“How are the sales today?” Hayley asked as she returned to her flat to find Sophie sat on the sofa, checking her laptop.

“Still good,” Sophie replied with a smile. “I mean, yes, they’re tapering off, but that’s to be expected after this length of time, so- yeah. Publishers are still VERY happy though.”

“I still can’t believe I know a famous author!” Hayley teased, giggling as her friend rolled her eyes and blushed.

To anyone following along -- I accidentally preposted some of the later chapters as chapter 29 and 30. This has been worked out now, but if you haven't read the *revised* chapters you might want to go back and read them since they're new material. Oh yeah, and forget everything that was posted before in their places. ;)

Raine

Desdemonia in April’s body went to bed a little while later, leaving me and April in her bedroom.

“Are you sure you want to try this?” she said. “There’s no going back, once the process is initiated.”

Natalie thought that she had expended all of her tears. The adrenaline from putting a gun in her mouth and being one twitch away from ending it all had long been filtered out of her system, her sadness and confusion going with it.

But after she heard Sara say she was sorry, she didn’t know what came over her.

She just lost it.

She cried. Hard enough to fill an ocean, probably. And it seemed nothing could stop her.

“Jump his bones!” the crowd screamed.

Rory is considered by many to be the quintessential male. However, he owns thirty-eight designer dresses.

And this is the real chapter thirty. Apologies again for the mistake.

As I pulled away from Mr. Stewart’s house, I had a conundrum. April had texted me several more times, but I wanted to go home and compare notes with Mom and Dad regarding the new information Mr. Stewart had given me.

Meanwhile, the clock was ticking, and the Who was coming. I didn’t know how much longer I might have in this dimension, or reality, or whatever, and I wanted to find out as much as I could before I was pulled back into the clutches of Desdemonia’s mind.

One of Those Stories
A Vignette
By Maryanne Peters

Part 1

In my time at University, I studied Art and Art History, with a little side project looking at literary greats. One of the things I learned by heart was the famous quote from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It goes like this –

‘The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.
Nor all your piety and wit, shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.’

Hey everyone. Raine here. I sorta messed up the numbers on my chapter. THIS is the real 29. My apologies!

I drove home.

We were less than 24 hours away from the Gateway opening, and I still had no idea what was going on.

The facts were these: Somehow I’d been caught up in by a big dark tentacular Something that wanted to come through into this reality.

Or…did it want to come through into my original reality?

“Hello!” Bisur said, and “We come in peace,” said Pamani. My other self had spent the morning during breakfast drilling the emissaries in English greetings, and had apparently thought “We come in peace” would be funny. Juniper certainly found it so, snorting as she suppressed an inappropriate laugh. And to be honest, so did I.