It was a cold winters night, the week before Christmas. The sky was dark and mysterious with only the moon peeking through the snow-clouds. All the stores were closed and shuttered, all the streets were empty dark and bare. Nobody in the right mind was out and about on such a bitter unwelcoming night, the only sparks of life were the homeless shivering in shop doorways, wrapped in cardboard, paper, or whatever other items for warmth and protection that they could salvage.

I was just about to escape into sleep when I heard someone approach me. In the short time I had been sleeping rough I had come to learn it usually meant either Police who were normally ok as long as you moved on until they had left, Security guards who were a lot more intolerant brusque and even violent, or other rough-sleepers who were looking to steal the few possessions or scraps of food that I had.

However this one was different, it was a young woman, well wrapped up in warm winter clothes with her long-blonde hair peeking out from under her woolen hat and wearing a pleasant welcoming smile.

Wildman’s Wife
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Photoshoot
A Vignette
By Maryanne Peters

I was accompanying my girlfriend on a photoshoot. To be honest, as a guy I was pleased to tell my pals that I was dating a model, but the truth is that she was not getting much work. She mentioned that her father had a hand is teeing up the session to promote a line of clothing that was just her style, so I have to say I wondered if Daddy might have sweetened the deal a little, given that he has bundles of cash.

Joshua is utterly broke and desperate to boot.
That's when his neighbor Twilla offers him a little job on the side.
But not before revealing that she is a witch and the job in question is everything but ordinary.
Despite the drawbacks, Joshua can't help but partner up with Twilla.
However, her offer might be too good to be true.

A bus trip goes weird when you swap bodies with your seatmate!

Made To Look Like An AI

By

Gwen Brown

Waking felt awful. I hadn’t been out at the Pub and had not been drinking otherwise. I could tell from seeing my breath that the room I was in was cold. Yet I was warm, and cosy so would have liked another bit of sleep, yet I was firmly awake and feeling more alert as the headache and unwell feeling passed. Had I been drugged?

Landlord

“I want a sister,” Becky used to say.
“What if it would be brother?” I tried.
“Boys are stupid! Oops! I'm sorry. I don't mean. That's I don't mean you. I'd like you to be my sis.”

After twenty minutes of walking, Zoe reached Skylar's house. She knocked three times on the door and waited. For a minute, there was no answer. Zoe knocked again, but there was still no response. Zoe was starting to wonder if she should check the mat to see if the Gregsons still kept a house key under there when the door was finally answered by Skylar. "Zoe?" said Skylar. Her blonde hair was all messed up, and her eyes were tinged with red like she'd been crying.

A Woman’s Eyes
A Vignette
By Maryanne Peters

I always thought that I had a strong face. Girls called me good looking. They said that I had “come-to-bed eyes – China blue. I never had any trouble finding girls, which is why I took advantage. I guess that made me heterosexual. If you are desired by women, then you desire them back. It is simply how things work.

After doing some research and talking with trans men on the forum Avery had recommended, he’d reluctantly decided that binding her breasts wouldn’t be right, given possible health risks for Dakota if he wound up staying in her body for months.

House sitting
 

I lost all my savings. I lost my job. I could survive anything but the loss of my best friend.
 

The shower took about ten minutes longer than it would have, and thirty minutes longer than his normal showering routine, because he broke down halfway through and huddled in the floor of the shower, unable to look at Dakota’s body or touch it, turning the temperature and pressure up as high as he could stand it as though it would wash off this soft feminine shell and leave the real him.

But he was soon distracted from his surroundings by a glance down at himself. At the clothes he hadn’t been wearing a moment ago, the shopping bags he hadn’t been carrying, and the breasts that hadn’t been part of him, displayed to advantage in a low-cut blue blouse.

Walther Livingston is a penetration tester, employed to probe the security arrangements at National Reliant Bank where a vast quantity of diamonds are stored. He tricks his way past guards and through numerous barriers, but the final line of defence is like nothing he has ever encountered before...

The News
A Short Story Contribution
By Maryanne Peters

I suppose that I had not much idea about the issues of intersex or transgenderism before Toxically Induced Sexual Morphosis (TISM) hit Ridgewick. Then it became not just the big news in town, but the only news. And the news is my business.

What if supernatural beings like Witches, Faeries, Demons, and their ilk are all real? Glen Evanston is about to be caught in their many traps in my new work in progress: Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem a Graphic Novel by Raine Monday

Amanda couldn’t decide what she was going to wear to the comic con this year. This year they were bringing in some of the best comic book artists and having them interview a potential artist. She puts her portfolio together of some of her best drawings of comic book characters.

She hopes this time, she’ll get some job offers for her talent. Her parents were disappointed in her, first because she wanted to be a cartoonist. Secondly, they didn’t like the fact that she wanted to be a girl. She has always known she should have been born a girl, but she wasn’t.

A young man discovers a genie hidden in an old piece of furniture and takes the opportunity to wish for his deepest, darkest secret, but he may not be ready to accept the consequences of his wishful thinking.

What if supernatural beings like Witches, Faeries, Demons, and their ilk are all real? Glen Evanston is about to be caught in their many traps in my new work in progress: Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem a Graphic Novel by Raine Monday

Miss Taken
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

The girl behind the counter had taken pity on him and placed a glass of water on the counter near the corner. He came in drawn by the smell of freshly roasted coffee, but he could not afford one. He had just enough for the ticket home, or so he hoped. Or a ticket part way and then dodge the conductor. Either way it was a failure to go back there. He would be marked when he walked down the street.