Stories by A. E. Dooland

“You look so different!” Sarah said as she held me at arm’s length, looking me up and down. It was too late to stop her. It was too late to do anything about what she’d seen, so I just stood there, panicking. “Sorry for chasing you up the road, but I didn’t want to yell… — read more

Fuck, my head. I wasn’t even properly awake yet and it was killing me. With my eyes still closed, I put a palm against one of my cheeks. My face felt hot, and that was in direct comparison to the fact the rest of me was shiver-cold. Where was my doona? I felt around the… — read more

  I woke up to the sound of someone opening and closing the cupboards in my kitchen. Yawning, I felt around my bedside table for my phone and held in front of my face, half-blinding myself. 6:02AM. Bree was very awake for six o’clock in the morning. Weren’t teenagers supposed to be impossible to get up… — read more

After a full weekend of dressing exactly how I felt comfortable, I wasn’t prepared for how difficult it actually was to face my work clothes on Monday morning. I hadn’t even thought about it because I’d been putting them on for five years, but now here I was, standing with my wardrobe open, taking ten… — read more

Because I hadn’t gone to bed before ten since I was about eight, I did end up wide awake at three am after all. And because I was awake in the dead of the night and there was nothing else to do, I discovered I had two choices. I could either lie in bed and… — read more

I got to work early the following morning so that when Sarah arrived, it was to a desk covered in analytics printouts. She stopped in front of them, looked from them to me, and then walked over to my desk and placed a can of Red Bull between my keyboard and my monitor. “Still glad… — read more

Henry had ended up being really angry about something Sean had done. When I answered the door to him, I didn’t even get to say hello before he’d walked past me with the takeaway and angrily hung up his jacket beside the door. I had been about to rant about Bree, but when I saw… — read more