Stories

Newly coming to terms with being gay, following an abusive childhood and a failed relationship with a girlfriend, electrician Keith meets Thomas, who runs a local arts charity. Despite coming from vastly differing backgrounds, the two discover much in common, not least the need to come to terms with complex relationships to their fathers. But they also learn to enjoy exploring life together.

I remember my life now as if I'm looking out a window. Streaks of my life flash by me. I try to open the window and catch them, but the window won't open. So, I sit and watch them, and I wonder did they really happen or was it just a dream? Take a journey back in time as 78-year-old Phil Reid relates his life experiences to a younger man.

Lysander - Andy to most people - got saddled with a strange name from a mom who is a little...off. Looking forward to college where he can leave mom behind and find boys who actually like kissing boys is his biggest goal in life, for now.

Kai just wants to slide by in this new school. He's a senior and only has to get by unscathed for 10 months so he can move on and figure out...well, whatever comes next. He's had enough drama and heartache to swear off the human race.

Even if we don't want to change, we do. We wear different faces at different ages, different faces for different crowds.

14-year-old Bryan Padilla is caught between worlds he doesn't feel connected to. Having been abandoned by their birth parents at a young age, Bryan and his younger brother, Caleb, were adopted by a family friend, Diego Padilla, and raised in a culture not of their own. Though it is the only life Caleb has ever known, Bryan inwardly struggles with his feelings about life, death, race and sexuality. Things escalate shortly after the death of his birth mother. Can Bryan come to terms with his situation as a figure from his past tries to upend his entire life?

After his parents are killed, TJ's world is flipped upside down by what he discovers.

December, 2023 was a high point in eighteen-year-old Kevin Lewiston's life. He'd finally lost his virginity. For the first time in recent memory he didn't get a 'C' or a 'D' on his report card. His parents gave him their old Chevy Equinox for Christmas. Everything was looking up for the young man.

The calendar changed. Kevin's world changed. By June, he was on the verge of giving up. Then he saw something on TV that changed his mind; saved his life even. He packed everything he needed or cared about into his car, hit the road, and never looked back.

"My grand-father always used to say that everything that happens to us in life happens for a reason. And when we look back on our lives there are some moments that just seem to stick in our minds forever and I can now see what he meant by that."

For Scott Fraser there was one such moment that he remembers well. It was the time when, as a teenager, he saved the life of a young boy who was about to be swept out to sea.

What he couldn't have prepared himself for, however, was what would happen when that same boy comes back into his life some years later . . .

Blair Lisle and Alex Donovan have been best friends their entire lives. Despite being polar opposites, they've been inseparable for seven years — until Blair gets accepted into the most prestigious prep school in California. Forced to navigate freshman year apart, their true feelings for each other finally begin to unravel. Between family troubles and the trials of adolescence, how will Blair and Alex manage to navigate their newfound relationship?

A response to Prompt #68:

Imagine where your character leads a pretty decent single life. Then there is a phone call and that life is turned upside down as they find out, they have just become a parent—to a teenager. Is this a cousin that has been left with no other family members? A god child? A niece or nephew? What is this first meeting between them going to be like?

The circumstances whereby Manny obtains guardianship are a little strange, to say the least. Not to mention what happens afterward.

To have someone to love is one of life’s greatest gifts, his grandma used to say. However, what grandma didn’t know, and Otis didn’t have the heart to tell her, was that getting there in this day and age required going through a painful phase called dating. Something he’s not very good at, to put it lightly. However, when someone moves in an apartment a few doors down from his, Otis begins to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

Full summary inside.