Rose Abigail Smith

August 3, 2018 AD

A Goodbye That Looked Like Dinner

Brisbane rises on the horizon and Rose lets herself believe the running might be over — Aunty Amelia's house, real beds, doors that lock for the right reasons. But the turnoff comes and goes untouched. Mum steers them into a cash-paid flat behind a row of dying shops, with caged balconies and a silence that presses in from every wall. When she takes them out for dinner that evening — proper food, a new jumper, her hand gripping Rose's all the way home — it should feel like a fresh start. It doesn't. It feels like the last good night before something changes for good.

August 3, 2018 AD

A Little Normal

In a quiet corner of the city, a rare evening unfolds with the promise of normality—dinner out, warm food, a gift wrapped in small kindness. But as soft moments flicker to life in a faded diner booth, Rose begins to sense what sits beneath the stillness: a tenderness built on borrowed time… and a goodbye no one can say yet.

August 4, 2018 AD

A Sunny Day For Doing Nothing

After days of movement, mistrust, and silence, Rose wakes to something unfamiliar: peace. With a full breakfast, brushed hair, and the city humming gently outside, the family dares to pretend—for one golden morning—that they’re just another trio out for a walk. But even stillness carries shadows when you're not sure how long it will last.

July 27, 2018 AD

After the Colours

In the aftermath of the impossible, Rose and Mack watch as the girl is wordlessly taken—drawn through the fading portal like she was never meant to stay. As silence settles over the ruined building, what remains is not just fear, but the irrevocable knowledge that the world has cracks… and something on the other side knows they’re here.

August 4, 2018 AD

All the Nice Bits

For one whole day, nothing goes wrong. Mum makes scrambled eggs on toast, brushes Rose's hair with patience she hasn't shown in weeks, and takes them exploring like a family with nowhere urgent to be. There are finger buns from a bakery and a glittery notebook chosen just for Rose. But kindness this careful has a weight to it. A detour into a chemist yields nothing visible, and something gets buried in a public bin. By evening, as Mum braids Rose's hair and whispers promises about tomorrow, the tenderness starts to feel less like recovery and more like someone saying goodbye without using the word.

Already Lucky

Rose Smith noticed everything. The way her father had gone quiet at dinner. The way her mother had stopped looking at him over the breakfast table. The small grey weather that started up inside the house when nobody was speaking. Rose was the kind of child who carried Ribbons everywhere, because Ribbons was a stuffed rabbit and Ribbons did not have to be brave. Then one afternoon a woman Rose had never seen smiled at her in a playground, and the grey weather inside her parents' house became the least wrong thing in Rose's life.

July 28, 2018 AD

Arms Like Apologies

Rose wakes in the corrugated iron building after days of cold and hunger, her brother curled around her like armour. Then a sound that doesn't belong — tyres on dirt, an engine coughing its last. Claire is running before the dust settles. But the children who step into the light aren't quite the ones she lost, and the mother gathering them close carries secrets heavy enough to reshape everything that comes next.

July 28, 2018 AD

Bags And Goodbye

With their mother’s arrival comes not comfort, but a quiet, complicated escape. As Rose and Mack are bundled into a dust-worn car bound for Brisbane, each kilometre away from the building carries more than just distance—it carries a silence thick with things no one is ready to name.

August 4, 2018 AD

Bits and Pieces

A walk through a faded shopping strip offers rare softness—warm finger buns, a glittery notebook, and the illusion of choice. But as small gestures give way to sharpened glances and buried truths, Rose and Mack begin to see that even kindness can carry the weight of something hidden… and not everything bought is meant to be kept.

August 4, 2018 AD

Braids and Promises

On the edge of sleep, in the hush of a borrowed flat, Rose feels the gentle tension of her mother’s hands in her hair—familiar, soothing, and strangely final. As the city murmurs outside and quiet promises hang between plaits and bedtime, the night begins to wrap around them like a spell too delicate to name… and too important to break.

