Mothers in Law
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Some say that if you want to know what your wife will be like in 20 years time, meet your mother in law. But for me, I have two mothers in law. Which one would she be like?

When Samantha wants to help Jenna, she finds out her friend is the victim of a three hundred year old family curse...and a whole lot more.

“You gonna be much longer in there?” my flatmate asks as I apply the finishing touches to my make-up and give my ever-growing hair one final brush.

“Just a sec,” I reply. “Just got one last thing to do….” I smile as I reach into my medicine drawer and retrieve the two packets of pills that over the last two weeks have become beyond precious to me. The fact that one packet is labelled ‘progesterone’ and the other ‘oestrogen’ should be all you need to know why.

When Samantha wants to help Jenna, she finds out her friend is the victim of a three hundred year old family curse...and a whole lot more.

"Mark," she said, voice breaking. "It's me. I'm Phil."

The Wish Coin
by Suzan Donamas

Ellen and I were both handy with tools, but only doing odd jobs. To take a chance at something better, we entered a do-it-yourselfer reality TV show. This type of thing wasn’t for everybody. We had to be able to spend weeks on location in Key West (because it was billed as an “island getaway” to draw in viewers), and even more time there if we won. So it was ideal for people like us with no steady work.

Caden wakes with his arms folded across his chest, fingers digging into his own ribs. A dull ache pulses beneath the skin — persistent, like the ghost of a bruise. He rolls onto his back and hisses as the sheets drag across his nipples, rough against skin that had turned traitor overnight. The pain isn't localized; it radiates outward in concentric circles, tightening with each breath. He presses the heel of his hand against his sternum, testing. The pressure sends a jolt down to his navel.

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.

Chapter 2

On Saturday morning, I drove Belinda to her home, about two hours north, where we picked up her guitar, and had lunch with her parents. They were happy that she had found someone to share her first week. We were able to tell them that we would be sharing the next two weeks, as we were helping two other guides, in separate coaches, but following the same general route from London to Rome, where we would be flown back for a week off before our next trip.

Chapter 1

I should have known that I was too old to try to pull that dead stump. I wasn’t the young buck any longer, although it would have been hard to describe me as a buck in my youth. It was about the time of the third pull that I felt something was wrong, with my left arm and chest suddenly painful and my strength going, I fell onto my back and looked at the scudding spring clouds.

Lilly had found the last several days particularly hard, for multiple reasons, and today was no exception. She groaned again at what was another extremely disappointing orgasm that had passed through her body with little more than a tremor. Lilly was frustrated, deeply frustrated, and she wasn't sure what to do about it.

"Four weeks," Caden mutters as the gravel crunches under his tires, the cabin's wooden sign swinging slightly in the wind. He parks, kills the engine, sits for a moment staring at the pine trees crowding the driveway. The tour contract is signed, the advance spent. A short drive from Denver, no distractions. Just the work.

I was behind schedule, so I was up all night trying to draw the most detailed version of Cindy I ever had for the cover of her book. I think I pretty much had her done when I passed out in my chair in front of the drafting board. When I woke up, I was looking at my work. But not the oversized drawing I’d just been working on. Had I fallen and knocked other work out of my desk?

When I cleared my eyes, I realized it was more than that. 360 degrees around me was comic book art. I looked down at myself. I was Cindy.

"Psst... have you heard about Benny's party? It's going to be next week."

"Yes," Maya giggled quietly. "But obviously I won't be attending.”

A bathroom stall. The ward bathroom — three stalls, the strip lighting humming above, the particular echo of hard surfaces. You are sitting on the toilet and you don't know how you got here. Early morning from the light under the stall door, the ward not yet fully awake. The gap between whatever came before and this stall on this morning is blank and featureless as the gaps always are.

"We can’t, Mistress, not here.” Jake pleaded with a whining note, breathing out heavily, as Leah made a daring, groping move towards his crotch.

Due to a corporate downsizing either Greg or Alice has to be fired by their boss Catherine. Catherine's weakness for submissive, feminine women, provides Greg with a path to remaining in the job he so desperately needs to afford his condo.

The first thing is the seat.

Not pain — just wrongness, a soft pressure where there shouldn't be softness, the wooden chair coming up against sensitive and unfamiliar flesh, flesh that registers the hardness of the wood with a directness that makes you shift immediately, instinctively, your weight rolling forward onto your thighs. Better. Marginally. The underwear is wrong too — something silky, something that rides and gathers in ways that underwear shouldn't, the fabric light against skin that is reporting every thread of it.

You look at the table.

Penny needs someone to share an apartment. Gina meets the need. But not all is smooth sailing.