Monopoly Money
by R.K. West
Once again, Juan tried explaining cryptocurrency to his father.
“If it isn’t backed by a government treasury or physical assets,” Dad asked, “where does it get its value?”
Juan had answered this many times before, but he summoned all his patience and said, “It’s based on people’s attraction and faith in the product, and a consensus among investors, like the stock market.”
“So I can just create my own imaginary coin and it will be valuable because everyone agrees I’m a great guy?”
“Sure,” Juan responded, “but you’ll need to hire developers to start your blockchain,” immediately wanting to slap himself for blurting out “blockchain,” thus inviting more questions.
That night, he dreamed that they were DadCoin billionaires
R.K. West is a Canadian-American writer who specializes in extremely short stories.
Credit: This piece originally appeared at Six Sentences.
1-2-3
Photo by Judith Taburet
by Judith Taburet
1-2-3
I polish my calloused palms with grease and soap.
The keys still echo Bach in my fingertips.
The faint moonlight whispers back to the kitchen.
My mother’s eyes measure my worth in foreign currency.
Veiled in soot, frying oil, and imported perfume,
I stand.
My sister’s laughter—diamond-cut,
the rich one, my shadow in childhood,
the clever one who catches a stranger like a boar in a net.
I listen.
Seventeen—I carry a rolled diploma,
the muscle memory of waltzes.
On the piano,
I play.
1-2-3
None of it pays the rent. None of it paints the crumbling walls.
I teach little girls to dance on cracked tiles,
telling them to hold their heads high,
even as my own dips under the weight of uncertainty.
The music swells at dusk.
1-2-3—
And I imagine another country, one not for sale,
where a girl can breathe
without selling her name to the highest bidder;
where my hands, trained on piano keys, not on a stranger’s chest
where a mother’s pride is not swollen
by the men her daughters attract,
but by the songs, the heart’s sigh—
1-2-3
Judith Taburet is a writer and photographer hailing from Madagascar, now based in France. Drawing from a rich legacy of advocacy, she infuses her art with a sense of purpose. Inspired by her father, an influential writer who courgeously fought against prejudice and racism in their homeland . Judy T channels her creative voice to shed light on women's stories and Malagasy culture. Her work, both in prose and photography, delves into strong experiences, ensuring they are told with unflinching honesty and strength.
Words, Like People, Fly
by Annalisa Crawford
She walks her dog in the dog-walking field every day. It’s not a field, really. It’s a cross-hatch of muddy paths and farmland given over to nature, with views across two wide, docile rivers, and a dense copse in the hollows harbouring birds and squirrels and rabbits within its knitted branches.
As she passes hedgerows with tangled branches dangling over the path, she crumbles the bark beneath her fingers as if to reassure herself it’s real. She climbs a gate and stands on the penultimate rung, shins pressed against the metal to balance herself, and exclaims, “Isn’t it beautiful?”, to anyone who passes.
On sunny days, her voice is calm and ambient; on windy days, it bounces across the fields and estuary like a leaf and can’t be caught. When it rains, her face is dewy and flushed, and the words trickle from her lips. When it’s foggy, they’re caught, entangled in the viscosity while she vanishes from view.
She always stops, always smiles with serene satisfaction; always inhales the fresh air which seems to lift her high above the gate, far above the fields. Arms stretched wide, eyes closed, buffeted by the current.
Today her smile is dampened on the drizzle. Her joyfulness mislaid; she gazes listlessly across the bleak valley. River mist hangs like cobwebs.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I venture, unsure my words carry the same credence as hers.
They don’t travel far; they cluster around my ankles like puppies waiting for treats. They edge nervously towards her, nipping her hand until she absently bats them away. But they persist, these words of mine, jumping up at her with puckish charm.
She nods her acknowledgement, but her countenance is lacklustre. Her knuckles turn white as her grip on the gate intensifies.
“We’re so lucky to live here,” I say.
“Yes,” she replies, wistfully. “To be alive here.”
She stares in my direction, but not at me. Her smile is silky, and she releases her rigid grip on the gate. Her feet drift from the metal bars and, with arms spread wide, she rises— simultaneously enraptured by her destiny and stunned at the heights she’s achieving.
I reach out—to drag her back or to be swept along with her, I have no idea which I’d prefer—but she’s already a dot in the cloud-dappled sky.
Annalisa Crawford writes dark contemporary fiction with a hint of paranormal. Annalisa has earned numerous accolades in various competitions and awards including the Wishing Shelf Book Awards, the Rubery Book Award and the Costa Short Story Award. She is a novelist and short story writer. Website: annalisacrawford.com
The New Food
by Stephen Leacock
Now and then, we publish vintage stories from historic authors. This was originally published in 1910.
I see from the current columns of the daily press that "Professor Plumb, of the University of Chicago, has just invented a highly concentrated form of food. All the essential nutritive elements are put together in the form of pellets, each of which contains from one to two hundred times as much nourishment as an ounce of an ordinary article of diet. These pellets, diluted with water, will form all that is necessary to support life. The professor looks forward confidently to revolutionizing the present food system."
Now this kind of thing may be all very well in its way, but it is going to have its drawbacks as well. In the bright future anticipated by Professor Plumb, we can easily imagine such incidents as the following:
The smiling family were gathered round the hospitable board. The table was plenteously laid with a soup-plate in front of each beaming child, a bucket of hot water before the radiant mother, and at the head of the board the Christmas dinner of the happy home, warmly covered by a thimble and resting on a poker chip. The expectant whispers of the little ones were hushed as the father, rising from his chair, lifted the thimble and disclosed a small pill of concentrated nourishment on the chip before him. Christmas turkey, cranberry sauce, plum pudding, mince pie--it was all there, all jammed into that little pill and only waiting to expand. Then the father with deep reverence, and a devout eye alternating between the pill and heaven, lifted his voice in a benediction.
At this moment there was an agonized cry from the mother.
"Oh, Henry, quick! Baby has snatched the pill!" It was too true. Dear little Gustavus Adolphus, the golden-haired baby boy, had grabbed the whole Christmas dinner off the poker chip and bolted it. Three hundred and fifty pounds of concentrated nourishment passed down the esophagus of the unthinking child.
"Clap him on the back!" cried the distracted mother. "Give him water!"
The idea was fatal. The water striking the pill caused it to expand. There was a dull rumbling sound and then, with an awful bang, Gustavus Adolphus exploded into fragments!
And when they gathered the little corpse together, the baby lips were parted in a lingering smile that could only be worn by a child who had eaten thirteen Christmas dinners.
Stephen Leacock (30 December 1869 – 28 March 1944) was a Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humourist. From 1915 to 1925, he was the best-known English-speaking humourist in the world. (Biography borrowed from Wikipedia)
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