Having thus far, we hope, interested our readers in the fortunes of a family which had become subject to so dreadful a visitation, we trust that a few words concerning them, and the peculiar circumstances in which they are now placed, will not prove altogether out of place, or unacceptable.

Bow me down to you
Bend my legs beneath me
Pull my head to the floor.

I have lower status than you.

Or so I chose.

Pull my hands out in front of me
Position me just right
Just how you want me.
Want me.

Claudia Lake

December 24, 2002 (Newspaper Publishing PLC) - Rumours that Western aid agencies are collecting human blood in return for food aid have spread panic among villagers in famine-stricken Malawi, who are barricading their homes out of a fear of vampires. The anxiety is so great in parts of southern Malawi that farm workers in one of Africa's poorest countries are staying at home.

Reginald's revelations were followed by a long silence, interrupted only by the officiousness of the waiter. The spell once broken, they exchanged a number of more or less irrelevant observations. Ethel's mind returned, again and again, to the word he had not spoken. He had said nothing of the immediate bearing of his monstrous power upon her own life and that of Ernest Fielding.

Super-speed highways with automated vehicles joining every part of the globe. Weather controllers that keep Earth's climate pleasant year-round, aside from the occasional storm programmed by humor-loving controllers.