Papa Paulie's Grill

By Sean Monaghan

On the frontier, Papa Paulie serves up the best clippercrab you can imagine. Vat grown, succulent and absolutely illegal.

Always a good place for friends, to settle deals and for a good old fashioned feed.

When Liall shows up to meet Jaslyn for the deal of their lives, things look sweet. A good meal, some extra cash and a good night ahead.

What they find might just turn their lives inside out.

A twisted Sci Fi tale with a hint of western a hint of mob antics and just a little fun.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Triple V Publishing
• Release date: Nov 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215660591

Sean Monaghan

Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music. Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

So me and Jaslyn, we met up outside of Papa Paulie’s Grill. You probably don’t know the place, but you kinda do, on account of how everywhere has got a place like Papa Paulie’s.

Well, everywhere like Soucherton, you know.

Maybe you’ve never been to one, with your filigree stratosphere apartment or your fancy deep ocean hab or your interstellar yacht gliding your way across the space lanes, but you know what I mean.

My favorite spot, of course. Here at the edge of where the real badlands begin, with their red as lipstick gullies and giraffalopes and a million places you can die on the turn of a whisker.

Papa Paulie’s serves up the best clippercrab you can imagine. You just strip the flesh out of the shell and let it melt in your mouth. Succulent and divine and omigosh so illegal.

Papa Paulie has this temperature controlled cistern sixty feet into the bedrock where he keeps his crop. We went down there once, me and Jaslyn, with Papa Paulie, sworn to pain-of-death secrecy because if any inspector found out, that would be it for Papa Paulie’s. Definitely would not want that.

He’s got the crabs jammed in there one on top of the other, with growth factors in the water and all the restaurant waste to feed on. Big as a house cat. They have six or eight pincers and a dozen more legs sticking out from their striated green-red carapaces. Wouldn’t want to meet one in a dark alley, huh?

I kinda didn’t like the way he was treating them, but Grace Almighty, do they taste nice with a thick siracha sauce.

Anyway, the restaurant proper has those soft gingham tablecloths and dim booths with low macramé lampshades hanging like a half a foot above the table. A long serving counter with stools and a rack of expensive liquors on the shelves in behind.

Actual people for waitstaff, ’steada bots. I like Wendy best, she’s always nice to us even though we don’t tip so great. Never have much cash for that.

Hence, right now, meeting up outside of Papa Paulie’s. No cash for a slap-up.

The street was dusty—when isn’t it?—and the sky was opaline. Nice word, that, huh? I learned that one from Melissa. Back when she would talk to me.

The street was busy with all