July 29, 2018 AD

Checkout Time

As the sun rises over the faded Copper Post Motel, Rose senses something uneasy beneath the routine of departure. With the doors still shut, curtains drawn, and a strange echo from the night before clinging to her thoughts, the family pulls away—leaving behind a place that never fully let them in, and maybe never truly let them go.

July 28, 2018 AD

Cobar After Dark

As night falls and the Copper Post Motel flickers into view, Rose, Mack, and their mother arrive in a town that feels more suggestion than settlement. But behind the dusty stillness and blinking signs, something lingers in the shadows—watching, waiting, and quietly tallying those who pass through.

July 28, 2018 AD

Cold Dinner

As a motel room hums with silence, flickering light, and the smell of meat pies gone soggy, Rose watches her family hold themselves together without speaking. But beneath the greasy pastry and drawn curtains, something heavier simmers—grief unspoken, fear unclaimed, and the question of who they’re all becoming just to stay afloat.

July 31, 2018 AD

Disappearing on Purpose

A voice on the radio says things Rose doesn't want to hear — words like "disappearance" and "Broken Hill" and "family of three." Mum kills the signal before the sentence finishes. The town they reach at dusk has rooms but won't give them one, and Mum doesn't fight it — because being remembered is worse than being cold. By nightfall they're parked in the darkest corner of a riverside clearing, eating cold food with no fire, surrounded by a silence that doesn't feel empty. It feels like it's watching.

July 26, 2018 AD

Dust And Distance

As Grandma drives them out of town, Rose and Mack are dropped at a lonely fork in the road with a phone, a note, and no promise of what comes next. In the hush of the outback, with the past shrinking behind them and no clear way forward, the children begin the journey into a silence neither of them yet understands.

July 27, 2018 AD

Dust and Silence

As the phone’s battery fades to its final flicker, Rose and Mack are left to confront the rising quiet, the creeping hunger, and the thin column of smoke on the horizon. Trapped between waiting and the unknown, they must decide how long hope can last before silence becomes the only answer.

August 5, 2018 AD

Dust and Thunder

Torn from one world into another, Rose finds herself in a barren dreamscape where nothing is quite right—until a familiar voice calls her name. But even in her father's arms, safety is short-lived, as a terrifying chain of events erupts from the reawakened portal, forcing Rose to face the unravelling of everything she thought she could hold onto.

July 24, 2018 AD

Dust in the Driveway

An unexpected visit from Mum stirs up more than just hugs and questions—underneath the sunshine and carrot-chopping lies a storm of quiet tension and unspoken truths. As Rose watches the dust settle on the driveway, she begins to understand that not all departures come with goodbyes.

July 28, 2018 AD

Dust Trails

As the family drives east, leaving Broken Hill behind without goodbyes or explanations, Rose begins to understand that escape isn’t always about distance. With each kilometre, the silence deepens, and the strange weight of what they’ve seen lingers—etched into memory, notebook pages, and the red dust that refuses to let go.

July 27, 2018 AD

Empty Evening

As hunger fades into something stranger and sleep becomes their only refuge, Rose and Mack try to hold still beneath a sky that feels too close. But even wrapped in warmth and silence, something unseen has begun to take notice—and it isn’t the dark-eyed man they fear most.

March 25, 2026 AD

Episode 003: Dust Trails

A six-year-old girl is drawing in the back seat of a car. She's drawn a road — long and straight, stretching to a vanishing point that falls off the edge of the page. She's drawn a sky, big and empty. A wedge-tailed eagle with its wings spread wide. And then two stick figures in the back of a wobbly car: herself, with a bow in her hair, and her brother, arms crossed grumpily over his chest, with too many freckles. Her stuffed toy is tucked under her arm, half-flattened from too much hugging. The sausage roll wrapper is scrunched in the door pocket. Her breath keeps fogging the window, and she keeps drawing faces in the condensation — two eyes, a round mouth — that smile sadly for a moment and then vanish. Nobody has spoken in a long time. Her name is Rose. She's six years old. And she has twenty-four days left.

