To act as bodyguards for the mob witness Val, Sheila and Martin have infiltrated the strip club where she works. Martin's hard job is to sit around drinking beers, while Sheila has to wear a short skirt and high heels, while serving drinks. Preventing a mob hit is a tough job, but it's much harder to hold down a cocktail waitress job without getting fired.

Leo was an ordinary guy until he discovers a strange program… the Master PC program. It allows him to edit the people around him and alter reality (including himself). What will a young man bored with life use it for? Well, depravity of course.

Just when we thought things were getting normal, on Saturday morning before we left the house, another pickup towing a trailer showed up. It looked like our pickup and trailer, if we’d let hippies decorate the outside.

Chapter 2

Marilyn went and stood on Coppergate and tried to visualise the scene. There was something wrong if the carnage was just a byproduct of a targeted hit. The Ram must have been waiting nearby, with a spotter in the Walk. If there was forward planning, the killers had to know, in advance, that the target would be there at that time, which meant a meeting had been set up.

The next day comes with a heaviness I don't recognize at first - not the cramping, which has mostly eased, but something underneath it. Behind the sternum. In the legs when I stand. I eat breakfast and drink coffee and it doesn't lift the way tiredness lifts with caffeine. Just sits there, systemic, the whole body running slightly below its usual output.

---

When Samantha wants to help Jenna, she finds out her friend is the victim of a three hundred year old family curse...and a whole lot more.

“There’s no room,” I announced. “We’ll have to take it all back.”

Sent By Sophia

Chapter 9: Debate

A Transgender Coming of Age Adventure

A Story from THE ONE

Ariel Montine Strickland

*

The digger was delivered the next morning as planned. Dora was on hand to watch Tom drive it down the narrow drive towards the house.

Noise; lots of it. I’m cold: I must have shivered as someone wrapped a warm blanket around me. Drift away again…

Noise again, light… My mother’s voice:

“I think he’s coming around.”

“Let’s have a look.”

Male, foreign, heavily accented.

“Ah; you back to us, yes?”

“Grunt”

“Whatyouname?”

“Huh?”

“He’s asking you for your name.”

Mother’s voice again.

“Name… Aisling…”

“It’s his stage name…”

Opening eyes, lights on ceiling, a man standing over me, white coat, stethoscope.