Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

“It’s called The Who.” Elder Langmore sat in the pergola in High Valley Recreational Facility which was adjacent to High Valley High School’s Baseball Fields. They were dual purpose with the high school using the fields and having priority, but also used for little league during the off season. The pergola was in a small park-like area south from the ballfield, nestled in a small wooded area that featured a pond and walking path.

Monday morning dawned cold and grey. Taylor, was beginning to think that the skies over Colne, were going to be that colour forever.

See You on the Other Side
(Part 4)
By Sabrina G. Langton

***

Friday, November 19th

"He was hard! And you let him leave. He ain't ever coming back." Martyn was laughing when I told him about the Friday before.

"He leaned in to kiss me so his male parts didn't get too close. I didn't mean to turn him on."

...alone, on the mountainside, making up my mind.

Cocktail
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

It seemed as if all that Jack needed to do was to get drunk. They had been seeing each other for almost a month. He had been determined that this was a relationship that would work. Perhaps he just tried too hard. That was how she let him down – hard. It hurt more than he could ever have imagined.

I made my way to PE, and went into the locker room.

“What’s the matter, Seth?” Coach Nichols said. “You look a little pale.”

“Uh, nothing Coach,” I said, making my way to my locker. “A little tired today.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Coach nodded at my hair which I still hadn’t cut. “Tangling with a witch, I take it?”

I rolled my eyes and shrugged. “You know me, Coach.”

“First and Third situations today at practice. Need your head in the game, son.”

The town celebrates the bounty Haida brings but things continue to go against them.

Camron was a security guard at a billionaire's warehouse of exotic artifacts. He never knew that protecting someone else's stuff could be so dangerous, especially when a werewolf attacks.

He's let his girlfriend bring another man into the relationship in order to save it. But the new man has some very unorthodox, very girly changes in mind for him...

Justin and Bridget's relationship is in trouble. They just aren't clicking romantically like they once did. So to spice things up, Bridget recommends bringing in a third: a suave, mysterious man named Anthony. Justin unenthusiastically accepts, and at first, the shake-up seems to be helping. But Anthony starts recommending increasingly feminine things for Justin to try -- inside and outside of the bedroom. How far will Justin let things go in order to save his relationship?

For a brief moment, I felt at peace for the first time all day. We sat there, waiting for the bell to ring, holding hands.

“You know, I never wanted any of this to happen,” she said, breaking the spell.

“And you know that Mitzy and I are just friends. I don’t know why you freaked out that day.”

She pulled her hand away. “I know, Seth. But what I’m becoming, who I’m becoming…you wouldn’t like. It was necessary to extricate myself from our relationship.”

“You mean the gothic lolita bitch witch?”

She chuckled at that. “I take it you don’t like the look.”