The story I am about to share with you has only recently come to an end. It has haunted me for twelve years of my life and tainted every moment of my younger years. Maybe now I can become a normal person, but I will never forget what happened. When I was 12 years old, my parents finally decided to split me and my younger brother up and give us our own rooms. I was a couple of years older than Alex so I got the bigger space, while he stayed in the box-room. My dad wasn’t too happy about having to move all of his junk down into the garage, but times change and I needed my own room.…

It was 9:30 P.M on a Sunday night and I had only just left work. There was a mountain of paperwork sat at my desk that had to be completed for Monday morning, but I knew that it couldn’t be done. I’d already given up my entire weekend, so it was difficult to find the energy to worry. I had grown bored of my job now anyway, so I didn’t really care what my boss said; I just needed a beer. I wandered out of the office doors, through the car park and made my way down the darkened road. Then like that, I was free. I was 21 now and had reached the age when I believed I knew…

I was 15 years old during the weekend in June when everything would change. My mum had decided to skip town to visit her distant family, as she felt that she had earned a break. Nothing unusual about the decision to just up and leave as she often goes to visit ‘the other side’ as she called it. She’d either visit her parents – a part of the family that I actually enjoy seeing – who occupy a modest cottage up in the hills of some English countryside; or if she was feeling tolerant, she would make the lengthy trip to see her annoying, yuppie cousins, living it up in their seemingly never-ending Spanish property – that’s where she was…

02-10-2012 This story began about five days ago but I’ve only now just got round to writing it down. I’ll take my time to make sure I share everything with you and the fact that this whole ordeal hasn’t once left my mind makes me feel certain that I won’t miss any details. It’s going to be a very long story, maybe too long for some people; but I just need some sort of explanation to keep me from feeling insane. I’m hoping that if I write it all down, maybe I or someone else can make some sense of it – as little as there may be. Well I suppose this story actually began 48 years ago and the…

Back in February of 2008, I decided that I needed a change in my monotonous life. Whether that change would come in the form of a new job or a new toothbrush, I didn’t know. I was never the most adventurous person, I’ve always found it difficult to veer away from my comfort zone and the limit of my existence usually depended upon which book I was reading at the time. It took me a while to realise that my happiness often derived from the stories that my mind was living in; I was an avid bookworm – as miserable a synecdoche as that is. Once I realised my true outlet, I immediately knew what I wanted. I purchased a…