Chapter 1

Detective Inspector Marilyn Houseman and Detective Sergeant George ‘Ginger’ Kidman walked into the murder team office, with the rest of the team stopping to look at them. Marilyn smiled and they all cheered.

“Terry Hanson got twenty-five years for each murder, consecutive, with the judge appalled at the brutality. That’s on top of the five that he got for smuggling and possession of illegal firearms. He’s unlikely to be out in our lifetime.”

Morning light finds him asleep in his clothes, barely rested. He packs both devices into his messenger bag and heads for the closest repair shop.

The bell jingles as he enters. A technician glances up from behind the counter — early twenties, a name tag reading ETHAN. His eyes skim past Caden's shoulders, landing somewhere around chin level. "Help you, ma'am?"

Caden's breath hitches. He sets the laptop and phone on the counter.

"Sir," he says, his pitch higher than expected, higher than a man's should be. He coughs, tries again. "Biometric lockout."

The digger was delivered the next morning as planned. Dora was on hand to watch Tom drive it down the narrow drive towards the house.

Noise; lots of it. I’m cold: I must have shivered as someone wrapped a warm blanket around me. Drift away again…

Noise again, light… My mother’s voice:

“I think he’s coming around.”

“Let’s have a look.”

Male, foreign, heavily accented.

“Ah; you back to us, yes?”

“Grunt”

“Whatyouname?”

“Huh?”

“He’s asking you for your name.”

Mother’s voice again.

“Name… Aisling…”

“It’s his stage name…”

Opening eyes, lights on ceiling, a man standing over me, white coat, stethoscope.

Chapter 6

Marilyn walked with her to the stairs. She held out her hand.

“See you later, Brightman. I’m heading back to my office to plug a new name into our searches. We’ve been trying to get the names of the robbers that Anderson was with out of the records for a week. They all went into juvenile and the records sealed. We’re looking at another avenue, but I believe that we now have the one we really wanted.”

She went up to the team office and stood by the ‘Rascal Wall’.

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.

“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.

This is a story about a trans woman taking her first steps into the big bad world. ( not my usual sex stuff )

I looked out of the window of my small bedsit one last time as I steeled myself to face the world. I held my breath and nearly scrambled out of my front door and the main door. I forced myself not to run up the path. I had been watching to make sure my neighbours were not approaching or leaving. A few steps and I was on the street.

Chapter 5

She looked at their faces, noting their seriousness.

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.

Every bump on the drive home lands in the same location. I park in the driveway and sit there for a moment with my hands on the wheel, the cramping still there.

The kitchen light is on when I come through the door. Emily is at the counter, laptop open, case files spread out, reading glasses on. She doesn't look up. I put my bag down quietly and go upstairs.

The bathroom. Stand under the fluorescent light for a moment.

Chapter 4

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

The Wish Coin
by Suzan Donamas

“You have to be kidding me. I don't want to go to an uninhabited island in the North of Scotland for a holiday., and I certainly don't want to spend day after day in the back of a car going round something called the 500.”

“What is the 500, by the way?”

“It is a route round the coast of Scotland. Very beautiful at this time of year. No storms, no midges and lots of beautiful seascapes and beautiful flowers. The sea will be brilliant blue and the sand will be white.”

The sun was warm, even at 10AM. I collected the oars of the rowing boat from the machinery shed where we kept two pairs hung carefully on the wall. This was my first time using the boat this year, the first time I had felt able to bring it out. I walked the 200 yards to the lake and waded in. The boat, fastened by its painter to a post on the shore, was deliberately left some way out to stop the cows causing damage by scratching themselves against it.

Following the publication of our earlier articles on The Jane Doe Mystery, Sightings has learned that Dr. Nathan Ralston and his team at the British Center for Paranormal Research have begun a preliminary investigation into rumors of anomalous activity in and around Brixton. While Ralston cautions that many of the more recent reports may be little more than reactions to our coverage, he admits that the sheer volume of testimony cannot be ignored...

Right on the lips.

Another Country -15-
by Erin Halfelven

Once Tom had signed a contract that was more of an agreement between the two of them, Dora said,

“I said that I owed you an explanation. Will you please follow me, and I’ll tell you why I’m here.”