I punched the speed dial on my Mobile.
It was a Friday afternoon in early March and I needed some entertainment.

“Hello Jen. What’s up? Your Boss still trying to feel you up then?”

“Hi Kylie. No. He’s not. I’ve threatened to tell his wife if he tries it again.”

They both laughed.

“As it’s the last Friday of the month and I’m assuming that you’ve been paid so how about some fun tonight?”

“I don’t know Jen,” she said with a big Sigh.

“Come on K. It’s been nearly nine months now.”

“BOOM!” Goes the snub nose revolver I test fired making my ears ring. The smell of gunpowder permutated from the gun. I never shot a revolver before, but this is the first and last day I fire one. My body was jittering as I pull back the hammer of the revolver.

I walk into my garage. I was dark and warm. A nice place to end it all. I sit down in a chair and put the revolver in my mouth. I slide my thumb in the trigger guard. I close my eyes and slowly squeeze the trigger.

I tried to take my 'grounding' with grace. I tried to think of myself not as a prisoner of my hotel – which seemed to be crawling with security people... I wasn't sure whether they were from our corporate parent, the local authorities or the hotel's management, none of whom I presumed, would want a violent tragedy associated with their brands. I tried to pretend we were 'ultra-VIPs', so important that the world came to us and we merely 'held court'. That was how I tried to frame this, to keep myself from going stir crazy. It wasn't terribly effective.

Synopsis:  Ashley Roberts has started living full time as a girl luckily she has the support of her family and has even managed to find herself a boyfriend along the way. Life seems good at the moment, but, “There's always a calm before the storm...”

Death

I changed my books from locker to backpack. Put the textbooks I didn’t need into the little metal space, put the books I wanted into my pack. Grabbed the earbuds that would be confiscated if seen in class. School policy.

Lucinda Rebecca Adams was out riding her old gelding Comanche King, she had needed to do a tour of the back of the ranch for some time now. The ranch was pretty big, just over 105,000 acres total, located in northern Texas not too far from the Texas - Oklahoma state line.

The ranch was home to over nine thousand longhorn cattle, most of them roaming where they willed across the ranch's broad expanse. There were over a dozen small to medium sized creeks on the ranch's land, so the cattle had plenty of places to go if they needed water.

Everybody struggles with life, even at the simplest times. My life just got flipped on its head, I had the choice to flip it or not, so I didn’t lose a family member or something like that… Well, I wish everyone in my family saw it like me.

CHAPTER 4
He was a big man, and I thought I recognised him from somewhere, but my mind wasn’t working as he slid sideways in the car, pushing the door open and then reaching round it to take another handful of my hair.

I found myself almost spinning on the spot as he dragged me backwards through the now open car door. Something poked the back of my neck, and he was breathing hard, but his voice was under full control.

“Get your legs in and shut the fucking door. Do it now or I cut you”