Sheldon Birnie

Sheldon Birnie lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada with his wife and their two young children. The author of Missing Like Teeth: An oral history of Winnipeg underground rock (Eternal Cavalier), his fiction has recently appeared in Exoplanet, The Wicked Library, Parallel Prairies, among others. Find him lurking online @badguybirnie.

OGOPOGO LIVES by Sheldon Birnie

August 25, 2021 · Fiction

It was Canada Day by the big lake and everyone was right fucked up. After the fireworks show on the beach wrapped up, the crowd took to the streets. Things were getting messy. Drunk girls held on to each other, hiking miniskirts up around hips to piss off the wharf into the black waters below, howling. One fell in, came up splashing, laughing. Muscle dummies squared off in the road, blocking traffic, letting the blood out of each other. Strip clubs up and down the lakeshore were packed, dancers raking in the money hand over fist. A police helicopter circled…

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THE COAT by Sheldon Birnie

November 21, 2019 · Fiction

“Hell yes,” Dave answered when his cousin Lisa asked if he’d like to see something weird. Dave followed Lisa off the deck and back to where the cars were parked as the sun was sinking in the west, cutting through the trees in brilliant bars of gold. Down by the lake, children shrieked and splashed in the late afternoon heat. He was sick of answering his family’s questions about his dumb job and why his girlfriend, Sandy, hadn’t made the trip out because they’d “sure like to meet her.” Something weird, whatever it was, was certainly a welcome change. “Dave,”…

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