The Scissors

A man is shot in his boardroom on a Friday morning. Steam rises from the blood on cold white tiles.

The Scissors traces the consequences of one murder through every life the ripple touches. The attorney who found the body. The wife waiting at a restaurant with a table set for two. The son who heard the phone vibrate at dinner the night before. The housekeeper's daughter who learned algebra with a fork and a salt cellar. The detective who watched the sirens head north and not south. The tech CEO who closed his company and flew to the Philippines. The mother whose daughter died in a hospital queue because medical aid ended when the job ended. The killer in a Markhams shirt celebrating in a shebeen. The mastermind eating sashimi in Sandton. The accountant with a gun and a seven-year-old asleep in the next room.

Every chapter is a different window. Every window sees the same event from a different angle. The consequences propagate without asking permission.

This is not a thriller. This is consequence geometry performed as fiction. No commentary. No moral. No lesson except the one the structure provides: a dot does not know which ripple will be fatal. It only knows that ripples follow.

The Scissors is Record Ø.1 in The 420 Code - where the exhibition began. Not in a library. In a wound.

Free forever at the420code.org. This paperback edition exists for readers who prefer the format.