NEIL
I couldn’t really sleep that night, my nerves all over the place. What if I got another stiffy while talking to her, for example? I woke again at about four, and realised I wasn’t going to drop off again. I rolled over in bed to light up my computer, and yes, there was a room in Durham. Before I could chicken out, I booked it. I doubted that the B and B would complain, as they would keep my money for the extra nights, and kept the space to fit in another guest.

Pete was the school gay boy. Well, actually he wasn’t. Gay that is, in the sense of happy etc. He was probably the gloomiest student in our high school. He made no secret of his liking boys though. It was so blatant that it had become a trope. We didn’t talk about gay people, we talked about pete people. We soon learned to live with his ooogling. Pete was definitely not a menace to anyone. He was the most non-aggressive person I have ever met. Besides, he was such a puny kid that the threat factor was in negative numbers.

MADDY
“Riiiiiight… Now, we both prefer monochrome, but you mentioned colour. Shall we get the pudding served, so we can clear the table to look at your portfolio?”

He hoovered up the ice cream I offered, so it wasn’t long before the table was cleared, dishes left soaking for the moment. That was what I normally did, but he didn’t need to know any of that. His portfolio was a large folder of paper prints, and one set caught my eye, as while it looked monochrome, there was a tiny dot of colour down near the bottom edge. I stood on the brake several times, but we got there, and in summary, the bite-sized chunks made perfect sense. I could feel the commas and full stops reasserting themselves in his speech.

“Are you ready for this?” I asked Linda.

“I’m ready,” were the last words she ever said with her body’s mouth.

“Ready,” some of Linda’s family members said.

Linda’s torso was perched on top of a small table with a pillow on it, with her rear legs on the floor and her front legs stuck to the sides of her head in preparation for the pairing.

An aging queen returns to her old stomping ground for a final hurrah and is joined by someone starting their journey.

Chapter 4: Running with Sis

NEIL
My school days were long past, but they still rode me hard, revisiting when I least expected them, or perhaps when I was least able to handle the memories. I was deep in a sump well below Castleton when something triggered my memories and switched on the classic fear/flight responses. It took me several minutes to put them back behind their wall, as I lay in the cold and dark, seeing and hearing the other boys as they threw whatever they had learned from their parents at me. Thank god I was always so much bigger than they were at all ages. Sticks and stones would never break my bones, but what I understood of their words still bloody hurt.

It was sheer bedlam in the casino, a group had booked the whole casino and hotel for seven days straight, we are talking major money here. No info on the group was shared down at our level yet, but it was rumored they were major high rollers. The problem was quite a few employees were on vacation, something the casino allowed, in fact encouraged, right after the Christmas holiday. So the powers to be were down interviewing everybody to see who could work extra shifts to fill in the gaps.

This story is a standalone entry separate from the previous What It Takes to Survive story. Feel free to start here!

Bristol, England—1628

Mother had been quiet the last few days. I knew something was wrong; how could I not? My mother, who was always laughing, hadn't shown so much as the tiniest smile in days.

I hadn't ever seen her this distant for as long as I could remember.

A group of people wake up in a video game world and are forced to work together to survive and find out how to escape.

The truth will set you free.

Chapter 27 recap

The wind picks up, icy and relentless, whipping my hair into my face. I close my eyes, steadying my breathing.

“I can do this,” I whisper to myself, trying to summon even a shred of determination.

I was a twisted lump of metal caught between the hammer of Abuela’s relentless, immigrant ambitions and the anvil of my parents’ broken dreams. I had no power to outrun my dark memories, nor any way to keep them buried. They were part of me.

CHAPTER 68
“Oh hell, Mike! Really? She must be…”

He stopped abruptly, looking directly at me, slowly collecting his next words.

“I know about your own loss, mate. The two of you must be in much the same head state, or am I wrong?”

“You have it just about right, Neil. We have had a few moments, to be honest. Memories, that sort of thing. Lots of stuff, baggage. Left overs, hang overs from the past”

“But you love her?”

Queen Dana of Highwinds the Elf Kingdom inside the Empire has a problem. One that she cannot fix personally. The problem is with a small minority of her population. A problem that has been brought to her attention by the half elf son of a problematic Duke. What is a Queen to do? She calls on help from a friend. The question now is does she realize what she is letting loose on her kingdom?

I had assumed until this talk that to become an adult I was going to undergo a metamorphosis where I grew another torso and a vulva, but now I learned I am going to get those parts by merging with a girl here.

Chapter 14: School Clothes
The mall was alive with the buzz of summer shoppers, its cool, air-conditioned halls offering relief from the sweltering heat outside. Yuqi walked confidently alongside her mom and Kelly, her purse slung across her shoulder. The air of excitement around her was undeniable—this was no ordinary shopping trip.

Chapter 17
I leveled my gaze at Hannah and Brian, my patience wearing thin. “You know, I don’t care what you think about my life before,” I said, my voice steady and cold. “But I’ll be damned if I let you say anything bad about my wife.”

The room fell into a tense silence. Brian shifted uneasily under my glare, and Hannah’s fake smile finally cracked.