These aren't the stories your mother told you.

No, these are the other stories. Photoshop Wizard by Luke Condor, narrated by Sophie Kamal.

This is genius, the voice said, booming through the computer lab.

Jeremy, you're some kind of Photoshop wizard. Walker winced with

every word as if each one were a fork pressing into her ribs. Guys! The teacher, Mr. Dag, or as he'd prefer

you to call him, Dave, called to the class. He waved them from their individual IMAQ workstations.

You guys have got to see what Jeremy is working on.

It was a small class of eight, all studying for their B-Tech National Diplomers in Graphic Design at West Nott's College,

all just trying to avoid getting a real job at McDonald's or boots or marks and sparks,

all wanting to escape this small, dying town, all wanting to make their way to a big city

and make a living doing something interesting, maybe even get a tattoo.

But Walker wasn't into any of that.

She simply enjoyed the manipulation of imagery.

She would spend hours losing herself in her computer, headphones plugged into her ears playing the latest drone call tracks,

tapping and clicking away on the keyboard as if she were born to do it.

And it was in the Adobe Photoshop software she'd found her home.

Her calling.

Dodge, burn, clone stamp, lasso, and the all-important pen tool.

These were the spells in her book, the recipes for her alchemy. Command and shift, command

and click, command an X, then C, and then finally, V. These were the incantations, the shortcuts that

she called upon, like she was summoning demons and ghouls from the pits beyond. You see, Walker had moved well beyond

the basics of image manipulation and was, although she'd never say it aloud, above this class.

...