Sandman Oh, hell. This can't be happening. There's sand on the floor, and that may not sound like much but where there's sand, there's a sandman. And if there's a Sandman... We're all dead. I quickly check my hands for dripping. That's what we call it here. The first sign of becoming a sandman. Your hands, then your arms, then the rest of your body all turn to sand, then fall off. But the process is agonisingly slow, so the contagion has time to spread. What's scary about the sandman syndrome is that the victims chase you in order to give you the disease. The corridor suddenly makes me claustrophobic. There's only two ways out, and if there are two sandmen they could surround me. Then I'm dead. I look one way, then the other. I'm scared, and I flinch at the slightest sound. I turn to run, to escape from this evil place, and there it is. The sandman has been very recently infected. Only his dripping fingers and the trickle of grey sand, dribbling from his left eye socket, tell me that he is one of them. As I watch, the stream from his eye intensifies until half of his face is invisible. I turn to run and there's another sandman, a woman, creeping up behind me. As I scream she wraps me in a bear-hug, and it's too late. It only takes one touch...

Riots So here I am. Sitting here, in an uncomfortable chair in a silent room. Waiting to see my brother for the last time. I wonder what colour my eyes are now. I'm afraid, so they'll be mostly violet, but I'm feeling so many different emotions right now so they could be anything. My thoughts are interrupted by a quiet young woman in a white lab coat. "You can see him now," she says. I rise slowly. Walk through the door to the operating room. And there he is. My little brother is sitting up in bed. He looks pale and thin, but I'm looking at his eyes. The yellow tint to them tells me only one thing. He's dying. As he turns his gaze to me, a hint of blue returns to his eyes and he smiles. I find that I can't meet his gaze, because I was part of the mob that killed him. It wasn't his fault. He was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time. And when the street turned into a battlefield, with the violent rebels on one side and the red-eyed police on the other, Jamie was caught in the crossfire. He doesn't say anything. Neither do I. There's nothing to be said between us. He doesn't know that I was with the rebels, throwing the shrapnel-bombs that killed him. We stay like this, solemnly silent, until his irises lose colour altogether and become deathly white. He is gone. Only then, finally, do I begin to sob.