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&nbsp;Kathryn had always been climbing. Out of the mud, out of the caravan park where the walls were thin and the nights smelled like mildew and dog piss. She climbed up through school, through a job at an office, through a promotion that became another promotion until she was Director of Projects, a title as heavy as it was meaningless. She bought a house that didn’t feel like home and filled it with sharp furniture she didn’t like. Her family called her a success. And then there was Sylvester. Sylvester was a man with restless hands. He built things that no one understood, machines and platforms that moved faster than anyone could catch up. His eyes always burned with the next thing, a thing that didn’t exist yet but would, because he willed it to. They met at a conference where he told her he was bored, and she told him she was too. They laughed at all the men in suits and all the stupid words they used to talk about things they didn’t care about. “You’re like me,” he said. She wasn’t, but she wanted to be. For a while, they were happy. Or as happy as two people can be in a world that doesn’t make sense. She brought order to his chaos, and he gave her the feeling she had always been searching for—the feeling that she wasn’t just climbing, that maybe there was something at the top. He kissed her wrist when she worked late. She sat in his warehouse and watched him scribble on napkins, muttering to himself. Her family hated him. They had climbed out of the same mud she had, but they were still caked in it—rich and bloated and loud, shouting at each other across dinners no one enjoyed. They didn’t trust Sylvester. They didn’t trust anyone. “He’s a fraud,” her brother James said, a man with shoulders too big for his suit and a voice too loud for the room. “He’s a parasite. He’ll ruin you.” Kathryn didn’t listen, not at first. Sylvester was building something great, he told her. It would change everything. Then the stories began. Small, like ripples in a pond. A competitor claimed Sylvester had stolen their tech. Anonymous accusations, forwarded by strangers, too vague to deny and too loud to ignore. His business wobbled on its feet, and Kathryn watched him late at night, hunched over his desk, his hands gripping his hair. “It’s your family,” he said. “They’re trying to ruin me.” She didn’t answer. Her family didn’t stop. James dug deeper, found debts, incomplete contracts, little threads Sylvester hadn’t tied neatly enough. They pulled on them, and the whole thing started to unravel. Sylvester’s people left him. His ideas turned to smoke. The press called him a failure. His competitors called him a fraud. One night, he showed up at her house. It was raining. It always rains in these moments, and Sylvester stood on her porch with his hair plastered to his face and his voice soft and small. “Tell me you believe me,” he said. But she didn’t say anything, because she didn’t know what to believe. Her brother and his friends came for him the next night. It was quick, and brutal, and over before anyone could stop it. The papers said they “found Sylvester’s body” outside Kathryn’s house. They said it was a tragedy. They said no one knew what had really happened. But Kathryn knew. She stood at her window and looked down at the street where his body lay. The rain had stopped by then, but the blood still ran into the gutter. Her family told her it was done, that they’d saved her, as if any of it mattered. The next day she went to work and moved her teams around like pieces on a board. The projects kept moving. Deadlines came and went. At night, she sat in her kitchen and listened to the house creak. Sylvester was gone, and his machines were silent. She thought about the mud, the climbing, the noise. There was no meaning in any of it. Her family was ugly and stupid, but they were alive, and Sylvester was dead. She was supposed to feel something, but she didn’t. Kathryn poured herself &nbsp;yet another drink and looked out the window at the empty street. The blood was gone now. It always washes away.

Blood in the gutter

In the heart of the void, where silence shrugs, A chair sits jagged, with no need for rugs. Its angles absurd, its purpose unclear, It hums with the echo: A god was once here.This was the seat where creation began, Where a god sat briefly to sketch out a plan. Stars were a doodle, black holes an oops, Galaxies flung like celestial soups.But gods, it turns out, have terrible focus, Distracted by thoughts of their own magnum opus. So the first god rose, left the chair in dismay, Muttered, “Bugger this,” and wandered away.The chair remains in its cosmic abyss, A monument to something vaguely amiss. It glistens with rain, though there's no real weather, And shadows hang round, not doing much—together.Does it mean something? Or nothing at all? Was the chair just there to prevent a fall? The universe laughs, a vast cosmic jest, And the chair just sits there, unimpressed.So heed this warning, you curious fool, Don’t sit on the chair—it’s no ergonomic jewel. For the weight of the void and god’s careless spree Might just leave you longing for tea.And somewhere, far off, the god has a grin, Sipping a drink as the chaos sets in. “Honestly,” they muse, with a casual air, “Who needs eternity? I’ve still got the chair.”

