Bleeding Lead or QuickSilver

This book is a collection of four novellas or long short stories.

The first story, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, is funny because all along, till practically halfway to the end, it is absolutely normal. An old business whizz-patriarch is using the services of a young teenager to read him books he can’t read anymore. The old man pays for the service per hour of reading and three times a year he sends him a card with a lottery scratch ticket: Christmas, Valentine’s, and the kid’s birthday. One day one of these lottery tickets brings in 3,000 dollars. The kid buys an iPhone and offers it to the old man, the very same first model of this contraption his father had offered him for his birthday or any other occasion. The old man who was very critical against these supposedly modern faddish tools learns very fast how to use it, including to manage his stock-exchange belongings, shares, or whatever other bonds. But life is not eternal. So, the old man dies and then things become creepy. Enjoy the trip. The end is kind of weak because everything goes back to normal. Everyone knows, Stephen King first of all among them, that after any weird event life never goes back to normal. Think of the present pandemic.