After observing a customer talk like a pirate while steadily lowering his voice, so his listener had to lean in really close before being sucker punched, the proprietor of the Thirsty Parrot bar added an extra admonition to the “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” sign, namely: “No Arrgh-guile Socks.”

John H. Dromey has had flash fiction published in a number of print anthologies, as well as online at Liquid Imagination, three minute plastic, Thrillers, Killers ’n’ Chillers, and elsewhere.