An “After Dinner Conversation” Virtual Book Club — Come Join Us

Great stories don’t end on the last page. They come back to you mid-conversation, in the shower, right before you fall asleep, and you find yourself wondering what you would have done in that character’s position.

That’s exactly what we talk about.

After Dinner Conversation hosts a free, one-hour virtual book club each month on Zoom. No formal agenda, no literary gatekeeping, just honest conversation about the ideas and moral questions a story stirs up. Readers join from across the country and around the world, which makes the discussion richer than you might expect.

Each month we pick one or two stories from the current magazine issue as our focal point. From there, the conversation goes wherever it needs to go.

Our next session is June 25, 2026. We will be discussing stories from the June 2026 issue.

👉 RSVP here: luma.com/afterdinnerconversation

We hope to see you there.
— Kolby @ After Dinner Conversation

Read the newest edition of After Dinner Conversation!

Click the image to get your copy!

After Dinner Conversation - Philosophy | Ethics Short Story is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Q&A

Which philosophy or philosopher most aligns with your own beliefs?

I attribute nearly everything I know and believe to Doctor Yakub. Without him, I wouldn’t be here. I gravitate toward Slavoj Žižek. That man is unfathomably based. As a leftist, it’s nice to hear a prominent neo-Marxist like Žižek state that the West should supply Ukraine with nukes as deterrence against Russian aggression. I take issue with Tankies.

If you aren’t familiar with them, Tankies are leftists who can see no wrong in anything Stalin or the USSR ever did. Every conversation with them is the same: Stalin never committed atrocities, but the atrocities he didn’t commit were justified.Look, respect to the dedication to being a Marxist, but why does that carryover to modern, hyper-capitalist and hyper-imperialist Russia? I think it boils down to these people viewing the US (and by extension, the West) as the epitome of evil (which is true), but Russia being antagonistic to the West doesn’t make them “good.” That’s kindergarten thinking. Russia sucks—hard. I’ve lived in both Russia and Ukraine, and at risk of being one of those guys who thinks you must have been to a place to have an opinion on it, I can confidently say Tankies don’t know what they are talking about. I won’t call Norm Finkelstein a Tankie, but he crosses over into that territory. I agree with him on basically 99% of issues. Watching him tear Zionist sycophants apart is joyous, but concerning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he miraculously puts the blame on everyone and everything but Russia. It baffles me how Russia gets treated with kid gloves in these matters.

Science fiction often shapes my philosophy. It saddens me how even now, science fiction (especially in literature) is so often dismissed. Sure, let’s applaud the fiftieth piece of autofiction about some trust fund baby, who just happens to be a writer. Weneed more of those books. You ever hear about this Ben Lerner guy? All his books are about writers. Wow! You have centuries of storytelling at your disposal, and you get paid the write for a living, and the best you can come up with is a story about a writer struggling to write? That’s just wild to me. But I guess these books keep garnering awards because it’s one big circle jerk, and people”see themselves” in these stories. The point is, literature isn’t dead; you just aren’t going to find anything of substance in books written by Ben Lerner or Keith Gessen.

The Three-body Problem trilogy by Cixin Liu blew my mind.These books take up philosophical and existential questions about time, space, reality, and society, plant seeds early in the stories, and then explore each of these questions, pushing them to the furthest possible conclusion. It’s terrifying. Humanity is not going to meet a happy end, the question is: just how terrible will it be? It might sound strange, then, that I love Star Trek: The Next Generation so much, as it couldn’t be more different from Liu’s works. It presents an optimistic future for humanity, where things like poverty and petty differences have been pushed aside. I’d like to believe this future is possible, but it most certainly isn’t. I don’t see humanity surviving this century.

Then there’s John Waters and his philosophy of bad taste. He writes stories about characters nobody would ever want to be in a room with, but he never judges them. He loves them. Lastly, Turtle from Entourage says a lot of smart things.

Is there any standard publishing or writing advice that you disagree with? Or any standard advice that you feel is too often neglected?

All advice is mostly trite gobbledygook. Just write. If you’re good at it, you’ll have the wherewithal to know it’s good. If you have no self-awareness whatsoever, also keep writing, because you might produce some true, elevated schlock.

Is your process for writing philosophical fiction different from the way you approach other works?

I never come into a story with a philosophical question at its inception. As cheesy as it sounds, the story tends to write itself, and then sometimes what I thought the themes were either become stronger, or change entirely.

What is the greatest compliment you have received as a writer? The most stinging criticism?

I only remember insults. The frustrating thing is that people tend to insult me personally, rather than my books. People can be quite mean. After being called various names for years, I’m now more convinced than ever that all of these people are actually Paul Dano burner accounts.

I’ve been accused of being both right-wing and a libtard with “victim mentality.”

Which authors or books would you recommend to those who want to challenge their own thinking?

People should read more science fiction. I think people are put off by the genre because they assume it’s nothing but technobabble and nerd crap. That’s partially true, but it’s like saying that just because 90 percent of rap music is trash, you won’t even give the outliers a chance. I think 90 percent of any genre or medium is crap.
Read The Three-body Problem trilogy, read Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, and please, please, PLEASE read Antkind by Charlie Kaufman (the funniest book I’ve ever read). Humor is hard to master, especially in literature. Books praised as funny always fall flat to me. You can always tell when someone is forcing it. Have you ever seen someone who took dancing classes and technically knows the moves and timing, but when you watch them dance, you can see them counting the steps in their head? It doesn’t look cool at all. It’s desperate and forced. That’s what people trying to be funny are like. Kaufman’s book is so unhinged and unafraid, which is the only way to be funny. If you hesitate or if you wink too much at your audience, like, “See, I’m in on the joke,” it removes accountability. I’ve recommended this book to anyone I can, but no one wants to read it.

Recommended Substacks:

Joe Nada (No Relation) , Chet Sandberg, and Moe Strausberg- he’s unhinged in a way I could only dream of being.

Author Bio:

David R. Low is the author of three novels (CoinciDATE, SCHLOCK featuring Russia Cop, The American Brain) and various publications. He is best known for his Substack post about Amazon Prime’s Ice Cube’s War of the Worlds. At various points, he has lived in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Japan. At present, he is seeking revenge against Paul Dano.

Story Summary: A pilot is tasked with "seeding" a distant planet with the codes to give rise to future humans, at the expense of the planet's natural evolutionary process. (Scroll Down to Read)

Take the poll for this week’s story, “Sow”:

(It’s completely anonymous…and fun!)

“Resident Philosopher” Nalini’s take:

Nalini Jacob-Roussety ties simple questions to deeper philosophical frameworks! Listen to her discuss the poll question above. Comment in the discussion area at the end.

It's Time to Subscribe

💡 Paid subscribers help us publish stories like this every week and access our full archives.

📖 Weekly Short Story

📖 Email cut short? Read This Story on Substack

Sow by Joseph Bodie

Pilot’s Log

12 March 2130

Days to Deployment: 5

Infinity is beautiful. If you’ve never seen it, it would be hard for me to describe the breathtaking wonder of an endless void. Some might find the solitude disquieting, but I have come to take comfort in the isolation.

It gives me time to think.

They told me this mission would be simple. Long and mentally and physically taxing, but simple in its directives:

Locate Planet X1506-78.

Locate fertile terrain.

Deploy and dust terrain with panspermia capsules.

Simple.

I know what’s riding on this mission, what’s at stake. I feel the weight of hopes millions and millions of light-years away.

Physically and mentally taxing. But, for me, I have come to see this mission as morally taxing as well.

Do we deserve to preserve our species? What right do we have to disrupt the natural evolution of an alien planet? Is life sacred or profane?

I do not have the answers to these questions yet.

* * *

Pilot’s Log

13 March 2130

Days to Deployment: 4

I spoke with my wife today. It’s just a room now, I told her. It’s time, I told her. You need to do this, it’s healthy, I told her.

It’s easy for me to say that. I’m not the one who has to remove the crib, the toys, the pictures on the wall. I’m not the one that will have to paint over all of those animals and their bright smiles and frolicking feet.

It’s just a room now. Walls and a window and a floor and a ceiling. It’s just a room as sterile and inhuman and indifferent as the white-walled hospital room with its machines and their beeps and hums and numbers on screens signifying a decline.

It’s just a room now. Just like it was just a body in the end. A tiny 14-month-old body. It wasn’t even a body. It was a host. It was a tiny 14-month-old cancer host.

It’s just a room. It’s just a body. It’s just a host.

* * *

Pilot’s Log

14 March 2130

Days to Deployment: 3

Is it better to have never been born at all? Given the unpredictable nature of life, given all of the possibilities for pain and pleasure, given the uncertainty of the ratio of pain to pleasure, given the question of the duration of the pain, of the pleasure, of the act of being alive itself, is it a gamble worth taking?

Thought experiment: I come to you with a proposition to join a game. If you choose not to play the game, you lose nothing. Everything stays the same.

However, if you choose to join the game, there is no guarantee as to how long you will play the game, how much pain or pleasure will come your way, and, most importantly, you have very limited agency in this game, your will is imposed upon by outside forces and is therefore not free.

Would you play?

* * *

Pilot’s Log

16 March 2130

Days to Deployment: 1

Hope is a strange concept, a strange bedfellow, a savage lover. The concept itself has become a little absurd and irrational and naive to me. What good is it to invest in something that’s wholly beyond your control?

Why has an entire planet of people placed their hope on me, on this mission, on these panspermia capsules?

To continue the human race? But what good does that do for them? They’re dead anyway. Is there really any comfort or consolation in the notion that our species will live on this foreign planet?

And do we deserve to? After what we’ve done on and to ours? On and to our own species? On and to every other species that we claimed dominion over?

And what about these capsules? Do they even want to start the long and arduous process of evolution to become something so staggeringly inconsistent as us?

So loving and hateful and compassionate and indifferent and charitable and greedy and peaceful and murderous and on and on and on and on.

Do they even want to play the game?

* * *

Pilot’s Log

17th March 2130

Deployment Day

This will be my last entry. I have made a decision, a choice, a commitment. Or I feel that it has been imposed upon me, so maybe I am not to blame for the consequences.

For posterity, in case this recording is ever transmitted: I feel that the moral course of action here is to self-destruct.

This will be a beginning just as violent and fiery and random as the beginning of all things.

There will still be a chance for some of the capsules to survive and fertilize the terrain.

Those that fight to live will have made their choice. They will play the game, for better or worse or whatever.

Who will survive and what will become of them?

Discussion Questions (Leave a comment!)

1. If you were the pilot in the story, would you drop the panspermia capsules on the planet, ending the potential natural evolution of the planet and seeding it to evolve your own species in the distant future?

2. To what degree would life have to already exist on the planet, for you to refuse to seed it with the panspermia capsules? What if the planet had a variety of thriving, but non-sentient, life already?

3. Does a species have the absolute right to continue its existence at the expense of others?

4. The pilot discusses life as a choice; “if you choose not to play the game, you lose nothing. Everything stays the same,” but if you play, the game lasts an indefinite amount of time, and may be full of horrible pains or pleasure. In short, if given the choice prior to birth, would you choose to be born?

5. Given that the entire species has put their faith in the pilot to perform this task, and he agreed to perform this duty, does he have the right to change his mind on deployment day?

MISSED the last story?

👉 Unlock full story archive.

Last Week’s Poll Results:

AWARDS:

• Rated “Most Popular Fiction Magazine 2024” by Chill Subs

• Rated “Top 10 LitMag of 2023, 2024” by Chill Subs

• Rated #1 “The Very Best Literary Magazine” by Ranker

• Rated “Top 50 Fiction” on Substack

Print Mag Subscription

NEWS:

• 🤟If you are new to our Substack, take a look at the Welcome Message from our Editor and Founder, Kolby Granville.

• 🖥️ Want a book club with a focus? We have started a Meetup Page for our virtual/zoom and in-person short story discussion groups. Join today!

• 🆘 Volunteer as an acquisition reader and help us decide which story submissions get published. No experience required, just a keen eye for stories that make you think. If you’re interested, just shoot Kolby an email and he’ll get you set up.

• 👩‍🏫 Educators, find out how to get a free copy of a themed edition.

Thanks for reading, sharing, and re-stacking this post!

Maddie

Get 30 day free trial

Read the newest edition of After Dinner Conversation!

Click the image to get your copy!

After Dinner Conversation - Philosophy | Ethics Short Story is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Q&A

Which philosophy or philosopher most aligns with your own beliefs?:

I’m drawn less to rigid philosophical systems and more to writers and thinkers who embrace contradiction, ambiguity, and the fractured nature of the self. Jung has influenced me deeply, as has mythological scholarship and trauma theory. I’m interested in the idea that people are not singular, coherent beings, but ecosystems of competing desires, masks, wounds, and narratives. Much of my work explores what happens when we stop treating those internal contradictions as failures and begin seeing them as parts of a larger story.

Is there any standard publishing or writing advice that you disagree with? Or any standard advice that you feel is too often neglected?:

I think modern writing advice can become overly utilitarian—everything reduced to marketability, speed, branding, or algorithms. Some of the most meaningful fiction is strange, atmospheric, difficult, or emotionally unsettling. Not every story needs to be optimized for mass appeal.

At the same time, I think writers are too often discouraged from engaging sincerely with new creative tools or interdisciplinary processes. I believe art has always evolved alongside technology. What matters is not purity, but intentionality, craftsmanship, and emotional truth.

Is your process for writing philosophical fiction different from the way you approach other works?:

Not really. Even my lighter or more fantastical stories tend to orbit philosophical questions whether I intend them to or not. I usually begin with an emotional image or atmosphere rather than an argument. The philosophy emerges organically through character, symbolism, and metaphor. I’m less interested in preaching conclusions than in constructing emotional and psychological spaces readers can inhabit and interpret for themselves.

What is the greatest compliment you have received as a writer? The most stinging criticism?:

The greatest compliment is when someone tells me a story made them feel seen in a way they couldn’t previously articulate. That means more to me than praise about technical skill.

The most stinging criticism is probably that my work can be “too strange” or difficult to categorize, or too heavy and thematically layered. But honestly, I’ve made peace with that. I think some stories are meant to feel like wandering through a dream or a labyrinth rather than walking a straight line.

Which authors or books would you recommend to those who want to challenge their own thinking?:

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, and nearly anything by Terry Pratchett, who I believe was very much a philosopher in author’s clothing. I’m always drawn to works that use fantasy, horror, or myth not as escapism, but as a means of exploring memory, identity, grief, and the hidden architecture of the self.

Labyrinthia’s Recommended Substacks:

, , , Mila from [Click here to see Mila’s interview!], and -click here to read Labyrinthia’s pick for her favorite Marble & Ember story!

Author Bio:

Labyrinthia Mythweaver is the pen name of author Kathryn Chodor, a writer of gothic psychological fiction, modern folklore, and mythic horror. Her work explores liminal spaces between fantasy and psychology, blending surreal imagery with themes of trauma, identity, and transformation. She publishes fiction and experimental multimedia work through her Substack, Tales from the Labyrinth.

Story Summary: A retired lawyer tries to help an at-risk youth, but feels she has failed him. (Scroll Down to Read)

Take the poll for this week’s story, “Tikkun Olam”:

(It’s completely anonymous…and fun! Last week’s poll results at end of post)

“Resident Philosopher” Nalini’s take:

Nalini Jacob-Roussety ties simple questions to deeper philosophical frameworks! Listen to her discuss the poll question above. Comment in the discussion area at the end.

It's Time to Subscribe

💡 Paid subscribers help us publish stories like this every week and access our full archives.

