Chapter Two: The Wish

James was up at six forty-five.

Not a decision — just what happened when you stopped setting an alarm and let four years of early calls do what they’d been trained to do. He lay still for a moment in the grey morning light of the front bedroom, listening to the house. Window open. Curtain moving. Gull somewhere busy already.

Magnolia Blooms & Sakura Petals
By
Rebecca Anna Coleman

Epilogue

CHAPTER 40
I had hands holding both of mine by then, Tom reaching over to squeeze my shoulder, as another witness took the stand.

“Verity Hallam, doctor, St David’s hospital trauma team”

This chapter includes part of the inquest on Angela's death, and may be upsetting for some.

The wrongness starts on Wednesday, a persistent pressure sitting low behind my pubic bone. It feels like I pulled a muscle doing deadlifts on Tuesday morning, except the ache is internal. I spend the afternoon walking a client through his municipal bond yields. His name is Vance, a guy who made three million in commercial logistics last year and now wants to talk about buying a marina. I sit across from him in the glass-walled conference room, keeping my face relaxed, smiling at the right intervals.

There was an extreme screaming sound in my ears as I opened my eyes to see Coach Register yelling at me.

“Dennereck! You alright?” He barked in a voice that would never sound calming to anyone.

I nodded and stood up.

I was back at school.

“That was a major hit,” Keith replied as he brushed at the dust on my shirt.

“Yeah,” I answered as I looked around and saw about every other guy in PE playing soccer, turning the center of the track into a mosh pit. “What hit?”

Part 16 The Minting of Penny

Next day we filmed a couple of linking scenes. One was where Susan inspects the work that the other two had overseen and decides that I need new bras; so, setting up the short shopping trip.

The second was the scene with me and Odette in her office where she inspects my changes so far; declares that I am coming along nicely and ordered me to pleasure her as my reward for the good start.

We took our time, and I made her shout when she came with my head being squeezed between her thighs.

Two people pass each other in the darkness of a stormy night, courses locked in for separate disasters. Fate intervenes . . . but is it for good?

I woke up with the sunlight blazing through the window, which it normally would not do until around nine.

I was late for school. Really late!

“Mom! What’s happened?” I yelled as I moved to throw the covers off, but there were no covers to throw. I sat up and looked at a bedroom with a lot of whites and grays with some shades of blue on a comforter that still covered the bed. I planted my hands on the mattress, vaulted myself off the bed and onto a hardwood floor.

I did not have a hardwood floor.

This chapter does NOT contain any more horrific incidents. The previous one was more than hard enough to write.