Jinx

By Carlie St. George

Your first date with Jake is perfect. So. That’s fucking weird.

Not a complaint, obviously. Actually, it’s a relief: you’ve been on far too many first dates with guys who, at first blush, seemed like cute, funny, thoughtful dudes with passionate but not emotionally unstable opinions about Star Wars—only to discover that they can’t stop ranting about their crazy bitch ex (Marcus), or think cops don’t have enough power, actually (Mike), or believe that women can just . . . “hold” their menstrual blood? (Kevin, Kevin, WTF, Kevin?) There are good guys out there. You’ve even dated a few, but . . . Christ, so many of them are such volatile, whiny little babies.

Jake, though. Everything about Jake just seems . . . perfect. Your first date is casual, which is exactly what you like: bowling and beers, not fancy dinners with words like gourmand and amuse bouche. He’s not a secret Republican. He doesn’t seem upset by your spontaneous pixie cut. He isn’t embarrassed about enjoying romantic comedies—honestly, he might like them even more than you do. Jake isn’t passive aggressive and weird when you win both games by a considerable margin, and while he doesn’t like The Last Jedi, he doesn’t think that Rian Johnson ruined Star Wars, ruined it, and deserves to be hung by his fucking neck (Kyle).

Jake owns the coffee shop next to your bookstore, makes the best vanilla latte in town, has an absolutely fantastic ass, and remembers all kinds of little things you don’t even recall telling him, like your favorite romcom (It Happened One Night) or how much you despise pickles. Plenty of men claim to be good listeners. Jake actually is one. He’d been working up the nerve to ask you out for months, apparently, ever since you came into his shop and recommended Legends and Lattes—which you do remember, since he bought it the next day.

You and Jake talk late into the evening, laughing whenever you say the same thing at the same time and calling jinx automatically because some instincts are deep-rooted. And when he kisses you at the end of the night, it’s nice, it’s fun—not a kiss that makes you weak at the knees, maybe, but also no terrible breath or awkward fumbling or accidental clicking of teeth. You make plans for a second date, and you’re looking forward to it, you are, it’s just . . . (Continue Reading…)

The Ghost

by Catherine Wells

She was a girl of fourteen, and she sat propped up with pillows in an old four-poster bed, coughing a little with the feverish cold that kept her there. She was tired of reading by lamplight, and she lay and listened to the few sounds that she could hear, and looked into the fire. From downstairs, down the wide, rather dark, oak-panelled corridor hung with brown ochre pictures of tremendous naval engagements exploding fierily in their centres, down the broad stone stairs that ended in a heavy, creaking, nail-studded door, there blew in to her remoteness sometimes a gust of dance music. Cousins and cousins and cousins were down there, and Uncle Timothy, as host, leading the fun. Several of them had danced into her room during the day, and said that her illness was a ‘perfect shame,’ told her that the skating in the park was ‘too heavenly,’ and danced out again. Uncle Timothy had been as kind as kind could be. But — downstairs all the full cup of happiness the lonely child had looked forward to so eagerly for a month, was running away like liquid gold. (Continue Reading…)

The Shadowy Escort

by A. M. Burrage

Almost everybody has at one time or another wanted to write a detective story, but, for the greater well-being of publishers and publishers’ readers, not everybody has tried. Among those who have, with varying degrees of success, must be numbered a lot of men and women who would not have attempted to enter the realm of letters by any other frontier. Detective fiction has a fascination for nearly every type of mind. Thus it may happen that the butcher’s boy cannot bring himself to deliver the meat until he has read the explanation of what really did happen in Chapter Six, and the Cabinet Minister, also immersed in another copy of the same work, forgets to protest because his dinner is late.

This is due to the age-old, natural, human love of a puzzle; and the ambition to create a puzzle of one’s own, instead of merely trying to solve other peoples’, is a natural after-growth.

Serrald had read detective fiction for years as a mental relaxation. When he dined out he talked about the Russian School and the influence of the Arthurian Legend upon our early poets; when he got home he went on reading The Mystery of Bloodshot Grange. This he regarded as a secret vice, and did not own to it until he discovered that many of his intellectual friends, who also should have known better, made similar concessions to their lower natures. (Continue Reading…)

The Red Lodge

by H.R. Wakefield

I am writing this from an imperative sense of duty, for I consider The Red Lodge is a foul death-trap and utterly unfit to be a human habitation — it has its own proper denizens — and because I know its owner to be an unspeakable blackguard to allow it so to be used for his financial advantage. He knows the perils of the place perfectly well; I wrote him of our experiences, and he didn’t even acknowledge the letter, and two days ago I saw the ghastly pest-house advertised in Country Life. So anyone who rents The Red Lodge in future will receive a copy of this document as well as some uncomfortable words from Sir William, and that scoundrel Wilkes can take what action he pleases. (Continue Reading…)