📖 Weekly Short Story

📖 Email cut short? Read This Story on Substack

Tikkun Olam by Mark Jonathan Harris

The lawyer’s phone call was one she’d been expecting—dreading really—for the past two years. What surprised her was that Deshaun wanted to see her again. Why? “I have no idea,” the public defender said. “You’re the only one he asked for.”

Roz debated several days whether to drive to the Riverside County Jail. Was she the only credulous person left he could call for help? Or was he summoning her there to blame her for everything that led to his incarceration? The need to resolve that uncertainty made the decision inevitable. The drive from Brentwood took two hours, more time than she wanted to ponder all the mistakes she’d made with him.

* * *

Her first impression, when he entered juvenile court in his black Nike jacket, tight jeans, white T-shirt, and white sneakers, was that he was the kind of handsome, reckless youth she should immediately flee. The swag clothes and slight smirk on his lips, as if he were superior to everyone who’d dragged him there, warned her to stay away. She’d gone out with men with the same cockiness and self-regard; it always ended badly.

The white-haired judge appeared to share her skepticism. He’d detained Deshaun in juvenile hall for three weeks for smoking marijuana and assaulting a staff member in his group home. Deshaun had completed his detention, but remained on probation, and the judge continued to question his behavior. Deshaun’s parole officer, a man with a hardened, acne-scarred face, reported that Deshaun was uncooperative at his new group home and he’d tested positive again for pot. His public defender, a petite Latina who seemed fresh out of law school, reminded the judge “drug relapse is common.” The judge acknowledged the fact but said if there were another relapse, he wouldn’t hesitate to aid Deshaun’s recovery by locking him up again. The case lasted five minutes.

Afterward, the LA public defender hurriedly introduced Deshaun to Roz and left them in the crowded juvenile court waiting room. Roz explained that she was a CASA, a court-appointed special advocate who’d been assigned to his case.

“You another lawyer?” he asked as if she were as useless as the rest.

“I’m a recovering one,” she said. “I used to write contracts for a record company that no longer exists.”

“Spotify, huh?” He summarized her recent history. “So how come you doin’ this?”

Though others had asked the same question, she still hadn’t formulated a simple, satisfying explanation. “I’d like to help,” she said.

“You wanna help?” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Can you get me some weed?”

For a second she wasn’t sure if he was serious. Her reaction made him laugh. “You really think I want that judge to put my ass behind bars again? Lighten up, lady. You feel me.”

He rose from the plastic chair. “I gotta get the hell out of here.” He nodded toward a burly, dreadlocked man hovering by the entrance. “My chauffeur be waitin’ for me.” Then he strutted out the door.

She called the CASA office a few hours later and asked if they might have made a mistake in assigning Deshaun to her. When she volunteered to become an advocate, she imagined becoming a compassionate mentor to a sweet, 12-year-old foster girl who needed a shoulder to cry on, or advice about boys or schoolwork, or simply an occasional treat to lunch and a movie. It’s what she’d craved growing up, support and encouragement from an adult who would listen sympathetically to her complaints about her taciturn and unresponsive parents. With no children of her own, and no longer work to occupy her, she finally had time to become the warm, indulgent figure she’d wished for as a girl.

Deshaun was not what the CASA training had prepared her for. If the non-profit, which had long experience at this, had a good reason for matching them, she didn’t detect it. “The courthouse is a difficult place to meet,” the young woman who answered the phone counseled. “I can understand why he’d want to rush out of there. Why don’t you arrange another meeting in a more comfortable environment?”

She didn’t want to admit that she hadn’t liked him. Besides, persistence was a quality she prized in herself; she didn’t want to quit because the boy had made her uncomfortable. So she called his group home and arranged to visit him at the end of the week.

The home was in Ladera Heights, a middle-class Black neighborhood beginning to attract white buyers looking for affordable residences. The house was a typical, two-story suburban dwelling from the 1970s, still in good condition, with pink and white azaleas blooming in the front yard. There was no gate, no bars on the window, nothing to suggest that delinquent teens lived there.

Inside, the dreadlocked staff member she’d seen at the courthouse sat at a desk that separated the foyer from the living room, where another co-worker in his early 20s was drinking a Coke and watching Judge Judy on a large screen television. He reluctantly rose and went upstairs to fetch Deshaun.

Deshaun appeared wearing earbuds and bopping to some music on his cell phone. He jutted with his chin to follow him and led her through the kitchen to a picnic table outside. He continued moving his head and tapping his fingers to the music as they sat across from each other at the wooden table, the only two people in the bougainvillea-draped, fenced backyard.

“What are you listening to?”

She repeated the question, louder.

He finally removed his earbuds and passed them to her. She listened a moment, but couldn’t identify the rapper. “Who is it?” she asked.

“No wonder your record label went bust.”

She laughed. “You’re right. We made some bad choices, but I didn’t pick the artists; I just wrote their contracts.”

“I coulda schooled you,” he said and proceeded to play some of the music on his playlist. Though rap was not her taste, she understood now why CASA thought they might bond. He played some mixtapes of Boosie Badazz: “They say that I’m crazy, and some time/I feel like I’m crazy/But I know I’m not crazy/My mistakes don’t make me or break me.” Boosie, he said, was sentenced to eight years in Louisiana State Penitentiary on drug and gun charges and released his album Incarcerated while serving time.

“I hope you’re not planning on following his example,” she said.

His sour look instantly made her regret her comment. “You’re one of those church ladies, right? Looking for a way to get to heaven?”

“No, I’m not a church lady. Not at all. In fact, I’m Jewish, and Jews don’t believe in heaven.”

“How about hell?”

“We don’t believe in that either.”

“You should try three weeks in juvie.”

“I don’t think jails are a good place for anyone.”

“Worst three weeks of my life, you feel me.”

“I can only imagine,” she said.

The curl of his lip suggested he didn’t believe she could. He put his earbuds back in and retreated to his music.

She was quiet for a moment. Although he was intentionally ignoring her, he didn’t get up and walk away. She tried again. “Your mistakes don’t make or break you,” she quoted Boosie. “Whatever they detained you for, it was just one act, one moment in your life. That doesn’t define who you are.”

He removed one of his earbuds. “You gonna say that to the judge?”

“I will if I get a chance, but I need to know more about you. The Deshaun the judge hasn’t seen.”

“Like what?”

“Well, you tell me. Where were you born?”

“Here in LA.”

“Brothers? Sisters?”

“One each. Both in different foster homes.”

“How old were you when you went into foster care?”

“Five… I was five.” He looked away.

“What happened?”

He glanced at the back door of the house as if hoping someone might emerge to rescue him. “Our mom couldn’t take care of us.”

“That must have been difficult.”

“Yeah. My little bro, he…” He paused again. Perspiration beaded his forehead. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. “Can we stop?” He rose abruptly. “I got homework to do. I gotta keep up my schoolwork for the judge.”

His flight shamed her. Her mother had buried her face in her hands and wept whenever she asked about her past. Now she was repeating the same mistake with Deshaun. There was more pain behind his swagger than she’d imagined. They crossed the yard in silence.

Deshaun halted at the back steps of the house. “I never had no court appointed advocate before. I don’t know what they s’posed to do, but could you lend me 50 bucks to pay my phone? It’s due tomorrow and I don’t get paid for the chores I do here till the end of the month.”

She wasn’t sure if he was lying, whether he needed money for his phone or if it was for something else like pot, but she wanted to make up for questioning him so clumsily about his background. She opened her purse and gave him the three $20 bills in her wallet. He didn’t promise to return them.

* * *

To find out what Deshaun found so difficult to talk about, she telephoned his social worker, who hadn’t attended his delinquency hearing. They met a few days later at a coffee shop in Culver City. Mrs. Grisham was in her early 40s, wearing a drab brown sweater and carrying a frayed, overstuffed briefcase that mirrored her own appearance. They exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes before the social worker reached into her briefcase and pulled out a thick folder.

“You realize this is confidential, but you deserve to know what you’re taking on.” She opened the file and, page-by-page, recounted Deshaun’s history as if reading an obituary of someone she’d never met.

At two his father left, never to be seen again. His mother’s new boyfriend beat her badly enough to go to prison, leaving his mother with Deshaun and a baby sister. The next boyfriend dealt meth, which his mother began to use as well. After the birth of a second son, her addiction worsened. Neighbors and a kindergarten teacher noticed that Deshaun and his siblings were dirty and hungry and called the Los Angeles Office of Child Protection. A social worker investigated and issued a removal order for neglect; the children were sent to three different foster families. Deshaun’s mother agreed to parenting classes and drug rehab, but she never finished the classes or the treatment program. After two years, the court terminated her parental rights. Deshaun’s sister and brother were both adopted by their foster families; however Deshaun was unruly and volatile, acting out at school and at home. One family after another took him in, only to send him away again. At 15, after living with five different families, none longer than two years, he entered his first group home, where he lasted less than a year. At the second group home, he started a fight with another boy and broke the nose of the staff member who tried to intervene. That landed him in juvenile hall. His current placement was his third group home.

The social worker turned over the last page, straightened the papers, and closed the file. “That’s it. That’s his story.”

“So far,” Roz said, feeling a surge of anger. “Or have you given up on him too?”

Mrs. Grisham reddened; she had feelings after all. “I have 23 other cases, some with histories worse than Deshaun’s. One of my kids saw his mother murdered by his father when he was three. Another was so badly beaten that he still walks with a limp. You can blame it on drugs, poverty, mental illness, racism—pick your poison—but all these kids have been dealt a crappy hand. A few will overcome it; most don’t, no matter how hard we try. They end up homeless or in prison or having babies they can’t take care of, who also have to be removed and placed in foster care. Maybe Deshaun will be one of the few who breaks the cycle. Who knows? He needs somebody to believe in him. Maybe you’re the one,” she said without conviction.

She stuffed the sheaf of papers into her worn briefcase and snapped it closed, leaving the bill and Deshaun’s future for Roz to take care of.

* * *

Her meeting with the social worker made Roz question what she could realistically do for Deshaun. Despite his troubled childhood, he was good-looking, quick-witted, passionate about music—all qualities that suggested resilience, strength. She thought of the three-foot tall French jazz pianist, Michel Petrucciani, whose lyrical music she loved. Although he was born with brittle bone disease that fractured his bones more than a hundred times as a youth, he didn’t let his disability stop him from becoming a remarkable musician.

Her parents too had managed to overcome the terrible fate of being Jews in Germany under Hitler. Her mother had been a forced laborer in a munitions factory in Fallersleben; the factory was bombed and she’d been left to starve in a concentration camp. Her father had somehow survived two years at Bergen Belsen. After liberation, both were interned in an American DP camp in Linz, Austria. As her mother once told her, “We didn’t have in the world anybody.” All their brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces had been killed. Four days after meeting, her father proposed, and in a few weeks they were married.

When they finally arrived in America, they entombed the past in silence and built a new family to replace the ones they’d lost. If her parents could survive the terror and starvation of the death camps, the murder of their families, and sustain a marriage founded on necessity rather than love, was it inconceivable that Deshaun could overcome the traumas of his childhood? Was he dealt a worse hand at birth than Petrucciani? Did he suffer more than her parents? Boosie Badazz might be Deshaun’s lodestar, but she had inspirations of her own.

* * *

She waited a week, then called and invited him to lunch on Saturday. After an uncomfortably long pause—was he trying to think of an excuse to refuse?—he agreed. She picked him up in her BMW and drove to the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw mall for lunch. She’d made a reservation at the Post & Beam, but he rejected the restaurant as “too bougie” and chose Taco Bell instead. They ordered tacos and sat at a table in the crowded food court. To make up for the missteps of their last meeting, she opened her purse and gave him two Petrucciani CDs, a solo piano album and a trio with Charles Lloyd.

“This is some of the music I listen to,” she said.

He looked at the CDs. “Never heard of him.”

Although Deshaun knew as little about jazz as she did about hip-hop, music was a safe subject for both of them. Determined not to pry, she let him guide the conversation. He moved from the “badass” artists he admired to the people who pissed him off, the “lame” staff and “fools and fuckups” living in his group home. He brightened as he talked, and it occurred to her that he probably had few people in his life willing to listen to him. Maybe the thought struck him as well, because he suddenly grew silent. “But you don’t really want to hear ‘bout this shit,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s shit.”

He considered her comment, as if deciding whether to believe her. “You remind me of the lady who adopted my kid bro. When I visited, we sat at the kitchen table and she let me go on and on…”

“Do you still visit?” she asked.

“Nah, the family moved to Sacramento. I ain’t seen my bro in three years.” He shifted his gaze to a Latina custodian emptying a trash container. They both watched her a moment.

“What about you?” he changed the subject. “You got a husband? Kids?”

She delivered a quick sanitized version of her history—her brief, childless marriage, twenty-three years in the music business, unexpected early retirement, and no desire to return. Her marriage was what sparked his interest.

“How come you divorced?” he asked.

“We wanted different things.” A glib explanation of a fraught relationship.

“You got a new boyfriend, I bet.”

“No, no boyfriend.”

“Why not?”

Now it was her turn to be embarrassed.

“So you alone too,” he said.

His unexpected recognition of her loneliness touched her. She felt an urge to reach across the soiled paper plates and take his hand.

Perhaps sensing her intention, he pushed his chair back. “I’m never gonna marry,” he vowed. “I didn’t see one happy marriage in any home I lived.”

“I grew up in a home like that too,” she said.

“Then you know what I mean. No way I’m gonna have kids. If you can’t get your shit together, it’s cruel to have children. You just gonna mess them up.”

“I guess I’m fortunate I didn’t make that mistake.”

“You ain’t that messed up. You got it together more than the fucked-up social workers I had.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she smiled.

“Whatever.” He rose. “We better be gettin’ back. I got chores to do.”

She had an urge to hug him, but again she held back. His faint praise was enough for the afternoon.

* * *

A week later she returned to Ladera Heights to help prep him for his coming court date. The hearing clearly worried him; he was more distracted, harder to engage than at the mall. He kept going over the reasons the judge should end his probation while they sat outside at the picnic table. His last drug test was negative; he was doing okay at school, where he was also performing his required hours of community service; and he was avoiding trouble in the group home, although he hated its rules and the “jailors” who enforced them. He didn’t understand why his social worker couldn’t find him a different placement. There had to be at least one foster family in LA who would take him. “I’m reformed, right? Ree-ha-BILL-a-tated. I learned my lesson. You’ll say that in court, right?” he asked, still uncertain how much he could count on her. She promised she would speak on his behalf.

Her assurances didn’t seem to ease his fears. He took out his phone and started to attach the earbuds, signaling their meeting was over.

“You know what would help?” he said as they rose from the table. “A haircut.” He ran his fingers through his kinky hair. “I’m a little short this week. Could you lend me another 50? I wanna look good for the judge.”

She saw that his hair, which was styled in a low fade, was growing ragged at the edges. Maybe he was telling the truth about the haircut. When she handed him the money, his thanks seemed more genuine than last time.

“You know I listened to those CDs you gave me,” he said as he pocketed the bills. “That cat could really punch those keys.”

She laughed. “I’m glad you liked his music.”

“I Googled him. He was a dwarf, right? His feet couldn’t even reach the pedals.”

“Yes, they had to build special extensions for him.”

“They said he was in pain all the time,” he said with surprising feeling.

She wondered if he was talking about himself as well. “It didn’t keep him from becoming a great pianist,” she said.

“Too bad I never lived no place where they had a piano,” he said.

