Short Stories

The Obsolete Mr. Sterling

by Sean Dempsey | 06/18/26 One hundred years after the United States of America had solved freedom, no one was free enough to say what exactly had been solved. The red, white, and blue cloth still flew proudly. The anthem still played before public ceremonies. And, yes, the revered U.S. Constitution still existed, sealed inside […]

Short Stories

El Dorado Vacation

By Sean Dempsey, 04/28/26 We stumbled into the sun like criminals fleeing a sex crime we could not remember committing. It felt like Monday. But time and sanity meant nothing to us in the fog of drink and this sublime orgy of heat-infused alcohol and sin. The El Dorado resort still stretched before us in […]

Short Stories

Two Canadian Brothers

by Sean Dempsey | 04/06/24 There once were, in a certain indistinct corner of a Canadian kingdom whose borders were always expanding on paper yet never visited in person, two brothers who came into possession of adjoining lands. Yet possession in such a place was a delicate word; for everything, in truth, already belonged to […]

Philosophy Short Stories

A Writing Exercise

by Sean Dempsey “At the beginning of a fine May day, a svelte equestrienne, mounted on a sumptuous sorrel mare, was riding, in the middle of flowers, the lanes of the Bois.” – Joseph Grand (Camus) =========== After the Trilogytes attacked, the earth stood still, weeping at the indescribable carnage. Bitter and anguished cries shook […]

Short Stories

The Obsolete Mr. Malum

By Sean Dempsey, 03/28/2025 This echo-filled chamber of judgment was not built to house men, but to erase them. Its walls were clean, without seams, without windows, without warmth. Light spilled from hidden fixtures like surgical lamps—cold, clinical, sterilizing. Every sound echoed twice. Each breath of the men and women in this dim legal sanctuary […]