Chapter 6

I put the nightie on and went to the toilet, washed my hands and got into bed. I laid there for a while, thinking about the day. I had spent almost the whole day following orders. When to smile, when to look bored, when to look haughty. There was quite a number of times I was asked that last one.

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoe Taylor

P.E. is bad enough, but at Clarity Prep, there's also the joy of the colorfully labelled New Experience Day, and today's lesson is Fencing, or as Lewis/Aria thinks of it, 'being a lopsided tripod with a sword.' Still, she manages to make a new friend in a senior fencing student and further the goal of repairing The Beige Beast in the process. And soon she'll get to actually see what the girls' dorms actually look like, too. En garde!

We walked out to the car, Jacinta keeping a loose hold on my right arm. She opened the back door:

“OK, sit in on the seat, then swing your legs in.”

Being a good girl, I did as I was told. Naturally, twisting around into a car pulled my skirt up; she leaned in, caught the hem, and tugged it into place.

“I’ll climb in the far side and take your handcuffs off.”

She closed the door, walked around the back of the car, got in:

Chapter 4

A middle-aged lady came out with our meals. As she set the soup down, she looked closely at me.

“Well, I never. Are you raiding the history books, Yvonne? This one looks like Zoe when she was starting out. I had a picture of her during that time in my room at university. We all wanted to be Zoe Hamilton, but I could never be tall, red, or skinny, enough.”

“She’ll be working for the same outfit, Jill. She has her first shoot in a couple of days.”

“You’re people.”

Plus the Frog
Suzan Donamas

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoë Taylor

“What the hell was that?” Kris asked, her head jerking up suddenly. Lewis didn’t answer right away. He felt along the paneling for something, and found it - a crack, almost invisible. He managed to dig his greasy theater-hardened nails into the crack and pried it back. Another low, echoing groan as the hinges protested, but gave way to a massive steel door, covered in acoustic foam on the other side.