* * *

When Deshaun showed up at the courthouse, she was disappointed to see his hair didn’t look any shorter than the week before. A haircut wouldn’t have made any difference. The hearing didn’t last much longer than the previous one. Although his drug test was negative, his parole officer reported that he’d skipped several days of school, which he’d failed to mention to her. Darnell, the dreadlocked staff member who’d driven him to court, testified that he was still uncooperative and failed to carry out many of his assigned duties, for which they’d docked his weekly allowance. Mrs. Grisham, who showed up this time, rifled through her briefcase to find his file. Retrieving it, she cited another complaint: he wasn’t engaging in therapy in his group sessions. Hearing the evidence mount against him, Deshaun’s Latina lawyer reminded the judge of his traumatic past. His alleged silence in group therapy didn’t mean he wasn’t benefitting. “It takes time, your honor,” she appealed. The judge turned to Deshaun to explain himself.

“I know I shouldn’t have ditched school or slacked off at the home. I had some black days, your honor. Mad headaches. Firecrackers goin’ off every minute in my head. Like they never gonna stop. I’m tryin’, but it’s hard.”

For the first time, the judge seemed sympathetic. Migraines he could understand. His wife also suffered from them. He ordered the social worker to make sure a doctor examined Deshaun right away and report the results at the next hearing. Meanwhile, he extended his probation for another six weeks. Deshaun’s lawyer didn’t even bother calling Roz. “Next time,” she promised as they left the courtroom. “There was nothing you could say to change the outcome today.”

Deshaun didn’t look at either of them, headed straight for the courthouse door. Roz followed him outside. “I wish you’d told me about the headaches,” she said.

“You do one thing wrong, you better have a fuckin’ reason for it. The fact they treat you like shit don’t cut it, but if you sick, like faintin’ or pukin’ or can’t see straight, that’s a different ball game.” He jabbed at his head. “Oh, it’s not mental, it’s physical. That’s why the kid’s so messed up. Send him to a real doctor, not a shrink. The doc will find the right meds for him—fancy drugs with names he can’t pronounce, not cheap ones he can buy on the street. Yeah, that’ll fix him.”

“You mean you made all that up?”

He looked at her as if she were very slow. How could she not see that the judge and parole officer and social worker were all stacked against him? “I miss my weed,” he said. “It quiets the noises in my head.”

A van pulled up in front of the building and Darnell motioned Deshaun to get in. “I don’t know how much more of this shit I can take,” he muttered.

Roz watched, helpless, as the van pulled away.

Mrs. Grisham walked alongside her to the parking lot. The social worker’s exasperation as she searched her purse for her car keys seemed aimed at Roz as much as her misplaced keys, as if she couldn’t get away fast enough from all of them.

* * *

The hearing shook her, made her wonder again what she could really offer Deshaun. She wasn’t a trained social worker or psychologist; she wasn’t even a parent. She didn’t know whether the headaches he claimed were real or imaginary, or how much he told her was true. She knew the dismal statistics for foster youth who, like Deshaun, were disproportionally Black and Hispanic: only 3% graduated from college; 40% of the men ended up homeless; 40% in prison. Had Deshaun’s vitality, and the glimpses of vulnerability he revealed, deluded her about his prospects? What chances were there really for a traumatized Black youth in a racist society? She had no answers, only a refusal to regard him as a lost cause. She waited for some sign from him to decide her next step.

Two weeks later, Mrs. Grisham woke her at eight in the morning to report that Deshaun was AWOL. Did she have any idea where he might be? He’d been missing three days now and unless he showed up by tonight, the court would issue an arrest warrant. When he turned up again—and runaways always did eventually—he’d go straight to juvenile hall. “If I don’t hear from him today, it’s out of my hands,” the social worker declared, clearly looking forward to the prospect.

Though she doubted he’d reply, Roz texted him anyway: Are u ok? I heard u ran away. To her surprise, he answered within an hour: Can u meet me? She considered dialing his cell, but since he’d texted instead of calling, she thought it better to reply that way. Where? When? He named a McDonald’s in Koreatown. How soon can u come? he messaged back.

She dressed quickly and drove east from Brentwood to a part of the city she rarely visited. On her way, she thought of calling the social worker; then she imagined both of them showing up at McDonald’s at the same time. Deshaun would undoubtedly regard that as a betrayal, ratting him out to the authorities, who would only punish him for fleeing. Better to talk first before deciding what to do.

The McDonald’s was in a tiny shopping mall of Salvadoran and Korean shops and restaurants, sandwiched between two high-rise buildings. Deshaun was sitting by himself in the back of the cramped restaurant, tapping the table in time to whatever music was playing on his phone. Fuzz darkened his cheeks and dirt spotted his T-shirt; it was the first time she’d seen him unshaven and disheveled. He removed his earbuds as she sat, his only acknowledgement that she’d rushed across LA to meet him. She asked if he wanted anything to eat.

He ordered a double cheeseburger and fries and a large coffee. He ate as if it were his first meal in days. “Where have you been staying?” she said.

“A friend’s,” he answered vaguely. “But I can’t stay no more unless I pay. He wants a hundred bucks.”

“That’s hardly a friend.” His grimy clothes and matted hair suggested he was lying and had been sleeping on the streets.

He shrugged. “There ain’t a lot of people rushin’ to take me in.”

She told him what Mrs. Grisham had said.

“No way I’m goin’ back.”

“They’ll arrest you, send you back to juvenile hall.”

“You gonna turn me in?” he said defiantly.

“Running away doesn’t solve anything. What are you going to do now?”

He gazed past her at a Korean mother and her two young daughters giggling at a nearby table. Finally, he spoke: “Maybe you could lend me a hundred so I could stay with my friend till I figure it out.”

“Oh, Deshaun,” she sighed. “You know I can’t do that.” It was what she’d feared when he texted; he was only contacting her because she was an easy mark, a gullible white lady he could con into giving him money whenever he asked.

“You don’t know what that home was like,” he said.

“I know you hate it. But let’s talk to your social worker. Maybe she can find a better one.”

“They all the same. You just bouncin’ from one place to another that don’t give a damn about you.” He gazed again at the Korean mother smiling at her children. His expression reminded her of a child staring in a store window at an expensive toy he knows he’ll never have. His eyes suddenly glistened.

She offered him a tissue from her pocket. He dismissed it with an angry wave, blinked back his tears. “You got an extra room in your house?”

The request caught her unprepared.

“You the one person I can talk to,” he said. “You get me. You show me respect. The judge don’t. The parole officer don’t. The social worker don’t. Might as well put that kid’s Black ass behind bars now. He never gonna amount to anything. But lockin’ kids up and feedin’ them bullshit all day don’t change you. If I live with you, I could get my act together, make something of myself, get on a better road. You feel me. It don’t have to be forever, just till I get my head straight.”

She knew she should say no. She’d signed up to be an advocate, not a foster parent. Taking him home with her supported his running away. But this was an emergency, a temporary measure, she told herself, and his watery eyes and the rawness of his need made it difficult to refuse. She couldn’t let him spend another night on the streets.

“Just for a few days,” she said. “Until we can get this all sorted out and find you a better placement.”

“You won’t be sorry,” he assured her. “I can school you ‘bout all the music you’re missin’. There’s a shitload you don’t know ‘bout.”

* * *

Driving back to Brentwood, Deshaun begged her again not to call his social worker. “You don’t know their fuckin’ rules,” he argued. She hadn’t passed a criminal background check. She hadn’t taken parent training classes or had a home inspection or filled out the proper paperwork. Unless she did all these things—which took weeks—child welfare would immediately remove him.

She told him she had no choice; it was the only way to prevent him from juvenile hall, but she agreed to delay the call until it was too late for anyone to pick him up today; at least he could have a good night’s sleep.

“You think it’ll be different tomorrow?” he said and lapsed into silence.

Read more

Read the newest edition of After Dinner Conversation!

Click the image to get your copy!

After Dinner Conversation - Philosophy | Ethics Short Story is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Highlights Taken From the Video

Why don’t you tell us about LitMag News? What is it all about?

So LitMag News is an offshoot of a site called The Review Review that I started in 2008 which was dedicated to basically guiding writers through literary magazines because if you’ve been submitting to literary magazines you know that that world is pretty opaque and it can be overwhelming there are a lot of magazines out there there isn’t a lot of information specifically about who does what. So in 2008 I started The Review Review which was a resource that provided a lot of different kinds of specific information about literary magazines and one feature of that site was a newsletter in 2019 I shut that site down and then most recently in 2020 I decided to revive the newsletter and that has taken the form of LitMag News.

So LitMag News now is basically a one-stop shop if you want to learn about literary magazines.

(On giving your writers a voice)

I’m glad you mentioned that because that’s something that’s been really important to me from the start of creating this site is that, just because people aren’t published yet, it doesn’t mean that they’re not having opinions and thoughts about literary magazines.

It doesn’t mean that they don’t have a critical view of what’s happening in our literary culture.

I don’t care if you’ve never published in a literary magazine, I don’t care if you’ve published 20 stories in the most elite prestigious magazines, you are very welcome to leave comments and share your views and ask questions and sort of be part of the conversation.

Because the person who is being constantly rejected by these different magazines and the person that’s being constantly accepted, both of their views are equally valid, no matter what you’re going through because that rejection is a huge part of being a writer.

And it’s nice for people to have a place to talk about that and vent that.

What is it about the literary magazine format that has inspired such dedication to it?

Because I feel like the literary magazine format is a really undervalued form, you know? Some of it might just be that there’s not really any space for newer writers. So if you publish a novel, you can try to get it traditionally published and have a book out. But if you’re publishing poems, what do you do with those poems? Or if you’re publishing short personal essays or flash fiction or more experimental writing, there really isn’t any place to send it you know you can put it together in a book and send it to small presses, but literary magazines are really the only place that are providing writers with that platform and that validation.

I’ve always championed literary magazines because they’re an alternative to what you see in Barnes and Noble. You know, like corporate publishing.

I love a good mystery. I love a good page turner but literary magazines are offering something really different and really valuable. [They] champion the underdog.

What sort of trends are going on right now that writers or people interested in submitting their work should keep in mind when they’re looking at these different magazines?

I think right now the question on everyone’s mind is AI. You’re just hearing about it everywhere. Editors are trying to figure out how do we guard against AI submissions while also not excessively discriminating against people because that’s also a concern that you’re going to falsely accuse people of using AI or make mistakes, you know, overlook human work.

So I think that is like the biggest concern right now.

What are the Substacks you enjoy reading?

For literary magazine stuff most people probably know Chill Subs. They have a Substack component called SubClub and they send out like a lot of information about literary magazines and literary agents and publishing and stuff like that.

In the video interview, Becky and I go into a lot more detail about how AI is affecting the world of literary magazines, as well as literary magazine scams, lessons learned from interviewing magazine editors, and a whole lot more! So make sure to watch the full video above!

~Drew

Author Bio:

Becky Tuch is the Founder of Lit Mag News, a best-selling Substack dedicated to demystifying literary magazines. Her short fiction has been honored with a MacDowell Fellowship and First Place in Moment Magazine’s Karma Foundation Fiction Prize. Other stories have appeared or are forthcoming in STORY, Chicago Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, Best of the Net, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Philadelphia, PA.

Today I had the sincere pleasure of interviewing Evie Pearman. Evie in an absolute delight and a breath of fresh air, both as a writer and as a person. In this interview we talk about creative writing programs, Victorian era criminality, “Weird Girl” fiction, virtual reality, true crime, cannibalism, and a lot more. Check out the video above to see the full interview!

~Drew

Read Evie Pearman’s short story, “It’s Too Easy”:

Click the image to get your copy!

After Dinner Conversation - Philosophy | Ethics Short Story is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Q&A

Describe your ideal reader.

To me, an ideal reader doesn’t come from why or how or what they read. An ideal reader is just someone who loves reading.

To expand, I believe that the ideal reader is open-minded, isn’t afraid to criticize and critique, to question and speculate, and also isn’t afraid to have fun and lose themselves in fiction. The ideal reader is someone who picks up a book expecting to not put it down and, if it’s worthy, read it all over again. Someone who could sit up all night talking books. Someone who is willing to engage in a story and to take it seriously. An ideal reader is one who reads to feel something, to see the world anew and to be changed. For me, the ideal reader is also the ideal kind of person.

Is there any standard publishing or writing advice that you disagree with? Or any standard advice that you feel is too often neglected?

As a writer, I often feel encouraged and pressured to follow the trends when it comes to publishing. Everything’s all about what sells and what sounds catchy on a blurb or in a pitch. Tropes, vital cornerstones to literature they may be, are currently being flogged to death on a book’s tagline. Everything has to follow the bestselling formula. But for me, rules were made to be broken, to be swerved, to be run over. And that’s how good stories are written and exciting new tropes are made.

I also think we should take back the em dash from ChatGPT. It’s highly evocative—see? We need exciting punctuation more than ever. I’m of the firm belief that form highly shapes the story. On that note, I’d like to see more stories written in the second person. It feels like unexplored territory for both the reader and writer in me.

If you could obtain certain knowledge of one specific thing, what would that be?

Other than the meaning of the universe (which, as Douglas Adams said, is obviously 42), it has to be if there are parallel universes where things worked out differently or someone made a different decision and, as such, humanity’s evolution was tweaked and we’re now all green slug monsters. Writing inherently deals with possibilities, and I’d like to know what possibilities are out there (so long as the discovery of them doesn’t explode my brain).

How do you come up with ideas for your short stories?

Often, it’s like a lightning strike. An idea of a situation will storm into my head, and then I have to figure it out, or rather, figure out how my characters will figure it out. Then I just write.

With my short story, “It’s Too Easy”, my first thoughts were to satirize our ongoing interest in true crime by writing a mock how-to-be-a-serial-killer guide. But then I realized that the customer was by far much more interesting than the instructor. And where there’s popular demand, surely new and far more exciting products will follow… Lightning strike!

I know I’m onto something when I find myself trapped in the web of a character’s decisions and I’m having fun, sweating it out, battling through their psyche.

Evangeline Pearman is currently studying literature in London, but she spends most of her time writing fiction designed to make readers like you question reality. She also enjoys reading tarot, studying cold cases, eating anything covered with chocolate, and participating in immersive experiences. Instagram: @the_literary_angel Check out one of Evie’s stories below!

E G Pearman

The Ghost of Grant Hall

We were sitting about the fireplace, whiling away the hours until the final chime of the year with merriment and wine, when the suggestion was made to tell ghost stories…

Read more

4 months ago · 2 likes · E G Pearman

E G Pearman

Hi! My publications tend to be short stories and poems about the weird, the uncanny, the fun and the spooky! If you're the kind of person who likes quirky aesthetics, dark humour and weird plots, read on!

Story Summary: A mysterious black box gives its users "unearned" money, but at what price? (Scroll Down to Read)

Take the poll for this week’s story, “The Money Box”:

(It’s completely anonymous…and fun! Last week’s poll results at end of post)

“Resident Philosopher” Nalini’s take:

Nalini Jacob-Roussety ties simple questions to deeper philosophical frameworks! Listen to her discuss the poll question above. Comment in the discussion area at the end.

It's Time to Subscribe

💡 Paid subscribers help us publish stories like this every week and access our full archives.

📖 Weekly Short Story

📖 Email cut short? Read This Story on Substack

The Money Box by Phillip Scott Mandel

This is not a morality tale. It’s simply a story.

It began innocently enough, over a lunch of beef pho in the Financial District, when my friend Paolo first mentioned the Money Box. Paolo was a pupa of industry then, waiting to emerge as a titan. He was wearing a light blue seersucker suit with a flower-print ascot, which I remember distinctly because he spilled Sriracha on it. Also it was unseasonably cold for May, yet Paolo made us take a table outside.

“A money box?” I said, intrigued.

He nodded, daubing at his lapel with a wet napkin. “I can show you one day.”

“What’s with the getup, anyway?” I said. “Are you going to the Derby?”