The chair in the Void

I grow none of the food I eat,and the few scraggly leaves I do, well, someone else bred the seeds, perfected them, handed them down through history's dirt while I fumbled with watering cans. My clothes? Not a stitch by my own hand. I wear the ghosts of tailors, the sweat of factories, the nameless work of thousands. And here I am, thinking a good jacket makes the man. I speak a language I didn’t shape, didn’t chisel from stone or forge in fire. It’s all borrowed sounds, patched-up metaphors, the voice of the species whispering through my throat. Math? Forget it. I didn’t invent it, just follow it around like a loyal dog. Numbers and theories crafted by minds that long since left the building. I’m shielded by laws, freedoms, the great invisible nets woven by thinkers, arguers, fighters, and fools. I enforce none of it, just float on the raft of their sacrifices. The music moves me, a melody carved from air by strangers, pianos weeping, guitars screaming, voices haunting the silence. None of it mine, but God, it feels like it. When my body broke, I had no answers, no ancient healing rites, no magic hands. Doctors bent over me, did what they could— their brilliance, not mine. The machines I type on, the code I wrangle— all born of sparks I didn’t ignite. Transistors, microprocessors, the endless symphony of innovation, a genius beyond my grasp. And yes, some of us are bastards. Petty, small-minded, cruel. But look at us— a species so magnificent it’s almost ridiculous. We build cities from dust, write books that crack the soul, paint the heavens in oils and light. We’ve created things no one mind can hold, wonders stacked upon wonders, a cosmic joke we can’t stop telling. And despite it all, despite the ones who make me want to walk into the ocean, I love us. The dead, the living, the screw-ups, the saints. I owe them my life, my joy, and every borrowed thing that keeps me breathing. &nbsp;

