Self-Ashtualisation

   When Sash was twelve, they were told that they would be struck by thunder if they referred and asked others to refer to themself by anything other than he, him or his. Disbelievingly, they hissed, of course. They were far from superstitious, unlike all the adults here in Parentitilla, the most conservative of all the adult-centred countries in the world. And they were right, of course they were – no thunder struck them, at least not in a natural-consequential way, but they were thunderstruck by the collective cruelty of the punishing people around them, through the mobile apps those people used to strike their body into submission. The adults’ laughter was the opposite of drowned out when their body nearly sank, in a metaphorical sense, dragged down by the weight of the artificially-induced rainwater. All the while their head was nearly cracked by the thunderous cracks – those blasts were extremely loud-mouthed, the sounds the cracks produced, but even those could not drown out t

Faith: A Short Story by Ashley    Gentle Kentish breeze charmed my nostrils with the smells of fish and chips and salmon steaks. The aromas enabled me to savour the quality time with my daughter on St Mildred’s Bay. A beach whose sight welcomed us with open arms, lighting up the face of the world’s greatest artist and painter, the one and only Faith. Claiming that she was the best was not an exaggeration at all. This claim was supported by the founder of Brilliant Bugs Academy for Special Children, Miss Joanna Bugs. In exactly twenty-four hours, my daughter would be taking her first ever one-to-one lesson with Joanna. A reward for the painting contest. Ah… Happy tears struggled out of the clutches of my eyes each time my mind replayed the moment Faith won the contest. I knew that my daughter’s artistic gift would outshine all the others’. So did Joanna, it seemed, as she confided that in all honesty, she did not expect much from all her other students. I broke down when Joanna offe