July 25, 2018 AD

Everything Felt Off-Balance

The morning doesn't start — it lingers. Grandpa hasn't moved from his chair, Grandma forgot to fill the kettle, and the curtains are still drawn at nine o'clock. Rose watches her brother quietly pack a backpack he won't explain and her grandmother cancel a doctor who was supposed to make everything better. By nightfall, the only light in the house is a phone screen illuminating a face Rose barely recognises.

July 28, 2018 AD

Found

After days of hunger, silence, and shadows, Rose and Mack wake to something impossible: the sound of a car. As their mother arrives in a flurry of dust and desperate breath, relief floods in—but beneath the reunion lies something unspoken, a quiet question neither child dares ask just yet.

July 27, 2018 AD

Gold Light, Dead Line

With the sun slipping low and hunger pressing in, Mack tries one last desperate call. As the screen flickers and fails, Rose watches a different kind of silence settle between them—one that no longer waits for rescue, only for what comes next.

July 23, 2018 AD

Goodnight, Daddy

Rose likes Grandma and Grandpa's house. It smells like Weet-Bix and crushed flowers and something warm she can't name. The clock whispers secrets she's not big enough to understand. The cupboard has a ghost who might just be lonely. And somewhere in the dark, after the lava floor game is over and Mack's breathing has gone slow and heavy, she whispers goodnight to two things she can't quite reach — one in the cupboard, one further away.

July 23, 2018 AD

Goodnight, Ghost

Rose and her brother Mack spend another winter night at their grandparents’ house, where ticking clocks whisper secrets, biscuit tins guard forgotten treasure, and ghosts may or may not live in the furniture. But under the playful games and shadowy bedtime stories, questions linger in the quiet—about Mum, about Dad, and about the things that aren't being said.

August 5, 2018 AD

Grass, Swings, and Sky

In the sprawling green kingdom of Downey Park, Rose finds freedom not in answers, but in the simple joys of chalk-streaked hands, soaring swings, and shared laughter with strangers. As the world softens around her and time seems to stretch, a single morning becomes something sacred—a pause long enough to feel whole again.

July 27, 2018 AD

He Saw Me

As the portal pulses with impossible light, the stranger turns—and locks eyes with Rose through rust and shadow. In that silent, frozen stare, she feels the unbearable weight of being noticed… and worse, dismissed. Something otherworldly has seen her, and now, it will never un-see.

July 27, 2018 AD

Hunger Pains

In the strange stillness of a morning after too much night, Rose and Mack wait—for food, for answers, for the phone to ring. But silence stretches longer than it should, and as hunger gnaws and questions grow heavier, even the air around them seems to wonder if help is ever coming.

July 24, 2018 AD

Improvised Reunion

Claire drives to her parents' house to see her children. Rose watches from the window as the car pulls in too fast. What happens between the front door and the driveway is the same visit — the same hugs, the same questions, the same lies about where Daddy is — but the woman telling the story and the girl listening to it are living in two very different versions of the afternoon. One of them knows exactly what she's doing. The other one might be right.

July 25, 2018 AD

Just Colleen

When the doctor doesn’t arrive, a quiet knock brings someone else—and with her, something less comforting than cinnamon scrolls. As Grandma locks the door and cancels the truth, Rose and Mack begin to sense that what’s coming might not be an illness after all.

July 28, 2018 AD

Kick to Unstick

Claire and the kids leave Broken Hill without saying goodbye — no stop at Grandma's, no last look, just the engine catching and the town shrinking to nothing in the mirror. Rose draws the journey in her notebook because drawing is the only language that still works. Hours later, a roadhouse appears from the dust like something time forgot to clear away. Inside, a woman with pale eyes and a face mapped by decades of outback sun watches them with an intensity that doesn't belong to a stranger. Her parting words aren't about the weather. And her gaze doesn't stay behind when they drive away.

July 30, 2018 AD

Lunch in the Middle of Nowhere

When the family pulls into a fading outback roadhouse, the stillness inside is more than just dust and rust—it’s a warning. Among flickering lights and ghost groceries, a front-page headline reveals a truth Rose and Mack hoped was far behind them… and that the world might now be watching.

