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.

Rascal's First Halloween
By
Rebecca Anna Coleman

-3-
Rascal's Reflection

I thought mom was just joking when she said she'll allow me to dye my hair blue to match my cosplay. But on this lazy Thursday afternoon. I found myself sitting in a vinyl salon chair, with a heavy, salon cape draped over my shoulders and tied firmly at the back. This was my first time visiting a salon and I found the lingering chemical smell a bit weird. It was also very noisy.

After a man is stabbed in the back and dies, he wakes up in the Labyrinth with a new body, new power, and another chance.

This story takes place in the same universe as my story Invoker.

The locker room routine is practiced now. End stall, bag on the hook, change in under two minutes. Mark is already on the floor, because Mark is always already on the floor - changed in thirty seconds in the open bay, the way he always does, because Mark has never had a reason to think about changing in a locker room.

I find him at the dumbbell rack, mid-warm-up.

"You're late."

"Two minutes."

"Two minutes is late." He racks the weight. "Biceps first."

---

Chapter Nine

This was the second day in a row Taylor would be skipping baseball practice. Yesterday, he had been able to get away with not saying anything to anyone; when his teammates asked earlier, he blamed it on some bullshit his parents had pulled with a poorly scheduled appointment. This time around, he had to deal with one of the guys calling him out for it ahead of time.

“Hey, Tay-Tay? You’ll be at practice, right? Or do you have some studying to do with your girlfriend?”

Chapter 7: Chosen by Gold

Chapter 3

We just sat there, speechless, as she looked at her papers.

There was a lot for the two girls to emotionally unpack when they arrived back at Bethany’s. While it had not been Maya’s intention to tell Bethany of the thoughts and feelings she had felt for Tyler at the party, she had found herself doing just that.

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?

The following morning my mother first picked up the Twins and all our schoolbags from Niamh’s house, then on to Ciara’s. Ciara squeezed in the back while her mother sat in the front passenger seat. As we were about to pull off, Aoife remarked that Ciara didn’t have a seat belt on; there were only three belts in the back of the car. Saoirse unclipped herself from the middle seat belt, yielding it to Ciara, unclipped my belt, snuggled in beside me, and clipped us both into the one belt.

“Sorted!” she announced and my mother pulled off again.

The dial tone buzzes in his ear like a trapped wasp. Caden taps his fingers against the desk — once, twice — before the receptionist finally picks up. "First available is Thursday at two," she says, the words clipped. He books it without asking questions. The phone clicks back into its cradle with a finality that feels heavier than it should have. Petra's number glows on the screen beneath it, untouched. Data first. Then emotions.