Chance also plays a role in “The Numbers Game” by Michael Aaron. This starts off like stereotypical sword-and-sorcery, but there’s an unusual reason that everything seems to fall into place just so.

Even our Classic Flash starts off with a bet, and although that’s not the point of the story, the ending left me saying, “Figure the odds.” It was written by turn-of-the-20th-century novelist and short story writer Elliott Flower. Never heard of him? Me, neither, but he was quite well known in his day, and I enjoyed this story — first published no later than 1916 — quite a bit. It’s a great example of an ending that makes you think it’s a twist, and then takes the twist just a little bit farther.

Bruce Holland Rogers is back this month, with two related fixed forms that he calls “prose sonnets”. He has two exemplars, “The Invisible Man” — I really like the ending of that one — and “Renaissance”.

As always, please comment (comments are like gold to an author). And a special thank-you to R.W. Ware for his original artwork for “The Numbers Game”!