clients to feel trepidation about Renditioncorp.”
I’d laugh; my gag prevents it.
“Naturally, the agency that financed your…residency is an important stakeholder, but we at Renditioncorp like to remember that it’s you, our clientele, who experience our service.”
Residency?
“Before your personalized interrogation, there’s one formality. Can you confirm that you’re unwilling to volunteer information?”
What fucking information? I fail to convey through grunts.
“Super. In one minute, our operatives will join you.” She smiles. “Renditioncorp: a extraordinary experience.”
And I’m alone.

This one was inspired by a prompt from @sullenhearts on Twitter.

Oh god, it’s totally like my “WORST NIGHTMARE!” She laughed, slurping her espresso martini and flinging back her head with calculated abandon.
“Can you IMAGINE? Like, ME in the NORTH? I start getting like, palpitations if I have to leave, like KENSINGTON!”
…
The dour bleats of socialist sheep on rainy moors echoed through her sleep. She was in static caravan, eating squashy sandwiches, feeding bites to a whippet, and like, ENJOYING it.

She woke, her throat hoarse with screams.

The next evening, she eyed a guest ale from Barnsley with horrified fascination.

Something had changed. A dark urge had awakened.

(This is yesterday’s. I fell asleep before I could finish it) The flat
was a find. Spacious and full of features. The tiles were Victorian, and the fireplace looked it. Magnolia nicotine walls could be painted white, the floors had been stripped.
In estate agent photos she was put down to glare (“amazing natural light!”)
When Toby and Greg took their first new home selfie, she’d crowded in, giving them a shared halo that made their friends laugh. After that they started noticing. Toby joked about their “genuine haunting” while Greg researched online, trying to find a tragic death. She laughed in her silent, mouthless way: she’d always been an orb.

The end of the rainbow, when they finally discovered it, turned out to fall dazzlingly, vividly, in a nondescript furniture showroom on the outskirts of town.
Some of the expedition to discover the secret had hoped for gold, handed over willingly by winsome leprechauns. Others had imagined a great, shining staircase, leading to a banquet hall of fierce warrior-gods.
Still others had pictured themselves stepping joyfully into the beams of coloured light and transcending to a higher plane.
It is fair to say that six months interest free credit on a tea-rose patterned sofa-bed was a disappointment to all concerned.

The playground is wide and wet and shiny. When I looked out of the window I saw a lake full of pigeons, but now I’m out here it’s hard, too hard to jump in and swim away from this. Someone has painted a spiraling snake on the Tarmac, its sinuous form segmented and numbered. I know numbers. That woman thinks I don’t. She tried to teach me “one”
– One!
She thinks I don’t know the first thing about school.
But I do. You have to keep your head above the water, because the water is hardened tar, swimming with snakes.

The park hated the night.
It hated Orion, clear, stark, towering over the creaking swings; refusing to be windswept.
It hated Ursa Minor, squatting impudently over the woods.
The moon, the moon, the moon.
The park resented the audacity of the stupid rock, glowing self importantly like that when the park’s own serviceable lamppost cast a far more practical quality of light than that cold glitter which greyed the grass and made the shadows the blacker.
As for the constellations, showy join-the-dots gimmicks, drawing the eye away from gracefully waving trees and furtive beasts.
Yes.
The park hated the night.

Once there was a wise sultan. He sent his trusted vizier to find a blind beggar, a beautiful courtesan and a mighty elephant. They all sat around drinking wine and playing Connect Four (except for the elephant, who was more of a Scrabble girl.) They learned nothing of note. No pithy and instructive (if sexist, racist and ableist) homilies were created.
And for this reason, they were never included on any corporate teambuilding presentations. Their experiences were never chronicled via clipart. They contributed nothing whatsoever to company productivity. But they didn’t give a shit about being a corporate training tool.

There was an orchard tended by two gardeners.
The orchard’s owner knew little about trees, and wondered why they only produced apples in autumn. Blaming poor motivation in his workforce, he gave one gardener from January to June to produce apples and the other from July to December, planning to sack the loser, and guarantee a year round harvest in future.
On the 30th of June, the first gardener, angry that her colleague would take all the credit for her work, gathered every single one of the tiny, unripe fruits, dry, bitter and green, and presented them to her employer.

The brothers tussled, turned the air blue and knocked knick knacks from whatnots till mum came back from work.
Granddad let them alone:
made jam sandwiches and chocolate milk when required, blessed his deafness and switched his hearing aid off.
Grandma, long gone from even the eldest’s memory, scolded, cursed and clipped them round the ears.
A shiver down the back, the urge to cry.
The boys would pause and flinch, sorries dropping unbidden from their lips.
The old man smiled:
“Thanks love.”