The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoe Taylor

P.E. is bad enough, but at Clarity Prep, there's also the joy of the colorfully labelled New Experience Day, and today's lesson is Fencing, or as Lewis/Aria thinks of it, 'being a lopsided tripod with a sword.' Still, she manages to make a new friend in a senior fencing student and further the goal of repairing The Beige Beast in the process. And soon she'll get to actually see what the girls' dorms actually look like, too. En garde!

Chapter 5

I was looking out of the window as Sally and Jerry were talking. This was a whole new world for me. Every view was new and different. They continued and I listened with half an ear.

“There’s a lot of new things to learn. It’s pretty exciting.”

“I’m told that it gets more like work, the longer you do it.”

“As I said, Jerry. We’ve both worked in retail. We’re not afraid of work. All I hope is that others treat us well.”

Chapter Five: Reflection

The annual planning folders are on my desk when I arrive - Dave's doing, the account list already pulled, the prior year actuals flagged for comparison. October means the revenue forecast, account by account, the coming year projected against the current year's performance. I open the first folder and start working.

The loose shirt manages the morning. Not perfectly - when I lean forward to pull a folder from the stack the fabric shifts slightly - but nothing that evident. The jacket stays on the chair.

Surprise, I'm alive. Someone has given me a quick kick, and I realized I hadn't posted much of anything here in years... again. I'll try once again to correct that problem. For now, please enjoy this one.

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?

Behind the scenes, Fox was preparing for the fight of his life. He fired the court-appointed lawyer and engaged the services of two of his former pupils. Then, he went to court and argued his right to defend himself. That was initially denied by the lower court and subsequently, the court of appeal.

Chapter 3

It didn’t take long to get to St. Pauls and the walk to the address we had been given didn’t take long either, considering that when we came up from the tube station the building was only on the opposite corner.

We walked across the road and along until we arrived at the main doors. It was still only around ten, but we went in and looked at the board inside to find the agency. We didn’t have enough time to find a café, so went up to the first floor and went into the reception. A very smart girl was at the desk.

“Can I help you?”

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoë Taylor

“What the hell was that?” Kris asked, her head jerking up suddenly. Lewis didn’t answer right away. He felt along the paneling for something, and found it - a crack, almost invisible. He managed to dig his greasy theater-hardened nails into the crack and pried it back. Another low, echoing groan as the hinges protested, but gave way to a massive steel door, covered in acoustic foam on the other side.

October. The light through the bedroom window is different from the summer light - lower, more amber, the trees along the street turning. I've been watching this from this window for six years. First autumn in this body.

Split Victory

© 2026 Zoë Taylor

“Sweetheart,” Tori said and kissed Morgan’s forehead, “Whatever you need, you know you just have to ask.”

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?

Once the public furore and extended media frenzy over Professor Fox being charged with some of the crimes had died down, both members of the Fox family were brought up before magistrates once again.

This time, the full gamut of charges, including child trafficking, paedophilia and child imprisonment, were laid down. As before, both pleaded not guilty through their legal representatives.

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?

I stood in front of the full-length mirror and adjusted my necklace so it hung in the centre of my chest. I smoothed my hands across my light blue tee and adjusted the high sleeves so it sat straight. Lauren had said this colour matched my eyes. Maybe that was why she’d bought it for me.