Fiction: Lucky’s sister dies unexpectedly, and all of a sudden her cat starts speaking to him

The biggest electronics store in the neighbourhood is on the corner of two busy streets, tucked away inside a rundown shopping complex where the eighties live on. In this long, windowless space, under bright white lights, it is forever and never night or day, and the piped music is a gentle refusal to move on from simpler times. Backed by an instrumental version of Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You”, big bold signs (“Big Discounts! Big Value! Welcome to Big Electronics!”) usher Lucky and Dinah towards the escalators in the middle of the building, past the rows of shops offering remittance services, foot massages, feng shui readings, exorcisms, and banana cake.

“Is this it?”

“Yup.”

The nondescript entrance is the same pair of heavy aluminium-framed doors that Lucky remembers from every time he’s been to the store in the last thirty-ish years. His father always said the doors were a good tactic. You see doors like these and you don’t think to yourself that this is a fancy sort of store; you see doors like these and you think you’re going to get a good deal.

Lucky walks in thinking he’s going to get a good deal.

An hour later, he is pacing the television…

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