It’s an annual ritual: put on winter boots for the first time of the season, take winter boots off, remove cat toy from inside boot, put winter boots back on.

As of last night, Montreal suffered its first of what will inevitably be many snowfalls of the season. It’s an amount of snow that would shut down many cities but barely makes Montrealers blink. The most dire ramifications so far is that it has caused my wife to consider getting her snow tires on, and me to accept that it might be time to remove the air conditioner from my office window. All around town, there was more discussion of the west-island meteor strike a couple of nights ago that everybody but me seemed to have heard. The weather is old news insomuch as it’s always bad news.

Today also marks the mid-point between Halloween and Christmas. What better time than this to share my short story, Hot Pennies, which specifically takes place between these two holiday landmarks. It’s high time I share this publicly since 2013 has also marked the death of the Canadian penny (which figures prominently in the story). Distribution ceased in February of this year and they vanished from daily transactions almost immediately, despite still being legal tender. Another casualty of fiat-based inflation I shall miss.

Rest assured people who were bored witless by my impromptu essay on hyperinflation and the fate of the Roman denarius, Hot Pennies is not a story about coinage. It’s a nostalgic tale inspired by my own childhood. I’ll let you guess for yourselves how much of it may be real. Any similarities to people living is purely coincidental. Any similarities to people dead is most certainly intentional.

‘Cuz fuck ‘em. The dead can’t sue.