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Bent Rules

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My father was a strange and secretive man who would disappear on us for days or weeks without a word and return as if nothing had happened. My younger brother, Alex, and I were still in primary school at the time; we never understood why he disappeared like that, and Mom wouldn’t give us a straight answer either. I don’t think even she knew all the details. As a few years passed, however, Dad’s disappearances became increasingly frequent, and he and Mom often argued when he was back. This led to our parents divorcing, and Mom getting full custody of us because Dad was never around. He was barely even present for his own divorce. After the divorce, we rarely heard from Dad. He would call us once in a few months, but it was always brief. After a few years, we stopped hearing from him altogether. We received no word about his whereabouts, and Mom was worried, but she never told us anything. She knew more than she told us; I was certain of that. When I was fifteen, we received a package th...
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Shadow Justice

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My life changed when I was just twelve years old. I was woken up in the middle of the night by my parents’ screams. The screaming prevailed only for a few seconds; I rushed out of my room to see how my parents were doing when I heard my twin baby brothers crying as well. Instead of checking on my parents, I went to my brothers’ cribs to console them, and while talking to them to get them to smile, a woman stepped into the room. She wore a hood, and had gloves on. I stood in front of my brothers, even though my entire body began to tremble. “I won’t let you hurt them,” I said. The woman sighed and gave a faint smile. “I’m no child-killer, unlike your parents. You’ve got heart, Lia. I hope you grow up to be a good citizen, not be part of a global organisation hell-bent on propagating terrorism and racial supremacy." The woman turned to leave, but paused to say one last thing before disappearing into the shadows. “I’m sorry about your parents, but I had no other choice. There are too...
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Reflections

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Having lost both my parents at an early age, my grandmother was my world growing up. She taught me so much about school and life, and always made sure that I had everything I needed. I was spoiled, even in my teens. I never moved out after finishing school, even though I got a scholarship to a university; I decided to stay with Grandma and work at a local shop. A few years passed, and Grandma began to say strange things, as if she knew she was going to pass on within a month. I paid little attention to those words because of her age, but I regretted not taking her seriously when one day, I woke up to find that she had passed in her sleep. I took two weeks off work to be alone after the funeral, and while going through old memories, I came across something I had forgotten about: it was a mirror that was a family heirloom. I remembered asking Grandma about it when I was around six; her answers were rather short and vague. I wiped the dust off the mirror and looked in, and to my surprise,...
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From Shadow

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Growing up, I could never shake the feeling that I was being followed. Almost everywhere I went, I felt like someone was watching me from a corner. I never caught anyone following me, but it kept me on edge all the time. When I opened up about the issue to my friends and family, my parents secretly assigned a private investigator to keep an eye on me. We had an argument about it, and they agreed to call the PI off. I tried not to allow myself to fixate on my fears of being stalked, and to some degree, it worked, as I started to spend more time with friends during the latter stage of my highschool years. However, those fears slowly crawled back into my mind once I moved from my hometown to work in the city; and in my small apartment, I began to sense a presence I had never even felt anywhere else. Or so I thought… Towards the end of the first week at my new apartment, I began to see the same recurring dream from my childhood that I had long forgotten. It was of a cloaked figure, enshrou...
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The Lurking

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As a child, I always had the feeling that someone was watching me. Whenever I was travelling, I could sense that someone or something was following me, even though I found nothing whenever I looked around. My parents didn’t think much of it at first, but seeing how scared I was, they made it a habit to never allow me out of their sight. These feelings lingered as I grew older, although they weren’t as strong as before. I would sometimes sense a presence around me whenever I did my homework—and I could have sworn I heard whispers echoing in the air sometimes in the dead silence of the school library. This weird experience led me to write short stories in my spare time, and I even got the idea to write a novel one day. Writing helped me pour out my experiences in a way that nothing else did, and I often found it soothing. Following my parents’ advice, I also saw a therapist as a teenager, but while the sessions helped me to some degree, the sense of brewing danger never truly faded. In t...
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Life and Death

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As a child, I was always fascinated by death, especially when exploring myths and legends that covered Death as an entity. This became an obsession as I reached my teenage years, and even led me to pursue subjects like mythology and theology in my higher studies. One night, I was driving home after work when my brakes stopped working, forcing me off the road and into a lamp post. When I woke up, or what I thought was waking up, I found myself in a hospital room, but my soul was floating next to my body. Mom and Dad were there, so were a few of my relatives. “Am I dead?” I asked myself. “No, you still have time, although how much may depend on you,” a voice rose from behind. I turned around to find a figure standing before me, dressed in dark attire and with an aura that was alluring for reasons I couldn’t comprehend. “Who… Who are you?” I asked. “I’m the one person you’ve been searching for information about all your life; the same person your mother asked you not to ask questions abou...
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The Gamble of Life

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My father was a dealer at a casino, but it was not long before he himself became a gambler. It was just a hobby for him at first, but later, it spiralled into a full-blown addiction. He was on a winning streak for weeks, often bringing Mom and me lots of presents and treating us to many luxurious meals at places I had never even heard of before. However, those happy memories were short-lived once he started losing. This caused tension between Mom and Dad as Dad refused to fight off his addiction and seek professional help. Mom, exhausted by his stubbornness, divorced Dad just a year later, and I rarely got to see him afterwards. I was just ten at the time, so I didn’t understand much, but entering my teens, the reality of what happened weighed on me more and more as the years passed by. Remembering how I enjoyed Dad’s gambling stories, I feared going down a similar path. Ten years have passed since the divorce, and Dad and I meet once a month to catch up. He has relapsed a few times si...
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