Dependency

<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: calc(16px * var(--body-fontSize, 1)); font-weight: inherit; font-style: var(--body-fontStyle, normal); background-color: rgba(249,250,251,var(--tw-bg-opacity));">The Alps were quiet that night, blanketed in deep snow. &nbsp;Krampus sat on a rock outside his cave, chain-smoking and flicking ash onto a pile of broken toys. His horns cast long, sinister shadows in the moonlight. He hadn’t terrorised a child in decades—not since Santa turned Christmas into an industrialised farce. Once upon a time, he was feared. Now? He was just another washed-up myth with a nicotine habit.That’s when Greta arrived, stomping through the snow like she owned it. Sixteen years old, blue hair, sharp-tongued, and angrier than a vegan at a steakhouse. She had never received anything but coal from Santa and was pissed.“You’re Krampus, right?” she said, sizing him up. “The demon goat who puts bad kids in sacks?”“Used to be,” Krampus grumbled. “Now I just sit here, waiting to die or get a call from some hipster who wants me to endorse artisanal coal.”“Well, you’re going back to work,” Greta said, pulling out a tablet. On the screen was a live feed of Elfazon HQ, Santa’s sprawling tech fortress. Conveyor belts stretched for miles, spitting out algorithm-approved presents with the soul-crushing precision of a dystopian wet dream. “This guy,” she said, pointing to Santa’s bloated figure on the feed, “has ruined everything. Christmas is a sham. And you’re going to help me burn it to the ground.”Krampus exhaled a long plume of smoke, staring at the screen. “Kid, you’re insane.”Greta smirked. “Maybe. But aren’t you bored?” By midnight, the unlikely duo was barreling toward Mistleton in a stolen sleigh. Greta had rigged up a few upgrades—a turbo boost, cloaking device, and a sound system blasting punk rock at a volume that made Krampus’s ears bleed. “This is your sleigh?” he yelled over the music.“Stole it from some influencer elf,” Greta shouted back.&nbsp;They crashed into Elfazon HQ through a window on the 17th floor, landing in the Naughty-or-Nice Department. Greta pulled a crowbar from her bag and started smashing servers like a tech-savvy Thor. Krampus, meanwhile, found himself face-to-face with a robotic elf, its LED eyes glowing red.“Unidentified intruder,” it chirped. “Please remain still while I initiate lethal—”Krampus didn’t wait for it to finish. He grabbed the bot by its plastic head and hurled it into a stack of gift-wrapped Pelotons.“Nice work, goat boy,” Greta said, tossing him a baseball bat. “Let’s wreck some Christmas spirit.” It didn’t take long for the alarms to go off. Sirens wailed, drones swarmed, and somewhere in the distance, an automated voice calmly announced, “Containment breach. Naughty Level: Critical.”“Here comes the big man,” Greta muttered, nodding toward the elevator. The doors dinged open, and out waddled Santa Claus himself. He was bigger than &nbsp;expected, not just fat but huge, his red suit stretched tight over a gut that could have its own postcode. His beard was immaculate, though, perfectly trimmed—a vanity that betrayed just how much he cared about his image.“Krampus,” Santa boomed, his voice like a late-night ad for diet pills. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here.”Krampus lit another cigarette. “And you’ve got a lot of nerve calling this Christmas.”Santa’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to run a global gift empire? Do you know what kind of margins I’m working with here?”“Do you know what kind of soul you’ve sold?” Greta snapped. “Kids don’t even write letters anymore—they fill out online forms. You turned magic into logistics, you fat bastard.”Santa took a step forward, his boots thudding like boulders. “Magic doesn’t pay the bills, little girl. You think reindeer fly on wishes? They eat, and they eat a lot.”That’s when Greta hit him with the crowbar. The battle raged through Elfazon HQ, a glorious mess of broken drones, smashed conveyor belts, and one incensed Krampus using his chains to lasso Santa like a deranged rodeo clown. Greta hacked into the central database, her fingers flying across the keyboard. “I’m rewriting the algorithm,” she called out. “Every kid gets a lump of coal this year.”Krampus grinned, his sharp teeth gleaming in the flickering fluorescent light. “And what about the adults?”“They get worse,” Greta said, her eyes glinting with mischief. “Cancelled streaming subscriptions. Socks. Self-help books.”Santa bellowed in rage, struggling against the chains. “You think you’re saving Christmas? You’re ruining it!”“Good,” Krampus growled, tightening the chains. “It’s about time someone did.” By dawn, Elfazon HQ was in ruins. The gift data had been scrambled, the drones reprogrammed to drop flaming coal into suburban swimming pools, and Santa himself left tied to a chair, forced to watch as Krampus and Greta broadcast their message to the world:“Christmas is cancelled. Go outside. Talk to your neighbours. Be weird. Be naughty. And for the love of all that’s unholy, stop asking for iPads.”As their sleigh soared into the sunrise, Greta turned to Krampus. “That was fun, what mischief is next?”He lit another cigarette, the glow illuminating his crooked grin. “Now? We go and knee cap the Easter Bunny. The guy's a pick and he has been skating by for far too long.”

A Festive Apocalypse

a lion and a lamb stitched together, not by love, but by the rough hands of a universe that wanted a laugh, or a lesson no one asked for. an animal at war with itself, claws and fear tangled in its veins, walking the world in search of a key to unlock peace it may never find. the lion wakes first, eyes burning with the sun’s ambition. he sees a kingdom—vast, abundant, his. he roars and the world bends; obstacles crumble like dust in his path. he knows what he wants and takes it with teeth and muscle. his is a fire that consumes but never apologizes. he is his own master, his own god. but the lamb stirs too, trembling beneath the weight of morning. its world is small, a landscape of shadows and imagined predators. it sees only what looms ahead, the next sheep, the shepherd’s hand, the promise of safety if it obeys. the lamb begs where the lion takes, fears where the lion fights. its heart beats in panic, its strings pulled by invisible hands. and so the creature rises, half-majesty, half-dread, steering itself into another day. you feel the ship beneath your hands, the course uncertain. is it the lion at the wheel, confident and wild? or the lamb, hesitant and hoping to survive? each morning, you decide who sails, but the war inside rages on.

Fusion

Adam had always been a screw-up. He knew it, the Master knew it, and the whole damn universe knew it too. In every possible version of every possible world, there he was—blundering, fumbling, and tripping over his own humanity. Sometimes he was a drunk. Sometimes a preacher. Once, he’d been a king, but that had ended badly. The Master, cosmic and cruel, had suffered Adam’s idiocy across too many timelines, and patience wasn’t in his nature.“For your sins,” the Master said, his voice rippling through creation like a rolling quake, “I will take from you the colour red.” It didn’t happen all at once. No, the Master was deliberate. The red bled out of the world slowly, like a wound refusing to clot. Adam watched it go, helpless, horrified, as the color seeped from the flowers, the fruits, the sky. By the time it was gone, it was as though it had never existed. Time folded neatly over the wound, like a lie you tell yourself to stay sane. People didn’t notice. Of course they didn’t. How could they? They couldn’t miss what they’d never had. But Adam knew. Adam saw it all. He walked the streets of this pale, washed-out world, feeling like he’d been gutted. Roses, once blazing with romance and longing, were now dull and sickly. Lovers still exchanged bouquets, their smiles empty of fire. He passed by a fruit stand and stared at the tomatoes, greenish-gray and shriveled-looking, the kind of thing you’d only buy if you were starving. The city looked smaller somehow. Flags flapped limply in the wind, their colors muted, their messages subdued. Without red, they were just pieces of cloth, signifying nothing. Adam wandered past a café, peering through the window at the people inside. They sipped glasses of wine that looked like dirty water. He felt something twist in his chest. It wasn’t just red they’d lost. It was everything red meant. The rush of blood to the face. The heat of rage. The quick, sharp pulse of lust. Life. Wars still happened, of course. People didn’t need red to kill each other. But they weren’t the same wars. There were no fiery speeches, no vivid banners snapping in the wind. Soldiers marched, they fought, they died—but it was cold, mechanical, like a machine grinding forward because it didn’t know how to stop. Adam stumbled into a museum once, hoping to feel something, anything. The paintings were there, hung in their expensive frames, but they looked flat, dead. The Renaissance masterpieces were smudges of beige and brown. He stared at a portrait of some saint or another—probably Mary—but her robes were pale, her lips thin and colorless. He wanted to scream, to shake the other people wandering the gallery. “Don’t you see it?” he wanted to shout. “Don’t you see what’s missing?” But they wouldn’t, couldn’t. To them, everything was normal. Perfectly fine. He wanted to laugh. Perfectly fine. That was the problem. The whole world had become perfectly fine. He spent nights in bars, hunched over glasses of whiskey that didn’t burn the way it should have. His mind drifted to the Master, the smug bastard, sitting somewhere in the great cosmic nothingness, watching him, waiting for him to break. Adam wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He wouldn’t. But God, he was close. He thought about blue sometimes. What if the Master had taken that instead? Would the skies have turned to smoke, the oceans to sludge? Would people notice the absence of calm, of depth, of infinity? Maybe. But blue was too distant, too cool. Red was life. Without it, the world wasn’t a world anymore—it was a sketch. A bad first draft. And so he kept walking, kept drinking, kept feeling the absence of red like a hollow space inside him. He tried to remember the way it used to feel, that hot, bright, unbearable fire. Sunsets that seared your eyes. The slick, dark gleam of blood on your knuckles after a fight. The way a woman’s mouth, painted crimson, could make you forget your own damn name. It was all gone now, a dream he couldn’t wake from. He met a woman once, on one of his aimless walks. She was pretty, he thought, in a quiet, pale way. They talked for a while, and she smiled at him. There was something kind in her eyes, something steady. She asked if he wanted to come back to her place. He almost said yes. Almost. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t look at her pale lips and pretend they were red. He walked away, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his head full of ghosts. The world had adapted, but Adam couldn’t. He carried red with him, like a curse, like a memory that wouldn’t fade. It wasn’t just a color, damn it. It was the thing that made life worth living. Without it, people didn’t feel—they endured. And Adam endured too, because what else could he do? He carried the weight of the Master’s punishment, alone in a world that had forgotten how to burn.

F.S.F

Writing, Poems and Rants

Blood in the gutter

The chair in the Void

Dependency

A Festive Apocalypse

Fusion

Red