Silence

My short story ‘Silence’ is now online in issue 20 of The Future Fire.

The crime had two penalties: a very short one or a very long one. The judge looked at the young defendant in his boxy courtroom suit. His shoulders were sagging where his body betrayed the cloth. She could only bring herself to impose the very long one, which was also going to be very short.

‘What kind of punishment is that?’ roared the father of the dead boy, that is, the boy who had died already. ‘He’ll be no different from the rest of us!’

Enjoy!