Chapter 4

That night, it took a long while for me to go to sleep. The morning would be two weeks since I had discovered his body, and Tom had filled the days since with his spirit. As I laid in the dark, idly scratching a dogs head, I thought about the clues that had been left. A small boy bullied and called a queer, who had grown up gay and finding love with a larger man. It all fitted a profile.

Tamsin and Josie became a team mostly because of their being together 24/7. Even though Tamsin was Elenora’s niece, she wasn’t that close with her aunt. Tamsin was very much her own woman.

The antiseptic tang of the living room haunted the air, a faint ghost of the hospital ward. Melanie, propped on the sofa, a patchwork quilt draped over her plaster-encased leg, flipped through a magazine. Her ankle throbbed, a dull ache that resonated with the silence hanging between her and Mum.

I lingered in the doorway, the scent of burnt toast from my failed breakfast attempt clinging to my jumper. They hadn't noticed me yet. Their voices, hushed and conspiratorial, floated from the other side of the room.

I looked at myself in the big mirror on the back of the door.

Another Country -9-
by Erin Halfelven

Brown sat off to the side, an outsider. Not family, not friend. Not Catholic. In the packed assembly, gathered together to celebrate a life, to mourn a death, he felt alone.

Chapter 3

We had lunch with Mum in the library café, telling her what was happening and how far we had got with the house. Margaret told her that the two of us would be at the church earlier to stand with our Uncle and Aunt. After that, we went back to the house, where I had to get shirtless and sit in the garden while my sister worked on my hair.

Chapter 3

“What have I got myself into,” Rose thought as Swanky handed her a black and white referee’s shirt. It was the week of their first practice and Swanky asked her to come in early for a birthday party.

“Do you have a bigger one?” Rose asked.

“Nope,” Swanky said with a shit eating grin on his face. The young man with Rick behind the counter rolled his eyes.

“Grandpa, you know we’ve got one in every size,” he said.

Rick glared at him, “Mikey, you’re ruining it.”

Ethan Martin and his mother live a simple life in a small Southern town... with a twist: She makes dresses to pay the bills and he helps out as best he can.
 

Ethan takes on a dare… and has second thoughts.
 

Coming Out Posthumously: a grave admission

A foreboding premonition caused now deceased cross-dresser Joel to schedule and pre-pay for his 'Makeover of a Lifetime' many months prior to his demise.

His ‘Makeover’ included being laid to rest perfectly made-up, with nice hair, wearing his prettiest earrings, his nicest high heeled pumps, manicured and painted nails and dressed in his feminine finery with the delightfully feminine “Miss Dior by Maison Février Essence de Parfum” wafting from his satin lined casket.

“I asked him, once. All he would say was, ‘I kept faith.’”