Tancred and his sidekicks used to cast a multitude of spells. Their saddlebags were filled to the brim with greed-powder for the jealous and cannon-powder for the violent. Smoke-and-mirrors-powder fo ... [+]
Laurence Raphael Brothers is a writer and a technologist. His new WWI-era fantasy novel Twilight Patrol is available for purchase on Amazon.com. Follow him on twitter: @lbrothers or visit https://laurencebrothers.com/bibliography for more. "Captured by the Dragon Cult" is in Short Circuit #02, Short Édition's quarterly review.
Probably I shouldn't have looked in that NO ADMITTANCE HIGH VOLTAGE DANGER OF DEATH door. I was loitering on the ramp to the #7 subway train at Grand Central Station. I didn't want to go home to Flushing for various good reasons that included my design project coming due and no work done on it yet. Anyway, the door to the utility closet was ajar, so I peeked inside.It was a tiny room with a board full of circuit breakers along with a big old knife switch. I have poor impulse control sometimes, so I had to fight off the urge to pull the switch. But, you know, DANGER OF DEATH, and anyway I didn'