Morning came too quickly.

Samuel opened his eyes slowly, disoriented by the unfamiliar ceiling, the beige curtains moving faintly in the air conditioning, and the lingering smell of hairspray mixed with perfume.

Natalie's house.

The gala.

Tiffany.

The dance.

The message.

His chest tightened at once.

He sat up on the guest bed. He was wearing a girls pijama Natalie had lent him. Traces of makeup remained around his eyes, faint dark smudges beneath the lashes betraying how much he had cried the night before.

Chapter Seven — The Receiving

An attendant struck the old bell at the head of the table once, and the low, worn note it gave off — the same note that had sent them out of the last room and into this one — brought the whole hall back to silence.

Chapter 8 – Walk on by

Which transgression against established norms has you most irate?

Wrestling with Tomorrow
Erin Halfelven

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoe Taylor

“Well,” Elaine said as she strolled over, placing the cable down on the arm of the sofa next to Aria, “I’m sorry to say, you’re not going anywhere until this lets up. I hope you can stand our company that long.”

Wychwood Day Eight

In the dream, within her dreamworld, I tried to see how far into Victoria’s past I see. And it was what wasn’t there that stood out. There were memories, and more memories of Victoria’s than I could ever remember exploring before. I could actually follow my Victoria back a bit further now in her mind, before I could remember ever having dreamed of being Victoria, though not all the way back to when I first invented Nancy before we had even started school. But this Victoria, the one who I grew up being in dreams, was not, no way, no how, the same as alt-Victoria that I brought into the world the other day. Even if she had some of the same personality traits, it was clear that she followed a different path.

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?

MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, Nevada:
Daisy and Jessie look at the two teenage transgender girls they rescued from a human trafficker. When the band noticed the girls, they saw that they had been doped up and dressed inappropriately for their age. Daisy got pissed and got right into the trafficker's face and pulled the switchblade she always carries for personal protection.

Chapter 7

Vanessa didn’t speak on the ride home. The low hum of the electric engine was the only sound, a quiet shield against the tension coiling in the car’s interior. She sat pressed against the leather seat, every muscle tight, refusing to meet her own eyes in the faint reflection on the darkened window.

The venue is a large room, three thousand capacity, standing floor with a balcony above. We get in and I find the accessible section along the side wall - a riser with a handful of stools, a sight line to the stage that's partially obscured by a PA column but clear enough. Emily takes the stool without argument, which tells me her back has been at it since this afternoon. I stand beside her and the opener is already playing, the PA system at full output, the low end moving through the floor and up through the body before the first song has finished.