July 30, 2018 AD

Morning That Isn't Ours

As the motel wakes to a brittle grey light, Rose notices the details that don't fit—cold that bites too hard, silence that listens back, and a mother whose movements no longer match the woman she remembers. With Mack growing wary and the map no longer making sense, it becomes clear: they’re not just off course—they’re unravelling.

July 31, 2018 AD

No Vacancy

Arriving at a nameless town where every building is closed and every excuse thinner than the paint peeling from its signs, Rose and her family search in vain for a place to rest. But the town isn’t just full—it’s watching, and what it refuses to give might be more about who they are than what they need.

July 28, 2018 AD

Not Exactly, Sweetheart

Mum's car is already packed when she arrives — duffel bags, backpacks, Rose's pink suitcase with its faded unicorn sticker. Too much luggage for a simple rescue. They're going to Brisbane, she says. Aunty Amelia's. Just for a bit. Dad will bring Charlie in a few days. The words are bright and practised and not quite true, and Mack can see every seam. As the building shrinks in the rear window, Rose understands something she cannot yet name: home is no longer a place anyone can drive towards.

July 27, 2018 AD

Not Worth Claiming

Rose wakes to a wrongness she can't name. Through a crack in the rusted wall, she and Mack watch a man move through the darkness with a girl who can barely stand, whose only word is "please." He carries a device that tears reality open — colours that shouldn't exist, a doorway to somewhere that isn't anywhere. Before he steps through, he turns and looks directly at Rose. Not with surprise. Not with concern. With the calm certainty of something that has already decided she doesn't matter.

July 26, 2018 AD

Nothing Looked Broken

Grandma says pack a bag. No explanation, no destination, just shoes on and socks folded. Rose is still trying to draw storm clouds when the world tilts — a knock at the door, strangers with devices that beep, words like "positive" and "removal" that don't mean what they used to. Then Grandma is leading them out the back door, past the bins, along the fence, and into a car parked two houses down. As they pull away, a sound splits the morning that no one will explain.

July 29, 2018 AD

Nowhere But Forward

After an unsettling, half-remembered stretch of road, Rose, Mack, and their mother arrive in Hermidale—a town that feels more like a pause than a place. As shadows lengthen and the stars press close, the family checks into a motel that doesn’t welcome so much as observe… and Rose begins to understand that not all stops offer rest.

July 30, 2018 AD

Nowhere to Stop

As the road stretches into a night that refuses to fall, Rose, Mack, and their mother find themselves trapped in motion—pulled forward by a fear no one will name. When they finally stop, it’s not at a destination but a place between—where silence breathes, stars press close, and the road behind feels just as lost as the one ahead.

August 5, 2018 AD

One More Good Day

High above the playground on a swaying rope ladder, Rose glimpses the truth unfolding beneath a tree—Mack and Mum, caught in a silent storm of gestures, tears, and decisions too big to name. As the day fractures behind a thin veil of sunshine, Rose makes a quiet choice: to climb, to run, to laugh louder than the cracks beneath her feet—because sometimes pretending is the only way to hold the world together a moment longer.

July 23, 2018 AD

Only Little Bounces

As the house settles into its nighttime hush, Rose finds comfort in Grandma’s late-night visit—but a quiet question about her father brings more than just a bedtime story. In the space between whispers and creaking floorboards, something tender and uncertain hangs in the air.

July 28, 2018 AD

Pies and Fear

Cobar arrives at dusk — less a town than a suggestion of one, its edges already dissolving into dark. The Copper Post Motel flickers into view beneath a neon sign with a dying letter. Behind the counter, a woman with ash-coloured eyes studies them like she already knows the shape of their story. Her parting words are not a welcome. Outside Room 6, Rose overhears her mother's voice stripped down to something unrecognisable — sharp, afraid, speaking to someone about promises that have already broken. Inside, Rose draws the motel room in her notebook: Mum melted into a chair, Mack standing guard, and herself — faceless. A blank circle where a girl should be.

