Chapter 16

After Pet had taken a couple of bows and the crowd settled back in their seats, Richard took up the microphone. “Tonight, you have just heard one of the rising stars in classical music, but we now have another surprise for you. We have, not just one, but two rising stars for you, please welcome Miss Edweena Grosse.”

I went on stage and took my place alongside Pet. Then I smiled at the audience.

Sitting down to eat, I couldn't keep my eyes off of Reginald. I wondered what he thought about being surrounded by students from Doom Valley Prep School. He was pointedly ignoring everyone, eating his lightly grilled baby charybdis steak. He hadn't actually looked at me once since he offered to act as my guide, assistant and bodyguard. I still didn't know why Ella had accepted his offer. He would only mess things up.

.
The mission had failed, completely and catastrophically. We had lost. And we would go on losing.

Forever.

When you come across a bear in the wild, there is a very handy rhyme that tells you what to do. “If it’s brown, lay down. If it’s black fight back. If it’s white goodnight”. And even though I was staring straight into a set dark brown eyes framed by a big bush of curly brown hair, laying down definitely was not the right course of action. For these eyes did not belong to a ferocious mammal with razor sharp claws, but instead a 16 year old girl who was very excited to meet her online friend for the first time. The latter feeling a lot more dangerous than the former to me right now.

I wrote this in response to a comment about nasty dads. I've included quite a few of them in recent writings - Seven Dresses, Candy Crush etc - and I'm not sure I can justify it, apart from a mentioning the general impression I have that rigid attitudes and unbending beliefs are more of a masculine trait than a feminine one. I realise this isn't true in all cases, so I wrote a story with a father who's more supportive than the mother, although she doesn't do too badly. Of course that dad's a bit trans, so not a typical male.

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Chapter 15

Richard came to the wings and escorted me to the center of the stage. I could see an audience of more than the dozen or so I had expected.

He went to the microphone, “Tonight we welcome Edweena as our pianist for the piano concerto, but now you will see the violinist in her.”

“But I can’t wear that! My father would be scandalized.” I heard a snigger from behind me and shot Selene, our ‘other’ make-up person, a sneer.

“Oh, good. This feels weird. Not as bad as I feared, though. I know you said I wouldn’t feel paralyzed or claustrophobic, but hearing it is one thing and experiencing it is another. It just feels... sort of normal to not have any arms or legs?”

“Zoe, bring up some pictures of me from about ten to fourteen years ago,” Daddy says to the household AI. Zoe complies, projecting an array of four pictures on the opposite wall. Three of the four show Daddy holding a baby, either Sebastian or his big sister Stella, who lives with Mommy now. In one of them, he’s nursing the baby. “Sebastian, do you see what’s different about me back then?”

I’d originally been going to title it “Venn-Splitting for Long-Distance Relationships,” but Sophia had come up with a snappier title, “Splitting for Togetherness.”

Chapter 14

It had certainly been one busy day. I was ready to drop. After we had changed, though, we had a message that there was a private party that we were required to join. It turned out to be in one of the larger staterooms which Kelly had taken for the night.

One day in mid-December, a few days after Meredith came home from UNC Chapel Hill for Christmas, I was taking a break at work and hanging out with Genevieve and Terri for a few minutes. Genevieve was a kind of beetle-bee hybrid, with a bee’s striped fuzzy underbelly and a beetle’s elytra over her wings, and a slightly human-ish face. Terri was a big mushroom with a face and arms and four small feet, apparently based on a fantasy creature from a story she liked, “though the ones in the book are a lot smaller,” she said. I was in one of my more outre dragon-like bodies, slender with silver scales and four smaller wings more like a butterfly or moth than a bat.

I knew very early on that I wasnt like the other boys, I just felt different, I acted different then them. They wanted to wrestle, or play in the mud and I wanted to color pictures of princesses. I would spend hours coloring all the pretty dresses, and long hair, outlining there make up. I would feel jelious of the princesses in my coloring books. They were so soft and pretty, they had curves. I really wanted that. I wanted to be like them.

Smoke was rising from Ivy's mouth and hands as Reginald's silver gauntlet burned her flesh. A very deep growl rose from her throat, and her eyes were getting a wild look. She'd probably have already attacked the wannabe paladin, but it was taking all of her strength just to hold his arm in place.

Chapter 11

“We should go to London,” Grace said after a while.

Greg didn’t move, but said, “We’re descending right now. We’re almost there.”

Grace sighed and turned to look at him. “Look. I know it was tough seeing what happened to Gracie, but we’ve got a job to do here.”

Chapter 13

Allan grinned. “That’s my girl. Make sure you take something to help you sleep tonight and tomorrow will be a good day. I’ll arrange for a nanny to come to the house this afternoon to look after Ali, to give you a little bit of free time.”

The Disappeared
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Quinn was off work. Injured in the line of duty they call it. Shot himself in the foot in the locker room. I like Quinn but he can be a klutz.

They paired me for a week or two with Gayle. Gayle is a lesbian, but you cannot deny that she is good at her job. She is just not the cheeriest soul on the planet. It makes you wonder if lesbian sex can really be that satisfying. But people’s private life is their own. I make no judgments.

When revenge goes wrong...