After I calmed down I looked out my bedroom window.

Link: Lost Faith Title Page and Description

--

Opening the door the same as he'd done thousands of times before, this time Fredrick cracked a smile at the person greeting him. "Welcome home, Miss Erica!" he said almost joyfully.

Link: Lost Faith Title Page and Description

--

Erica waited outside her bathroom door. "Hurry up, April! We're going to be late!" She heard the water turn off and the shower curtain open. Waiting a minute, she saw the door open as April exited, wrapped in a towel and smiling gaily as she pulled off the shower cap.

Link: Lost Faith Title Page and Description

--

Faith heard a faint knock on the door. "Come in, April." she said dismissively, thinking that she had decided to keep an eye on her through the night after all. Walking back into her bathroom, she called back over her shoulder. "I'll be out in a few, alright?"

In my eyes the town looked as miserable as it had done 25 years before when I left it. I suppose it was OK if you had a thing for Midwest small towns. A long way from any sizeable city it was the commercial center for a wide swathe of the countryside. Not that the aforementioned countryside was particularly densely populated. I passed a small mall when entering the town. That was new. However, the main reason for the existence of the town was The Mill. Most of the working population worked for the mill directly or indirectly. The fact that I arrived on a cold and windy December day didn’t matter. I couldn’t have hated South Odom any more anyway.

Link: Lost Faith Title Page and Description

--

It was a bright Wednesday morning, five days from Halloween. Heather sat in her loveseat reading Keats, while Faith was upstairs alone in her room, as usual. While Cook puttered in the kitchen and Franchesca updated Erica's website before starting the laundry, Fredrick busied himself with preventative maintenance on the limousine. It seemed like just another day.

Link: Lost Faith Title Page and Description

CAUTION - emotional pain/open emotional wounds

--

Waiting for her name to be called, Erica was nervous. Even though it was a simple outpatient procedure, she knew there was no going back. The money her aunt Heather had sent her every month had been squirreled away, invested, and turned into a tidy sum that was paying for her new life.

Link: Lost Faith Title Page and Description

CAUTION - cousin incest (non-sexual)
CAUTION - severe emotional pain/open emotional wounds

--

Christmas came with all the happiness, love, and family it's supposed to have. Faith had called off the move, but that was to be short lived. As the long winter wore on, Heather decided that, for Erica's own good, she needed to move into the guest room and make it her own. She offered to let the girl chose her own decor, but Erica sadly accepted the room as it was.

LOOKING AFTER A FRIEND

By Rhayna Tera, copyright 2021

Warning: If you don't like reading transgender or related fiction, then stop reading now.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Link: Lost Faith Title Page and Description

CAUTION - emotional pain/open emotional wounds

--

Sitting at the vanity in her room, Erica watched the mirror while her aunt finished braiding her hair into two pigtails that came down the side of her head. The costume had been dropped off the day before and fit perfectly. With the shoes, dress, red braided pigtails, and a picnic basket with a small stuffed Cairn Terrier sticking up out of one side, she was the perfect image of Dorothy Gale. Watching her aunt tying off the blue ribbons at the end of her pigtails, she smiled at the reflection, still happy to see her young mother reflected back at her, even through her costume.

Link: Lost Faith Title Page and Description

--

Sitting in the back of her aunt's limousine, Heather across from her and Faith next to her, Erica's nerves were on edge knowing she was going to meet someone who knew her father... and her from her old life before she was reborn in the body of her son. The butterflies were gone, replaced with raging wildcats clamoring around inside her stomach.

What happened next? Well before Clay and I could go on our date, I needed to change out of my bathing suit. I mean I could have wrapped a towel around my waist, slipped on a pair of flip-flops and called it all good and ready to go. But that looks only suitable for the beach and not a end of the summer carnival. And going home and getting changed was kind of out of the question. Heck mom and dad had already headed off to find a secluded place of their own. I honestly think mom and dad were trying to rekindle the love of their marriage or something.

Link: Lost Faith Title Page and Description

--

Erica awoke slowly, stretching her body and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Next to her, Faith lay sleeping. The room had an odd quality to it as she unwrapped herself from Faith's warm clinginess. Sitting up, she dropped her feet into the slippers that Faith had given her the night before. Crossing the floor toward the window in her borrowed nightgown, she'd finally noticed that the howling wind had subsided leaving an eerie silence to sit over the house. She'd become so accustomed to the howl of the storm, its absence left a void in the perceptions of her surroundings. Peaking out the window, Erica saw something she'd never seen before. Awestruck, she stood in wonderment at the beauty of the sight before her.

Safe
Copyright 2021 by Heather Rose Brown

While I managed to keep myself relatively safe most of the time when I was growing up, there were only a few places and times when I felt completely safe. Below is a tiny vignette about one of them.

=-=-=

Link: Lost Faith Title Page and Description

CAUTION - emotional pain/open emotional wounds

--

Rinsing off the body wash as he remembered the happy exchange that now nearly brought him to tears, Eric's heart ached to see his best friend even though he knew he likely never would again. Draining the tub, he pulled in one of Faith's towels and dried. Stepping out, he pulled the towel around him tightly to ward off the bitter cold seeping in from the outside.

Link: Lost Faith Title Page and Description

CAUTION - emotional pain/open emotional wounds

--

Awaking slowly in a dark room, his mind was groggy and dull. The satin pillow and distinctive sweet smell that screamed 'girl' told him he wasn't in his room at the Stone's house. That room still stank of teenage boy from its occupant before he'd taken it. Unable to remember where he was, he had a vague notion of going to sleep in someone else's bed and there being a storm. He reasoned that he must have sneaked into April's bedroom last night like he'd done a few times after his mother's hospitalization when he'd been especially scared. April would soothe away his fears and he would sleep on her floor, returning to his own room in the early morning. That's when he remembered he was in a bed and noticed he wasn't sleeping alone.

Link: Lost Faith Title Page and Description

CAUTION - emotional pain/open emotional wounds

--

The three exited out into the hallway after Heather turned down the lights in Faith's bed and bath, showing Eric how to do it with a long stick made for that purpose for people not tall enough to reach them.

Link: Lost Faith Title Page and Description

CAUTION - emotional pain/open emotional wounds

--

Gasping as the room was plunged into darkness, a crack of thunder rolling over the house several seconds later, Eric thought he heard someone squeal in fear. After it passed, he found himself wrapped in his aunt Heather's arms and he could finally hear the sobs of fright escaping his own lips.

he first one to step up to the line was a teenage boy around my age, and man was he gorgeous, he was tall, and God had blessed him with a head full of long, silky smooth jet black hair that reached down to the collar of his shirt. He was also tanned and one could see nothing but lean muscles. Just looking at him made me shiver. I soon found myself starting to blush. And much to my embarrassment their was no way I could hide my blush.

Link: The Wisher's Paradox Title Page and Description

CAUTION - Referenced Sexual Abuse of Minors

---

Climbing out of the car, Lyle knew he was on shaky ground. Officially, as an FBI agent, he had no reason or jurisdiction to be at the inspection of the home Ruth's parents had rented in order to take custody of Christina. Still, he hadn't been able to shake the feeling in his gut that if he didn't look into it, something terrible might happen. After twenty years of first being a cop and then an FBI agent, he'd learned to trust that instinct as it'd saved his life countless times. His hunch had paid off when he'd looked into Nancy's file.