“Tommy’s at poker night getting thrashed again. He’s had nothing but hand after hand of utter dross until these two kings. Now the feels are on him, the same as when his dead father shows himself with a soft thud in an empty next-door room…”

I first came across Ken Elkes’ writing through his excellent flash fiction collection All That Is Between Us (Ad Hoc, 2019). But I think his short stories are even more impressive. Tommy plays poker every Wednesday with two mates. They dream of going to Vegas, seeing the bright lights, but are stuck in a dead-end British town. When Tommy almost literally loses the shirt off his back he wheels away from the poker game and wanders this town he has known all his life, memories crowding in. It’s a story that hits you with quiet force: has Tommy folded his life’s last hand, or is there another deal to come?

Published in The Mechanics Institute Review #16, 2019