Home at ten-thirty. Emily pays the cab while I get the keys. Inside, the house quiet - Jenna on the sofa with her phone, the monitor on the coffee table showing Theo's breathing steady and slow.

"He went down at nine," Jenna says. "Took the bottle fine."

Emily thanks her and counts out cash and I wait by the door. When Jenna's gone Emily sets the monitor to low and looks at the stairs.

"He'll wake in a few hours," she says. Not a complaint. Just the math of it, working out what the night holds. She takes her shoes off at the bottom of the stairs.

---

CHAPTER 4
“Anyway, what did Lynn say, Julia?”

I looked at her as she composed her thoughts, someone who had just shared the most literally horrendous personal information, and asked myself exactly how self-absorbed I must be. All of this was entirely down to me, in the end. Not Mary, not work, just me I wondered if there might be a way of rebottling the genie, for all of the very few seconds it took me to realise how stupidly unrealistic that thought was.

“Lynn? Oh, don’t worry. She didn’t spot a bra strap, or some unwiped mascara”

< It all started as the holiday from hell.

We were going on a three week holiday
to a villa in the hills of Spain away from the
tourist areas so that we could practice our
Spanish. We had been learning Spanish at
night school and we had decided to try to
speak only Spanish whilst we were on holiday.

It all started well until we were caught in
a traffic hold up on the M25. We therefore
arrived at Gatwick with only minutes to go
until the last check in time.

The moment lasted about four seconds.

The Sisters

By Jenny with a G

Chris was already at school when Lily arrived.

That was not unusual.

Chris was usually there before almost everyone, sitting on the wooden bench outside the library with a backpack tucked close beside one foot. Teachers passed with coffee cups and key rings. The custodian pushed a cart down the hallway. Students came in laughing, yawning, arguing, complaining about homework, and never wondered why Chris always seemed to be waiting before the day had even begun.

Lily noticed.

Lily noticed most things about Chris.

Part 3 A Penny for them

We had the next three days to film the rest of the Friday story. On Tuesday morning, very early, we were filmed coming out of a door onto the street. The door had ‘Head Office’ on a sign over it. We all then went next door into an actual beauty salon which had the sign ‘Heavenly Bodies – Look like an Angel’.

Back in the industrial building I was shown a set I had not seen before. It was a mock-up of a salon, complete with hair-washing station, make-up station and a proper salon bed with adjustable height.

The Magician's Force

Author's note. This essay contains a discussion of abuse. please read with care

Dance, Dance, Dance, Amy

A Transgender Mythology Romantacy

A Lamur, GA, USA Novel

Chapter Seventeen: Crystal Echoes

By Gail Rose Landers

I found a jacket that remembers a missing girl, and it’s rewriting my body one day at a time. Now I have to solve that girl's murder before the coat finishes its work and I disappear into someone else’s life.

CHAPTER 14
I did the honours with the fresh bottle, and when Ox had popped my cork, I returned to our table, where Hira was interrogating the others.

“So it is the tall man who is the baker?”

Alicia was taking question point.

“Yes, as in he is the one with the bakery, over to Cathays. Nana Deb’s his wife, and she runs a, well, a girls’ home. That’s where I live”

I wake at half past four to something wrong with my underwear.

The Ghost of Tomorrow

Chapter 2: Home Truths

That night I had a vivid dream. You know, one of those dreams where
you think you’re awake until you wake up? In this dream, I woke up, and
grabbed the clothes that Mum had laid out in my bedroom to get dressed
into and went into the bathroom. Just a normal school morning. Only when
I took off my pyjamas, two things finally dawned on me. Okay, well
three. No four.

The trio left Damien’s father and friends behind. After receiving some more directions from Stephanie, the Taxi took them to a quiet mews not far from Red Lion Square in Central London. They waited in the street while the cab did a ‘U-turn’ and disappeared into the traffic in search of a new fare.