I hope that everyone has had a great week so far! There won't be any prompts this week as the 2014 Summer Anthology: The Backup Plan is now live! If you've been looking for some new stories to read, we have some great new reads for you to take a look at! Don't forget to leave the authors a review to let them know what you think of their hard work. Enjoy!!!

 

 

 

 

Paul lay across the left side of the bed, his arms wrapped around his lover. He smiled as he looked out the window at the falling snow, the cat sitting near it, tapping as the large flakes fell just outside the double pane. Finally, life was going his way. He had a new job, his lover, and all was right with the world. He leaned over to nuzzle closer and … brrrrringg … brrrrringgg … brrrrringg!

 

He opened one eye and stared at the bright red light of his alarm clock showing it was barely five minutes after midnight. He hated that he was dragged out of the best dream he had experienced in months. Brrrringg! He stretched and snagged his cell phone off the nightstand as he forced himself to sit up in bed.

 

“What?” he snarled into the phone.

 

 

I was sound asleep when my cell phone began to ring. I always leave it on the nightstand where it will be easy to reach and the ringtone indicated the call was coming from my sister's house. Although I didn't have any idea what she might want, I figured it must be important for her to be calling at this hour. Fortunately, it hadn't awakened my boyfriend, Jeremy, but then again he can sleep through just about anything. I glanced over at his mop of dirty blond hair extending above the sheet, as I groggily reached over and answered the phone.

 

"Hey, sis. What's up?" I offered in greeting, slightly perkier than I though I was capable of at that hour of the morning.

 

"This is Officer Light from the Jefferson Police Department," the voice responded. "Are you Scott Fisher, the brother of Kelly Coleman?"

 

Jean Claude "Savage" Saville sang along with Alan Jackson as the song played on the garbage truck radio. Halfway down the east side of Burled Oak Drive, a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye caught Savage's attention, and his foot slammed down on the brake pedal. Savage's fingers clenched the steering wheel as if he could stop the truck by sheer strength alone. A silent prayer on his lips, Savage helplessly watched a toddler, wearing only a diaper, running down the driveway in front of him. The garbage truck's brakes squealed as it finally stopped just short of the driveway. A pair of kangaroos fell from their perch on the dashboard, landing on the floor. The sound of the horn was like a siren in Savage's ears and his body shook at the sudden sound. It was only afterward that he realized it had been his horn.

 

The toddler had also stopped running, startled by the loud horn. He stood safely in the driveway, a few feet back from the road. Savage, with his heart pounding and chest heaving from fright, watched the toddler's wide eyes fill with tears.

 

Rachel woke with a jolt. It took a moment for her foggy mind to recognize the annoying buzzing sound. The screen of her cell phone lit up her tiny bedroom when it rang again on her nightstand. Fumbling with the phone, she blinked, trying to focus her sleepy eyes, but it was helpless. She was blind without her glasses. Clumsily grabbing her phone, she answered with an automatic swipe of her thumb.

 

“Hello?” Rachel answered, still in a haze.

 

“Rachel?” the caller asked, as the screen of her cell phone went black, plunging the room back into darkness.

 

I’d asked Jason McCaig to the school formal about eight weeks ago and he turned me down. He turned me down so quickly that my head was still spinning. It seemed as though he was not quite yet ready to be out to the world.

 

We’d been ‘together’ for nearly two years, since we turned fourteen. He had no problem with me sucking him off or bending me over and giving me a good seeing to, but God forbid just the thought of us slow dancing with each other in front of our friends really freaked him out.

 

Since I couldn’t go with the person who was allegedly my boyfriend, I decided I’d have to find another boy to go with. Jason was the only gay kid I knew in my school, I had absolutely no intention of asking a girl, and since it was obvious that I couldn’t ask any of the other boys in my year, I decided to fall back on an old family trait: magic. My family had always been magical; it was just that we hadn’t used it in over a century.

 

“I’m very disappointed in you, Conners.”

 

Here we go again, thought Elliot. He put on his best poker face and braced himself for the upcoming verbal onslaught. His boss stopped pacing around the room and put both his hands on his desk, leaning toward Elliot.

 

“You settled for half of what we could have been awarded in the Szmansky case. I demand an explanation.” He settled into his chair and steepled his fingers, looking at Elliot expectantly.

 

Elliot took a deep breath. “Szmansky Brothers Hardware is a mom and pop operation. If they hadn’t settled they would have lost their business. They still might.”

 

Sven Tollefson stood by the rail fence looking at his dying corn. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a blue handkerchief and felt despair well up in him. All over Cottonwood County, thousands of farmers were seeing the same thing. Crops dying from a heat wave coupled with a severe drought. The corn leaves were still green but hanging wilted from stems that were almost gray. It wouldn’t take much longer before most of the field was dead.

 

“Damn!” he exclaimed to no one since no one else was around.

 

Sven took a hike over through his little grove of trees and looked at his clover field. There would be no second crop this year. The clover was yellow and stunted. In some patches, where the soil was quite sandy, the clover wasn’t even yellow. It was brown, dormant from the lack of moisture. He walked through the field and wondered, ‘What am I going to do?’

 

“So where is home? And if you say that damn dome, I’m going to call Dr. Connor back,” I said. The shifters wanted to take care of me until I could take care of myself, however long that took. Until then, my plans to get out to my stake and start working on my future were on hold.

 

“Oh, no. We have a nice apartment on the south edge of the city.” Moshe grinned. “Big enough for me, even.”

 

I raised one eyebrow. “There are no nice apartments on the edge of the city. Now, apartments on the north side, by the coast… those are nice.” Trees and hills weren’t exactly considered prime view material, and it took hours to trek to the beach through the city, even using the transfer system. I’d gone to the south side, once, with my college roommate, Keon.
I’d never gone back.

 

Paul sat in the back of the little café staring at a tiny crack in his coffee mug. A week ago, he'd had to watch Sam kissing Mark, and his plan to tell Sam what he felt for him had been overtaken by reality – a reality in which Sam still loved Mark, or so it had seemed at the time. Like the idiot he was, he'd run when he should have stayed, leaving behind a perfectly cooked three-course dinner for two. With candles. And wine.

 

He had smashed his phone, ranted to his sister, cried in her arms and then had worked day and night because Maya had accepted so many orders. Orders for weddings, for office parties, dinner parties. He had no brain capacity left other than thinking supply orders, recipes, time schedules.

 

But he wasn't ready to accept that Sam was lost to him. After all, he'd had a backup plan.