Ventilation Haywire by James Hohmann
from Seven Deadly Sins: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series
Adapter was salivating. The corporate repository was practically in his hands.
He was gorging himself on private databanks and blacknet crypto schemes. It was all too easy. He fed on proprietary information and he fed well.
He thought “This is delicious gossip, but I have to know more.”
He already had the fattest sack of dirt on everyone who played the game, the tech-police were always a step behind. He was the most voracious blackmailer in town.
“Next course: Big Pharma,” he said to me at dinner one night. That was the last time I ever saw him.
He poured money into this op, but he overindulged. His ravenous Agent-Farm overdrew the power in his flat. Overload, black out, and the local grid went down. It was a hot summer too. Three old ladies and a cat died in their electro-magnetically sealed apartments. His own bloated corpse went undiscovered for days.
The Coroner’s report said Adapter choked on vomit, technically it wasn’t the heatstroke that did him in, even though he was found in bed under piles of heavy blankets and pillows. Stranger still, I thought, when the media reported him as a victim of “Korean Fan Death”?
This story appears as part of Seven Deadly Sins, a PUNK NOIR Magazine series, originally published July 2025.
Bio
(b.1986) is a speculative fiction writer with an interest in Sci-Fi, constructed languages, and philosophy. He’s a lifelong resident of Massachusetts and he splits his time between work and family. His writing can be found at Nethaven where he posts a mixture of thoughts, poems and flash fiction.
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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"Eating Produces Appetite." French Proverb.