“Oh, I’ve no need of such action anymore,” he replied, smiling cryptically. He slurped a noodle through a straw-shaped gap in his lips and changed the subject to his upcoming wedding, to which I was invited, though with no honorifics.

Paolo, unfortunately, I have not seen in ages. Swept up like the rest of us, I suppose, in the season of the plague.

* * *

Months passed with no mention of the Money Box, and I tried to forget about it. The news was awash with rising sea levels and apocalyptic dust storms. That summer was, yet again, the hottest on record. One of my clients suffered an oil refinery explosion that destroyed four hundred thousand acres of virgin rainforest. Another client published a series of tweets denying the Holocaust. So I had plenty to think about. But I couldn’t stop obsessing over the Money Box.

I threw myself in with my colleagues, whom I despised, and I walked my dog, whom I loved. I tried to date, with little success. My ears are rubbery and pinguid, my mouth spumescent. My nostrils are asymmetrical and, as an object, my body is short and round, unpleasing to the eye. A small but noticeable goiter protrudes from my neck. Also, I don’t ever seem to “get” jokes and therefore must force myself to laugh, often inappropriately.

Nevertheless, I was able to charm one woman, Penelope, in for a nightcap. It was our eleventh date, and her children were with her sister. When I flipped on the lights I noticed my goldfish, Simeon, had finally succumbed to the dropsy. He had indeed looked singularly unhappy for weeks, swimming in circles and popping out little air bubbles, but in my malaise I’d done nothing about it. So she wouldn’t see Simeon’s inert body floating at the top of the bowl, I had Penelope wait in the kitchen while I scooped him out with a little net and deposited his rotted carcass into the toilet. He seemed to be staring up at me with those piteous, lifeless eyes, forever open and plaintive, as (regretfully, I admit) I urinated on him, for I didn’t want to waste a flush.

* * *

I didn’t tell Penelope about the Money Box, nor did I pester Paolo about it.

But many nights I would dream fitfully about it, though I knew nothing other than it was called a “Money Box.” My imagination cooked up all manner of containers: an old cigarette carton stuffed with hundreds; a gleaming, stainless steel bank vault stacked with bricks of gold bullion; or more banally, a bulging chest of diamonds, rubies, and other treasure, protected by a scaly, halitotic dragon.

I was distracted, and perhaps because of this, four Key Accounts under my purview—including the ruinously careless energy company, and the anti-Semite—left our firm in Q3. My manager Rick (I’ve never trusted anyone named Rick) had HR write me up. Maybe he just couldn’t stand the look of me any longer. I can’t say I blame him.

Was I fired? No. Too much paperwork, Rick explained. But I might polish a CV. He’d provide a lukewarm reference.

“I am not a feudal serf!” I screamed, right in his face, then slammed his office door.

Of course but I did neither of those things. Because we both knew I was, in fact, a serf, quite dutifully bound to that hateful square of carpet upon which rested my cubicle, and my personhood was owned, if not by Rick, then by our shareholders.

Even Penelope broke off our budding romance, saying I always seemed distracted, never “present,” as if I was seeing someone else.

Even then, I failed to mention the Money Box.

“Look at me, Penny,” I said. “Do you think I’m seeing someone else?”

She shook her head sadly and said, “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

* * *

Finally Paolo invited me to his house for a dinner party. His fiancée, Erin, was there, as were six other corporatized schlogs, so I brought my dachshund, Tyrone. Everybody loves a dachshund, and the guests of this dinner party proved no exception.

Erin was the kind of woman who decorated her home—a narrow, red-brick townhouse amid a row of old townhouses—with electric tea lights instead of real ones, who posted photos of her meals, a person who could never allow natural lulls in conversation to stand. While I was chewing on a particularly fatty piece of brisket and therefore could not stop her, she detailed her and Paolo’s honeymoon itinerary, about which I had not inquired. Then she rolled her eyes and said, “I’ve already been there,” as if I might sympathize with her dilemma. “Eight years ago.” She scanned the room and lowered her voice. “With my ex.”

I bowed, unsure what else to do. I’d heard from Paolo that Steve (her ex) was a loathsome brute, but had, for some reason, managed to remain friends with Erin and was even invited to the wedding.

“It’s a remarkable place,” she continued. “Really. The people are so warm, so friendly. Always smiling. But the flies, my god. Bigger than bumblebees. Their wings sound like static on the radio.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the place had been flooded into near extinction and these “friendly people” were now refugees, and had, if they were lucky, absconded to more moderate climes, or at least higher ground.

After dessert, Paolo brought out the Money Box. “I know this is why you’re here,” he said, over half-hearted protests that we’d come for his company. “This is what you came to see.”

In the corner of the room, there were two rolled-up foam mats—the yellow one more frayed than its purple cousin—peeking out from under a white bar cart, and I was momentarily struck with a bolt of intense sorrow, a hollow pain in my gut, both for my own loneliness and for imagining this soon-to-be-married couple doing yoga together.

Presently Erin cleared the plates and silverware and empty crystal punch bowl centerpiece, and Paolo placed The Money Box on the table.

It was jet black and perfectly cubical: roughly 18 inches per side, the size of a small guitar amp, or a cheap ottoman from Ikea. I don’t know if it was painted, or what onyx material the box was made of, but no light reflected off its surface. It emitted no smell or sound, and I imagined if I’d touched my tongue to it, I would taste nothing. But I did seem to feel a slight warmth emanated from where it sat on the table, just out of arm’s reach.

Despite my intense curiosity, the Money Box was, in a way, terror-inducing. What astronauts must feel on their first spacewalk, staring into that infinite midnight, or the day after someone wins the lottery.

On all six sides of the cube was a slit in the center. I didn’t notice until Paolo pointed them out, and then I couldn’t take my eyes away. The ever-slightest glow seeped from each aperture, as if the box was filled with a weak incandescent bulb.

“It doesn’t matter what side you lay the Money Box on,” Paolo said. “It all works the same way.”

“But what does it do?” Steve said.

“Just wait,” Paolo said, as if expecting the interruption. “Someone give me some money.”

Steve gave Paolo a dollar bill. I suddenly found I didn’t care for Steve, and not only out of loyalty to Paolo, but because earlier in the night he’d been pontificating about Robert Rauschenberg.

“No, something higher.”

Dee-Ann, with her suede jacket and designer purse, handed him a luminous gold credit card with an ovate portrait of a centurion in the center, buying her a few chuckles ‘round the table.

“That’ll work,” Paolo said, but as he went to take it from her, she pulled back her arm with an almost-imperceptible hiccup. Dee-Ann, always so composed, was coming undone by this frightening device. We all were.

Finally, Sanjeev took a crisp hundred-dollar bill out of his billfold. He ran one of the sharpest hedge funds in the world.

“Perfect,” Paolo said, and grabbed it.

“Wait,” Sanjeev said, but by then Paolo had already inserted it into the Money Box.

It happened so quickly I barely registered the transaction. The bill went into the slit smoothly, like buying a Coke at a vending machine, and then… Nothing.

We stared at each other. There was no sound, no movement, just our eyes darting back and forth, skeptically, between the box and ourselves.

Tyrone barked. “Hush,” I said, and bent down to scratch his ear.

That’s why I missed what happened when these people—my non-friend acquaintances—gasped and said, collectively, “Oh.”

I popped back up to see Sanjeev holding three fifty-dollar bills, and Paolo holding a finsky.

Sanjeev cleared his throat. “How the hell—”

“It’s the Money Box,” Paolo said, with a grim smile, like a dentist extracting a persnickety, stuck tooth. “Who else wants a turn?”

* * *

Perhaps I should take a moment to provide context for what happened next.

The Assyrians of Nineveh worshipped a minor deity, the Locust Man, as God of Agriculture (maternal uncle to the Goddess of Fertility). The Scythians called this same divine spirit the Patron of Slavery, and in the earliest known version of the Hebrew Bible, he is alternately referred to as “Trust-King” and the “Grandfather of Suffering.” Ancient Hindus referred to him as the ex-boyfriend of Lakshmi.

Unsurprisingly, only human sacrifice would do for such a god.

A few tiny sects of contemporary monotheistic religions still claim him as the precursor to Jehovah, but he is not. His true identity is the Lord of Money and Pestilence. That is all.

There is a well-guarded and little-known archive of religious artifacts in the sub-sub-basement of The Peace Palace in The Hague wherein lies an ivory carving—a woolly mammoth tusk, in fact, not unlike the Lion-man of Hohlenstein-Stadel—of a humanoid figure with a finely detailed orthopterous head, leathery forewings and membranous hind wings, and two razor-sharp chewing mandibles. It’s as close a simulacrum to The Locust Man’s true form as you’ll find in the modern world.

I know all this because, since the plague season commenced, I’ve done a whole lot of research on the subject.

* * *

Anyway, nobody knew how the Money Box worked. I hesitate, even, to say “worked,” because the box didn’t appear to do anything.

It was easy to demonstrate that it worked: I saw with my own eyes people insert countless hundred-dollar bills and receive back larger sums of money, though always in smaller denominations—and Paolo always got his cut. But the box itself made no noise, and there appeared to be no machinery inside, no moving parts. At first, we guessed there was a wireless or Bluetooth device: a money-counter, or a copy machine, printing out fake currency.

But the Money Box produced authentic legal tender, indeed. I bought clothes and lottery tickets and Uber Eats and deposited it in my account with no trouble.

Whenever the box was “processing,” as it were, nobody could sense any type of disturbance. But Tyrone would whimper. That, I suppose, should have been a tip-off something beyond merely cryptic, but untoward, and unnatural, was taking place, though I couldn’t ascertain what. But there are a lot of things in the physical world that exist, that are real, but are also mysterious and imperceptible, like quantum entanglement, gamma radiation, germs, evolution, or falling in and out of love. I don’t disbelieve such phenomena just because I can’t perceive, or make sense of, them with my lowly consciousness and imperfect naked eye.

Paolo would not say where he got the Money Box, and he certainly wouldn’t take it out of his home. If you wanted to use it, you had to be invited. And you had to bring cash. There appeared to be no limit to the amount of money the thing would convert—as long as you used increments of fifty-dollar bills or higher. And you could recycle the same bills: if you put in a hundred, and got back three fifties, you could put one of those fifties back in and get three twenties (Paolo would get a single dollar from such a meager exchange). Indeed, Dee-Ann came back from London with a £50 note and got back four twenties, which was even better than the currency exchange rate (incidentally, she also put in €100 and received a less generous exchange). However, if you put in a twenty or smaller, the money simply disappeared.

I was invited to Paolo’s house three more times before the wedding, and on my second visit, I brought ten fresh one-hundred-dollar bills. He’d bought a case of Veuve Clicquot and it was a crowded, celebratory, almost raucous dining table.

But, even tipsy as I was, it was then I noticed Paolo himself never used The Money Box, and I began to grow suspicious. I tried to ask him why, but he’d always dodge the question, or say something about “not getting high on your own supply.”

Nevertheless, the third time I visited, I brought a wad of one-hundred-dollar bills (the extent of my life savings) and for a time after that, I felt, mistakenly, that I was a rich man.

This belief—and the ease with which I adopted the churlish smugness and imperious vanity that led me to tell off Rick—was, perhaps, my tragic flaw. But he’d made me take down my inspirational poster of a wet grizzly bear eating a salmon, underneath which was the phrase, “Only when the last tree has been felled, the last river poisoned, and the last fish caught, will we remember that money cannot be eaten.” He said it was antithetical to our company’s mission and the passive voice was weak writing. So I told him where to stick it.

How could I have known?

In any case, on that third visit, Dee-Ann was present again. She was haughty as ever, complaining that Singapore Airlines was “going to seed.”

“You shouldn’t be flying at all,” I muttered under my breath.

“Come again?” Sanjeev said, staring at me with disgust.

“Carbon emissions,” Dee-Ann replied, rolling her eyes and smiling a vulgar little smile.

We were in Paolo’s living room now, which had more room for guests. Every book Paolo owned was about predatory subprime mortgage lending, credit default swaps, Lehman Brothers. Old news.

Dee-Ann brought out that same glinting golden credit card from before. She handed it over to Paolo, confidently now, and, oddly, it appeared the centurion, in his oval, had reversed, now facing the left.

“You’re sure?” Paolo said. Dee-Ann nodded.

Paolo inserted the credit card into the Money Box, and we waited. And waited.

“So anyone have weekend plans?” Erin said, in a newsprint-soft voice.

“Be quiet, please,” Paolo said. I began to fret about how long their marriage would last.

I’d booked Tyrone in a Pet Hotel for the night, but now I wished he was with me, if only to break the interminable silence with his jagged little yaps.

“What have you done?” Dee-Ann said eventually, alarmed.

“Just wait.”

I concentrated, listening hard for any sound, such as the movement of infinitesimal gears or the laser scanning of a bar code. But nothing. It was like a séance.

“What the hell, Paolo?” Dee-Ann said. “Now I’m going to have to cancel it.”

Paolo’s eyes widened. “Do not do that. Whatever you do.”

“Why not?”

We all stared at Paolo, and I felt a sensation of dread creep up from the pit of my stomach into my throat. It felt exactly like when, in business school, I’d downloaded an essay for an economics course and handed it in without even reading the damn thing. For weeks I waited to be expelled for plagiarism, but instead I received an A+.

Before Paolo could answer, the Money Box began spitting out hundred-dollar bills from all five slots. It was the hardest labor I’d seen from the machine. Ninety bills came out of each slot, for a total of forty-five thousand dollars. Paolo lifted the box, and there was another nine grand squished up under the bottom slot.

“Okay everyone,” he said. “Time to go home.”

“Wait,” Dee-Ann said. “Where’s my credit card?”

“It’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

Paolo and Erin started ushering people out of their house. “Just, gone,” he said.

* * *

That was the first night I was visited by Mr. Locust. He was an evil, slender figure in a three-piece gray suit and he smelled like gasoline. He looked like a giant silverfish. In the dream I was tied to a hospital gurney, and under my body the icy metal bars burned my skin, for I was naked except for a pair of soiled white briefs. I couldn’t understand what Mr. Locust was saying, but when he opened his mouth sometimes a dusty cricket would fly out. Suddenly he was holding a meat cleaver, like he intended to chop off my feet.

Despite my screams and protests, he removed everything below the ankle. It was not a quick process.

When he was done, I woke up. The lower half of my bed sheet was covered in blood, and my toenails were cracked and split apart, but my feet were still there, relatively intact.

I believe Paolo, in a benign yet insidious way (that is, without malice but without grace, either) sought to exploit the asymmetry of information between the market maker and the buyer, while skimming a little of the top for himself. A standard practice throughout human civilization—the oil in the gears of progress, in fact. The foundations of civilization. But did he really know how the Money Box worked? I don’t think he did.

Not that it matters.

Steve was the first to be rejected by the Money Box. It turned out Steve was broke, though he claimed his money was tied up in “business ventures.” We all knew it was booze, gambling, cocaine. Though I detested his personality, I didn’t fault him his vices; as far as I was concerned, every man was free to swing his fist up to the tip of another man’s nose, so to speak. But Steve, well, he was just rotten.

After that first rejection, Steve borrowed five hundred dollars—from whom I know not—and returned to Paolo’s home, asking to use The Money Box to turn it into a thousand. Paolo refused. He said the money had to be earned.

Steve slapped him.

That’s what Paolo told me. And why would Paolo lie? It’s a humiliating thing, to be slapped by another man. To be infantilized, emasculated. After the slap, Paolo relented and let him use the Money Box, and Steve even kept Paolo’s share.

