Chapter 8

By the following morning, the questions swirling through the city had finally reached the clan’s doorstep, their urgency amplified by rumor, fear, and the relentless churn of public debate. Chief among them was one that threatened to divide the community more sharply than any other: Should hunters be allowed to attend school alongside normal children?

Late November. They've known the date for three weeks - Jenny scheduling the induction for a Tuesday morning, the bag packed and in the car since the week before. We get to the hospital at six. Emily is checked in, changed into the gown, the IV in by six-thirty. The monitor strapped around her abdomen, the baby's heartbeat on the screen - the same fast percussion as the ultrasound in May, steady, constant.

Chapter Eight — What They Choose

Outside, the night had gone clear and cold and enormous.

They came down the hall's wide steps into it together, and the dinner closed behind them like a door underwater, all that candlelight and scrutiny and held breath suddenly muffled and far away, and Gwen stood on the bottom step in the freezing air and let herself, for one unguarded second, simply breathe.

"The car's down past the trees," she said, automatically, reaching for her keys.

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?

We were having a whole conversation without moving our mouths.

Not This Guy
-6-7-8-
by Suzan Donamas

The next morning was a recovery day before two of us became wage slaves again, but the kids had a few more days of grace before they started their next round of indoctrination. Ish was happy to big-brother LC through the next day, and as Maz and I were travelling together, we arranged to collect them both from ‘our’ beach café, or rather meet them there and pay for unhealthy food. Just as I was finishing breakfast, Ish showed me his laptop.

“Clara sent me a mail last night Dad. Last night for us, I mean. It’s okay to read; nothing…”

“Personal, son?”

Chapter 10 – The cook

When I reached the office Guy was already there, engaged on his new case. I was not unduly surprised to find that he had anticipated the course of action I’d planned for mine.

My phone rings at twenty past one.

"I've got it," she says, before I can speak. Her voice is different — faster, something lit in it. "The reactivation isn't a response to the gradient. It's a response to the timing. The nodes are pattern-matching the suppression interval and compensating. If we randomize the interval — structured pseudo-random within a fixed variance band — the mesh can't predict the next suppression event."

I sit up.

"Show me," I say.

"I'm at home. I've been running it on my machine."

I'm already looking for my shoes.

Chapter 9 – A discovery

“I’ve seen his office building” I repeated.

“Then you should go and see him and find out what the son of a gun is up to? Give him my best when you do. First, some refreshments would be nice but hurry! Then you might catch him in.”

Acidalia XXVIII

By Amanda D

Sunday Oct 11 2:55 pm

Pacific Coast Highway:

They turned into the coffee shop parking lot, circled behind the building, and backed the Honda Civic into a space beside the tree line. As it had been just two days prior, the lot was mostly empty save a moving van parked taking up three spots near the lot’s exit and a couple of cars parked by the kitchen entrance that looked like they might belong to the shop’s employees.

Wychwood Venice First Days

She/her

One

Chapter 10

The week was full on. We had Jerry take us to the appointments every day. We dressed in our special clothes, which usually lasted until after the interview and were then changed for outfits that their photographer had been supplied with. I started out every day as Zoe, but many of the pictures were me looking like someone else. Several wanted me to look like other current models, but we drew the line on that as being unethical.

Chapter 3 The Date
Marie

Warm golden light spilled through the green plaid curtains as Marie slowly opened her eyes. She tried to turn but was tangled up in sheets. She felt James bite her toes before jumping off the bed and scampering down the stairs. The woman next to her stirred and images from the preceding night carouseled through Marie's mind.

"Good morning, June," she whispered. The body next to her stirred and then rolled over a bit.

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoe Taylor

“Well,” Elaine said as she strolled over, placing the cable down on the arm of the sofa next to Aria, “I’m sorry to say, you’re not going anywhere until this lets up. I hope you can stand our company that long.”

Wychwood Day Eight

In the dream, within her dreamworld, I tried to see how far into Victoria’s past I see. And it was what wasn’t there that stood out. There were memories, and more memories of Victoria’s than I could ever remember exploring before. I could actually follow my Victoria back a bit further now in her mind, before I could remember ever having dreamed of being Victoria, though not all the way back to when I first invented Nancy before we had even started school. But this Victoria, the one who I grew up being in dreams, was not, no way, no how, the same as alt-Victoria that I brought into the world the other day. Even if she had some of the same personality traits, it was clear that she followed a different path.