Eureka!

By Nick Mamatas

Adam hadn't worn the crushed velvet blouse in his hands for a long time. It was from his goth phase, twenty pounds and twenty years prior. He shuddered at the thought of it distending around his spare tire these days, but he couldn't bring himself to put it in the box he'd set aside for Out of the Closet either. And not only because it would be embarrassing if anyone saw it.

There were memories in the wrinkles of the velvet—well, not memories exactly. Half-memories, images and glimpses and smells. Two decades of gimlets and bad decisions and a few teeth and a trio of cross-country moves. What was the place? It was Huggy Bear's on Thursdays, when they played disco for a majority black clientele, but on most nights it was just The Bank. A real bank, in the sepia-toned days when great-grandma worked in an Orchard Street sweatshop, a goth/darkwave club now.

Full transcript appears under the cut.

[Intro music plays.]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 18 for October 13, 2015. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story today is Eureka! by Nick Mamatas.

Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including Love is the Law, The Last Weekend, and the forthcoming Lovecraftian murder-mystery I Am Providence. His short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Best American Mystery Stories and Poe's Lighthouse, magazines including Tor.com and Asimov's Science Fiction, and in the recent collection The Nickronomicon. Nick has written about Edgar Allan Poe for Weird Tales, The Smart Set, and Wide Angle.

Eureka!

By Nick Mamatas

Adam hadn't worn the crushed velvet blouse in his hands for a long time. It was from his goth phase, twenty pounds and twenty years prior. He shuddered at the thought of it distending around his spare tire these days, but he couldn't bring himself to put it in the box he'd set aside for Out of the Closet either. And no