14,523 words

I Can’t Go Home Like This
by C. Sprite
© 1999

Draft - (will comprise Chapters 66 – 70 when completed)

The Nutcracker

By Jenny with a G

Thomas had seen a ballet only once in his life.

It was December, close enough to Christmas that lights glowed in nearly
every window and silver garlands trembled above the streets. His mother
had saved for months to buy two tickets to The Nutcracker.

She expected him to enjoy it.

She did not expect it to change him.

From the moment the curtain rose, Thomas sat perfectly still.

CHAPTER 5
“Thanks, love”

“Never a problem, er, woman, if I have that right. I set up this meeting, by the way, so I am keeping people out until I’m sure you’re sound. Whose top?”

“Mary’s. So’s the pendant and, er, the skirt, but the rest is all me and mine”

“You need some T-shirt bras; that one’s showing through. Ready?”

“Do it”

When I left school the orphanage found me a job as an office
boy, where thehs. boss had a spare room that I could lodge in for a
couple of mont

When I started work I found out that all the rest of the office
workers were women. I soon settled down and found that they were
all nice to me.

There was one woman Marie who was slightly older than me,
we chatted at lunchtime and during tea breaks. As I was the only boy
the talk soon got round to as to whom were the brightest and
cleverest boys or girls.

I go to her apartment that evening.

She opens the door and reads my face immediately — she always reads my face immediately, this has been true since the first week — and she steps back and lets me in without asking anything.

Her apartment is warm. The laptop is on the kitchen table from last night, the whiskey bottle still there, most of it gone. She closes the laptop. She stands at the kitchen counter and waits.

"I talked to her," I say.

Seo-yeon is still.

Torn from his own world and stuffed into the body of the villainess he'd been writing, "Amelia" must navigate a world she really should know - too bad she was never great at worldbuilding.

Now stuck in a world she (maybe) created, Amy 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'd never even considered. And let's not even get into the complexities of the magic system or the infuriating 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 get out of that...

...Right?

Cover by The Sweet Winter

Magnolia Blooms & Sakura Petals
By
Rebecca Anna Coleman

Prologue

The whole house was asleep. Which afforded me a measure of privacy I did not have during the day. According to the wall clock on the kitchen wall it was twelve o' ten in the morning. A rerun of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was playing in the background. And I was sitting at the family's computer. Trying my best to write something. I needed to write something. I had this burning desire to write something, I had ideas, but I did not have the voice.

He always woke at the gate.

Marcy at the Gate
by Suzan Donamas

Samantha enters the Patron Reception on Andrew’s arm, prepared for elegant dresses, wealthy donors, and uncomfortable questions. She is not prepared for the past to walk through the door.

CHAPTER 17
I made sure I got our bosses to let me go to court for that one. I wasn’t needed as a witness, but the sight of a paramedic, in working rig, with a shiner, might help gee up the Bench.

Affray, assault, ABH times three, assault on an emergency worker, oh, and possession of a Class B drug, amphetamine to be precise; guilty, to all. He at least had the good grace to mouth ‘Sorry’ at me from the dock. Unfortunately for him, he was already on licence for burglary, so off he went to Cardiff for an en-suite holiday at someone else’s expense, and I got two hundred pounds in compensation.

The Marionette

Chris lifted the little wooden control bar.

The marionette rose from the bedroom floor.

She stretched her tiny arms toward the ceiling, then spun in a graceful circle. Her little skirt floated around her knees before settling again.

Chris smiled.

“There you are.”

The marionette curtsied.

“Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon.”