Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

I’ve always loved stories that start small. A little thing, a chink in the armor of the universe that lets some light in, a butterfly flapping its wings, builds into something bigger, something grander, until before you know it you’re off, sailing for parts unknown while each stop on the way brings new twists, new characters, and you wouldn’t have expected any of it when you began.

Imagine shearing off the cover of Alice in Wonderland and passing it off as a staid Victorian novel, and then reading in wonderment as the heroine steps down the rabbit hole and everything familiar recedes or is bizarrely reborn. Imagine turning on a movie after the credits, without any idea where it will go, only to end breathless two hours later screaming at the Statue of Liberty or as the savior of a distant planet.

Those are the stories I can’t get enough of, and they’re also the hardest to create. That sense of blissful innocence at the beginning is crucial—you have to look back and say “I can’t believe this all started in a rundown old tea store!” It’s hard to capture. I usually succumb to the temptation of reading the back of the book, or the back of the box. But once, every so often, it happens, and I’m utterly enchanted. More than anything, I’d like to create something that kindles that feeling in others.

I never got that chance, not yet anyway, but I did get to feel something like that firsthand once.

Mack was the kind of person who always walked around in a cloud of cigar smoke–as if the other business he was involved in wasn’t enough, he loved to clench death-sticks between those fat lips of his and give people cancer. I sometimes wondered if he even really smoked at all, or if he just pulled out a cigar, as big around as his fingers and just as brown and weathered, to impress people. A cigar says power, money, influence. A cigar says ‘I’m the kind of guy you don’t screw with–you default on one of my loans, I break your kneecaps and shove this stogie in your crotch.’

None of that would bother me, of course, if I hadn’t been trying to kick the habit myself. Cigars and cigarettes aren’t the same, as any smoke snob will tell you, but that aroma was enough to make me reach for my empty breast pocket, where the cowboy-killers used to be. I rolled a stick of gum up and stuck it where a cig should have gone.

Mack laughed, dredging up a gallon of phlegm from deep inside his stout frame. “Ain’t you gonna light up?” he said. “Them Bubble Yum brand cigs, they sure pack a wallop.”

I laughed too–with Mack, you laughed when he did, whether what he said was funny or not.

“So, anyway, the old prick drops dead. