Another piece of short fiction is up at Noble Cobra Magazine.

This one was a rather quick piece; almost Flash-Fiction, based on a central conceit that had been kicking around my head for a few weeks. So, consider it an experiment in rapid production, I suppose. Enjoy!

Marcus saw her almost every day, though he had never yet spoken to her.

During the lunch hour and study periods, he liked to take his work out to the school courtyard, a well-tended miniature park where the seats were placed back among the bushes and in the shadow of the two big oak trees, partially screened by the plants from the central patio, as well as from each other. But there was a gap in the hedge beside his favourite place, and from there he could see her, sitting tucked away in a corner of the courtyard, her face buried in a book.

She was there almost every lunch hour, always alone, always reading. And while Marcus used the time to catch up on his studies, he always found his eyes drifting over to her.

She was not beautiful, though she wasn’t exactly plain either. Her skin was clear and pale, her hair a light brown, her figure thin and unremarkable. “Cute” was the word Marcus would have used if asked to describe her. Yes, definitely cute, with her big dark eyes and her habit of sticking her tongue out as she read.

Her name was Paula. That much he knew because she was in some of his classes, though he didn’t see her much there. She always sat in the back of the class, and never volunteered information or asked questions, or did anything to draw attention to herself. Most people forgot she was even there. Meanwhile, Marcus was always placed in the front of class, right under the teachers’ eyes where they could watch him.

Marcus didn’t much mind his class placement. Just like he didn’t mind the whispers and anxious looks that sometimes followed him in the halls. When you came to an upscale private school with a criminal record in tow, you had to expect that sort of thing. The old him would have resented it and probably smashed some heads to show it, but then, his old self never would have come to St. Mary Mercy in the first place. He wasn’t that person anymore. If he ever got irritated by any of it, he just chalked it up as penance and reminded himself that he was lucky not to be serving an extended jail term.

Maybe that was why he liked seeing Paula there in her corner, reading to herself. Something about her seemed so perfectly innocent, so far removed from the world he’d known. She would never have survived a minute at his old school.

Read the rest here.