Sisyphus is So Online by Ewen Glass
from Betrayal: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series
Sisyphus was tired of his own worst instincts; the matches, the messages, all of it.
He’d no sooner set up a date than another future presented itself, but it felt different with Seema. They’d met in person like in a Jane Austen novel and their second date was, after an errant early joke, completely dry. Sitting in a Cuban restaurant wide-eyed with absence, they missed neither two-for-one mojitos nor the laboured craft-beer choice, but the reserve that was the feature of early dates in the city. They didn’t need the deft prod of are they literally a psychopath or what unique version of polyamourery are they gonna spring on me. Their words found little resistance and they closed to kissing in a late bar after their food. Seema was everything Sisyphus wanted, and when he went to the toilet he arranged dates with other matches as he would thirty years later, quietly broken by the feeling that his work wasn’t done.
This story appears as part of Betrayal, a PUNK NOIR Magazine series, originally published May 2024.
Bio
Ewen Glass (he/him) is a Northern Irish writer who lives in England with two dogs, a tortoise and lots of self-doubt; on a given day, any or all of these can be snapping at his heels. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Bridge Eight, Poetry Scotland, Gordon Square Review and elsewhere. On socials (and in real life) he is pretty much ewenglass everywhere.
PUNK NOIR, the online literary and arts magazine that looks at the world at its most askew, casting a bloodshot eye over the written word, film, music, television and more.
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This is such an interesting piece... structure, tone, end twist.