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?

Rascal's First Halloween
By
Rebecca Anna Coleman

-5-
Mercury Power, Make-Up!

Leo was an ordinary guy until he discovers a strange program… the Master PC program. It allows him to edit the people around him and alter reality (including himself). What will a young man bored with life use it for? Well, depravity of course.

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.

I wake at five-seventeen and lie very still.

Wednesday I woke to the first of it — the small buds, the wider hips, the absence below the waistband. This is Thursday. Whatever the process is, it has not stopped.

I move my hands.

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.