Chapter 3

It was wonderful, sitting at that table with the other girls. As we ate, the conversation turned from boys to fashions, back to boys and then what we wanted out of our last year of high school. I found out that it was possible to re-enrol as transgender and live my real-life period. While it sounded exciting, it also sounded expensive, with some of the clothing prices being bandied around.

Eventually, we all trooped off to the toilets and I found myself reworking my lipstick next to Beth.

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 7
Jenny looked a little surprised at that, and I realised how much of Lil’s problem went both ways. How must a trans woman feel, when so much of the world was shouting that same ‘imposter’ directly into her face? I did a rapid blessings count, giving my wife’s hand a squeeze, before waving in the general direction of our departed arseholes.

Chapter 2

I waited as I was, as the other guy strode away. Drom stood for a few moments and then went to a stall selling coffee. They had some tables and chairs set out. I turned around and watched him get a drink, then he went to sit down.

I went over to the stall and got my own drink. I had been worried what Drom would say if he ever saw me in a skirt, but now that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to him about. I went over to his table.

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

“Make yourself at home, Miss.”

THE END

1

[NEC, Birmingham, UK]

The applause and cheering gradually died down after ‘Hazed’, aka Hazel Donaldson and her backing band, had left the stage. Then the chants of ‘More’ grew until the stage lights went on again to reveal an empty stage apart from Hazel, a stool and an acoustic guitar. In the minute or so from the lights going out to now, she’d changed from her previous outfit into a simple white lace dress.

Suggestion 1

I had just moved in to her place when Tracy spoke up. We were christening her bed. I won’t go into those kinds of details, but I will mention how compatible we were in the sack.

I love old euphemisms like “in the sack.” Being an English major drew me to words. But before you criticize me for a useless major, I am also getting a business major.

So, Tracy spoke up. “Robbie, can I make a suggestion?”

I was in that lull, thinking about closing my eyes, when her hand returned between my legs. Yes, dear readers, she had my attention. “Of course, you can. I am open to any suggestions you have.”

“You have an unpleasant odor about you.”

I panicked. “Really, what do you suggest?”

Cruel Love
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I have always considered myself as a driven person – some might say obsessive. Whatever you call it, it has bought me success and the admiration of my peers, but I wonder whether it is also what led me into a cruel love affair.

Chapter 1

They say that you can’t choose your parents, and I for one, can heartily agree with that. My own parents, Duke and Daisy Smithers, should have had a better upbringing if there had been any justice in the world. Their own two sets of parents were aging hippies, living in a commune and growing odd plants.

I’m not saying that they were bad people on the few times I had met them, merely spaced out for most of the time. I’m still not sure if my parents had actually married, but the five of us children all bore the surname of Smithers.

He smirked. “I don’t wear anything.”

Another Country -14-
by Erin Halfelven

Keith and I had decided we were going to try to go together into what would be my eighth life and his second. But deciding on another world to make was harder than we thought.