A story in the The Fading Stars Universe
Some choices are easy. Either face fifteen years in an off-world prison for trying to steal a military battlecruiser or join a crew of interstellar fixers for a hazardous mission. Rembrandt chose the latter and finds much more than he bargained for.
Halloween 2019
Anne Evans is a Wiccan who works as a nurse in a hospice. Peter Morgan, a coma patient, comes under her care. She senses that he responds to her presence. Her special treatments finally bear fruit (pun intended) in the night of Samhain. Winner of the 2019 Halloween Writing Contest.
Asmodeus J. Jones is Summoned to a parallel universe to fight against a wizard oppressing the countryside of a province of an unfallen Roman Empire. Sorry, no sex, though they do talk about it now and then.
I had no parenting skills at all, so I have no idea why my sister asked me to stay with her daughter while mom and dad went off the Europe on a business trip. My niece was incorrigible. She snuck out to a party. She got drunk. She had sex! I had to do something, but I had no idea what to do. So I did what my dad did when I screwed up. I beat her bare ass. Who would have known she'd actually LIKE that?! And it all went downhill from there. All because I had no parenting skills.
The topic is "The End of the Affair." My problem is that everybody from Ovid to Henry Miller has had something to say about that - not to mention a few million folks on this site. So, I took a slightly different interpretation of "the end" here. My hero makes a bad choice. But he has decent instincts and with a little help from an unlikely source he eventually learns how to be a good person. Some of you might find this a bit allegorical. If so, I couldn't possibly comment. / (Reviews)
Toby Adamson has been best friends with twins Andrew and Natasha Stevenson ever since they met in kindergarten, when they were five years old. Toby was totally in love with Natasha by the time that they reached the age of ten. This part of their story begins in 1966, as the Stevenson family move away from their old home, near Toby's house, to a newly built ranch-style bungalow, near the hamlet of Northolt, in the English Cotswolds. Toby is about to go and spend a few days with the family...