Heart's Desire [Illustrated]

Three friends play a fortune-telling game to grant their hearts' desire, but is it really giving them what they want? Explicit.

Cole stood beside the cabinet, like he was presenting it to them. "It's like a fortune telling game, but it's got special rules to it. You play it with a bunch of people, you get one fortune per day, and the first person to get to five 'blessings' wins."

"Wins what?" Tricia asked.

Cole pointed to one of the rules. "Your heart's desire."

Alex made a soft snort. Cole grinned. Tricia was starting to smile too. It was a cheesy old game.

"So, want to give it a shot?" Cole asked.

"That's what we're here for," Alex said. Even if it was silly, it was something they could all play together.

Alex stood up, fished one of the tokens out of the open coin return, and dropped it into the slot. A tinny recording of a sitar played as the cards on display in the booth swirled around and the lights on the outside flashed on and off in a spinning pattern.

A slot in the front spat out a yellowed card. Alex picked it up, then moved to the side. Tricia stood by her after getting her own fortune, and once Cole got his too, they all turned to face each other.

Broadway Was Waiting For Me

A superpowered cat sucked back in time is introduced to the high society of the Roaring Twenties. (And also turned into a girl.) Mature.

A wave of gray slush crashed up over the curb, then hung, frozen, an inch from colliding with the young cat.

The businessmen on the corner stared from beneath their dark-brimmed hats. A fox clutched at the fur stole draped around her neck, like she had been frozen in place along with the water. Someone let out a low whistle of amazement.

This was worse than the cell phone.

Today was Celsius's bad day. Number one, it was the twenty-third of December and he'd had a final to take this morning. Come on, you couldn't schedule it any earlier?

Number two, he'd ran out of people to ask to the school's Holiday Bash. Stupid party. He didn't want to ask the cute archaeology major to the party anyway.

Number three, he'd missed his bus stop, and the next stop was all the way down in the historic district, so he'd either have to go to an ATM and get change for the bus fare back, or spend half an hour walking home.

And number four, he was stuck in a time-warp to the Roaring Twenties.

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Null drones convert a hapless photographer poking around an abandoned hospital. Explicit.

Eight clicks echoed through the dead hospital.

Thomas raised his head. His ears rose too, stretching to hear the sound again. To him, rusted gurneys and rubble-strewn beds were photogenic, not eerie, and an odd noise was cause for investigation, not panic.

He pulled his camera off of his tripod. He thought it might be a wild animal, or some sort of scavenger. Whatever it was, he was going to get a picture of it.

He walked back across the ground floor of Bellvue Hospital, closed down and left to steep in its own formaldehyde for the last thirty years. There had been a quarantine then, a panic—but it was all before Thomas's time. The hospital had never been sealed up airtight. If there were any pathogens left, simply going inside couldn't hurt.

Marian

Robin Hood fanfic, oh no! Sir Hiss hypno-corrupts Maid Marian. Mature.

Prince John had a gallows grip on the gold coins between his fingers. One wrinkle creased his brow just above his snout. His lip curled, just a little. With each breath, an uneven whine left his throat, like a wet log steaming in a hot fire.

Sir Hiss grinned as ingratiatingly as he could.

"Sssire, you've counted that gold twice already. I think it'sss time sssomeone went to bed," he said.

Prince John didn't look at him. Hiss peeled back the corners of his mouth harder.

"Come now, sssir, you need your beauty sssleep," Hiss said.

Hiss's tail draped across the line of gold rings that Prince John held. He hooked the coins against his tail and tugged. Prince John held on tightly. His mouth stayed closed, though his lip had started to wobble.

Hiss had hoped the prince would have taken rejection better, but there was nothing the lion reacted to pleasantly.

Fight the Beast

Thrown into the arena, a young lion grows into a tough, brutish gladiator. Explicit.

A blade flowed down with a flourish along the way, aimed directly at him. Milon stumbled back. Cheers clapped his ears, sand twisted his feet, and sun shot through his eyes.

The next stroke was hidden in the glare of the sun. Up, across, stinging, bringing him to his knees. He clutched at his chest. His hands were red. His fur was red. The gash running from his breast to his stomach ached with every motion he made, ached with a pain that was dull and deep, hot and stinging, sticky and trembling and too imperfect to be a dream.

The tip of a sword pointed at his face. The cheers subsided, then roared even more fiercely. Milon's eyes were rooted to the blade. A drop of blood wobbled on the end. He stood still, staring into his life cut into two by the sword.

Jewel Roxx

Too much of an 80's TV show turns a cat into a glam rock dinosaur. Explicit.

There had to be cosmic irony somewhere in this. He had called in sick for work today. But his boss didn't want him losing the whole day in terms of productivity, so at nine in the morning, wrapped in a blanket and sniffling, he took a big bag of VHS tapes from one of the other interns.

He was being asked to watch cartoons as his job, and he didn't want to do it; that was the ironic part. He was sleepy, and his fur was all messy from rolling around constantly, and he wasn't exactly thinking straight. But his boss would want his 'trendy young 16-24 year old feline demographic' opinion on...he pulled one of the tapes from the bag. Jewel Roxx.

It took an internet search to figure out what the hell he was going to be watching. A show made in the 80's about a dinosaur rock star who fought to defend the planet. Maybe it would kind of be...hipster bad? So at least he could be ironic about it. But considering it had been canceled halfway through its pilot, he didn't have high hopes.

He took out the tapes and shuffled them around until he'd gotten them in the right order, then took the pilot tape and stuck it in his VCR. He had to fish the remote out from under the coffee table before he plopped down on the sofa and adjusted his blanket around him. He reached for the tissues and blew his nose, then turned on the TV and hit play.