Chapter Four

When they arrived back at the house, there was immediately a complication.

A car that Sam didn’t recognize had taken their spot in the driveway, and someone else had parked on the curb. He wasn’t ready for anyone to see him like this! Wasn’t all the wedding stuff supposed to be the following day? He hadn’t considered that Fiona might end up having company that wasn’t on the itinerary, since the bridesmaids were all friends and relatives of hers.

Quinntessa, Hold That Pose

The ad in the local paper caught my eye. I reread it several times making sure that I was understanding exactly what the ad said.

"Mark," she said, voice breaking. "It's me. I'm Phil."

The Wish Coin
by Suzan Donamas

“You have to be kidding me. I don't want to go to an uninhabited island in the North of Scotland for a holiday., and I certainly don't want to spend day after day in the back of a car going round something called the 500.”

“What is the 500, by the way?”

“It is a route round the coast of Scotland. Very beautiful at this time of year. No storms, no midges and lots of beautiful seascapes and beautiful flowers. The sea will be brilliant blue and the sand will be white.”

The sun was warm, even at 10AM. I collected the oars of the rowing boat from the machinery shed where we kept two pairs hung carefully on the wall. This was my first time using the boat this year, the first time I had felt able to bring it out. I walked the 200 yards to the lake and waded in. The boat, fastened by its painter to a post on the shore, was deliberately left some way out to stop the cows causing damage by scratching themselves against it.

Following the publication of our earlier articles on The Jane Doe Mystery, Sightings has learned that Dr. Nathan Ralston and his team at the British Center for Paranormal Research have begun a preliminary investigation into rumors of anomalous activity in and around Brixton. While Ralston cautions that many of the more recent reports may be little more than reactions to our coverage, he admits that the sheer volume of testimony cannot be ignored...

Rose, Kick That Leg High

Well, it all started about eight months ago, I had been working in Vegas for a little over a month, a transplant from Southern Arizona. I came up here to try and further my career as a dancer. Of course, the chances of getting a job professionally are quite low, but dreams and ideals spur you on to keep trying. It makes it twice as hard when you are a male dancer. The majority of the dancers working in Vegas are female, buxom semi-naked females.

A week later. The alarm blares and Caden slams a palm down on it, the sharp sting of impact radiating up his wrist. He stares at the ceiling. Podcast day — out of town, he and Hale are both guests on the show. Keynote finalized. Twenty-eight days since the first flannel seam had scraped his neck raw.

Chapter 3

Tapper looked as if he’d been hit, and Marilyn watched him closely. He was silent, and they could see that his tear ducts still worked. He took a deep breath.

A TURN OF THE MOON
Day Nine
by
Jessica Drew

I lay in bed with my hands behind my head, staring up at the skylight. The room was starting to grow lighter and the birds had begun to twitter and chirp in the trees outside. I felt like I’d barely slept all night.

Cover art by Erin Halfelven
©2026, SammyC

Victoria, Ten Days Of Femininity

Ginger arrived home a little later than normal, excited because she had three new clients this afternoon as a result of the new promotion that the salon is running. She sat down in one of the wing back chairs in the living room when she got home, so she could remove her heels.

Torn from his own world and stuffed into the body of a villainess, facing the end of a doomed route he himself wrote, "Amelia" must navigate a world she really should know - too bad she was never great at worldbuilding.

Stuck in a world she (maybe) created, Amelia quickly finds that reality has filled in the details she failed to describe. The characters who were so flat when she wrote them now have nuance, and motives. The kingdom she wrote into existence is experiencing internal strife she never even thought about. And let's not even get into the complexities of the magic system, or the demon that forced her into this situation to begin with...

Oh, and then there's the fact that she's about to be arrested and executed... but surely she can come up with a way to write herself out of that, right?

...Right?