"Intervention," by Terry Black, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2026.
Very short stories can be wonderful, but, boy, they are hard to review. How much can you say without giving away too much? This tale is very good but it's under 2,000 words, so forgive me if I keep this brief.
Our hero -- well, let him speak for himself.
[T]here's no girlfriend, no guy friends, no social group, no family -- I'm one of a dozen kids in a foster home where no one cares. I get bullied in school and sit alone at lunch and never get invited anywhere, b y anyone. Zero social life, zero reason to keep on living.
So now he is standing on the roof of a six-store building, girding himself to take that one last step off into the void. Then he sees something, something which doesn't change his mind but convinces him to postpone the final act for a moment.
What he sees I can't tell you. And what happens next, well, that is a clever and satisfying resolution.
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