Mantra (Malibu Comics) finally sees her imprisoned son Gus, but he's in a jam that she can't get him out of. One can forgive her if she thinks that things can't get any worse. Bit the fact is, they can, and they often do.

"It is nice to be back home," I said as I sank into a chair on board the newly refitted Roxy.

Melody didn’t answer right away so I tried again.

"This is your home too you know. Get yourself sorted out about what you want to do with your life. I guess that everything you ever thought about was being Melody. Now you are. You are legally Melody and have the documentation to prove it. Now you have the chance to think long and hard about what you want from your life as Melody."

I stayed with Matt that night. His home is less than one mile from the world-famous 'Richard Arkwright’s Mills' at Cromford. I wished that I had more time so that I could visit the place where mechanised cotton spinning was invented but I wanted to get back to Oxford before nightfall.

Office Takeover (Extended)

By Susannah Donim (based on a short story by Margaret Jeanette)

Jim and his secretary change places, with far-reaching consequences.

The Christmas party

“Come on – you’re the CEO. You have to push the boat out a bit!”

My wife, Marilyn, was trying to persuade me to splash out on our costumes for the company’s Christmas fancy dress party.

“CEO, hah! There’s only sixteen of us in the company. I’m more like a Team Leader.”

DOWN THE AISLE I GO

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.

Cut-04

I left Melody to sort out our food for the evening and went up on deck to phone my friend and business associate, Jonathan Fields. He ran the gallery where I was due to be having my show at the end of April/early May.
The cold wind of earlier in the day had died down and the sky was clear. It was going to be a cold and decidedly frosty night.

I really didn’t want to get out of bed the following morning. The hotel bed was so comfortable when compared to its counterpart on Roxy. I rolled over and switched on the radio. The 06:00 news was just finishing. That meant that I had plenty of time to get up in a controlled fashion rather than my normal wake up and get out of bed. I normally reserved my few ‘lounging in bed’ times to when I was in a Hotel but I had to be out of the Hotel and back onboard Roxy before sunrise if we were going to get to Brentford by sunset.

A short story...

Copyright © 2021 by AuP reviner

I returned to the store as quickly as I could but I couldn’t find Melody anywhere in the clothes department. There was no evidence of an abandoned trolley full of clothes so I was left a bit perplexed. Where was she?

I began to walk through the main section of the store. As I did so, I scanned the aisles. There was no sign of Melody anywhere until I caught sight of a trolley half full of clothes in the aisle that had the racks of makeup.

I managed a smile as I saw Melody looking at shampoo.

“Your hair is fairly greasy,” I said calmly.

Melody almost jumped out of her skin.

There are some days in the middle of winter that are perfectly described using a single word. That word is ‘Dreich’. It is a Scottish word that means one or more of the following, ‘Bleak, miserable, dismal, cheerless and dreary.' If you add a biting wind that comes from straight from the Arctic ocean and you get the idea about just how it was that day.

If I’d have had any say in the matter, I’d have been in a pub with a big log fire, some good food and more than a few pints of good beer. But I didn’t have any say in what I had to do that day.

Mantra (Malibu Comics) has been learning some very important things about the Mantra of this alternate dimension, but she still needs to know much more. That includes whatever Evie, her own young daughter, might know. Evie had had the misfortune of witnessing the most violent and frightening parts of the crisis that happened only a few days earlier. But children are fragile, and so Mantra and her psychological advisor, Pinnacle, have to question the little girl very carefully while making sure that she isn't additionally traumatized.

It was well after four in the afternoon when I walked into our Office and spotted our visitor. He looked so out of place to be almost funny. He was dressed in a suit that would be ideal for a court in a big city. Custer County is a long way from any big city. He’d stand out a mile. People around here only wear suits for Weddings and Funerals. No one I knew could afford the duds that he was wearing.

“Mr Rieck? Sheriff Matt Harker. Welcome to Custer County.”