All Duncan wants is to be a normal kid in a normal school. Until he realizes he is something very far away from normal.

Stu Shepard is a fast talking and wise cracking New York City publicist who gets out of trouble and lies with his clever charm, connections, and charisma. Stu's greatest lie is to his wife Kelly, who he is cheating on with his girlfriend, Pam. Upon answering a call in a phone booth in belief it is Pam, Stu is on the line with a dangerous yet intelligent psychopath with a sniper rifle. When realizing it is not a joke, Stu is placed in a powerful mind game of wits and corruption. The New York City Police eventually arrive thereafter and demand Stu comes out of the phone booth- but how can he when if he hangs up or leaves the booth he will die? Written by commanderblue

Billie Frank is a shy, young multiracial girl who is sent away by her alcoholic mother at a very early age. At an orphanage, she befriends Louise and Roxanne. Flash forward to 1983. Billie and her friends are spotted by a record producer, Timothy Walker, who wants them to sing backup for his latest pop-music discovery. But when super DJ Julian Dice hears Billie's incredible voice, he makes a shady deal with Timothy to get her out of that dead-end situation. Soon, Billie and Dice are making hits inside the studio, and falling in love outside of it. Eventually, the pressure of her newfound celebrity puts too heavy a strain on Billie, forcing her to decide what it is she really wants from Dice, and what she wants for herself. Written by Anonymous

Paulie, an intelligent parrot who actually talks, relates the story of his struggle to a Russian immigrant who works as a janitor at the research institute where he is housed and neglected. Paulies story begins many years earlier when he is given as a gift to a little girl who stutters. Eventually, he teaches the girl to speak correctly but is taken away by her father because he believes the girl cannot distinguish fantasy from reality because she believes the bird can talk. Paulie goes through a series of adventures with a pawn shop owner, an ageing widow, a Mexican-American troubadour and a would be thief before being taken to the institute where he now lives. Written by lodger13@iwl.net

In New York, Alvin Sanders is a small-time thief who's just been hauled in for stealing a bunch of prawns (shrimp) from a local restaurant. He ends up in a cell with John Jaster, one half of a high-tech criminal team that's just stolen $42,000,000 worth of gold from the Federal Reserve. Realizing that he could die at any moment from his worsening heart condition, Jaster tells Alvin to relay a cryptic message to his wife about the whereabouts of the hidden gold. Alvin doesn't know exactly what the message means, and Edgar Clenteen, the U.S. Treasury investigator working the case, hopes it will lead to the gold or Jaster's partner Bristol, but it does neither. Eighteen months later, Jaster is dead, and both Clenteen and Bristol are still looking for that gold. Clenteen decides to secretly plant a tracking device in Alvin's jaw, release him from prison, and then let the word out that he knows where the gold is hidden. Knowing that Bristol is probably watching their every move, Clenteen ... Written by Todd Baldridge

A Kansas City waitress with dreams of becoming a nurse becomes delusional after seeing her no-good car salesman husband murdered. Becoming delusional from shock, she becomes convinced that she is the former fiancée of her soap opera idol. What she also believes is that the soap opera is real and goes to LA to find the hospital where he works as a cardiologist. Meanwhile, her husband's murderers are searching for the drugs stolen by her husband and, as luck would have it, they are stored in the trunk of the car she drove off in. Freeman, an aging hit man planning his retirement after this job, also becomes delusional about the woman he is tracking. Written by John Sacksteder jsackste@bellsouth.net

Computer scientist Hannon Fuller has discovered something extremely important. He's about to tell the discovery to his colleague, Douglas Hall, but knowing someone is after him, the old man leaves a letter in the computer generated parallel world his company has created (which looks like the 30's with seemingly real people with real emotions). Fuller is murdered in our real world the same night, and his colleague is suspected. Douglas discovers a bloody shirt in his bathroom and he cannot recall what he was doing the night Fuller was murdered. He logs into the system in order to find the letter, but has to confront the unexpected. The truth is harsher than he could ever imagine... Written by Danny Rosenbluth