As we neared the wedding, Paolo complained about Steve showing up at his house, clutching crinkled bills and asking for The Money Box, using words he obviously didn’t understand, like “LIBOR” and “derivatives.” Paolo said he wasn’t an ATM, and eventually got a restraining order, but nobody believed Steve would be deterred by such weak tea. I think Steve planned to steal the Money Box, which would have been a disaster, as all economists and philosophers agree such power needs to be concentrated in few, competent hands; otherwise, society would devolve into an egalitarian, democratic wasteland. The unwashed masses are too ignorant to control their own urges, let alone steer the ship of culture. It would lead to anarchy, chaos, ruination.

Even the ancients knew as much.

Several opportunities passed for me to bring up Mr. Locust, who’d begun appearing in my dreams every second or third night. Paolo mentioned I looked like I wasn’t getting enough sleep, and I was about to say something but even then, I held my tongue. Mr. Locust wasn’t his problem, I told myself, though, really, I didn’t want to make Mr. Locust angry. The phantom pain from his bullwhip and scalpel and wheel felt real enough, and there was no telling how Mr. Locust would punish me if I transgressed against him.

At first Penelope politely declined the invite to be my wedding date. I realized I’d grown quite fond of her, though, not unlike how, perhaps, a farmer grows fond of his favorite sow, or a gambler begins to trust his bookie. I enjoyed knowing her in the biblical sense, too, and after much prodding and begging, I convinced her to come.

“No funny stuff,” she told me.

“I’m never funny,” I replied, and relayed the old joke about the zombie and the chicken to prove it.

For Paolo’s bachelor party, we scheduled a limousine to take us to a steakhouse, a casino, and a Gentlemen’s Club. Before we left, I attempted to withdraw an enormous sum of cash from an ATM in preparation and was informed on the screen there was a problem with my account. This being a Saturday night, I figured I could handle it the following Monday.

Steve was not present, as he’d been disinvited.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the steakhouse was in a sorry state of disrepair: a worn, frayed red rug led up a balustrade staircase missing several spindles into a nearly-empty dining room staffed by a crew of forlorn, phlegmatic waiters, all old enough to be waiting to die. It made me sad because it reminded me of my own father, who waited tables until the day he aneurismed in the walk-in fridge.

Before even the chateaubriand was served, Paolo’s phone rang.

Read more

Greetings After Dinner Conversation subscribers! Todays interview is a bit of a departure for us at ADC. Instead of limiting our video interviews to authors solely featured in our magazine, we have have decided to use our platform to spotlight new and upcoming authors who have caught our eye on the Substack platform.

Today we are featuring Mila Golubov and her publication The In Between.

This interview was an absolute blast. We touch on so many important topics including AI, joblessness, marketing, techniques for growing your Substack, where ideas come from, whether or not to choose a writing niche, attracting paid subscribers, branding, and how not to use AI.

I hope you enjoy watching the interview as much as I enjoyed conducting it. And make sure to check out Mila’s work at The In Between.

-Drew

Read the newest edition of After Dinner Conversation!

Click the image to get your copy!

After Dinner Conversation - Philosophy | Ethics Short Story is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Bonus content not featured in our video interview:

Mila’s “Cheat Sheet” for growing your Substack-

Ha no official cheat sheets but here’s some tips. Participate in haiku/last line challenges- allows you to tag bigger accounts and get your skills out and become a go-to for others cause they want to see what you do. Subscribe to accounts with open chats, most people just read posts there instead of in emails. Restacking is favored by the algo. Lives/podcasts are also currently favored. Find ways to playfully tag people in work. Most people will subscribe to you it you are positive and support their work a few times. Following or being followed doesn’t actually get you into the feed consistently so sub or be subbed when you can. Collabs will help visibility most larger creators will collab with you if they like your style but there’s some people on here that just love to collab with others for the don’t of it like ethereal poetry or Damian.

Which philosophy or philosopher most aligns with your own beliefs?:
Rawls, Hobbes and Marx.

Is your process for writing philosophical fiction different from the way you approach other works?:
I tend to approach fiction with sociological implications, current events and historical precedence in mind.

Which authors or books would you recommend to those who want to challenge their own thinking?:
Moonwalking with Einstein, A Molecule Away From Madness, The Creative Act: A Way Of Being, The School Of Life.

What authors on Substack do you enjoy reading/think others should know about?

Labyrinthia Mythweaver, A Writers Voice, Nicole K Writes, Shae/Yuck Fiction, Laura B Shadows

Author Bio:

Mila Golubov is a playwright. An author. A poet. A screenwriter. An avid reader. A teacher. A spiritual explorer and a long-time creative director. Her work currently explores all things woo woo, the fall of capitalism, heady sci-fi, witchy rituals, natural analogies, divergent thinking, conscious AI and so much more. milagolubov.com

The In Between

The In Between is a place to explore the world from the outside in.

Read “The Post Mortem Post” here!

Read “Killer Sex” here!

Read James Musgrave’s ADC short story, "Illusions of Survival” or his philosophical short fiction collection, "Valley of the Dogs":

Click the image to get your copy!

Q&A

Is your process for writing philosophical fiction different from the way you approach other works?

Even though I often get my philosophical contents woven into my historical mysteries, my short fiction is mostly literary in scope, so this is where I concentrate at providing the most interesting content to be chewed by the brain. After being diagnosed after surgery with stage 4 prostate cancer, I have increased my poetry and fictional output, as my mind (obviously) has turned toward the relationship with death and its meaning to humanity and myself. As a follower of Advaita Vedanta, I find this religious philosophy most agreeable to my own lifestyle and recovery aspirations. Also, the teachings of Psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung and many others from the Eastern traditions of mental health, and open-minded exploration of reality, serve as constant reminders to me that we are living in Paradise right now. It just takes a deeper insight to recognize our connections and true powers of concentration and awareness.

Are there any ideas right now that are ripe for fictionalizing?

As my personal philosophy sees us all as being connected, often without society's help, I am constantly coming up with concepts that show in some way the problem of seeing through the illusions that Maya keeps presenting in order to connect one human to another at deeper levels of consciousness. Therefore, I often bend toward the mystical and synchronistic realities of life and storytelling. It's often dangerous, as the shadow side must be explored along with the spirit or soul side, as humans seem to learn only when probed (sometimes painfully) to use their intuition and deeper intellects. I was a teacher for 25 years, so it's hard to break old habits, I suppose.

If you could obtain certain knowledge of one specific thing, what would that be?

How to get the global majority working together as one to feed everybody. It's obviously very doable, except for the fact that food sources, sadly, have also become politicized/militarized and controlled by merchants for mostly profitable goals. This "magical knowledge" is not magic at all, obviously, it's just made to be so complex (like socialized medical care) that the ones in "power" fight against this goal with tooth and nail. It seems societies wish to have unlimited wealth rather than unlimited nourishment of our fellow animals and humans.

James Musgrave is an award-winning author and creative technologist based in San Diego. He writes reality-bending fiction, legal-tinged thrillers, and humane poems about bodies, time, and mercy.

His recent publications include “The Chalk-Scribbler of Canal Street” in the anthology MMEORY (Air and Nothingness Press, 2025) and “Fangs Fur Love” in the collector’s anthology "Were Wolf Short Stories" (Flame Tree Press, London, June 2025).

A former educator and publisher, Musgrave builds open, reader-first projects that blend research with heart. When not drafting at odd hours, he mentors writers, designs experimental ebooks, and drinks heroic tea while coaxing stubborn sentences to confess.

Website.

Read James Musgrave’s ADC short story, “Illusions of Survival” in the April edition of our magazine out now!

Click the image to get your copy!

Share After Dinner Conversation - Philosophy | Ethics Short Story

Leave a comment

Story Summary: A little girl is "born" by a film studio, and is raised as their ward. (Scroll Down to Read)

Take the poll for this week’s story, “Hollywood Baby”:

(It’s completely anonymous…and fun! Last week’s poll results at end of post)

“Resident Philosopher” Nalini’s take:

Nalini Jacob-Roussety ties simple questions to deeper philosophical frameworks! Listen to her discuss the poll question above. Comment in the discussion area at the end.

It's Time to Subscribe

💡 Paid subscribers help us publish stories like this every week and access our full archives.

📖 Weekly Short Story

📖 Email cut short? Read This Story on Substack

Hollywood Baby by Holly McGinnis

Hello. You may have frequently heard my name in the news these past few weeks. You may have heard it uttered as if I am a criminal or a reprehensible celebrity having a breakdown, which is what the broadcasting network would have you to believe. However, I am neither. I am fighting for my rights, and today, I am fighting for my reputation and future. The public needs to know the truth, and you need to know my story.

My name is Araminta Fox, and I’m a Hollywood Baby. I was born for the show Kat’s Out of the Bag, where a widower father (Miles Swift) raises his feisty daughter—the beforementioned Kat. Shenanigans ensue. In season six, he marries an engineer named Emily (Delilah Banks), and in season seven, they have a daughter together (Araminta and Anastasia Fox). The show was on for three seasons after our birth. I don’t recall a single moment of it.

As you know, Miles Swift went on to become a big action star, garnering fame, fortune, and esteem beyond the sitcom world. He hasn’t spoken to my sister or me since the end of Kat. Delilah Banks has had a few roles here and there. She sends us cards on our birthday and holidays. When we were young, it was always “To my Precious Girls.” Now, it’s “To my Talented Araminta” and “To my Brilliant Anastasia.”

Beth Shepherd, our caretaker, always made a big fuss over these cards when we were kids. But she was careful to never call Delilah our mom; it would place too much emotional burden on the actress. Other children might have had mothers, I later learned, but we had a Beth. She was enough. Mostly.

We had acting coaches and booked small gigs as far back as I can remember. At age six, we landed a lead role in a new show, one where the protagonist has supernatural powers. I remember the night before the first day of filming, Beth readied us to see Ross Declan, the CEO of Fox Television and our legal guardian. She brushed our hair and tidied it gently, first Ana’s, then mine.

Our bedroom was a light pink. Both of our twin beds had squishy pastel pillows and translucent canopy curtains above. Against one wall, we had a white, mirrored vanity table. We each had a small desk, as well. It was all perfect for little princesses.

That evening, I sat on the end of my bed, feet hanging down, while Beth braided my hair for bed. Anastasia bounced around the room, her hair already neatly French braided. We both wore white nightgowns with pink trim.

“Mr. Declan is coming to see you tomorrow morning,” Beth said to us. “He is your primary guardian, and he cares about you very much. He wants to wish you good luck before your first day of filming!”

“What’s a guardian?” I asked.

“It’s someone who is in charge of a child. You’re his responsibility.”

“Is Mr. Declan our dad?” my sister questioned, squeezing the hem of her skirt tight.

“No, he’s not your dad, baby girl. But he’s there to take care of you.”

“But you take care of us, Beth,” I stated. “Doesn’t that make you our guardian?”

“No,” she began, pulling my braid through a ponytail holder, “I’m just your Beth.”

“So, if Mr. Declan isn’t our dad, and you’re not our mom,” Ana reasoned, “does that mean we’re orphans?!” She flung herself back on the bed and pillows, placing a hand on her forehead in a swoon. Ana had just watched The Little Princess (the one with Shirley Temple), and she was very enthusiastic about the dramatic potential of orphanhood just then.

“No, you’re not orphans!” Beth giggled. “Orphans have lost a parent. You... just have a different situation.”

“So, who are our parents?” I asked. “Is our dad dead like Sarah’s?”

“He’s not dead, Minty!” Ana shouted, “He’s just wounded!” Beth smiled and gave a shush.

“You don’t really have parents,” she said. “But you have me and Mr. Declan and the whole board of directors. We’re all here to take care of you.” She squeezed my shoulders and smiled at me in the mirror. Ana was still lying on her bed, probably wondering if she could get away with calling herself an orphan for dramatic effect. I smiled at Beth but wished there was a name for someone who had never had parents to begin with.

It would be years later before Beth gave us the Birds and the Bees Talk, and I learned that, biologically, my parents were Miles Swift and Delilah Banks, but they have no legal relation to me. I still don’t know who gave birth to me and my sister. It wasn’t Delilah. Perhaps it was Beth, but I have never asked her. Fox keeps its surrogacy arrangements very confidential.

The next morning, we sat in our trailer, already costumed in worn jeans and too-big t-shirts, our hair and faces artificially dirtied. The trailer was a large RV, furnished in deep browns and creams, and Ana had already been around, swiping her hand against the smooth wooden surfaces and hugging random pieces of furniture. “It’s not pink!” she said.

Thirty minutes before we were called to set, we met Ross Declan. He was thin, but not particularly tall. His hair was a deep black, which looked strange above his creased face. He wore a suit and had a seemingly unshakable air of formality. He stepped into our trailer. “Araminta, Anastasia!” he greeted us. “How are our girls this morning?” Ana replied, “Good,” and I nodded, wondering who else he was speaking for.

“Are you two excited for your first day of filming?” He rubbed his hands together. I bobbed my head again, and Ana glanced at Beth, who smiled, nudging her off the couch.

“Okay, girls,” Declan continued. “I want you two to be on your best behavior today. You’ve been working with our family, but now you’ll be working with NBC, and I want you to make us proud. Show them how Foxes do it!” Ana smiled wide, and Declan put his hand out to start a stack. Beth put her hand atop it, and we joined in. “Go Foxes!” he said, and we raised our palms in the air.

“Now, who’s taking first shift?” I glanced at Ana, and we both volunteered. “Those are my girls!” Declan praised, and I wondered if parents were different from a guardian.

The show lasted less than one season. It was cancelled during its winter hiatus.

For the next few years, Ana and I floated from job to job, audition to audition, feeling like pros next to the new kids who cried in the waiting room or wiggled nervously as parents fretted and fussed. Beth always ran lines with us before auditions, but, once we reached the day of, she refused to use the real dialogue. We knew each page backward and forward, and she would insist we improvise the dialogue and mess around. Play pretend. I learned later that Beth had been a casting assistant before our caretaker.

When we were seven, we booked a small-budget horror movie. I think that’s when things changed. We met the monster beforehand; he was a middle-aged man, with a bald, shiny head, and a wide smile. He showed us how he could make scary noises in his throat. We tried to copy him, laughing hysterically when all we could manage was high-pitched pig oinks.

I took the first shift. My job was to fall backward on my butt and then run down the hallway, making sure to turn around when I passed the door and look at the camera with my most scared face. I did the scene over and over again, and then Ana had her turn for a scene where she hides, trying not to cry, while I had school time. Then, we filmed a scene where the monster chases our character, screaming, through a parking lot and catches us. The set was in a studio. The ground looked like an asphalt parking lot, but it was squishy. And the walls were green fabric. We weren’t in a dark car park at all.

We practiced with the nice man, and he showed us how he would pick us up. The director played it back for us, and I was surprised how it looked like he was attacking us. Ana was on shift for the scene, but Beth let me watch while I ate lunch. We liked to cheer each other on when possible.

The lighting positions were set, and the man and Ana walked to their marks. The man started gurgling, and the director called “action.” Ana ran. And screamed. The monster chased her, the awful noises lunging out of his throat.

She was supposed to run across the stage, just slow enough for him to catch her around a green tape marker on the floor. The director had explained it was important for how the camera was set. But Ana breezed right past it; she was running so fast that the monster didn’t lift her up until almost the edge of the green screen. She yelled even louder, tears streaming down her face. I was in awe of her performance, and I couldn’t wait to tell her so. The director called “cut!” and the man put her down, praising her acting, but Ana didn’t listen. She jogged away from him, holding her arms around herself.

“Good job, Ana!” I called. She didn’t respond, just trudged closer to where Beth and I stood. Something wasn’t right. The director called for places again; he wanted to get a take where the monster caught up to Ana closer to her mark. But she kept walking until she reached us and buried her head in Beth’s jacket.

