The Toe: a Sourtoe Cocktail fiction
The world of Warriors of the Last Days is post-nuclear Canada. The Collapse took the banks, the governments, the infrastructure, and most of what people had built their lives around. What it didn’t take, what it couldn’t take, were the things people held onto because letting go wasn’t an option.
The Sourdough Saloon in Dawson City is still open. The tradition has been running since 1973. The rule hasn’t changed.
You can drink it fast. You can drink it slow. But your lips must touch that gnarly toe.
What Is the Sourtoe Cocktail?
The Sourtoe Cocktail is a real tradition. It started at the Downtown Hotel in Dawson City, Yukon, in 1973, when a mummified human toe was dropped into a glass of Yukon Jack and a rule was invented on the spot.
Since then, thousands of people have made the trip to Dawson City specifically to drink it. The toe has been swallowed by accident, stolen, replaced, and donated by diabetics, frostbite survivors, and people who simply decided their toe had a better use in a shot glass than in the ground. The Captain, whoever holds the title, keeps the count, reads the oath, and maintains the tradition without variation.
It is the kind of thing that sounds invented. It isn’t.
The Fiction
The Toe is is a sourtoe cocktail fiction set in this world. It follows Edouard Marsh, a trapper who loses his right big toe to a wolverine on a Tuesday and spends four days tracking it through the Yukon barrens to get it back, because he knows exactly where it belongs.
The story is deadpan. Edouard is not a comic character: he is completely serious. The situation is comic. That gap is where the story lives.
It’s free to read. No signup. No catch. You can read it directly on this site.
A World Worth Exploring
This is the first sourtoe cocktail fiction, and the first Warriors of the Last Days story, that I’m releasing publicly. It stands alone: you don’t need to know anything about the series for it to land. But if you finish it and want more of this world, the novels are where it goes deeper. Thirty-six short stories are set across every province and territory in post-collapse Canada. The Toe is where the door opens.
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Stéphane Roy is a lifelong reader and writer with a deep love for science fiction, apocalyptic worlds, and tightly constructed mysteries. This is his first novel. He lives in the Yukon with his dog and his aquarium, where long winters, silence, and wide, sometimes glowing, skies leave plenty of room for imagining the end of the world, and what might come after it. He is also waiting, with cautious optimism, for the aliens to finally reveal themselves and straighten us all out.