(This story is a chapter from a longer work in progress, A Thousand Benedictions.)

For a reason Mr Tamsin made clear at the beginning of the course, which Joel now strained to recall, feedback in Creative Writing for Beginners was conducted in pairs. Because Mr Tamsin’s cruelty was not always subtle, he had paired Joel with a shy boy, Phillip, who wore a dog collar. Phillip’s creative writing sought to explore a netherworld of feudal knights, sorcerers, goblins and nubile women with names like Fern and Glayde, whose masochism, Joel felt, was a thin veil for his own. His latest work had the title The Curse of Mandralor, and after a complex plot involving the deaf-mute ‘King Mandralor’ and a magical talking dog called ‘Volto’, it concluded with a graphic description of decapitation by broadsword.