Subterranean Press has just put Charlie Stross’s killer short story, Snowball’s Chance, online as part of their latest issue, which also includes some great Elizabeth Bear audio and fiction, as well as fiction from Charles de Lint, Gene Wolf and Joe R Lansdale.
The louring sky, half past pregnant with a caul of snow, pressed down on Davy’s head like a hangover. He glanced up once, shivered, then pushed through the doorway into the Deid Nurse and the smog of fag fumes within.
His sometime conspirator Tam the Tailer was already at the bar. “Awright, Davy?”
Davy drew a deep breath, his glasses steaming up the instant he stepped through the heavy blackout curtain, so that the disreputable pub was shrouded in a halo of icy iridescence that concealed its flaws. “Mine’s a Deuchars.” His nostrils flared as he took in the seedy mixture of aromas that festered in the Deid Nurse’s atmosphere–so thick you could cut it with an axe, Morag had said once with a sniff of her lop-sided snot-siphon, back in the day when she’d had aught to say to Davy. “Fuckin’ Baltic oot there the night, an’ nae kiddin’.” He slid his glasses off and wiped them off, then looked around tiredly. “An’ deid tae the world in here.”
(via Futurismic)