July 29, 2018 AD

Promise

Back inside Room Four, the walls press close as the night deepens and the silence grows heavier. With Mum adrift in troubled sleep and Mack stretching to hold it together, Rose clings to one quiet question—and the answer that might not be true, but needs to be believed.

July 26, 2018 AD

Ribbons Knows the Way

The track leads to a building that stopped being a building decades ago — corrugated iron and rust, a calendar frozen on August 1987, a name scratched into a locker by someone who wanted to prove they existed. Rose and Mack make it theirs as best they can: a mattress dragged to the safest corner, half a sandwich rationed between them, a spaceship game that transforms the wreckage into something bearable. Then night falls properly, and something outside the walls reminds them that pretending only works until the dark starts listening.

July 28, 2018 AD

Room Six

A cold motel room offers temporary shelter as Rose, Mack, and their mother pause on the road—but the stillness holds its own kind of tension. As overheard whispers spill secrets meant for no one, and the air thickens with unease, the children begin to understand: they’re not just passing through—they’re being hidden.

July 29, 2018 AD

Room That Forgot Itself

As night settles in Hermidale, Rose, Mack, and their mother step into a motel room more memory than shelter. Within its cracked walls and flickering lights, something heavy lingers—something that doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, but watches… and waits.

July 26, 2018 AD

Run Quiet, Run Fast

As strangers wait at the front door, Grandma leads Rose and Mack into a sudden, silent escape through the back garden and out into the uncertain streets beyond. But even as they flee, a sound from the house reminds them: what’s left behind may never be the same again.

July 30, 2018 AD

Running From the Front Page

A fading roadhouse offers stale chips, flat lemonade, and a newspaper nobody was meant to see. Bold black letters on the front page confirm what Rose has been afraid to think about — what happened at Grandma's house is no longer a secret. It's a headline. Mum doesn't pause to read it. She grabs the food and drives, refusing every stop Mack suggests, until there's nothing left but a gravel rest area, a broken picnic table, and stars that don't care who's underneath them.

July 29, 2018 AD

Seven Seconds Between

At 2:17am, the Copper Post Motel is alive in the way all unfamiliar rooms are at night — dripping taps, groaning pipes, a bar fridge that breathes in its sleep. Rose lies still beneath stiff blankets, counting the seconds between each drop of water, while Mack whistles softly in his dreams and Mum sleeps folded into a plastic chair she never meant to stop in. A backfire cracks the silence and Rose checks the car park: nothing but frost and a dying neon sign halfway through erasing its own name. Then she hears it — not loud, not clear, but unmistakable. Charlie. Their Kelpie. The whine she saves for the laundry door, for people she knows are close. Impossible, hundreds of kilometres from home, but Rose is certain.

July 31, 2018 AD

Shortcut Through Somewhere

With tension rising and the map no longer matching the land, the family veers off the known road onto a track that seems to lead nowhere—and maybe was never meant for people at all. As tempers flare and the trees begin to press in, Rose clutches Ribbons and watches the scrub prepare to swallow them whole.

July 29, 2018 AD

Smaller Than a Town

Hermidale is barely a town — a pub, a man smoking in the dark, and a motel that looks like it stopped trying years ago. Room 4 smells of damp and neglect. Rose watches her mother set down the bags, sit on the edge of the bed, and simply stop. The food is almost gone. The bathroom door closes and doesn't open again. Mack says what Rose already knows but hasn't been able to name.

July 30, 2018 AD

Smoke and Wrong Turns

The morning starts wrong and doesn't correct itself. Mum is pacing the car park before dawn, smoking cigarettes she's never smoked, and when they leave Hermidale her route makes no sense — unmarked tracks, ignored maps, turns taken on instinct that leads them in circles. Mack tries to reason with her. Rose watches the woman behind the wheel become someone she doesn't recognise. By the time the car dies on a red-dirt road in the middle of nowhere, the journey has stopped pretending to have a destination.

