Playtime Ends

By Nicholas Stillman

In the ultimate nanny state, the derelict find all new ways of dying. Rick, a malcontent youth, flees the enfeebled male population of his hometown to discover his inner wolf. Arriving in a one-street town of freewheeling drunks and scofflaws, Rick accosts a wannabe Old-West dentist, Robinson, and his fractious sexpot wife. They too, like everyone, seek hooliganism, pain, and anything that will pique that ancient thing called toughness.

The quest for manliness and hellraising takes Rick to the top dissidents of the day: a bunch of losers, LARPers, and debtors stuck in the smoking section of the world. But will their crawl to the bottom make Rick into a radical or another lost eunuch of the north?

Get “Playtime Ends” now, if you can survive the frat party of the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stillman Sci-Fi
• Release date: Feb 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386813477

Nicholas Stillman

Nicholas Stillman writes dark but entertaining science fiction. His weekly short stories and collections aim for variety and novelty with fun and thought-provoking twists. They often branch into dystopia, crime, horror, medical fiction, black comedy, romance, adventure, adult, and the completely new. Some of Stillman’s themes include civilizational collapse, addictions of the future, medicine in space, dark psychology, and the terrifying fate of our healthcare. Stillman offers monthly free short stories at StillmanSciFi.com. Get yourself free, easily accessible short stories for life--the perfect way for any science fiction fan to spend time on commutes or at home.

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Playtime Ends | By Nicholas Stillman

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Playtime Ends

By Nicholas Stillman

© 2018 Nicholas Stillman

Get free short stories monthly at stillmanscifi.com

THE STRIP OF WEATHERED houses looked pathetic and forgotten. It looked perfect. Rick stepped off the bus into a freezing community without painters, carpenters, or roofers. If such men journeyed this far north, they did so to drink everyday like everyone else. They retired or pretended to for a while where no one asked them for favors. The rundown houses formed a sort of stubble, an outcrop of the tundra itself, and the storefronts showed the extra wear and tear from loiterers. The recluses here bought a pack of cigarettes or a can of pop each day as an afternoon highlight. Too many squat homes huddled along the one street, and too many ragged mopers went into each one. Many layers of paint had worn away from every housefront. Rick could make out bare wood and even splinters on the sills, porches, and doorframes. Losers didn’t necessarily come here to die in the remoteness, but they did come to rot away.

Rick inhaled a lingering stench of exhaust long after the bus pulled away behind him. The cracked street retained the fumes somehow. The coldness hurt his face and neck where his winter coat let it. The breeze felt like a shave with a cold knife.

This place could surely test him. It could punish him for living at home with his mother into his twenties. If no one here did, the gelid north would. To engender such a challenge, he didn’t even bring a change of socks. His cash might run out, and his bankcard might bend in his jeans pocket. And if the bankcard stopped working, no one here would help.

The brass