Lantean Sands
A seaside tourist town in the 1970s with petty gangsters and the descendants of an Atlantis that didn’t disappear into the sea… not completely.
This one’s rather long for a short story… it’s heading into novella territory. It was published in two parts in The Fortean Bureau.
Read part 1 here and part 2 here.
Neptune Slim was Lantean dark but with eyes as green as the water out by the breakers on a sunny day. He wore a ring on every finger and a different crystal in each ring. This was before all that New Age stuff about Lanteans being mystically inclined by nature, but Slim seemed to think he had some kind of special spiritual gift. He’d punch guys, just spontaneously; some guy’s walking past us on the street and– POW!– Slim would bust the guy’s lip with a crystal-covered fist. And he’d say, “Just realigning your chakras, man, no big thing. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”