July 26, 2018 AD

Storm in the Bag

When Grandma abruptly tells them to pack their bags, Rose and Mack find themselves swept into a quiet flurry of decisions no one explains. With the clouds growing darker and Grandpa silent in his chair, the children begin to sense the storm isn’t outside—but something coming from within the walls of their once-safe world.

August 3, 2018 AD

The Apartment That Isn’t Home

In a forgotten flat behind shuttered shops, Rose, Mack, and their mother settle into a space that feels more like hiding than resting. As surfaces gleam too brightly and silence thickens in the corners, the apartment begins to press in—revealing just how far the family has drifted from the idea of home, and how much pretending it takes to stay afloat.

July 25, 2018 AD

The Blue Glow

As night folds over the house, Rose senses something shifting in the silence. While Mack dreams of pancakes, she glimpses a version of Grandma the grown-ups usually keep hidden—one lit only by a phone screen and the weight of what she’s not saying.

July 24, 2018 AD

The Butter Didn't Melt

Morning brings more than breakfast in Rose’s world—it brings the sound of Grandpa’s cough, the silence between Grandma’s glances, and questions no one wants to answer. As toast grows cold and voices falter, the house begins to feel like it’s waiting for something none of them can name.

August 5, 2018 AD

The Camp

Led through a haze of dust and fear, Rose is pulled toward safety by a grandmother whose voice is barely holding together. But at the heart of the camp, surrounded by strangers and shouts, Rose discovers that even safety can feel terrifying—and waiting can be just as hard as running.

July 31, 2018 AD

The Crack

Tension that’s long been building finally splinters when the car breaks and so does the silence. As Mack demands answers and their mother edges toward something close to truth, Rose watches the moment fracture—realising that some things, once said or left unsaid, change the shape of everything after.

August 5, 2018 AD

The Day We Were Allowed

The morning keeps its promise. Mum packs crustless sandwiches and a proper picnic bag, and for the first time in weeks the preparations feel like they belong to a family outing rather than an escape plan. The drive through suburban Brisbane is a glimpse into a world Rose barely recognises — tidy fences, kids on scooters, a plastic gnome half-hidden in someone's fairy garden. When Downey Park unfolds before them, vast and sunlit and full of families doing ordinary things, Rose makes a quiet deal with herself: hold onto this day, memorise every detail, keep it somewhere safe. Just in case it has to last.

July 26, 2018 AD

The Forgotten Place

Alone in the red-dusted scrub, Rose and Mack stumble across a derelict mining building—silent, crumbling, and steeped in memory. As they take uneasy shelter within its rusted bones, the quiet grows heavier, and the building itself seems to remember more than either child is ready to understand.

August 5, 2018 AD

The Gnome Was Watching

A short drive through quiet Brisbane streets becomes something much more for Rose—an accidental glimpse into a world where life is soft, ordered, and safe. As the family pulls into Downey Park, surrounded by cake, scooters, and strangers who aren’t afraid, Rose makes a silent promise: to hold onto this day like a secret, just in case it has to last.

July 24, 2018 AD

The HMS Marshmallow

While grown-up worries linger at the edges, Rose and Mack escape into a day of pure imagination—building spaceships, chasing aliens, and exploring backyard galaxies. With Grandma joining the mission and Grandpa watching from the sidelines, even a world full of unspoken questions feels lighter—if only for a while.

July 29, 2018 AD

The Hour Between

Alone in the thick silence of the motel night, Rose senses something strange—an echo from the life they left behind. As clocks tick and whispers creep through the walls, she hears a sound that shouldn’t be possible… and begins to believe they’re not as forgotten as they thought.

July 25, 2018 AD

The House Is Holding Its Breath

The morning doesn’t start—it lingers. As silence thickens and Grandpa doesn’t stir, Rose watches the adults falter and her brother quietly prepare for something he can’t name. In a house where clocks tick softly and tea goes untouched, the hush says more than anyone dares to.

July 26, 2018 AD

The Knock

When a strange knock echoes through the quiet house, Rose and Mack are ushered into hiding as Grandma confronts two figures on the doorstep. Behind hushed voices and flickering shadows, an unspoken truth begins to surface—one that threatens to take more than just answers.