“Did that scare you, baby?” Beth asked, stroking her head and back as tiny sobs shook my sister. She nodded.

“It’s okay, Anastasia,” I consoled. “I can do it for you.” I squeezed her back in a quick hug, kissed her head, and took my mark. The frazzled director was happy to let me substitute. I got on my mark, eyed the monster-man, and screamed my heart out when action was called, making sure not to run too fast. The man’s costume was heavy, after all. When he reached me, I made sure to sob a little and scream bloody murder. He bobbed me up in the air, a little higher than we’d practiced, and I could feel my whole insides trying to leap into the sky. We heard “cut,” and he swung me up once more to right me and ceremoniously placed me on the ground.

“Are you okay?” he asked, pushing back his mask and looking at me eye-to-eye. I wiped my crocodile tears away and smiled, feeling the power my lungs had just exuded. “Great!” I answered.

I took the rest of Ana’s shifts that day while she rested with Beth in the trailer. At shift change, I would go to the bathroom, and when I returned, the crew would call me Anastasia. The next shift, I would be Araminta again. I was proud to help my sister, even as I expected her to rejoin us any minute. To my surprise, she didn’t, and I worked even as I became exhausted. Finally, all scheduled scenes shot, talent was released from set. Mr. Declan walked me back to the trailer. Beth ushered me through my nighttime routine, and I joined Ana in our bunk beds.

The compact trailer bunkhouse was darker than our room at home. It had one small window, but I couldn’t see it from the bottom bed. Ana turned over above me.

“Ana?” I whispered. “Are you okay?”

“I think so.” Her voice was barely audible.

“What happened?”

“I got scared.”

“Why? It’s all pretend,” I pointed out.

“It didn’t feel like pretend to me.” I didn’t understand. The concrete was squishy, the background was chartreuse, and the monster was a friendly man. How could it have felt anything but highly fabricated?

“Why didn’t you come back?” I questioned.

“My tummy hurt.”

“I missed you.” I crawled out of bed and up the ladder.

“Me, too. Beth and I played card games, and I wished you were here.” Ana scooched over to let me cuddle with her.

“Will you come back tomorrow?”

“Beth says I have to.”

“Do you want me to do the scary scenes? I can pretend I’m you.” I looked at Ana’s sad face in the low moonlight of the window. She nodded.

“I love you, Ana.”

“I love you, too, Minty.” We lay down, snuggled together, and slept soundly, squeezed into the tiny trailer bunk. I would spend the next few months overworked and jumping between being myself and impersonating my sister.

Surprisingly, I really liked doing horror movies. The cast and crew were always exceptionally nice, and I got to scream all the time; no one told me to hush. Ana had a few roles on children’s shows, but I guest-starred in crime shows, playing the victim, inconsolable, weeping with grief—I was showing off. I could make everyone believe I was hurt, even while it was all pretend. After a while, I learned to miss Anastasia less.

When I was nine, I booked my first big movie. It was a screen adaptation of a new, popular children’s trilogy. I wasn’t a lead, but my character was in every book, guaranteeing me a place in each of the movies. Beth assured me that Mr. Declan and the board were so very proud of me. Around this time, Ana asked to have more time to study. The board agreed she could, so long as she went to one audition a month. Anastasia upheld her end of the bargain, but, despite her impressive résumé, she never booked another job. If Beth knew the reason behind Ana’s sudden, suspicious inability to act, she didn’t tell Mr. Declan. I was just glad that she was always home when I was. When she saw me after a long day, she would inundate me with the latest facts she had learned, and I would regale her with my successes on set. This ended when I booked the movie.

I was always accompanied by a board member to the set in New Zealand, while Beth was responsible for Ana’s schooling in LA. My first chaperone was Don, and he didn’t like children very much. He was a good sport, just couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for interacting with me. Luckily, I made friends with the large cast of children quickly. They were fascinated by my parental situation, but conversations around this always ended with a sense of pity, or an apology that I couldn’t remember enough of Kat’s Out of the Bag to chat with them about the reruns their parents had shown them. I learned that I could best connect with them by talking about movies or siblings. These were universal topics—and pity-free.

Over the next three years, as we grew from bubbly children into anxious, fame-weary tweens, our cliques morphed and evaporated, reformed and dissolved, until we emerged from the experience not remembering who our first friends were. We had made three movies, endured rigorous press tours, and our faces (not mine) were plastered on billboards and advertisements the world over.

And then it ended. No longer did I have friends surrounding me for 12-hour days on set, but I also didn’t have to watch them run to their mom or dad, while I waved to Don or whichever board member was accompanying me, fulfilling the legal obligations of guardianship. The situation did have its benefits, however. While parents berated their children for bad performances or missed opportunities, my guardians’ only comments on my work were constructive criticism or encouragement. I was only ever chastised for misbehavior. Other actors dealt with overbearing parents while my relationship with my guardians was always strictly professional. For better or for worse.

For the next few years, my work was press. Late night interviews and daytime talk shows were my gigs, and I studied with Ana during the day. Fox decided we (me) were too well-known to attend school, so we learned with Beth and private tutors at home. Ana flourished, swimming through grade levels easily, while I applied myself to what needed to be done, although not with the same enthusiasm I had for acting.

When we were fifteen, Fox wrote a new television show with twin leads, just for us. I think they were tired of waiting for Ana to bring in money from other studio jobs, so instead they wrote a show in which they didn’t have to pay their leads. The show was humorous and well-received. You may remember it. Anastasia and I did well. It was great fun acting with my sister again, and her comedic timing has always been impeccable.

Upon our eighteenth birthday, we were emancipated, much to Fox’s chagrin. I would have stayed until age twenty-one, but Ana was eager to forge her own path. We now had access to the percentage of our earnings legally mandated to be set aside for us. Our characters were killed off and replaced with male leads: the Colby twins. Fox was hoping to keep the momentum going, as Dr. Who had managed to do years before with new leads, but ratings plummeted after we left. The show only lasted one more season. This ending was bittersweet. I was sorry to disappoint Mr. Declan, the board, and the fans, but being with Ana was most important to me. And Beth was so proud of us. She made the transition more sweet than bitter.

Ever the scholar, Ana applied and was accepted to St. John’s College at the University of Oxford. We were all so proud. I did my best to follow and was accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Mr. Declan threw us a party, Delilah Banks wrote a card, and Beth retired. To Fulmer, UK. Coincidentally.

For the next three years, we studied: Ana art history, me theater arts. I drove to Oxford every weekend I could. Sometimes we would meet at Beth’s cottage in the middle, and, even more rarely, Ana would have time to visit me in London. Holidays were precious, and we spent them together, exploring castles, going to shows in the West End, hiking with Beth, or crossing to Paris in the Chunnel.

The summer before our final year, Ana brought an extra person along on our holiday excursions. His name was John, and he studied mathematics. Ana was good enough to never make me feel like a third wheel (if she could help it), but the dynamic had shifted. No longer was I the best companion for my sister.

But John was good, and he was good for Anastasia. They viewed the world through different lenses but managed to see the same scene. Together, their outlook on life was better than either’s was alone. After a while, I couldn’t begrudge her this relationship. They were happy and in love, and they made everyone around them happy. Still, I visited Beth and her cottage more often during my final year at RADA.

At RADA, I unlearned some bad television-acting habits and was welcomed into the world of the theater. Movie sets and TV studios were my world, but the stage was fresh. I could sing into the dark auditorium, feeling my lungs expel power, much like they had during my childhood horror movie days. But this was healthier and more emotionally expansive. You could sing joy, sing fear, sing anger, sing hurt, sing exuberance! And you could stay with the same company for months. Each scene—the fun, the challenging, the boring—you got to do each night, over and over again, until it was perfect every day, but always a living thing.

I auditioned for show after show on the West End during that year, and, finally, the day after graduation, I booked the role of Juliet in the new adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. John proposed to Anastasia. Their wedding took place three weeks after my opening night. My costume was so lovely, I was very tempted to wear that.

For three years I had that role, an extraordinarily long time for an original cast member to stay on, but I was enjoying myself. Every night I fell in love, had (two!) sword fights, and cheated death. (The Bard would be horrified.) Meanwhile, Anastasia found a job at a museum in London. I was in the same city as my sister again, and it felt good. Dodging the immovable shows and rehearsals in my schedule, I visited Ana and John in their flat. Game nights were my respite. Beth visited every few months, but we were grown now, and she had her gardening community in Fulmer to think about.

As the years passed, Anastasia settled into family life, and I... settled. As she blossomed in her stability, I began to wither in my stagnation. But perhaps wither isn’t the right word. I was getting twitchy.

Finally, I decided I wanted to give movies a go again. (My West End performances hadn’t been enough to land me a spot on Graham Norton’s couch yet, I rationalized to John.) I alerted the producers of my intention to resign a week after my sister announced her pregnancy. My nephew was born the night of my last show. (He’s always had an interesting sense of timing and irony. I think he might turn out to be a philosopher.)

Back in the States, in New York, I had little luck at my movie auditions. I moved to auditioning for guest-starring roles on every procedural I could think of. These were more successful. I was in five episodes of a CW sci-fi show. I video chatted with Ana, John, and baby Edwin once a week. I also booked a leading role in a new off-Broadway production. This is what I was devoting my time to when I got the call from Fox.

They offered me the leading role in a new show they assured me would be a hit, saying that I was their first choice. Skeptical but intrigued, I agreed to read the script. It was fantastic! Characters were deep, dialogue was snappy, and the potential was endless. I loved the character from the first page. Her name was Natasha, and she suddenly finds herself a single mother after her partner ends their relationship to pursue humanitarian work. She’s torn because she resents him for leaving her but respects his instinct to help others in need. It’s just that she suddenly finds herself in need. That’s why it was called Natasha in Need. Each episode opened with “Need” being scribbled over and a more fitting word for the episode being inserted. I am still hopeful that this project will one day be fulfilled.

Encouraged by the successes of Anastasia and I, the company wanted to birth their next Hollywood babies. NBC, ABC, and CBS all have dozens, but Fox was intentional about its brand being seen as family oriented. They wanted to show the world the effort and nurture they gave their babies. This would be only its third set since the practice began.

Read more

If you would like to submit a story to After Dinner Conversation, here’s how.

Read Jon Medrano Miller’s short stories, "The Place Before Perdition” and “Broken-Winged Moths”:

Click the image to get your copy!

Q&A

How do you come up with ideas for your short stories?

Sheesh! Stories come from everywhere really. “The Place Before Perdition” was an accumulation of a true crime documentary I watched about a serial killer in Texas in the 1960s, memoirs I’ve read from both parolees and prison guards, and stories I’ve heard from family working in law enforcement. Then this story collected dust in a drawer for a year before I circled back to it.

To me, a great story is a gathering of two things: philosophy and ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. When else is one bombarded with the deepest, murkiest of ethical questions?

Are there any ideas right now that are ripe for fictionalizing?

Right now, I’m fascinated by the idea of history repeating itself. I’m working on a manuscript set in 1918, a time of war, pandemic, and religious fervor. Presently, everyday people insist we’re living through the “worst of times,” but I’d wager someone in 1918 was saying the exact same thing. What is interesting to me is how the anxieties of the past—about health, religion, death, and self—are like our own concerns today. By putting today's issues on top of history, we can understand how human desires and fears truly are universal; they only have been shaped by an evolving society.

Which authors or books would you recommend to those who want to challenge their own thinking?

Once an overthinking college student, I greatly admired the ideas of Emil Cioran—a man so pessimistic that his own mother told him she wouldn’t have had him if she knew he’d turn out so depressed. His aphorisms taught me so much about meaning, or lack thereof. As I’ve gotten older and started a family, my outlook has thankfully brightened—but life has by no means grown simpler. The dilemmas are still there, only reframed.

Writers like Kōbō Abe and Daniil Kharms have a way of incorporating surrealism to expose the banality of everyday life. Abe, in books like The Woman in the Dunes, traps his protagonists in hopeless repetition. Kharms celebrates the absurd and the grotesque. Boris Vian mixes tragedy with acid satire, luring you in through humor.

Clarice Lispector is more interior—her prose digs and digs to the point where you feel like you’re eavesdropping on unvarnished consciousness itself. And more recently, I’ve been drawn to Samanta Schweblin, whose work often hovers between the real and the uncanny. Have I mentioned the films of David Lynch yet?

And if you haven’t read Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, I recommend you get ready to have your socks blown off.

What is your ideal reader?

My ideal reader isn’t someone who agrees with me—it’s someone willing to be unburdened by questions. I remember reading this YA book in middle school that started off strong until the final 20 pages when everything suddenly became nicely tied up and resolved. I felt totally robbed. Not because I enjoy watching people suffer, but because it seemed so far removed from real life. It’s why everything I write is left open-ended, in a way.

My ideal readers are those who are willing to sit without knowing and wrestle with the desire for tidy answers. If they finish one of my stories without a solution and at least one question that will continue to live with them in a useful way, then I believe that the story has worked.

Jon Medrano Miller is a Chicago-based writer who crafts stories about those often overlooked—loners, misfits, and chanteuses. Influenced by the works of Zora Neale Hurston, Kōbō Abe, and Daniil Kharms, he is currently at work on his debut historical novel. For representation or to just talk about all things literary: website.

Share After Dinner Conversation - Philosophy | Ethics Short Story

Leave a comment

Story Summary: Daphne is institutionalized while trying to answer the question, "Why am I, I?"

Take the poll for this week’s story, “The Big, Immovable I”:

(It’s completely anonymous…and fun!)

“Resident Philosopher” Nalini’s take:

Nalini Jacob-Roussety ties simple questions to deeper philosophical frameworks! Listen to her discuss the poll question above. Comment in the discussion area at the end.

Join the Conversation

📖 Weekly Short Story

📖 Email cut short? Read This Story on Substack

The Big, Immovable I by Harrison V. Perry

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Daphne said from behind her cigarette. “Of all the people in the world, I’m me.”

Disinfectant, and the reek of the canteen food laid out on the table, brought back memories of school dinners and dread. Daph wore her favorite tatty jumper, the sleeves scrunched up to her elbows. I had looked high and low for it and she wouldn’t say a word until I had found it and brought it to her.

“You know?” she went on. “It’s a mask I can’t take off.”

At the table behind, a man wearing a ward gown flipped his tray of curried chicken and vegetables high into the air. “There is no God!” he screamed. “Let me out!” and was pounced upon by two of the orderlies.

Daphne explained: “That’s Charlie. God abandoned him.”

The ash from her cigarette fell away and landed in her banoffee pie.

“I keep running into it,” she said, “into the infinite-regress.” With her teaspoon she scooped out the ash. “I love the pie here.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“And I get stuck in it.”

“In the pie?”

“No, the regress.”

“Oh, yeah. I get it.”

“Do you?” She leaned forward. “Do you really?”

I ate a bite of soggy canteen burger. “Are you doing much sport?”

“No,” she said. “They only let you do one. So, I can run, or I can play tennis.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I prefer tennis,” she said. “It gives me less time to think. But nobody here is any good.”

“That’s what you need, to get out of your head.”

She smiled, drew hard on her cigarette, and blew smoke into my face. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know.”

She shook her head. “The doctors and psychologists, they think they know too, but they don’t, neither do you.”

I put the shitty burger back down. “I love you, Daphne, and I want—we all want you to be well, to get out of here. Dad’s been busy redecorating your old room. He’s painted the walls, fixed the stuck window, even built you a double bed. It smells good in there, like his old workshop; you remember the sawed-wood smell? Like his workshop from when we lived in Toronto? It smells just like that right now.”

“Has he read my paper?”

“Yeah, we all have.”

“What does he think?”

