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.

That remark brought a proper laugh, but Nora managed to wind it back down.

“Ah, teenagers: who’d have ‘em, ey?”

Her face fell.

“Sorry, Maz. Didn’t think”

My lover simply smiled.

“Water and bridges, water and bridges. Got him back now, and not letting him go again. Anyway, got his sister to get through it in a few years”

“Swap notes then, love?”

Chapter Six — Together

The room was exactly as they'd left it, and entirely different.

A Journey of a Thousand Miles

Chapter 9

Manny arrived with his camera and a flash with a power pack on his belt. He waited, with a big grin, while Carol and Sally brought me back to my basic self, with the brows and lashes removed as well. I posed for him with a copy of todays’ paper held in my hands to confirm the date.

I started Sunday with my usual morning jog showered, did my feminine routine and had just dressed in some casual clothes when I came out to the kitchen and saw Sam there wearing a collared shirt and a pair of dress pants. I asked him what the occasion was and he said that he was heading for church. I asked him what time the service was and he said it would be in about an hour and a half. Pondering this for a moment I asked Sam if it would be alright if I accompanied him.

Road Trip
A Vignette
By Maryanne Peters

We had always talked about doing it, fresh out a high school and before committing ourselves to three years at college – the Great American Road Trip. Just the two us and a Kombi van that my uncle said we could have if we got it working. Just me and my best pal since Elementary School – Andrew Logan.

Chapter 4 – My first case

All too soon, the anticipated charms of my promised new lifestyle became tarnished. When, after several days more had passed, I found myself in Guy’s place of business for the first time, it would have been putting it mildly to say I was disappointed by the surroundings. I hadn’t expected the Ritz, but the building was ancient and its condition could best have been summed up as dilapidated. The furniture in the office itself evidently dated from another era, one long-bygone.

David's mother is obsessed with becoming enhanced the way her own father had been, and this obsession leads her to making some reckless decisions that completely upturn both of their lives.

I go to the hospice on Thursday morning without calling ahead. The ward is quiet at that hour — a different nurse at the desk, the corridor smelling of the clean that hospice corridors smell of.

Mom's door is ajar. I knock and go in.

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?

Chapter 3 – The ex-agent

Chapter 8

It was nice to be outside and together again after the weekend. The pizza place was clean and smelt good, but the prices on the menu made my eyes water.

“I’ve never paid thirty pounds for a pizza before, or fifteen for a glass of wine!”

“This is Knightsbridge, love, with the most expensive shopping area in England across the road. We can afford this now, so order what you want and to hell with the cost.”

“I think I’ll like the salmon one, that’s a bit different to what we get in Braintree.”