Stories

What if you were a witness to a crime, but didn't know it? Once the crime is solved, does what you know matter? If you put a period at the end of the sentence, does that give you a final answer?

Anthology Pot Luck Theme: Turn Back Time

British born Chinese gay man Stanley Cheung wakes with somebody else's hangover.

Not only that, but he is laid out on someone’s couch in a grungy student digs where a strange woman is telling him he smells like a brewery. The thing is Stanley rarely drinks.

When the woman finally leaves, he finds out that not only has he woken as six-foot-three, ripped, blond-haired, straight Caucasian Don Bradley, but today is not Friday.

It’s Thursday.

Again.

He is reliving the same day but this time as somebody else.

Zane is a methodical person. He’s great at making plans for work and for his life. When he discovers a rainbow sticker in the lower left corner of a window, he plans to visit a gay bar, for the very first time in his life.

Jamison definitely missed his older brother, Johnny, when he went off to college. Especially since he's the only person in his family that he can talk to about being a gay teen in high school. So Jamison is overjoyed when he gets to take his very first bus trip out to see him for the weekend. It's a three hour ride, but when he meets another boy who seems to be heading in the same direction...that may not seem like enough time at all.

Chandler Drake is in middle school and rides the school bus that Bob Bell drives. They’re also neighbor’s, so when Bob sees that Chandler is being bullied, he wants to help. Bob does what he can, but he would like to do more. When he discovers a second boy, Nick Morenus, who lives nearby and rides a different bus, is going through a similar situation, Bob attempts to offer a solution to help both boys. Chandler has devised his own solution that works even better when combined with Bob’s proposal. Will this strategy solve their problem?

This is my entry for the Fall/Winter 2021 anthology, ‘An Unconventional Gift’.

A short and very personal conversation with my dog.

Aged 10, Albert and his younger sister Florence went to live in the old house at Coldbrook with their parents. What happened there would change all of their lives.

Rowan thought he was nuts for moving into a house sight unseen, even though it had been in Pieter’s family for generations. Oakhaven’s beauty changes his mind, and he soon finds himself on a journey of family secrets, where he learns that gods and monsters aren’t always what they appear to be.

Pot Luck Theme: Lockdown

Sucked through his laptop screen by a hooded wizard, Jake must work for him and the voice in the sky… or be erased from existence. How long can he survive when he’s not in control?

A poem about loves journey