Category Archives: Character Stories

Street Cleaning – A Story of The Night

BROOKLINE, BOSTON
11:22 PM

(Text surrounded in [square brackets] is spoken in Russian.)

The Model Cafe once had been a nice place to eat. That was years ago.

Now it was a dive bar, and the place to drink for more than a few Russian expats. Even on a Sunday night, a half-dozen of them were mostly drunk, boisterous, and unable to keep playing the darts game in the middle of the bar. A couple of the hot dogs the place was known for were in pieces on the floor and the bar, and the bartender was looking at the group dubiously.

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Management Negotiations – an Outback story

San Francisco:

James Michael Donobran stepped into the small alley off Wentworth Place, and adjusted his coat. It was drizzling a little, but not too badly.  He reached into a pocket, pulling out a small gem, and put it in the mouth of what appeared to be a statue of a dragon next to the wall he’d apparently stepped out of.

“Thanks for the trip, Ménlóng,” he said, and as he stepped away, the gate dragon’s eyes lit up, and it swallowed the gem, making a pleased noise.

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Pragmatism – a Juliette d’Aubigniy tale

ABSALOM, Ascendent Court, Cayden’s Hall

Boots up on the table, Juliette d’Aubigniy regarded her cup with a mix of amusement and irritation. The amusement was due to having seen one member of the group she shared the table with try to take a drink from the cup, only to have the metheglin within push him over the edge from drunk to unconscious; the irritation was because he’d dropped it and spilled it over the table. It had been a bit expensive to get it, in both money and personal services, and she wasn’t looking forwards to the cost that Tauglithgin would ask for more.

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The Blow-Off – an Imago story

He ran down the filthy back alley, stopping at the intersection to look behind. He knew he was being pursued – one of the enforcers for the cult was after him. It was revenge that drove them, he knew – the guard had somehow found the cult and arrested most of them for demon worship and human sacrifice (the latter was the actual crime), and now those that remained were looking for their betrayer. Click to continue reading.

Live Demo – a Eiko Takashima story

It wasn’t unheard of for the CEO to come down to the labs – she’d cut her teeth in research, everyone knew that – but it had become more rare in recent months as she had been working on a big project. But word came through the grapevine she was coming down to what everyone called the “Pie in the Sky Lab”, a lab that worked on the really crazy ideas.

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