The kid was the complete package: speed, size, common sense, even keel. He couldn’t miss.

Then he developed the worst case of hemorrhoids they’d ever seen and could never recover his edge.

“The most outstanding prospect we’ve ever had, ruined by piles, for Pete’s sake,” the GM blabbed after six martinis.

Gary Clifton, forty years a Federal officer, has an M.S. from Abilene Christian University and has short fiction pieces published in Spinetingler, Broadkill Review, Yellow Mama, and Dumb Butt Mag.