After a few months, Bertie was reconsidering his recent foray into the world of the local BDSM community. While Cherrie at the Oubliette had been a delightful guide, it soon became apparent that attendance at the shop’s fetish events had been in decline since before the pandemic. While he and Rachel had met a few other customers in the basement dungeon, they tended to similarly be newbies, or were “just checking it out”....

“The wind howled across the moor that night, raking the last few resilient leaves from their branches. Gillespie lay awake, watching the moonlight phantoms play over the ceiling. He was aware in the back of his mind that tonight marked the end of his first month at the school and his first month since his father had packed up the farm and moved to London, leaving the boy here to, as he said, make a better man of himself t...

Bertie had once told her over dinner that no food drew him back to a specific time and place like two-dollar student discount pizza. While he’d never admitted it, Rachel knew from the occasional stain on his clothes that he indulged in that nostalgia perhaps a little more than he should. But she’d never gone to university, and the two-dollar slice he remembered from his school days now went for three-fifty. The only time...

In the final days of the twenty-first century, the experiment that was democracy had failed. Riven by internal disputes, the great states were dying, their cries going unheard as their leaders, their enemies, and their poor stupid citizens all struggled to have the last word. As collapse of society threatened their investments, the wealthiest corporations stepped in. There would be stability, they said. There would be com...

The night had started with the best of intentions. A week before, Bertie and Rachel had been sitting in front of the TV, watching cartoons while eating dinner, and Rachel had asked, out of the blue, when they’d last had any friends over to visit them at the apartment. Even now, Bertie didn’t know what had prompted her question, but he couldn’t provide an answer for her, either. Clearly they could use a little company – bu...

Two months after she’d received it, Rachel was still at a loss over what to do with the damn poster. Her ex – a man she’d seen in person once since she’d left him thirteen years earlier – had recently died. She remembered their relationship in grand gestures and emotional manipulation, and Rachel expected nothing from him. So to say her inheritance was unexpected, was putting it mildly. It wasn’t to say that the poster wa...

Rachel lay stretched in the lounger by the pool, a drop of sweat beading on her forehead. She felt it swell, begin to dribble, and then dissolve into steam before even touching the bridge of her nose. It was hot, no doubt, but it was still better out here than in the apartment. It had become a cycle in the time they’d lived here. The apartment complex was old, with no central air, so each year after the first summer heat...

Somehow, he’d expected… more. Bertie supposed it had been a pretty good day, on the whole. He’d had the day free from work, and had been able to spend the morning cleaning house – his girlfriend Rachel had even helped with the dusting, which was more than he’d come to expect from her in the seven years they’d lived together. When the hottest part of the day had passed, they’d walked down to the Botanical Gardens together,...

Mika never came by on Fridays. There had always been something else going on – late classes, gym workouts, Girl’s Nights, pool at the student union – but he’d come to accept that he would spend his Friday nights by himself. He justified it as a trade-off for continuing to date a woman over forty years his junior. So when Jeff saw her step out of the rideshare car at the edge of his lawn, he was shocked. She’d texted him e...

“The truth is… little girls grow up. It’s what they’re supposed to do.” Mika had practiced that line in the mirror before she’d come over. She’d said it over and over until she meant it, until it seemed right. Rational. Inevitable. In three weeks, she would (belatedly) achieve her degree. From there it would be straight back to her hometown and a job opportunity that her father had arranged back when she began her studies...