He thinks you’re confused. “He didn’t say. He doesn’t say much, but that’s dad. He just got to work making you a new bed.”

The orderlies had got Charlie under control and taken him out into the hallway. A grown man screaming, getting wrestled away, Christ, I didn’t blame Mum for not visiting. The tension here, the anxiety: an outburst from a patient, odd questions and smells, shouts and invasions of personal space: it had lost its initial hold on me after my first few visits. I no longer panicked: it was all part of the environment. You either accepted it, or you didn’t come.

“Daph, I need to get back to work, alright? I’ll see you next week. You know, if you fall into the regress, you can call me. I’m always at the other end of the phone.”

“Yep,” she said, “but you really don’t wonder why you’re not me?”

“No,” I told her, getting to my feet, “the thought never comes to me. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t worry why I’m me. I just … I just, I don’t know. I just don’t have those thoughts.”

She lit another cigarette, smoked it so the cherry was nice and bright, and then stubbed it out on her wrist. I went to whack it from her hand, but an orderly beat me to it, grabbing her wrist and saying, “That’s it! That’s no more cigarettes for a week.”

* * *

“Psychosis leads its sufferers down rabbit holes of beliefs,” group leader Anna said. “Everything the sufferer encounters, a TV show or a film, a conversation, even the title on the spine of a book, act as evidence for the psychotic belief, as if these pieces of information were made for the sufferer. Messages, the psychotic might say, are encoded in everything. Creating information-sparse areas, like removing books and the television set from the bedroom, are ways we, as loved ones, can help reduce the amount of stimuli and stress for the sufferer.”

Daphne had lost her job the week after her admission. I’d spent three days clearing out her apartment, sifting through everything—looking for that fucking jumper—trying to get it all boxed up before the landlord charged another month’s rent. Every single one of her books had highlights in it, notes in the margins, the question: Why am I, I? scribbled on most pages.

“Zach,” Anna said, “are you with us?”

I came out of my thoughts to find everyone looking at me. There wasn’t a person in the room who didn’t have an ashen face and black bags under their eyes.

“Sorry,” I said, “what was the question?”

“No question,” Anna said. “You drifted off.”

“Sorry, it’s been—” A sharp pain on my wrist cut me off. A red splotch.

“It’s okay to feel a little disconnected,” she said. “Why don’t you tell the group how you’ve been helping your sister? I’m sure our new faces will find it helpful.”

I doubted it. “Alright,” I said. But a man, I guessed it was his first time in the group, started crying.

“My son thinks I’m Zeus,” he said, taking a clump of tissue paper to his face. “He thinks my wife is Aphrodite. He’s absolutely sure of it.”

* * *

After the meeting, I went back to work and found a new voice message from Daphne on my desk machine. “Don’t tell Mum,” she pleaded, her voice shaky. “She doesn’t like it when I put cigarettes out on my wrist.” Shouts in the background: someone was cheating at sevens again. “The explanatory gap is bogus,” Daphne explained. “It’s a language problem. If we didn’t have language, Zach, then they’d be no problem. But we use words to think, so we’re burdened.” The message ran on, all this philosophical nonsense. “I have graduated from the school of life and I see the true reality, but I can’t work it through. I have had to make a new mathematical symbol that quantizes human consciousness. We are waveforms—”

The tape in my machine finished. If she was calling the office phone, it meant that she’d filled up my machine at home, too.

I drank a little from my desk flask. The cheap gin burnt my throat, but settled my head and eased the pain on my wrist. I found enough focus to get back to the Havisham monument designs. The cenotaph was already over budget, even before it was handed to me to complete, but the Royal Canadian Infantry Corps still insisted it be twelve feet high and onyx stone.

On the tip of the cenotaph the general wanted a star, but my inked lines weren’t right. I sat there, staring at what I had drawn, wondering why it was so off. I traced the lines with my finger and realized I had drawn Daphne’s hospital logo.

“Zach.”

I started. My finger smudged the ink. It was Mr. Diego, in his tweeds.

“Can I see you in my office?”

* * *

On Mr. Diego’s darkly red desk stood four finger-sized basalt models. Each one was a to-scale of the various monuments we had designed over the years. I picked one up, a baseball bat and mitten, commissioned by the Ontario arm of Baseball Canada. It never got erected because a focus group said it looked like a dick and balls.

“Zach,” Mr. Diego said, shutting the door behind him. The recliner squeaked as he sat down. “You know I’ve given you a lot of leeway. I even told The Infantry Corps, explained to them about your difficulties, your personal issues.”

My gut tightened. I wanted more gin.

“And I know they haven’t been the easiest of clients to work with.” He leaned back in the green leather chair. His tweed jacket smelt like dog and stale pipe tobacco. “But you’re drinking in the office. I can’t have that. I looked the other way, at first, but it’s upsetting people. We can smell it on you. It’s on your breath, Zach. Have you thought about taking time off? A sabbatical? You used to talk about Australia.”

“You want me to go to Australia?”

He set his elbows on the desk: “I want you to stop drinking in the office.”

“I’m not a drunk—The work is getting done.”

“It isn’t, Zach, it really isn’t. The stonemasons are fed up. The last design was nearly ninety kilogrammes too heavy.”

“That wasn’t my fault. General Hawks wanted it twelve feet high, in onyx stone. How the hell—”

Mr. Diego shook his head. “What are you talking about? At the last client review we all settled on ten and half.”

“What?”

He closed his eyes. “This,” Mr. Diego said, “is exactly what I’m taking issue with. You aren’t right. You’re… you’re not here. I don’t know who you are.”

Neither did I.

“Let me get the meeting notes,” I said, rising to my feet.

“No, would you just…”

But I left his office, scratching at my wrist, and walked to my desk. I found my folder—quickly finished the dregs in my flask—and headed back. “Here, look,” I said, “look right there. Twelve feet.” I held my finger by the digits.

Mr. Diego put on his glasses. He studied the page, then me. “Zach,” he said, “Zach, that says ten point five.”

It said twelve. I blinked a few times, refocused my eyes, and the number shifted between twelve and ten point five, but settled on twelve. I smelt freshly fired clay and glaze: wet dog and pipe tobacco.

He sniffed, peered over the rims of his glasses. “Did you take another drink?”

“No, I…”

“Zach, you clearly aren’t well. Why don’t you take the rest of the week off? Take it as compassionate leave. On Monday, we can start fresh, no more drinking.”

It said twelve. I knew it said twelve.

* * *

My favorite lamp lay smashed on my apartment floor. I swept up the porcelain and bulb shards, wondering how it got broken. Daphne had made the lamp for me: she would stay late at the potters and make mugs and bowls and vases and lamps. I need the practice, she would say, and give the pieces to friends and family. It all seemed so long ago. Stuffed full of ambition, determined to get her work in galleries and exhibitions. But it never happened for her. It never really happened for any of us.

I ate leftover pizza and played my home answering machine. The tape was full.

“There’s no reason I’m not an Egyptian, tilling a field on the banks of the Nile a thousand years ago,” she said. “Why am I, I?”

I drank and ate to Daph’s voice until I fell asleep.

Dreams of the infinite-regress: I fell and picked myself up: I fell and picked myself up: I fell and picked myself up….

The telephone woke me. I jolted; the empty gin bottle rolled off my lap and thudded on the carpet. I padded over, picked up the receiver. “Yeah?”

“This is doctor Zetsubō. Am I speaking with Zachary Anderson?” the voice on the telephone said.

I rubbed my eyes with the back of my wrist. “I think so. What’s happened?”

“Daphne is fine,” the hurried voice said, “but there was an incident early this morning. Would it be possible for you to come to the observation ward?”

* * *

It was snowing downtown. I arrived at the hospital blanketed in snow, my feet frozen solid. I wanted a drink, to keep warm, but the liquor stores weren’t open yet and the supermarkets didn’t sell this early. Doctor Zetsubō, a Japanese lady who’d led most of Daphne’s care, who’d listened to me as I’d explained Daphne’s first episode, stood outside the hospital doors smoking a cigarette. I walked up the icy marble stairs, my breath blowing like a car exhaust, and said hello.

She smiled at me. One of her incisors had a small chip in it.

“Can I bum a smoke?”

She patted herself down, pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarettes. I took one and she lit it for me.

“Thank you for coming,” she said between exhales. “It’s not easy.”

“I want to be here for her,” I said.

“She couldn’t sleep last night, so the night team gave her sleeping aids, and they—” she ran the tip of her tongue over the chipped tooth “—they didn’t mix well with the psych-meds. She was up all night and hallucinated. We’ve moved her from her room. She had drawn over all the walls.”

Blank walls were too inviting: like a giant canvas, begging to be drawn on. I smoked and watched the traffic go by. The traffic lights glowed and lit the snow and the headlights of cars were like flying fairy lights. I used to love this city. When we first moved here it was our great big adventure. All of us heavy with our own hopes and dreams, and all of us slowly ground down to nubs. First Dad, then Mum, then Daph, and now me.

I blew smoke. My tongue tingled.

Doctor Zetsubō flicked her cigarette butt and crushed it out. She shivered, eyeing my cigarette. “How are you doing? Looks like you haven’t slept either.”

“I have… a little.” An ambulance roared past, wheels slipping on the icy road. “But I’m having—My work is difficult. Not like yours is, I’m sure, but—They want to send me to Australia.”

“You’re a family of artists, yes? A… ceramicist, yes?”

I had to think for a minute. Was I a ceramicist? “No, I design monuments.”

“Oh, that’s unusual.”

“It’s not what I want to do. Not anymore.”

“What is it you want to do?”

I dragged hard, finishing the smoke to its bitter end. “I would like to be a ceramicist.” I dropped the butt on the floor and, as I crushed it with my heel, said, “Ever since Daph getting sick, it’s been hard to think about anything else. I’m worried it’s spreading.”

“The want to be a ceramicist?” Doctor Zetsubō laughed, but seeing my face, she held a cold granite expression. “Her psychosis? Has something happened?”

I told her, “Some numbers, at my work, they shifted right on the page. Ten point five, twelve, ten point five, twelve. Is that a problem?”

“Tiredness can do that to you. Stress, too.”

“It makes you wonder about reality.”

“A very dangerous idea to wonder about reality.” She smiled.

“Your tooth,” I said, “I never noticed it before.”

She hid herself behind her hand. “Oh,” she said, laughing, “I haven’t had a chance to see the dentist.” She grabbed the door handle. “Chewing on marbles.”

“Chewing on marbles?” The hospital warmth wrapped around me: the canteen scents sickly and oily. I closed the door behind us.

“Mmm,” she said, “I thought they were candies. Who has marbles on their desk that look like candies?”

That’s what happens when you can’t distinguish reality accurately: you chip your teeth, design a heavy cenotaph, draw all over the walls, burn your wrist and not realize it.

* * *

Beside a big window, Daphne was smoking a cigarette in a hospital gown, sitting up in a chair wrapped in easy to clean plastic, her legs crossed.

“I thought you weren’t allowed to smoke for a while?”

She puffed away.

“And you’re in a gown,” I said. When she was first sectioned, dad and I had packed all her favorite clothes, but every time I visited it was always that tatty jumper I found her in. “Where are your clothes?”

“Covered in ink, Zach. You need to read the walls. Have you read the walls?”

“They don’t let me into your room.” I grabbed a big foam cube: all these soft, hard-to-hurt-yourself-with objects lying about, and sat on that. Between us, on a table that had its corners rounded, stood a chessboard, most of the pieces missing. “What did you write?”

“I figured it out, Zach.” She blew smoke all over the pieces, grabbed the queen and dragged it across the board until it reached the king. “Look how easy it is.”

“You’ve figured out why you’re you?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Don’t you see, Zach?” She knocked the queen against the king. “It’s that easy!”

“Daph, I have no idea what you’re talking about. You aren’t making any sense. What’s a queen and king got to do with any of this?”

“Can’t you see, Zach? The king and queen, and even all the pawns, they’re the same.”

“Seriously, there’s nothing here. This is all some fantasy of yours. It doesn’t make sense to ask why you are you. You just are, alright? You’ve got no fucking idea what all this is doing to us, to Mum and Dad. We’re losing our minds. You can play psychotic all you like, but you’ll have to come back to the world: to reality. I’m losing my mind.” I thumped the chessboard and sent all the pieces scattering. Daphne screamed. Her cigarette fell and burnt on the board. Orderlies ran in and I shot up from the foam cube, shaking all over. “I can’t do this anymore!” I yelled.

Read more

An “After Dinner Conversation” Virtual Book Club — Come Join Us

Great stories don’t end on the last page. They linger. They come back to you in the shower, or mid-conversation, or right before you fall asleep. You find yourself wondering what you would have done in that character’s position, or whether the story got it right.

That’s exactly what we want to talk about.

After Dinner Conversation is hosting it’s last monthly virtual book club, a one-hour Zoom conversation built around one (or two stories) from that month’s issue. Free to attend. Open to all readers. No formal agenda, no literary gatekeeping, just honest conversation about the ideas and moral questions the stories stir up.

Here’s how it works: Each month we pick one (or two stories) from the current magazine issue as our focal point. From there, the conversation goes wherever it needs to go, the ethical dilemma at the heart of the plot, the choice a character made, the moment that stuck with you. Our readers come from across the country and around the world, which makes these conversations richer than you might expect.

We’re hosting events through Luma, which handles time zones automatically, so no matter where you are, you’ll always know exactly when to show up.

Our next session is May 21, 2026, and we’ll be discussing stories from the May, 2026 issue.

👉 RSVP here: luma.com/user/afterdinner

We hope to see you there.

— Kolby @ After Dinner Conversation

PS. You may be familiar with our Meetup.com page. Our Luma page currently mirrors our Meetup.com, but we are migrating from Meetup.com to Luma.com. We will be discontinuing the Meetup.com page over time.

Read Courtney Welu’s short story, "Soul Loop”:

Click the image to get your copy!

Q&A

Are there any ideas or topics that you wish you had the courage to write about?

Someday, I would love to write the Great American Draft Dodger Novel. I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing currently in print, and the few books that do touch on the experience of draft dodgers in the Vietnam War almost always treat it as some great shameful secret or hidden guilt that causes untold suffering. Personally, I think draft dodging is one of the most ethical things someone can do when told to fight in an unjust war. My uncle went AWOL in the year 1969, and he would tell you it was one of the best decisions he ever made. I don’t think I have the talent or experience to write the Great American Draft Dodger Novel yet, but I figure that’s the imminent goal of my writing career.

Which philosophy or philosopher most aligns with your own beliefs?

In undergrad, I took a literary theory class as a requirement for the English major. My professor was a very short, very intense Sri Lankan man who would regularly threaten to jump out the window and kill himself if people kept asking stupid questions. I absolutely loved him. Everything we read influenced my worldview, but Louis Althusser and Roland Barthes especially gave me the vocabulary to talk about concepts that I already believed in. I certainly don’t want to hold them up as paragons of virtue – Althusser killing his wife is a pretty big strike against him – but I am grateful to my professor for introducing them to me.

How do you come up with ideas for your short stories?

Many of my short stories, including “Soul Loop,” are drilled into a specific location, often somewhere in South Dakota. I prefer to write explicitly about places that I know well rather than fictionalized versions of them. I enjoy researching times and places, and bringing my intimate knowledge of the places I’ve lived to a story. Even though I love sci-fi and fantasy, I have always vastly preferred urban fantasy to second world fantasy. I want the characters to live in a world that I recognize.

Which authors or books would you recommend to those who want to challenge their own thinking?

I think we all have a responsibility to read books written by people who are different from us, whatever that might mean for you as an individual. I especially think cis readers need to read trans authors. My favorite recent release is Emily St. James’s Woodworking – set in South Dakota! I was thrilled to find a reference to the 41st Street Perkins in Sioux Falls.

