It was another frustrating and tedious day at Sheetz. Devin never voiced any of his disdain for his job. If he did then he’d be complaining all day. He assumed all of his coworkers felt the same way. Working in retail was just miserable.

It was apparent that not every one of his coworkers followed his “no speech” line of thinking.

“Listen, my shift starts at 12, so I come in at 12.” Liam stated firmly.

“I wanted you in early.” Morgan said to him.

Debbie looks at the other girls in the band. As they stand there and think about what Sara (aka Tinker) just told them. She just got offered a job with Middle Wood Hospital as a nurse. She would be working nights and wouldn’t be able to play with the band anymore.

“Now, what are we going to do? We need a drummer, and we don’t have a lot of time.” Angela knew they had a gig coming up in two days and didn’t want to cancel it.

“I might be able to get us a temporary one.” Jessie looks at Angela since she was the lead singer and one of the owners of the band.

“Okay,” I whisper to myself, before taking a deep breath and focusing on the words on the page in front of me. “Doctor, what should I do with this liver?”

“Well, fry it with some onions and some beans!” Comes the reply from George, one of my fellow students.

“…It’s a transplant liver, doctor, for humans,” I say in a deadpan voice, before grimacing. “Ah, shit, sorry, that should be ‘it’s a human liver for transplant’.”

This is about the little sensible voice that many of us have that keeps us from harm. It also, perhaps keeps us from being who I we were meant to be.

It started way before I remember. The voice in my head. The little sensible voice that keeps me from harm. The one that I always listen too.
At 5 my mother tried to dress me in a pair of girl’s knickers, I refused as sensible voice told me. “Your brother will be shouting to everyone that you wear knickers if you do” He was probably right.

Gym, Susan’s Mansion:
Gracie watches from the sidelines as Bunnie, and Sandy practice some self-defense moves their Uncle Ricky was teaching them. Lately, more and more of their relatives were coming over to check on them and train them. Even Emily was required to attend the training.

Ricky looks at his niece and her girlfriend. He knew Bunnie and Sandy weren’t the combative ones in the family, so he had to develop a fighting style for them. Normally, Sasha would be teaching her daughters, but she was upstairs with their parents and their brother.

Time to think...

Abandoned Warehouse:
Tammy, Leland, and Nyx move quietly towards the warehouse. It had taken them thirty minutes to arrive at the site. They parked a little way away from the warehouse. Nyx was dressed in her body armor and had her rifle with her.

All three of them were communicating through the earwigs they had, well in Nyx’s case. She was using the communication system of her helmet to communicate with Leland and Tammy on their earwigs.

“Do you guys hear that?” Nyx was picking up the low hum coming from the nearby transformer.

The Woman He Deserves
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I said it to Hannah: “How can she do that? It is like she is tormenting him.”

It was supposed to be a double date, but Tammy had insisted on bringing a friend. A man friend to make five at the table. Then she spent the whole night playing footsie under the table with Rafe (that was his name), while Jack was right there. I could see it, and I was damn sure my date Hannah could see it too.

But Hannah’s response left me cold.

Queen Dana of Highwinds the Elf Kingdom inside the Empire has a problem. One that she cannot fix personally. The is with a small minority of her population. A problem that has been brought to her attention by the half elf son of a problematic Duke. What is a Queen to do? She calls on help from a friend. The question now is does she realize what she is letting loose on her kingdom?

It Takes All Sorts

Part One

She was unlike any girl Kyle had ever seen. She was tall, taller than him, anyway, and wore a black leather biker jacket, Doc Martens boots, slicked-down hair and an attitude. Kyle kept sneaking glances at her as the day went on, and wanted to speak to her, but he couldn’t pluck up the courage. As he packed his bag at the end of class, she turned to him.

“What’s your problem?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been staring at me all day.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Mum’s home?” I said in surprise, as Claire pulled onto the driveway.

Seeing my Mum back from work before 7pm at the earliest was unusual. She was a bit of a workaholic, albeit a very successful one. As the divisional CEO of a large segment within a FTSE100 consumer goods business, the financial rewards almost matched how hard she worked. My Dad, before he died, had been the Group CFO of the same business, him and my mother having met each other at work many years ago.

“However, back to the matter at hand. Nowadays, the matter of male and female is considered by the open minded to be a very broad multi dimensional continuum, a multi dimensional spectrum if you like, rather than two points at the opposite ends of a single dimensional line. However, the question I would love to have answered is at what point, and why, does a person of one apparent gender or perhaps that’s better expressed as one apparent identity, wherever they are on that multi dimensional spectrum, make the decision that they are in the wrong body, or indeed that they are in the right one? I’m asking what is the trigger mechanism that brings about that magical transformation? I know the matter is much more complicated than that, but you have to start somewhere. I am sure I’m not the only one who would like to know. I also suspect the matter to be deep, very, very deep.

This is an extract from A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale Ch. 36 Changes Ancient and Modern that is not yet ready for posting, but I considered it to be capable of standing alone as a solo tale perhaps of interest to those who have no interest in the GOM tales.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Devin once again found himself staring at his reflection in the mirror. He'd been doing that a lot recently. Perhaps it was because he was obsessing over every little bodily change the hormones brought him. Perhaps it was because he was inspecting himself to see if he really looked like a girl. Perhaps it was because he simply liked looking at himself. Devin silently laughed at that last thought, as if.

Or perhaps it was because it was an easy way to force himself to do some mental introspection.

“Oh, so is that another robe I’ve lost? Have you still got the black pyjamas, too?” asked my sister, across the breakfast bar in the kitchen. “I assumed you’d slept in the pink ones from last night.”

“Good morning!” I said, much more brightly than I felt. “I got into bed with them on last night, and they were far too warm. And yeah, I slept in the black set, I’ve got them on underneath now.” I loosened the robe slightly, to display the strap of the black silk pyjamas underneath. I’d not returned them after trying them on last night. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Anything new happen with Devin?”

Elise was sitting down on one of the couches in her living room when Amanda sent her that text. She internally groaned once she saw it. As expected, Amanda was going to pester her with more questions about Devin after their chat the previous day.

Annoyed, she simply replied back with “no”.

Link: The Road to Hell Title Page and Description

CAUTION - Attempted Suicide
CAUTION - Highly Emotional Content
CAUTION - Intense scenes involving a minor

--

A month to the day after the accident, Josh went back to school. He walked into the building dressed in a black skirt, top, tights, and flats. He also carried the black backpack that Grace had used for the last three years, the same one he'd had before her. Judy let him keep it as a memento of their love, along with a few other things. He'd asked about the carving he'd given her for her sixteenth birthday, but Judy told him she'd been buried holding it, unwilling to make her daughter ever part with the gift she'd loved nearly as much as Josh himself.

Instead of heading to the holding area, it was a shorter route for me to head first to the gymnasium changing rooms, and pick up my two other costumes. I therefore went in a different direction to the boys that were now likely already in the holding room, and I returned down the route I had just walked.

The sound made by my high-heeled sandals clicking along the wooden flooring was almost hypnotic. Despite this being the furthest I’d ever walked in heels, and also the first time wearing some outside my own house, I was ‘in the zone’. What had once taken serious concentration to avoid breaking my ankle was now coming almost naturally.