What do you do when you look 7 years old, but you're actually a college student in your late teens? For Kathleen's entire life, she had fought against people treating her much younger than her actual age. Feeling obligated to grow up fast to show people she wasn't the age of her size, Kathleen never let her inner child out. Tired of fighting against the world, she explores the adult submissive world. What she finds, however, is an enjoyment of regression. Had she made a mistake? Would life be better if she just let people treat her how she looks, 7 years old?

Gene Rookwood slammed the front door of his house behind him. He was not in a very good mood right now, and he knew things were gonna get even worse now that he was home.

"Gene? You're home?" Gene heard his father Reginald say.

"Yeah," said Gene.

"What happened?" Reginald asked. "Did you get off work early?"

Gene went into the living room, where his dad Reginald and stepmom Paulette were sitting on the couch. "No," said Gene. "I got fired."

Reginald's jaw dropped. "You were fired?"

One father learns from the sad lesson of another.

“Really. You’re asking me to believe that somewhere in the multiverse, a language almost exactly like English independently evolved? And not in an alternate England, but somewhere that sounds completely unrelated to England?”

“If the multiverse is infinite, that’s not a far-fetched claim, is it?” I said.

Sam had played rugby ever since starting secondary school. They enjoyed it so much they decided to keep it up even after graduating and moving on to college. They figured it was a great way to keep in shape and also to support their local Sports Club which had come close to shutting down for a lack of finance. Thankfully grant aid was found from a charity that demanded that everything at the Club was inclusive. Nobody should be denied access to sport on the grounds of ethnicity, religion, sex, or social standing, they said.

Dot and Sam 17

Catching Up
By Marissa Lynn

"Come on Mitch, stop squirming."

"I can't believe I let you talk me into this."

"Oh stop whining, Mitch. You can't be having that bad of a time. And remember it's for the views, right?" Cassie asked as she applied the eyeliner along his left lower lash line.

"Besides, it's what we do for our art and sometimes, we suffer for our art, right? It's for the Dynamic Four, after all," Todd said

Author’s note - After finishing the updated story of Laurence I was finding it very difficult to lay the story down. I knew that if I continued, then it would get dark and I knew that I couldn’t avoid that. As readers you may appreciate my dilemma or say it would have been better to leave it as it was?

This is written as a separate short story so readers can avoid the ending that appears here. I needed to write it, but you don’t need to read it although I hope some of you do.

Marcia woke with a start. She'd heard something in her sleep which didn't come from the engines or the gentle rocking of the “Blue Canoe.”

It came from the other bed in the room. She lay quietly again for a few moments until she heard another sniff. It didn't seem like the product of a cold or allergies. This sounded like someone hurting. She debated for a few minutes, wondering if she should just let Heather cry it out. When she heard the multiple exhalations of a weep, however, her compassion took over.

Isn’t Life Strange?
A Vignette
By Maryanne Peters

I was on holiday with my husband Mike and his two boys by his first marriage, and we were visiting a brewery in Colorado. They served what looked like a great lunch, so we sat down for a meal, to be washed down with one of their craft beers. I have to confess that I still prefer beer to wine, even after all these years post transition.

Part 4

“Girls, I wouldn’t have spent it if we couldn’t. You know I do the books for the business, and I can tell you that we do very well. We owe nothing on the house and land because they’ve come down through the family; the original truck fleet were bought just after the war for next to nothing, and the tank transporters came out of a military auction. The Burrells cost about fifty pounds each, so I was told, and are now worth over a quarter of a million, each.”

I’m really not sure why I did it, but I was young at the time.

I rode into town after being paid. We all did. Anyone who spent so much time on the trail had a tendency to want some time in the company of the opposite sex.

And, while you were waiting for said company, you might as well loosen up a bit. Most of the brothels were upstairs of a saloon, so it was only natural to spend some time in both areas.

I was generally known as Cookie, which was not a problem as I did the cooking for our boys.

I’m a little older than most of them, except the trail boss who’s known only as Stumpy. It’s kinda strange, him being the boss, as somewhere in the past he’d lost his right leg. The legend is he had a run-in with a rattlesnake at some point. Nobody seems to know the true story but him and one other person, and Stumpy isn’t telling anyone who that is.

Stupid me, I’m not great at telling stories. I kinda get things out of order in the way I tell them.

Let’s go back to that time back when Austin was Boss.

I'd also like to thank Melanie in helping me get this posted!

As was usual, she was lonely, especially on this day, as it was Christmas Eve. She got up and went to the kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee, and instead of creamer, she poured a bit of eggnog in with the brew. She considered something stronger, but even though only she would know, she wasn’t yet of the legal drinking age, and it wasn’t like she had any alcohol on hand.

She put the nog back in her fridge, then returned to her recliner.

She lived in an apartment that wasn’t lavish by any means. She needed to save as much money as she could, so whatever was left each month after basic necessities was put into a savings account. Once it was large enough, it would fund her needed surgery.

As she sipped the coffee, she thought about the events that had brought her to the present. Her mother had played around a lot in high school and she kept it up as she went to college. She had been the stereotypical proud cheerleader, who felt no one but the football team was worth her time.

Usually.

It was colder than he had expected, the sleet steadily hardening into snow, but Ken had endured worse. There was a hedgerow running between two of the fields which he thought might work for the night, and part of it looked to be hazel, or at least something with similar leaves, which the shrub had clung to despite the nastiness of the late Autumn and Winter. It had all looked so simple when he was little, the Boy Scout books almost rhapsodising about hatchets and straight staffs as a ridge pole, but walking around with an axe these days would get him lifted by the plod in no time.

Toni’s met Tim again, and been introduced to his friend. And all the rest, Natasha, Sally and Jess, have met Tim and Tim’s friend Mouse. No alarm bells are ringing for anyone and it’s all been a lot of fun. In fact Tim has been quite sweet, with him and Toni exchanging kisses, and Mouse has even bought a table-load of food, after being very picky about his sandwich.

Now it’s back to Tim and Mouse’s apartment, where Mouse says he’ll cook them dinner if they stick around. But does Toni really know what to expect? Going back to the man you’re kissing’s apartment, even if he’s apologised for being too forward? And it might not have occurred to Toni, so doll-eyed is she, but the others are really more interested in why Mouse is called Mouse, and what his deal with food is, rather than the two sickening lovebirds making googly eyes at each other.

Dot and Sam 15

Author's note: Here it is, my first story here, originally started as a New Year's Contest entry, but as the story played out, I felt I'd be truncating it too much to get it to 5,000 words. Thanks for the encouragement and inspiration, getting me to move from reader to writer!

'Til You Make It
By Marissa Lynn

September 17
"Dammit! I can feel it right there, but, crap. Something's not right. I'm not right."

The E Girl
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Prince Taylor reads the book written about him