A PLACE BY THE SEA
The stone flew past her head immediately after the word. She’d spotted the kids sitting on the wall as she came round from the Co-op, but there was no other way back to the flat, sitting as it did at the end of a cul-de-sac. It was one of Billy Shaw’s boys, she was pretty certain, but she didn’t know the other boys, nor the girls standing by them laughing at how macho they could be. The rucksack should protect her back, she thought, so best just keep her head down and get in the door as quickly as she could.

XY – Why cross-dress?

I have a friend who ….. oh no – here we go again – a pretence that this is not an autobiography.

A Love So Bold
by Anon Allsop

The story continues - Hope you enjoy!

-Sixty One-

Their wagon rolled on, the land had begun to level out during the past few days. Tall pines crowded the trail; Hannah was smiling more as the snowy landscape was turning green with vegetation that had yet been touched by winter’s icy grasp. Within her heart was an anticipation that seemed to grow with each rotation of their wheels. Gideon and the children too weren’t immune to the excitement of the trail’s end. Theirs was a journey that had taken months, but like those who arrived before them, much would need to be done!

With Jenken’s success as a day trader many money management corporations as well as many domestic and foreign government agencies began investigating how a three year old could be doing what she was doing. Just the fact she’d achieved a consistent 50% profit each week baffled all the experts. The SEC launched an investigation of Jenken’s astounding day trading success. In addition the DHS, FBI and CIA began investigating and developing dossiers on the precocious youngster. Dozens of foreign government agencies and businesses also began investigations. Everywhere the corporations and government agencies looked they found total transparency. Jenken made no attempt to hide her activities or finances. The money management giants and government agencies were easily able to follow the massive electronic trail of her successful trades but could not find even the barest hint of insider trading. It seemed she was able to somehow deduce and act on trends quite precisely before they occurred. No business, much less any individual, had ever matched her phenomenal winning streak much less across such a wide spectrum of stocks and markets. Other brokers and dealers who tried to jump onboard her trades could not begin to keep up with the speed or volume of her transactions. No one was able to figure out why she was so successful much less how she was able to conduct thousands of worldwide purchases and sales in a massively diverse and constantly changing portfolio, hour after hour, for twenty four hours every business day in the top twenty worldwide exchanges. At times the volume and variety of her trades threatened to overwhelm the computerization of the exchanges. Companies with offices full of people couldn’t come near Jenken’s round the clock multiple trade volume.

Jenken felt the heat and didn’t like it. Thanks to her multitudinous tags she quickly learned which agencies, companies, and individuals who had targeted her.

A Soldiers Christmas Poem

“I’ll have the code changes worked out in a couple of days. I’ll be ready to test by the end of the week,” I said feeling a bit of pressure from the people in the office.

The Video call wound down and I breathed a sigh of relief as I hung up. As I was doing so, I heard a voice start to call out my name. I ignored it. The call had gone on far longer than anyone had anticipated and I really didn’t want to speak to anyone for a while.

“Shall I go and turn him over to the guard? Or castrate him myself?”

“Take him somewhere else first,” one of the other women pleaded. “I can’t stand the sight of blood.”