Her Best Act

A new mask improves an acrobat's talents and makes her more of a crowd-pleaser. Explicit.

The crowd looked at her and laughed at her and they were all upside-down.

"And if my puns didn't please you, remember a groat is always better than a groan!" Tam said.

She stage-winked and nodded toward the wide open pouch beneath her. There were a couple snickers, a few groans all the same, and some flashes of coins flicking into the depths of the pouch.

Tam unwound her legs from the second-story bannister. Her hands clutched the edge for a pivot and she swung down into a roll, tucked into a ball. Everything pitched around her and she tumbled until the ground was coming up underneath her and she landed, feet-first, arms outstretched, smiling. She was greeted by gentle applause. She kept up the smile until the crowd was breaking up and drifting away into the market and there were no profits to be lost by snatching up her pouch.

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.

Lophiformes Elapidae Cordyceps

A batch of contaminated eggs cause a series of strange mutations. Explicit, body horror.

T-0:30 to Patient Zero; six eggs remain.

Alice pushed open one of the few remaining cartons of eggs. The last one had two that were chipped, but these seemed all in order, except for one of the eggs which was smaller than the others by a centimeter or so and sitting at an angle to all the rest. Alice picked up the exceptional egg. It weighed fine in her hand and there were no marks or otherwise to hint that it was damaged.

Maybe then it was a sudden spasm of her hand, or she had misestimated the strength of the egg, but whatever the reason, the shell cracked open. She expected a mess of white and yolk to drip down her hand, but what oozed between her fingers was an opaque, sticky, whitish substance. Alice shook her arm and wiggled her hand and spread her fingers but the white goo only bounced and rippled and stayed stuck fast to her hand.

Demophagiai

Scythian hyena-barbarians capture a Greek man and make him join their warband. Explicit.

Demos had no reason to be scared of the Scythians. They were like beasts, or were they like amazons; they devoured everyone, or maybe they kidnapped everyone, or both. No matter who was telling it, though, they always came in the dead of night for misbehaving young boys and girls and snatched them from their beds. In short, they were the monsters at the edges of childhood.

Demos had no reason to be scared of the Scythians until they came. He was grown up. He sold oil all over Thrace. He had a slave who stayed up night to make sure no one tried to make off with a jug of his oil and another slave who brought him dinner. He was supposed to be beyond monsters, but they had come in the dead of night and then pain had exploded across his head and everything was black.

On top of him lay a thick weight and beneath him it was uncomfortably lumpy and all around him the smell was awful. At the tips of his fingers, arms outstretched, he could feel a breeze. Animal instinct drove him toward the open air, squeezing and pushing and grunting. At last his head and shoulders were free.

Another One of the Girls

A fox-squirrel runs into one of those trashy rat girls. Surprise surprise, she TFs him. Explicit.

The doors started to close, then stopped and pulled back. Fortune stepped into the elevator and tapped the brass button for the fifteenth floor. The bed was waiting for the fox-squirrel up in his room, where he could rest his legs and feet before dinner. Probably Italian food, he thought—it seemed fitting while he was in the city, even if he'd had pizza for lunch for the same reason.

He looked from the doors up to the number three which slid up to four, then to the other person standing in the elevator with him. The way her ass jutted out in the thin black dress made it beg to be squeezed, and the way one of her knees was crooked, lifting one of her tall black heels off of the ground, seemed almost inviting. Her pink tail swayed from side to side behind her. The dress ended just below her shoulder blades, amid the thick curls of her black hair, while on top of her head, a pair of rounded ears held up heavy golden hoops.

Silken

A cat tries to rob a Chinatown store, but its owner finds a better use for him. Explicit.

The lanterns were strung up, the already-cramped streets were choked with stalls and people, and every single shop was busy. Obviously, Chinese New Year was a big event in Chinatown, and that was what made it the perfect time for a bit of petty thievery.

See, all of the shop owners would be busy as hell—and likely not even in the shops, if they had a stall out on the street. With so many people around, one little orange tabby cat could easily go missing. No one would pick him out when the place was packed with tourists. He knew a couple of the back streets, since he'd come here a couple of times before. One of his friends had a thing for Chinese food. It was simple, easy, hard to fuck up. Get in the back of a shop, grab some expensive stuff, and make a couple hundred selling it all on the internet.

Liam had gone for the nondescript look. Hooded sweatshirt, pair of jeans, sneakers—just a college kid checking out Chinatown. There were some roadblocks that blocked off the back roads so that people wouldn't go back there, but it took no more than ducking underneath to get past them. No one said a thing to him, if anyone even saw him slipping past the barrier at all.