“Tammy, I love what that magical wreath did to me.” Sara loved her new elven body as she looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror.

“I’m glad you like your new body because I hate what it did to me.” Tammy walks up and stands next to Sara.

The magic from the ancient Christmas wreath they found had changed both. Where Sara was turned into a five-foot-six-inch busty, curvy female elf, she was turned into a female elf who resembled Judy from the Tim Allen Santa Claus movies.

"Mum I can't possibly do this. " Alex she told her quietly, horror evident in his voice. His mother standing next to him in their little combined kitchen and dinning room, snorted in rye amusement.

It felt, after the initial panic had passed, that his whole world was about to come crashing down around his ears. It was bad enough that he’d left his rucky on the train complete with money, passport and change of clothes, to add to the woe he was in Germany and it was Sunday afternoon but the real issue, the bit that scared him most, was he was dressed as his alter ego, Bianca. What had possessed him to even think it was a remotely good idea to ‘bring’ Bianca on the trip?

What are you going to be doing during the Christmas break Joey?” my mum asked while I was relaxing with a glass of cider back at home from university for the holidays.

As Rob drove to Church for the Christmas Eve Service he felt torn. For several years the place of comfort and support the Church represented had become increasingly difficult for him to bear. For the vast majority of the congregation, the Religious Dogma was rote, especially the formal prayers and creeds. Rob didn’t see anyone who put any thought into what they said thus missing what the Faith was all about. He understood he was not having a Faith Crisis, but was slowly being consumed by a Religious Crisis. For the last 5 years, He’d been increasingly unable to rouse himself from bed, only attending sporadically. The closer he came to the Church for the Christmas Eve Services, the more anxiety he felt. This brought up the question of how, at age 73, he’d reached this unsettling point in his life. During the past 47 years he’d traveled the 36 mile loop between Church and home well over 3500 times so the route had become rote. His mind switched to auto pilot as he reminisced.

The lynching tree is the oldest living thing on our farm. It was here when the first white men
came and it’s still here and growing. I guess the black folks around here have always called it that. Back when I was in elementary school Reverend Amos James began calling for the tree to be destroyed as “a symbol of white oppression.” That’s when everyone started calling it the lynching tree. Before that we just called it the big oak.

The Escort and her Driver

“Where to tonight, Emma?” asked Daniel, the driver.

“Number three, please, Daniel,” asked the raven-haired woman in the white fur coat who had just got into his car.

The Little Brother
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

In all this transgender shit, nobody talks about people like me. Nobody talks about the little brother.

Imagine that you have an older brother that you always looked up to, a sportsman and a musician and a popular guy at school, somebody a little brother would want to be, and then he tells you he wants to be a girl. That is what Josh did. I could not believe it. None of us could. Our parents were in shock too.