Posts

The Fort by David Penn

Image
Two children bully a schoolmate into showing them his secret fort, but there are hidden dangers. Image generated with OpenAI It was Neil's idea, as I remember it, as most of our bright schemes were. That long summer holiday we were bored, he and I, which, as most people know, can lead to serious consequences when you're thirteen. No school, and there was never much to do in Graevwych, but we had to make our mischief somewhere. We knew this kid, a year below us, Daniel Bartlett, who you could mess about with royally and get away with it. Everybody, including the teachers, thought he was a sandwich short of a picnic and nobody minded, really, if he got teased a bit. So in the playground we used to nick his schoolbag and have him running around after us trying to snatch it back. Get him to hand over his dinner money to us, spend it on fags, and have fun watching him splutter when we gave him one to smoke. Egg him on to say things to girls - I mean things that would have them slapp...
Post a Comment
Read more

Death at the Double Kiss by Lituo Huang

Image
Lonnie is cheating with Greg's wife and is found dead in the bathroom after a game of pool at the Double Kiss. Photo by Kyle Miller, from Pexels It wasn't supposed to snow as much as it did the night Lonnie got killed at the Double Kiss. Two men guard the door of the pool hall. They don't work here. They exhale smoke into the dim evening air, snowflakes dancing around them. My late father's brother Francis, who recently took me on as his eight-ball doubles partner, nod to the two men. We step between them and Francis opens the door, sucking cold cigarette smoke inside the pool hall. I feel quiet tension. Maybe because it's playoffs, or maybe because of the unexpected snow. Albert, the owner of the Double Kiss, takes a knee in front of one of his pool tables. He pokes at something and peers through his thick glasses with his baseball cap turned backwards for a better view of the malfunction. The redheaded cashier behind the counter, Sally, greets me. "Hey, Jus...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Girl Who Was Halfway There by Jerry Petersen

Image
Paul Friedrich falls in love with a woman with an extraordinary ability that could be a blessing or a curse. Image generated with OpenAI I remember that she was studying a Degas. Few other people were in the museum that day, it being working hours on a workday, and it was just the two of us in that room. She was wearing a skirt with black leggings, a plum-colored blouse and quilted vest. Her hair was my favorite, one shade of brown this side of auburn. "Are you a lover of Degas?" I asked her, uncharacteristically forward. "I am a lover of beauty," she said. "Hm. Me too." I said it while continuing to look at her rather than back at the painting. She turned her head toward me. Blue eyes. Very little makeup, maybe just a touch of color in her lip gloss. "Nice line," she said. I smiled. "Thanks," I said. "I'm rather proud of it myself." She didn't answer, and moved toward the next painting, but then turned her head ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Orbital Arbitrage by John Leahy

Image
Jasper, a market analyst working after the split of the moon into two parts, develops an algorithm that predicts how the moons' forces affect market trading on Earth. Image generated with OpenAI It started, as things often did in the early years of the Split Era, with a graph that made no sense. Jasper Ganz - thirty-seven, brilliant, already semi-disgraced - was sitting in his apartment overlooking the Hudson, a half-drunk glass of Grüner Veltliner sweating beside his keyboard, the New York night smeared silver by the twin moons. They hung in the sky like quotation marks around a sentence humanity hadn't finished writing. He ran the simulation again. Gravitational delta: 0.0006. Tidal amplitude shift: 3.7%. Derivative volatility: 12% above baseline. Lunar separation velocity correlated with commodities trading volume. "Impossible," he muttered. "Unless someone's front-running gravity ." He had said the same thing to his ex-wife, to his therapist, to ...
Post a Comment
Read more