Garnet Smith was an experienced Marine when he was transferred to 48 Commando. His statuesque figure and shock of red hair made him quite obvious in any military parade, so his hair was kept short and hidden under his green marine beret. Otherwise he had performed well when deployed around Britain’s shores. He had picked up a Scottish accent from living in Faslane, and was comfortable protecting nuclear facilities as part of 43 Commando.

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?

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 22 – Girl talk

By the time we had finished work and closed up, the time was well into the small hours. I lingered over my final tasks to make sure that Connie and I would be the last to finish. Accordingly, when we got back to the dressing room to change out of our exotic costumes the others had already left.

“Looks like your neighbour got lucky last night.”

It was 5:30am and Jacinta was sitting at the dining table scrolling through last night’s video recordings from the CCTV, one of her daily jobs; she paused the video to take a look.

“Hmmm; and she’s hot.”

“Let me see.”

I fount this hard to believe.  Whereas Tom was a nice guy, and very bright, he was not exactly a babe magnet.  Shy and awkward around women, he rarely seemed to bring one back to his apartment.

“OK, but don’t start getting any ideas!”

“Nor you!”

Chapter 3

After we had stored our things and had a quick look around outside, we went over to the bigger farmhouse to help get the lunch. Apart from the three of us, there were only three others there, with Magnus, the Unit Leader, telling us that the others were all in the field.

He introduced Nora and Petra, the communications expert and the ‘dresser’. The first thing that surprised us was that when he introduced us, he gave us different names. I was Alex, Matilda was Mary, and Hortense was now Hope.

Powers
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

She just walked up to me. She must have seen that I was a guy out of place. I sure felt that way, that afternoon. My girlfriend at the time dragged me along to that “convention” – I forget the name of it. It was about spiritual stuff, like meditation, incense, crystals, whatever. She was at some stall talking with some woman about some kind of nonsense.

CHAPTER 11
“Ah!”, my wife said, grinning, “How about this one?”

It wasn’t what I expected, which would have been a swimming costume shot, but rather one from one of our restaurants, with Lil pulling a face at some crustacean or cephalopodian thing.

“We experimented with the food, girls. And boys. Why go all the way down there to revisit Chippy Lane?”

Samantha was supposed to disappear after graduation. Instead, Samuel opens the suitcase again and faces his first day maintaining her entirely on his own.

Synopsis: Peter always wanted to know what it felt like to be a woman. The answer comes unexpectedly: in sleep, in fragments, and in the borrowed lives of Elizabeth and Akari. At first it feels like a gift, then the edges begin to blur. Memories bleed, and lost hours become lost weeks as he struggles to understand whether he is witnessing other lives or slowly disappearing into them.

Prologue

The platform at Beauty World station was underground and air conditioned, which was a welcome relief from the humidity.

Once back at Sam’s place Sam got out his Ipad and started browsing through it while I put away my things and changed out of my dress and underwear. I came out wearing a pair of shorts and a silk blouse along with fresh undies. I then sat down in the recliner next to Sam and watched him go through a few screens on his Ipad.