Author’s note - After finishing the updated story of Laurence I was finding it very difficult to lay the story down. I knew that if I continued, then it would get dark and I knew that I couldn’t avoid that. As readers you may appreciate my dilemma or say it would have been better to leave it as it was?

This is written as a separate short story so readers can avoid the ending that appears here. I needed to write it, but you don’t need to read it although I hope some of you do.

This is a story about a trans snooker player.

As I bent over, lining my cue with the white ball, my mind was in turmoil. What should I do? The cue felt like an extension of my arm. It was a Peradon. I remember back to the hell my mother kicked up when my father brought it home. He showed me and we stared in awe at it. It was as if he had shown me Excaliber itself.

Isn’t Life Strange?
A Vignette
By Maryanne Peters

I was on holiday with my husband Mike and his two boys by his first marriage, and we were visiting a brewery in Colorado. They served what looked like a great lunch, so we sat down for a meal, to be washed down with one of their craft beers. I have to confess that I still prefer beer to wine, even after all these years post transition.

I'd also like to thank Melanie in helping me get this posted!

As was usual, she was lonely, especially on this day, as it was Christmas Eve. She got up and went to the kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee, and instead of creamer, she poured a bit of eggnog in with the brew. She considered something stronger, but even though only she would know, she wasn’t yet of the legal drinking age, and it wasn’t like she had any alcohol on hand.

She put the nog back in her fridge, then returned to her recliner.

She lived in an apartment that wasn’t lavish by any means. She needed to save as much money as she could, so whatever was left each month after basic necessities was put into a savings account. Once it was large enough, it would fund her needed surgery.

As she sipped the coffee, she thought about the events that had brought her to the present. Her mother had played around a lot in high school and she kept it up as she went to college. She had been the stereotypical proud cheerleader, who felt no one but the football team was worth her time.

Usually.

It was colder than he had expected, the sleet steadily hardening into snow, but Ken had endured worse. There was a hedgerow running between two of the fields which he thought might work for the night, and part of it looked to be hazel, or at least something with similar leaves, which the shrub had clung to despite the nastiness of the late Autumn and Winter. It had all looked so simple when he was little, the Boy Scout books almost rhapsodising about hatchets and straight staffs as a ridge pole, but walking around with an axe these days would get him lifted by the plod in no time.

Author's note: Here it is, my first story here, originally started as a New Year's Contest entry, but as the story played out, I felt I'd be truncating it too much to get it to 5,000 words. Thanks for the encouragement and inspiration, getting me to move from reader to writer!

'Til You Make It
By Marissa Lynn

September 17
"Dammit! I can feel it right there, but, crap. Something's not right. I'm not right."

As the night entered the small hours, she decided she might as well open her e-reader and wait for dawn, which was why she found herself waking from the faint memory of a dream as ever-elusive sleep had finally drawn her under.

Her cell was buzzing away next to her pillow.

“Ummmff?”

“Tiff? You awake? It’s Tyler”

“Wasn’t, but am now. Whadyawant?”

It’s 2054. I’d been out with our lady’s group on a pseudo off road ride on a trail up a 3400 meter mountain when we encountered an old slide area that seemed smooth enough but strewn with potato sized rocks on a rideable incline. My front wheel power was on my right hand and my rear wheel power on my left. I had not fallen yet, and my riding suit would protect me from injury if I did. My helmet still had enough power to keep my blood Ox levels up, so I felt confident that I could stay with the group.

Freddie is sick of being seen as weak and feminine, so he has decided that beginning in the New Year, he will completely change himself and become a true man! But when he runs into a pretty, air headed girl, she ends up dragging him into working (crossdressed) at her maid cafe!

There once was a man named Elysium who had a death wish some might say. He was always getting himself into dangerous situations, and only barely just getting away. His time was spent most days plotting a revenge fantasy for someone who had wronged him in his past. And he made plans to carry out his deed before New years of 2024. This would be his last chance. He lived in a dingy vague apartment in Oregon state, cold, and dark, brown, fuzzy feeling, and damp.

The flight was not my greatest delight.

Silly words, but I was decanted from the 777 into Perth airport feeling like absolute shit. Sod all the advice about jet lag, I NEEDED sleep. The baggage trolley was awful, only the back wheels steering.

“What is the purpose of your visit, Mister Ellison?”

Lanterns on Lake Pontchartrain
An Acadiana Transgender Story

-7-
The Road to Baton Rouge

Annie reconnects with her family and gets her true life.

“.”

“?”

“!”

“What am I?”

“You are a full stop I have just typed on this piece of paper.”

“Is that all I am?”

“For the moment, until I decide what you will be.”

“I think you will be an eighteen year old girl.”

“I still feel like a dot on your piece of paper although my experience is limited to being a dot, I suppose.”

“Yes, you are, but you are so much more in my head.”

“So am I also in your head?”

“Yes. How am I speaking to you?”

It was a shop day, so I had to bring my smiles, despite everything that had happened. My Dahon folder had caused a few comments when I had boarded the train at Croydon, and once again at Clapham Junction, but that was par for the course. It was still far more convenient than the bus ride into Barnes. Asa I was also covering duty manager that day, I had had to brave the full-on commuter rush into London, and once again I was grateful that the second trip was against the flow and the train a lot emptier.

Charlie

Late last year I was asked to interview a resident of a care home. I was told that he was over ninety but still very lucid. It was in the build-up to Christmas and I couldn’t see the point for a fashion magazine, but his daughters were insistent that he had a story to tell our readers. I had my misgivings, but went along anyway with only my phone to record the interview.

Charlie walked with a frame and guided me back to his room with the help of his daughter Claire. Once seated, he began his tale.

Jane, recently divorced, looks for a reconciliation with her daughter, Sarah.

This is a story I had given up on. It just seemed trite. Then I realized I was telling it from the wrong viewpoint. Mathew's viewpoint may may offend or trigger some people, but here it is.

It was the worst holiday I can remember. No, it was the worst day I can remember, period.

I was in the kitchen helping Mary cut up a pork loin for our traditional New Years day family dinner of shrimp cocktails followed by chop suey when Jeremy came down the stairs. I couldn’t take it all in at once. It was all just total perversion.

All the warnings! I always wanted to write a horror story. This is the one and I don't want it to be tame. It certainly isn't for everyone. There will be fucked up scenes. Check the warning tags, if there are any you'd rather avoid, please go read one of my other stories instead.

Lost and Found

“At your age how do you avoid the social services and the schools people?”

“Mostly by hanging with adults, like you. If they see me with a grown up they go to bother someone else. That woman over there is one of them. That’s why I decided to talk to you.”

“How did you know I was safe? I could have been a child molester or anything.”

“Naw. I’m good at weighing people up. You’re a veteran with PTSD. I’ve met hundreds like you on the streets. Nice men who gave everything they had to the government and then got threwn away on the garbage heap.”