1. Sliding Sideways


    Date: 8/22/2015, Categories: Fantasy & Sci-Fi, Author: BradleyStoke, Rating: 4, Source: LushStories

    Quentin who I’d been before and who lived with my confessions who’d have to live with the consequences of it, not me. It was like I could start afresh every day. Indeed, I discovered I could do whatever I fucking liked and I’d never have to worry about living with more than the memory of it.” “Me too!” exclaimed Vivienne, drawing on her cigarette. “It’s so fucking liberating! In fact, I’ve done things several times, just because I knew I could. I stripped naked in a pub. Just because I could. I sucked a stranger’s cock in public because I knew I wouldn’t have to suffer for it. I’ve had sex with anyone I fancied.” Quentin raised his eyebrows. “Well…” he remarked, “I’ve been a bit bolder than I might have been. Like I’ve been with you, you know, approaching an attractive woman knowing that if you rejected me it’d be the Quentin I’m inside now who’d have to live with the rejection. I’ve been unfaithful to the several different wives and girlfriends I’ve had, who, after all, I often didn’t really know very well and didn’t always like. I’ve sometimes done things I can’t claim to be proud of. No Groundhog Day redemption for me, I’m afraid. But I’ve never been as bold as you.” Vivienne shrugged. “I guess us spacetime travellers all have our different ways of coping with the freedom we’ve been granted,” she mused, “but I know that the Viviennes whose bodies I’ve occupied have all been pretty different. All the different ways I could have been, and, of course, somewhere in space and ...
    time actually am. On some occasions, the Vivienne I’ve been was pretty tight-arsed, so that’s probably when I’ve been most wicked. The current Vivienne’s got a boyfriend who works in the City, but she seems pretty free and easy. Which suits me! None of that ‘Christ, Viv! What’s got into you?’ that I’ve heard so many times.” Quentin finished his glass of beer and pulled out a twenty pound note, with its head of King Charles the Third on the back, and waved it at the barmaid. “What do you want?” “I’ll have another glass of house dry white,” Vivienne said. “And I’ll have another pint of Blackwell’s. I’ve never heard of that beer before this week, but it seems to be the most popular there is around here.” “It’s the little things that are most confusing,” Vivienne commented. “I was amazed to see that there’s no Jubilee Line here. And no one’s ever heard of Madonna. She never made it big in this world. And who’d believe that Colin Powell would have become President of the United States!” The two of them sat together on seats by the jukebox on which was playing a selection of old pop songs, some familiar, some peculiarly and surreally different in detail and some totally unknown. Quentin studied Vivienne with an approving eye as they sat down. She was a little younger than him. Probably in her mid to late thirties, but a woman who being so slender and assertively pretty now, must have been quite a head-turner when she was younger. She crossed her long slender legs, almost all her ...
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