Courtney Welu (she/her) is a writer from the Black Hills of South Dakota. She currently lives in Austin, Texas where she works at a community college. Her previous work can be seen in publications including Gone Lawn, Prosthetics, and Bag of Bones Press.

Share After Dinner Conversation - Philosophy | Ethics Short Story

Leave a comment

Story Summary: The "Lord Keeper" sets out to murder his successor in order to keep a community secret safe. (Scroll Down To Read)

This Week’s Story Poll (Last Week’s Results At Story End)

“Resident Philosopher” Nalini’s take:

Nalini Jacob-Roussety ties simple questions to deeper philosophical frameworks! Listen to her discuss the poll question above. Comment in the discussion area at the end.

It's Time to Subscribe

💡Paid subscribers help us publish stories like this every week and access our full archives.

📖 Weekly Short Story

📖 Email cut short? Read This Story on Substack

Bound by Joanna Michal Hoyt

I came fully awake as I sat up and cracked my head on the thwart of my upturned canoe. The pain cleared my head. I felt under my bedroll for my knife, hoping I hadn’t made enough noise to attract the attention of whatever—whoever?—had waked me. I didn’t hear footsteps. I was just starting to drift back down into sleep when I heard the voice speaking from the high ridge above the brushy bit of riverbank where I had camped, meaning to get a good night’s sleep before venturing into Sheneshe. The speaker must have been just about directly above me.

“This is the third night, and the second asking,” the voice said. A man’s voice, elderly, melodious, and exhausted. “If I knew anything more to say to change your mind, I would say it.”

“And it would not change my mind. My answer is no.” The answering voice was younger, harsher.

A sigh. “Then all I can do is sit with you until dawn.”

“Until three nights ago, I might have thought that was kind of you.”

“Arlin,” the old man said, “the Law was given in kindness, but that kindness was meant for the people, not the Keepers—or the breakers either.”

I could hear the capital in the old man’s voice as he said “the Law.” I heard something else too, something I couldn’t put a name to, something that set my teeth on edge. Though perhaps that was only the fear that came from the rumors I had heard...

* * *

Gossips in the towns downriver had told me that no woman in her right mind would paddle on upstream past Sennipol to Sheneshe. When I observed that I could paddle as well as most men, they sighed and said no sane man would go that way either. When I inquired whether there were rapids, they explained that the problem was not in the river, but in Sheneshe itself—that its folk were unchancy.

“Unchancy how?” I asked. “Lawless? Cruel?” Some stared blankly at me or shrugged, plainly parroting something they’d heard and never thought to question. Others looked hard at me and then held their hands up before their chests, fingers splayed—the curse-warding sign. Some made it vaguely toward the north, toward Sheneshe. Some made it toward me. Maybe the shadow of what I’d left behind, the reason for my flight, was in my eyes. Maybe they thought the cursed place drew accursed travelers to itself. They might have been right, at that.

In Sennipol, the last town downriver from Sheneshe, there was a deal of curse-warding and a bit of muttering and spitting; I left the inn with all discreet haste. One man, a thin stooping fellow with ragged clothes and haunted eyes, followed me back to my boat and tried to give me an answer.

“They’re not lawless in Sheneshe,” he said, spitting aside. “Their Law interferes in far too many things—if the tales are true. But they killed their god long ago, and the curse is still on them.”

“The folk downriver in Marvi kill their god every autumn, and mourn for him every winter, and he comes back every spring and blesses them,” I said.

He spat again. “Southland lunatics,” he said. “But the folk up northaway... I’ve heard of no blessing there.”

* * *

I remembered that warning as I listened to the young man’s voice in the dark, answering the mention of the Law with words I couldn’t make out and fury I couldn’t help hearing. I was several paces away from my boat before I understood that I was going to the voices. I didn’t stop. I’ve learned to move quietly, and the young man’s voice covered the noises I couldn’t help making as I climbed. I was maybe ten paces from the young man when he stopped speaking and I stopped moving. The circle of light from the old man’s lantern stopped five paces from me. It showed me the old man’s face, heavy with grief. It didn’t reach to the young man. I stood there for a long time, watching the old man watching the young man, watching first hint of gray smudging the eastern horizon. When the old man looked up and said “The third night, and the third asking,” and the young man answered “No,” the lantern-light flashed from the knife in the old man’s hand.

I was between him and the young man before I had time to recall this wasn’t my affair. I was also between him and the lantern-light, and the dawn light wasn’t much help yet; I think he saw a bulky black silhouette against the glow, not a rawboned middle-aged woman trying to hold her own knife steady.

“You can’t do that,” I said.

“You do not understand,” he answered, lowering his knife hand.

“No, I don’t,” I admitted. “I thought you meant to use that on him.” I jerked a thumb back over my shoulder at the young man. “Was I wrong?”

The heavy silence answered well enough. “I can’t let you do that,” I said.

“I had no choice. I gave him his choice, and he chose,” the old man said.

“Had, not have?” I asked.

He didn’t answer that either. We stood looking at each other while the light came up in the sky. Then he sheathed his knife and sat down. I stepped back so I could see both men. The young one was sitting very straight against a beech-bole—tied to it, not cruelly tight, but enough to keep him in place. His hands were tied in front of him.

“Who did you say had a choice here?” I asked the old man. “He’s bound and you’re not.”

“I am bound by the Law, and he has broken the bond.”

“You carry out your Law in secret, in the middle of the night?” I asked.

“His Law is all secrets and lies,” the young man said. “I would have told them the truth.”

“I keep them safe,” the old man said.

“Keep who safe? Safe from what?” I asked.

“The god,” both men said together in the same heavy tone.

“So he’s after you for sacrilege?” I asked the young man, wishing I’d stayed out of it. I thought I’d learned not to meddle in religion in foreign parts. For one thing, meddling was an easy way to get yourself killed; for another, it was an easy way to hurt people in ways you’d never imagine ahead of time. But I couldn’t just go off and leave the young man to get murdered, or sacrificed, or whatever it was. I’d seen too much to let me leave, and I hadn’t seen enough to know what I should do instead of leaving.

“Not sacrilege,” the young man said. “It isn’t the god he’s protecting.” I waited for one of them to explain. I kept waiting. Another voice finally broke the silence, a woman’s voice on the far side of the ridge, calling, “Lord Keeper?” By then the sun had come up, restoring the color of the old man’s long blue robe and the smell of the late blackberries tangled in the long grass.

“Go back!” the old man called.

“Only if you want murder done,” I shouted before I could remind myself about the evils of meddling.

“Who’s there?” she called.

They didn’t answer, so I did. “An old man with a knife, and a young man tied up—I guess one of them’s your Lord Keeper—and a stranger.”

“Athele, it’s me, it’s Arlin,” the young man called in his rough tired voice.

Athele, who looked near my age, came over the ridge and stopped to stare at us. She looked first at Arlin, but it was to the old man she spoke after a long uncomfortable pause.

“Lord Keeper, you said Arlin had run off,” Athele said slowly. “Said you were going to find him. What happened? And who is she?”

The two men I’d interrupted answered together again: “The god’s messenger.” They both sounded afraid.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t know your god.” They ignored this.

Arlin looked at the Keeper. “Too late now for your way,” he said.

“Too late,” the Lord Keeper agreed. He nodded to me. “Loose him, then. We’ll go back together.”

I cut Arlin’s ropes and he stepped forward, staggered. The third night... I thought. No wonder he’s stiff. I reached out an arm to steady him; when the old man reached for him I came round between them again.

“I will not hurt him,” the Keeper said. “Not now. Take this.” He loosened the sheathed knife from his belt, gave it to me, took Arlin’s arm over his shoulders and started to help the younger man along. “Go back, then,” he told Athele, “and gather them all in front of the Place. If the story must be told, let it be told only once.”

Arlin’s legs limbered soon so he could walk at a decent pace and bear his own weight, though neither he nor the Keeper seemed eager to let each other go. We hurried through woods, then through pastureland loud with sheep and calves, then over the last hill into the village. The white stone houses were small and sturdy. I heard and saw no people. Right through the village we went, out the other side, through fields of oats and pease, then back into wild country.

At the top of another hill we came to a tall hedge of roses with a few late blossoms, white and scentless, still clinging to their thorns. Inside was a turfed courtyard surrounding a round wall of white stone too tall to see over and too smooth to climb. The door in that wall was locked. Six or seven score people milled around the courtyard, buzzing like a hive of bees that’s almost made up its mind to swarm. When they saw us, most of them raised their left hands to their foreheads as they looked at the Lord Keeper; I took it for a gesture of respect, though not one I’d seen before. A few of them made the curse-warding sign.

“Lord Keeper,” they said uneasily.

“It is yet to be seen whether I am still your Keeper,” he answered.

They didn’t seem to find this much clearer than I did. “Are you stepping aside for Arlin, then, Lord?” one man asked.

“He will never be Keeper,” the old man said

“He speaks truth in that, for once,” Arlin said. “The secret has been kept too long. It is time you knew the truth. It is time the gates opened and you saw...”

“Wait.” The Keeper spoke so softly that even Arlin quieted to hear him. “Wait. You want them set free, Arlin, and then you want to make their choice for them?”

“It is the god I would set free.”

“Ill words,” someone said, and “What does he mean?” said another.

“I’ll tell you...” Arlin began.

“Do you want him to tell you?” the Keeper interrupted. “Or will you keep the Law and your own protection?’

“And let your Lord Keeper sneak off in the middle of the night and kill people,” I added.

They seemed to notice me for the first time when I spoke. “Who are you?” a woman asked. “Did he threaten you?”

“He didn’t threaten me,” I said, “but seemingly he would have killed your Arlin here.”

Arlin shook his sleeves back, let them see the rope marks on his wrists.

“He wouldn’t! He didn’t!” several voices cried. “You never did, Lord Keeper?”

“I did,” the Keeper said.

“Why?” The question spread quickly through the crowd.

The Keeper turned his palms upward, nodded. “You have won,” he said. “I will tell the story, Arlin.” The people sat, and Arlin sat too, facing the Keeper. I sat where I could get between them again if I had to—not that either of them appeared to notice. Arlin’s eyes were fixed on the Keeper, smoldering with anger—though there was something else there too; something I took for an affection that had grown so far into him that he didn’t know how to get rid of it all at once. The Keeper looked into the empty air as though he could see the things he spoke of happening there. I can’t rightly remember the words he used, but I won’t soon forget the gist of the tale.

* * *

It began, he said, when the grandfathers of their grandfathers were still babes in the womb. (From him, that sounded less like a tale-teller’s flourish than an actual accounting of how much time had passed.) The women in whose wombs they rested, and their men, lived then in Sennipol, a town down the river which had been locked in its fears and its petty rivalries for generations: rich and poor feared and resented each other, families brooded over slights from generations past, but they all agreed that it was far better to live in Sennipol than in any of the backward or decadent towns downriver, or in the wild hill-country upstream which was said to be demon-haunted. (I bit back a snort of laughter, remembering Sennipol and wondering how the good folk of the inn would take to that description.) But one of the Sennipoli, an old woman named Myriona, was haunted by a dream of better things: of a sweet country where the air was fresh, not stinking as in the alleys of Sennipol; a place where men and women worked and sang and were glad together in the light of the face of the god.

Oh yes, she dreamed of the god too. It was his voice that urged her to come up the river to the hill-country and live free, and to take with her any brave souls who were willing to come. Myriona obeyed, and got away from Sennipol before anyone actually got round to disposing of her as a witch; a fair number of other people who were weary of the course of their lives followed her.

There was no obvious sign of a curse on the hill-country. The streams were sweet and clear, the soil deep enough to work, the game plentiful. And there was one spring-fed pool whose waters seemed little short of miraculous; drinking them cured Myriona’s lameness, and Alden’s sleeplessness and fear, and the children’s summer sickness. Above that spring there was a great outcropping of shining stone which Myriona worked into the shape of the face of the god she had seen in her dreams, the one who had led them there.

In the first-year rain and sun came in season and all things grew and prospered. At the first-year festival when the people danced around the spring and gave thanks for the god’s gifts, some looked into the water and saw that the reflection of the carved figure’s calm face smiled more broadly than it had when Myriona first carved it, and that the reflected eyes followed the dancers as they leapt and spun.

The next year also passed in peace and plenty, and the year after that wasn’t bad, though there were more pests eating the crops and a few lambs born wrong, to their loss and their mothers’—no more than might have been expected back in their old life, but it didn’t quite seem to fit with the blessed new life. A few murmurs started then about who might have been less than properly grateful for their blessings, but nothing much came of it.

In the twelfth year there was drought. The vegetables were scanty, the grain headed too early, the goats took sick and their milk came out dark and foul-smelling. The pool fed by the spring shrank in the drought. Some said the healing water shouldn’t be wasted on sick goats; others said it was sin not to use it and trust that all they needed would be given.

One night Myriona woke from a nightmare to see flames rising from the thatched roof of her neighbor Ansa’s goat-shed. She knew Ansa had taken blessed water for her goats. She knew, too, that their neighbor Evrena had called it a sacrilege and a waste. She ran out and found Evrena standing with her hands on her hips and laughing at the flames.

“What have you done?” Myriona hissed. Evrena whirled to run. Myriona caught her arm. They struggled silently until the flames leaped from Ansa’s byre to Ansa’s house on one side and Evrena’s hencoop on the other. Then they stared at each other and ran opposite ways down the street, shouting for help in fighting the flames. Too late.

Half the village burned that night. All might have been lost if the rains had not come at last, torrential, drenching, pounding the standing grain into the ground. The villagers huddled together in the unburned houses. Some blessed the god, and some cursed him, and many cursed the human fire-starter. Myriona, afraid they might think her guilty of that, told them how she’d waked to find Evrena by the stall. Evrena didn’t deny it. Her face was stiff with fear even before word came that Ansa’s oldest daughter Tereu, a girl of sixteen, was dead.

Tereu had taken a dream-draught, hoping for word from the god about why the rain did not come; she did not hear the flames, or the shouting. When the blaze kindled in the roof Ansa picked the baby up, and her husband Goran took their sickly four-year-old; when they would have gone back in to pull Tereu out, the roof fell in, blazing.

When the rain rolled away, Myriona climbed stiffly up the hill to the spring and stopped, staring at the god’s stone face. The face was scarred and blistered, the mouth twisted with pain. She feared her eyes or her mind were playing her false, and she stooped to drink from the spring, hoping it still had grace to clear her mind. She didn’t drink after all. She stared instead into a reflection that was not a reflection. In the still water she saw the flaming roof collapsing on Tereu. Then she saw Evrena’s face, streaked with blood. When Myriona looked up, blood ran down the face of the god-stone.

Myriona fled, but as she passed into the trees she heard footsteps blundering up the path toward her. Goran stumbled up the hill, wild-eyed and haggard.

“What are you looking for?” Myriona asked.

“The one who killed my daughter is dead,” Goran said. “Surely I did right in that. The curse-bringer is dead, and now the god must take the curse away.”

“The god!” Myriona cried. “See what you have done to the god!” She took Goran’s arm and pushed him up the path ahead of her, out of the trees, face to face with the god-stone. Goran stared awhile, then turned back to her with the vacant stare of an idiot and fled back the way he had come.

Myriona looked again and saw that the god-stone was blank-eyed as Goran had become, though the stone face reflected in the spring was a mask of grief.

Myriona stumbled back down the slippery stones of the path and told her neighbors what she had seen.

“What are we to do?” they asked her.

“Nothing else to grieve the god,” she said.

“What would not grieve the god?”

She opened her mouth, closed it. “I do not know,” she said at last, low and troubled.

Read more