CHAPTER 51
Recovery from surgery was slow, but nowhere near as bad as I had feared. When I left Hemmings’ place, Carol was with me, having taken the train down so that I wouldn’t have to ride all the way home again alone, but for my little rubber ring under the new anatomy. We hardly spoke at all; what should have been the celebration of my body finally being compete was lost in the rattle of train wheels and Tannoy announcements from the guard. It all felt so utterly meaningless, and the question locked in my mind was whether I should really have bothered going through with the surgery. What, after all, was the point?

I used to have a recurring dream. A dream where I was on a boat out on the sea, off the coast of Africa. I didn’t know anyone else on the ship, except for one person, and she was a reason I was on that ship to begin with. The details of the dream would become sketchy each time…like a collage of events taken out of time, space and context. Did I see her smile at me or “the camera” did we swim in a pool with blue and green rocks on the bottom or was I remembering an aquarium I used to own?

CRYING SHOULDER

Creatures
by Anon Allsop

Another world, long ago

The macabre creature looked upward into the strange sky, one of its twin suns grew dim causing odd light to be cast upon the land. Tilting its strange triangle-shaped head slightly, it turned then raced back toward its nest to protect a small clutch of sleek and nearly impervious silver mirror-like eggs.

The eggs were nestled within the earthen bowl, each reflecting the face of the alien beast as Christmas ornaments would reflect back a child's face - distorted and bent across its surface. She hovered over them, instinctively using her body as the last bit of protection from what was racing down from above. Slowly she raised her head, just as the meteorite entered the thin atmosphere burning and tumbling toward the ground.

Chapter 3

I had to sit down and catch my breath. I said “That can’t be right; I don’t look girly, do I?” He said that it was not that I looked girly now, it was the fact that some small adjustments to my facial bones, that any competent cosmetic surgeon could do, would give me the look he had drawn.