“There are days I feel more robotic and days I feel more human. People tip more when my body is shaped like a female human, but they also expect me to act in a feminine way. Some days I can do that and some days I cannot.”

Chapter 5

We allowed the couple some time to get their act back together. Margaret pointed us to a downstairs powder room while they went upstairs to freshen up. We all looked a lot better when we sat at the dining table for lunch. The talk was now less emotional, but no less serious, as we discussed possible outcomes.

Belle of Vicksburg
-4-
Shopping

“Love is a powerful thing, isn’t it?”

“What’s bugging you, Evie?”

“I think I’m in love.”

“With Chuck? Juan? Richie Morrow?”

“No, silly, Trent. Trent Foster. He’s simply…wonderful.”

“Oy vey.”

“Don’t you think he’s cute?”

“So now we’ve established what you aren’t not telling me. S’pose you save me some trouble and tell me what you are.”

Mel finally realizes she is transgender.

It had been 3 months since that night when Mel uncovered the plot to steal the patient for the E.V. charger. Simon had talked to each member of the board privately and had held an extraordinary meeting and removed those plotting against him. The inventor had been given a guaranteed share of the profits and signed over the rights to the company.

Mel had done a lot of soul-searching in the following weeks and met Angie for advice.

I was soon entering Jacqui’s office ready for the worst in response to my coming clean to her about falsifying the job acceptance and about me being really Joey not Josie, but hoping that they had found a way to allow me to stay involved with the Ostia project.

Daydreaming on Deck (Part 2)
By Sabrina G. Langton

***

Author's note... More ticking inside our heroines' head. We find out what she has been up to this last year, we learn a little more of her past...

***

Logan texted, he would be here at two. He was driving. I asked him if I could get dressed up, I had a little black dress I had been dying to wear. He said he couldn't wait to see me in it.

Looking out the window at the howling blizzard, Von sipped his tea, contemplating his rather open schedule for the day. Since Mage Aleksandar had taken over all Council business, he had found himself largely at loose ends. Scratching his stump, he realized he should have expected that to happen. While he hadn't been declared a traitor, he couldn't expect much more than that.

Here’s the thing just like all the stories and cliches say that I found someone when I wasn’t looking and had stopped looking.

I’m not going to sugar coat things but I’m a single guy and a long term bachelor and I have dated and I had never really wanted to settle down and do all that family stuff mostly because my family ranged from self destructive to petty so none of that really was an investment.

I moved out as soon as I could and went into the army and got a trade under me as an engineer and spent time basically fixing things on bases.

Could I continue to live, if one day I looked into her lapis lazuli eyes and saw, not the warmth and love that had always been there, but a tepid indifference?

“There’s less than ten lines for my character in the whole scene, Debbie.”

Lane Carter was a cargo bay drone pilot scraping by and spending all his...rather her time in the Virtual Reality game created by the Zenith Company. He was a playtester on their first serious fantasy setting on the neural link head set and now steps into playtesting their new full body pods and Vala their account became something more and more.

Words are better . . . truer, maybe . . . when silence surrounds them.

As he watched the sunrise on the horizon, causing the brilliant golden spires of the city to twinkle like the multi-colored stars that had just retreated from the sky, the King couldn’t help but issue a forlorn sigh. Even the flock of yellow and green dragons that passed by overheard shortly thereafter, off to begin their morning hunt for the red whales of the nearby purple sea, did little to lift his spirits.

Authors Note: I did not realize I had not published this chapter before publishing chapter 5. I am sorry for any confusion and hope that you will enjoy this chapter.

A group of friends streams their gaming on Wednesday nights. But not all the action is on the dining room table.

Slave to Beauty
A vignette from some images found
By Maryanne Peters

I was brought up in a beautiful home. My mother called herself “A Slave to Beauty” as if that could explain everything that she did to me – or perhaps excuse it. It was like saying that she had no choice, but surely that was mine.