August 5, 2018 AD

The Magpie's Song

In a rare moment of stillness, Rose wakes to soft light, a hopeful plan, and a mother who remembers how to cut off crusts. But as sandwiches are packed and butterflies drawn, the day ahead waits—its promise as fragile as the hush that holds them.

July 31, 2018 AD

The Name on the Radio

A ghostly radio transmission breaks the silence in the car, forcing Rose, Mack, and their mother to confront the possibility they’re no longer just missing—they’re being looked for. As truth flickers through static and silence sharpens around them, the road ahead starts to feel like a vanishing point rather than a path forward.

July 27, 2018 AD

The Ones Who Shouldn't Be Seen

Rose wakes in the black silence of the forgotten building, a suffocating stillness hanging in the air. When she and Mack spot two figures moving through the dark scrub—one dragging the other through dust and moonlight—what unfolds is not just fear, but the knowledge that they've seen something they were never meant to witness.

July 29, 2018 AD

The Pencil Snapped

The road north from Cobar has no turns, no shade, and no radio signal that holds for more than half a sentence. Rose draws impossible things in her notebook because it is the only part of the day she can control. When Mack asks why they are not going to Dubbo, something in the car breaks that is not the pencil. At a rest stop where even the clocks disagree, lunch is two muesli bars and a silence too heavy to chew through. Then the bitumen disappears, and a sign no one recognises rises from the dust: Gundownee, 47km.

July 26, 2018 AD

The Quiet Kind

As night falls in the abandoned shelter, Rose and Mack transform fear into a fragile space adventure—until an eerie sound outside shatters the game. In the thick black silence, with nothing but each other and their imaginations, they confront a deeper fear: the kind that comes when you don’t know if anyone’s coming back.

July 31, 2018 AD

The River That Waits

As night falls over a ghost-silent bush clearing, Rose, Mack, and their mother stop at a riverside camp that feels less like a resting place and more like a held breath. With empty vans nearby and a darkness that presses in close, they bed down without fire, surrounded by a silence that doesn’t just listen—it waits.

July 29, 2018 AD

The Road North

As the car hums ever forward, Rose watches the red landscape flatten into endlessness while silence thickens in the tight space between her, Mack, and Mum. Tension builds with every unanswered question, every detour, every unfinished drawing—until even the sky begins to feel like it’s holding something in.

July 30, 2018 AD

The Road That Fights Back

When the car begins to fail on a red-dirt road that offers no help and no way back, tension erupts inside and outside the vehicle. As mechanical failure bleeds into something quieter and deeper—fear, exhaustion, the breaking point of belief—Rose, Mack, and their mother confront more than a breakdown: they face the creeping truth that the road isn’t just hard. It’s hungry.

July 29, 2018 AD

The Road That Isn’t on the Map

A sudden veer off the bitumen pulls Rose, Mack, and their mother into the raw silence of an unmarked path—where dust bites harder and the landscape watches without blinking. As Mum drives deeper into nowhere with white-knuckled silence and no destination they can name, the children begin to realise: this isn’t just a detour. It’s an escape from something none of them are ready to face.

July 23, 2018 AD

The Sewing Room Door

Dawn's yellow kitchen hasn't changed in decades. The kettle clicks on before Claire has finished her first sentence. Behind a closed door down the hall, two children who are supposed to be asleep are listening to every word through thin walls — and learning that grown-ups lie in the dark just as easily as they tell the truth in daylight.

August 5, 2018 AD

The Silver-Haired Woman

At a sun-drenched playground where joy floats like soap bubbles, Rose meets a stranger with silver hair and a voice like a lullaby—someone who claims to know her father. As the ordinary day folds into something extraordinary, Rose takes one step too far... and the world begins to unravel.

