“Okay, now walk to me,” Rachel said with a smile, beckoning me across the room. It was hard, and we’d been at it for two days. My legs felt like lead even with the metal crutches lodged beneath my armpits. She’d said I wouldn’t need them forever; eventually I’d be able to support my own weight but for right now, I couldn’t even fathom standing up on my own. I looked to her weakly, forcing a smile, and putting one foot in front of the other. My hospital socks easily gripped the hard wood floor of my hospital room where she’d opted to do at least some of my physical therapy.

The first thing I remember was the cold. It wasn’t an unbearable cold, it wasn’t freezing, but it was uncomfortable. Through barely cracked eyelids I could see white walls, a flat-screen television, a plethora of ‘Get Well Soon’ cards taped to the walls. My body was heavy, I could move a bit but I was entirely too stiff to even raise myself into a sitting position.

It was near the end of the school year, and the fifth-graders of Northwood Elementary School were going to fifth-grade camp. The fifth-grade camp was right next to the ocean, and it was all about studying...well, the ocean.

Galen stood alone in the hospital in Roanoke. He’d had the opportunity to travel with a team of experts to aid in figuring out what Edward Watt knew about Bug, but he’d chosen to travel alone to meet Edward and his family. According to eyewitnesses, at the party trap that the Destructors had set for the girl, Edward had been ordered to pick Bug up off the ground. Immediately, for a few brief moments, they’d entered what witnesses described as some sort of vision.

Galen was sitting in his office, going over preparations to take Bug into custody. He felt like a wannabe inventor trying to become an actual inventor. It was one idea after another. He just couldn’t figure out a way militarily that would even work out successfully for them. It was getting to the point that he would be forced to enlist the help of military strategists and historians to aid in this endeavor. But Bug might simply be too powerful for Galen, the Agency, and the best the military had to offer.

Nerd-No-More Ad #3
by Ellie Dauber

Commercial products have been put to political use since the dawn of time. This use (misuse to some) of Nerd-No-More is only the latest case, and the Nerd-no-More company claims no responsbility for the INDEPENDENT actions of one or more of its customers.

Can reality be projected from one mind to another through a common household appliance?

Emily's Strange Life Chapter 10

If I should die before I wake...

They came from the same direction we had come from, more of the huge green things than I could count. Gunshots banged out from our side, but they had firearms, too, monstrous pistols like the one we had found for Trike.

Emily's Strange Life Chapter 9

There is no reason why I should be cooking dinner for my landlady, but somehow it seems to have turned out that way. I blame the sexist manufacturers of meat sauce jars. Mrs Pilsudski couldn't get the jar she'd bought to go with her evening meal open and neither could I, so now it sits there mocking our female weak wristedness while I glower at it and make a casserole from scratch.

One important thing to be aware of about nuns. When they say they're going to give you a total makeover, they aren't kidding. I figure it's the backed up pressure of not really being able to experiment themselves that means when they do get a chance it's Nuns Go Wild!

Moment of truth. I'm in the hospital's cybercafe. It's three am so I have the place to myself and I'm about to do what I've been putting off since Michael told me the secret, or at least, what he claimed was the secret. I google 'Marcus Julius Naso', the name Michael told me was mine. .

Then I look at my search results and shudder. I attempted to usurp the throne of the Roman Empire before being assassinated in 407 AD? Oh, wait, that's the wrong Marcus Julius Naso!

“Greg? You’re… you're…” I stuttered.

Greg laughed, which then turned into a coughing fit. “I’m alive, you fucking bitch,” he said once he recovered.

“That wasn’t my fault!” I screamed at him. In responsible, he snapped his fingers and Cara punched Lacey in the face, knocking her over. Lacey couldn’t hold back her tears and started sobbing, but was so dizzy that she couldn’t seem to get back up on her knees. What was causing Lacey to be sick like this? Was it the rock? And why did Cara punch Lacey? I thought I was the target, not her.

The Awakening
By
Michele Nylons

Part Two – Resurrection

Mike meets Vanessa, the mysterious person who's email address and phone number he found secreted away. He is shocked to learn of his secret past, forgotten because of his amnesia. Vanessa reintroduces Mike to his alterego Michele, who emerges like a beautiful butterfly from her cocoon.

I was sitting on a bench outside Gare’s office, dressed in my uniform again. It had been an hour since the incident had occurred and I was still crying. Frank’s words stung. The class’s reaction stung. This sucked. My life sucked. Everything that I did always ended horribly. Was it ever going to get better for me? I’d only been aware of the past month, and pretty much everything I did always had something bad happen. When I went to the mall with Lacey, I broke down. When I went to the library, I overused my abilities, fell asleep on a toilet, and got to go to the dark place.

The door opens. Michael is home.

There was simply too much going through my head to go back to sleep, so I stayed up. My name, my true name, was, if those figures could be trusted, Jamie. It wasn’t that bad of a name, so that was good. But still, those figures, they screamed it out in anger and pain. What happened? What did I do? Most importantly, what was the Dark Place? The last time, I assumed that I was dreaming, and that place was a representation of my mind. Now, I was sure that I wasn’t dreaming. This raised the question: if I wasn’t dreaming, then what was I doing?

A few hours later and I'm seeing my boyfriend off on another potentially fatal trip. Naturally, I concentrate on being perky. However worried I feel the last thing Michael needs is me bringing him down ahead of a mission.

“Be careful while I'm away,” Michael warns me “I worry about you.” He does too. He's off to the wastes of northern Canada where literally everyone will want to kill him and he's busy worrying about me.

“Do you have your pistol handy?” He asks me

Our amnesiac transsexual heroine finds the answers to only some of her questions and is finally contacted by the mysterious Executive Solution. The two assassins who tied to frame her for the murder of mobster Tony Delgado are closing in so she, LeBron and Reese have to make a run for it.

Executive Solutions

Michele Nylons

Chapter Two – State Forest

Our amnesiac transsexual heroine is on the run from Executive Solutions and the two assassins who tried to frame her for the murder of infamous mob boss Frank Delgado. It's out of the frying pan into the fire when she narrowly escapes her pursuers. She finds sanctuary at a small motel where she meets wanna-be cowboy Reese.

Caught in the Filter

A round-robin story by Shadow Dragon, MrMarvel, Sylvia Waldgrave, Bobbie Cabot, Spindizzy, Paradox, Trismegistus Shandy, and another who wishes to remain anonymous

Lupita checks on their guest before she goes back outside to chop some more wood. Black Wolf had left earlier to go see Fighting Hawk and his wife Running Brook. She bundles up as she grabs the ax and head outside. She starts splitting the logs as she wonders where the child came from. She knew from the memories of the elf’s mind she now inhabited. That it wasn’t uncommon for teenagers the child age to go in the world. However, normally, they have someone watching over them.