Brother by Lani Young

nna looks around the ruins of her wrecked A city and does not dare breathe. She feels perhaps while she holds her breath she can pretend it’s a dream, or some kind of vision. Perhaps while she holds her breath it isn’t true. But she can’t hold her breath forever. The exhale, when it finally comes, clouds on the glass she’s pressed against. She doesn’t wipe the mist away. Instead, she turns her back on the window. She has seen enough. She walks through the halls of her palace, the stone cracked beneath her bare feet and the plaster crumbling onto her hair and shoulders. She wonders if the white dust makes her look like a ghost. The doors to the palace have been torn off their hinges, and the giant wooden slabs lie broken and charred on the dusty ground. There are splashes of deep red sprayed across the dark oak, and Anna pauses to wonder whose it is. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine the terror shining in his tear-studded eyes as the sword glinted towards him. But she cannot imagine his face. She cannot remember his name. Will they remember his name, in years to come? Will they remember hers? What will people say, she wonders, when they talk about Carthage? What will they say when they talk about Dido?

Anna is old enough to recognise the difference in the way they talk about the gods and the way they talk about the goddesses. Baal is strong, powerful, regal. Astarte is shamed and hated. Melqart is fierce and brave. Anath is naked and vain.

She has no doubt that when they tell her sister’s story, it will not be full of her military exploits, as Aeneas’ will be. It will not be about her legacy, about her foundation of the mighty city of Carthage. It will not be a story about her life.

More important - most important - will be her death.

Already Anna is hearing whispers from the few remaining Carthaginians she has come across. They talk about Dido’s lust, her shallowness. They say she was driven mad by love, driven to her own destruction and the destruction of her own city.

They say she was driven mad by love. By her own arrogance. Never, Anna thinks, by the gods.

They don’t dare ascribe that fault to the gods. No. It is the fault of the woman. It is always the fault of the woman.

Amnis Perennis Extract from

Guérin: Dido and Aeneas, oil on canvas 1815

By Francesca Wolff

I Flash Fictioni

With the flick of a switch, the light goes out. If only it was that easy for all of humanity. Eliza Evans

The screaming of the crowd bounced against the walls of my skull and nearly burst my eardrums. You would think I'm used to it by now. Saraya Perdios

“I never loved you,” she lies. Francesca Wolff

“I’ll get help, I can get help! Sh*t. Stay there, I promise everything- everything’s gonna be fine, okay? Just hang on, goddamn it, hang on!” A clear streak ran over her cracked, bloody lips, and I realised that she was crying. She didn’t think she would make it. She was crying. Brave, beautiful Pyra was crying. “It’s- it’s alright,” she whispered in a hoarse voice. “It’s ok. Just-“ “No.” Denial. The first stage of grief. Hell no. She was not going to leave me, she couldn’t just die, that wasn’t what was supposed to happen, we were all supposed to get out of this. That was the point, wasn’t it? All the main characters in the stories I had read always lived, they always survived. It wasn’t fair, it couldn’t be“Please- hold me.” She squeezed my hand tight as I pressed her to my chest. Eliza Verney-Kershaw

His ring sinks in dark water. Francesca Wolff In the attic, a flame flickers. Francesca Wolff Bright white shoes, ruined by blood. Francesca Wolff

Year 9 have been diving into the world of gothic Literature and have been having a go at writing a story of their own. Gothic writing uses isolated scenery, creating a feeling of fear and suspense through dark and unsettling imagery. These stories are not for the faint of heart due to the supernatural powers, darkness, madness and death that they hold; if all of this sounds like something you would enjoy reading, then you are in the Gothic Stories o right place. Read on at your own risk!