July 27, 2018 AD

The Smoke We Couldn't Reach

Rose steps outside for the first time and the world is enormous and empty and wrong. A tiny skink earns a name and a knighthood, but the joy lasts only seconds before hunger folds her in half. Smoke threads the horizon — too far to walk to, too faint to trust. The phone has one bar left, then none, then nothing at all. By nightfall, the building feels different. Not emptier. The opposite. Something old and patient has taken notice, and the dark presses closer than it did before.

July 23, 2018 AD

The Truth in the Cupboard

A midnight creak pulls Rose from a glowing dream into a world more uncertain than before. As hushed voices drift through the walls and shadows stretch long, the truth slips in quietly—changing the shape of everything, even if no one says it out loud.

July 31, 2018 AD

The Truth She Almost Said

The morning begins with frost on the windows and a mother who won't look at them. She promises Queensland by nightfall, but the route she chooses isn't on any map — an unmarked track that narrows into scrub and leads them deeper into nothing. When the car stops beside a broken gate and a dead windmill, Mack finally asks the question they've all been circling. For one raw, unguarded moment, Claire almost answers. Almost. Then the door slams shut again, and they drive on without direction.

July 24, 2018 AD

The Untouched Crossword

Rose knows something is wrong before anyone says so. Grandpa always does his crossword first thing — before the kettle boils, before anyone else gets a word in. But this morning it sits untouched beside his tea, and his hands are shaking like leaves before a storm. So when Grandma suggests building a spaceship out of cushions and Grandpa watches from the back steps wrapped in a blanket, Rose plays along. What else can she do?

July 28, 2018 AD

The Woman at Noona

A quiet fuel stop at a forgotten roadside servo becomes something stranger as Rose, Mack, and their mother encounter a woman who seems carved from the land itself. Though they leave with snacks and silence, the woman’s cryptic warning—and the weight of her watchful gaze—follows them down the highway, a presence too quiet to name… but impossible to shake.

July 30, 2018 AD

The Wrong Road Twice

Tension rises in the car as Mum leads them off the map and deeper into the dust, her certainty cracking under the weight of silence and exhaustion. With every wrong turn folding back on itself, Rose, Mack, and their mother begin to understand that this isn’t just a detour—it’s a spiral.

July 29, 2018 AD

Time Doesn't Work Here

At a nameless outback rest stop caught between times, Rose, Mack, and their mother pause in the stillness of dust, rust, and too many unspoken things. As silence stretches and hunger hollows out the day, even small gestures—water from a tap, a shared muesli bar—carry the weight of everything they’re not ready to say.

August 3, 2018 AD

Twenty-Five Kilometres

As the outskirts of Brisbane rise on the horizon, hope flares briefly for Rose and Mack—until their mother’s silence becomes a decision, and a turnoff meant for safety slips past, unreached. Now deeper into the city but further from help, the children begin to see the line between escape and pursuit isn't behind them—it’s the road ahead.

July 27, 2018 AD

We Don’t Talk About This

After the colours vanish and the impossible slips back into silence, Rose and Mack are left alone with the memory of what they’ve seen—and the realisation that no one can ever know. As fear settles into their bones, so does the first unspoken rule of survival: if you want to stay, you don’t talk about what took her.

July 31, 2018 AD

What Breaks First

Waking to frost and stillness, Rose watches the cracks deepen between her mother and Mack as their car idles in the emptiness of nowhere. As the cold tightens its grip and the map loses meaning, a quiet truth settles over them: something has broken—and no one is sure how to fix it.

July 29, 2018 AD

What We Don’t Say

In the cold stillness outside their motel room, Rose and Mack sit side by side beneath the stars, watching a version of their mother unravel behind a flickering door. As silence stretches and truth lingers just out of reach, the siblings begin to name what fear has kept quiet: that something is deeply wrong—and they may be the only ones holding each other steady.

July 27, 2018 AD

Where the World Went Thin

Hidden in the shadows, Rose and Mack witness something impossible: a man with a girl, a device that bends reality, and a rip in the world that leads… somewhere else. As space itself folds under a silent, brilliant force, the children realise they haven’t just seen too much—they’ve seen something that could change everything.