Author: Madd Fictional

The pregnancy announcement began with a sonogram and ended with a confession about childhood neglect.

Nobody remembered exactly how it happened. One moment the expectant parent was holding up a grainy black-and-white image; the next, everyone at brunch knew about the locked bedroom door, the Christmas spent alone, the parent who drank, the teacher who noticed and did nothing, and the first therapist who said something unforgivable in a room that smelled of peppermint tea.

At first, the table responded with the tender seriousness people reserve for revelations that arrive beside pastries.

Then another guest touched the small curve of the belly and began crying.

The tears came with a story.

That story triggered another.

Soon the entire restaurant was confessing.

A waiter admitted he had not spoken to his brother in eleven years. A woman at the next table described the exact moment she stopped loving her husband. Someone near the window announced that every birthday since age nine had made her physically ill. The chef emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray of eggs and disclosed a fear of abandonment so detailed that three customers quietly canceled their weddings.

Nobody could stop.

The baby bump seemed to pull secrets from people like gravity.

By the third trimester, strangers approached on sidewalks just to unload decades of pain. Grocery stores became impossible. Elevators became group therapy. The obstetrician began every appointment by apologizing for something unrelated.

Then labor started.

In the delivery room, every nurse began confessing at once. The parent screamed for them to shut up, and for the first time in months, everyone did.

The baby arrived furious, healthy, and completely silent. No crying, wailing, or complaint.

The room leaned closer.

The newborn opened its eyes.

And every adult present suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to keep something to themselves.

©2012 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

“I’m dipping dumplings you’ve never heard of.”

The sentence appeared online beneath a photograph of six pale crescents arranged around a ceramic bowl of black sauce. Within an hour, strangers were demanding the restaurant’s name. By dinner, food accounts were calling the dish “the next thing.” By morning, people were arguing about whether they had eaten the dumplings before they became popular.

Nobody could identify them, and that only made them more desirable.

A critic described their filling as “ancestral, elusive, almost accusatory.” Another detected fermented pear, smoked eel, and “the mineral memory of rain.” A television chef claimed the folding technique came from a mountain village inaccessible during winter, although nobody could locate the mountain.

Restaurants responded quickly. Menus acquired untranslated names. Servers began explaining that the dumplings were traditionally eaten in silence, with the left hand, after thinking briefly about one’s grandmother.

Reservations became impossible to obtain.

The original poster watched all of this with increasing alarm.

The dumplings had come from a supermarket freezer bag. The black sauce was soy sauce mixed with too much molasses because the bottle had slipped.

Eventually, a magazine requested an interview about cultural authenticity.

There was still time to confess.

Instead, the poster said the recipe could not be shared because it belonged to “a nearly vanished culinary lineage.”

That was the moment everything became expensive.

A cookbook followed. Then a streaming series. Then a line of artisanal dipping bowls. The supermarket quietly discontinued the frozen dumplings, unaware that its least popular product had become an international obsession under another name.

Years later, at a private dinner attended by critics, collectors, and people who used the word mouthfeel without embarrassment, the creator finally tasted the celebrated version.

It was exquisite.

“What do you think?” someone whispered.

The inventor chewed thoughtfully, dipped another dumpling into the sauce, and smiled.

“I preferred them before everyone knew about them.”

©2012 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

“If I get pushed into a pool one more time, somebody is going to die.”

Everyone laughed because everyone always laughed.

It began at the first summer party, when someone thought it hilarious to shove the fully dressed guest into the shallow end. The next time happened at a wedding reception. Then a birthday. Then an office retreat. Somehow the joke followed from one social circle to another, acquiring the strange immortality of a story people preferred repeating to understanding.

There were objections, of course. Quiet ones at first, then angry ones. None mattered. The moment someone stood near water, another person would grin, glance around for an audience, and begin creeping forward with both hands raised.

So precautions were taken. Phones stayed in waterproof cases. Watches came off near pools. Shoes were chosen for drainage. Invitations mentioning boats, fountains, hot tubs, lakes, or decorative ponds were declined.

For three years, there were no incidents.

Then came the rooftop party.

There was music, champagne, a swimming pool glowing blue beneath strings of lights, and exactly one person stupid enough to remember the old joke.

Hands struck between the shoulder blades. The victim disappeared over the edge. The screaming began before anyone reached the railing.

The rooftop pool had been removed during renovations six months earlier.

What remained below was an empty concrete basin, twelve feet deep.

The ambulance arrived quickly. So did the police. Witnesses repeated the same sentence: it was only supposed to be a joke.

In the hospital, wrapped in plaster and stitched nearly everywhere stitching was possible, the survivor listened as an officer carefully explained that charges would likely follow.

“Good,” came the whisper.

Months later, the rooftop pool reopened.

At the first party of summer, everyone promised not to push anyone. And even though nobody even stood too close…

…a set of hands rushed out of nowhere and gave a rough shove.

©2012 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

“I have a lot of business ideas. The problem is the police.”

That was how the pitch began.

The investor across the café table lowered his coffee and considered leaving, but curiosity won over. The entrepreneur opened a folder labeled OPPORTUNITIES and slid over several neatly typed proposals. None of them were illegal exactly. They simply became illegal whenever described in enough detail.

The first involved unused parking spaces, temporary ownership, and license plates that changed more often than weather. The second required a refrigerated truck, three abandoned warehouses, and an extremely flexible definition of seafood. The third was described only as “subscription-based burglary,” which the entrepreneur insisted had excellent recurring-revenue potential.

“You understand,” the investor said, “that most businesses try to solve problems.”

“These do.”

“For customers.”

“These do that too.”

The entrepreneur explained that law enforcement lacked imagination. Every time a promising market appeared, somebody eventually called it fraud, theft, smuggling, extortion, or operating a zoo without appropriate permits. Innovation, apparently, was always being punished by vocabulary.

The investor should have walked away. Instead, he asked about the final page.

The entrepreneur smiled.

That proposal was completely legal. No contraband, forged documents, stolen goods, or suspicious livestock. It merely offered consulting services to people with unusual business concepts.

“What kind of consulting?”

“Compliance.”

The investor stared.

The entrepreneur leaned forward and explained the model. Clients paid generously to discover which laws their ideas violated before the police did. Premium subscribers received introductions to accountants, attorneys, permit offices, insurance brokers, and, where necessary, therapists.

Within six months, the firm occupied two floors downtown.

Within a year, it employed forty people.

Three years later, the founder gave a keynote speech at a business conference about ethical entrepreneurship.

During questions, someone asked where the idea had come from.

The founder smiled at the packed ballroom. “I used to have a lot of business ideas,” he said. “The problem was the police.”

©2012 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys