At a young age Caitlin Leigh was hauled down from the rooftop during one of her attempts to get her fairy wings to work. Now 19, she still has not managed to get a secure grip on reality. She's studying English and Psychology at UCT and has yet to learn not to play with fire.
This is Caitlin's first story for Something Wicked.
extract from Burnt
The sun was melting down into someone else’s tomorrow. Aching buildings stood tall amongst the last few strands of light and night began creeping up from the other horizon. Dust dampened windows of cars and trains reflected pieces of sky as shards of the burning sunset. A block of flats had framed, within one of its tear-stained windows, the face of a young boy. One of Hitler’s lost Aryan children. Or so it seemed. White-blonde hair encircled a gaunt face and above each raised cheekbone lay an ice crystal encased by dark lashes. Wide-eyed he stared over the edges of the city as he had done every night since he was old enough to stand. His tiny fingers scratched paint off the peeling windowsill as he waited in taut anticipation for the sun to disappear completely and for the dark of the night to reveal his beauty. Behind him, his small room, with its bedraggled and sordid possessions, was slowly welcoming the night’s cold into its cement skin. A mattress and a blanket lay in one corner next to a rotting wooden chest. A bookshelf opposed the mattress and stood on the other side of the room beside the doorway. Upon it lay odds and ends that had seen the darker side of seven long years. A bare and lifeless light bulb swung like a dead man from a noose in the breeze that found entrance by the window. Far down below the workers of the city were beginning to make their ways home to aching families while Kay stood still at his window.
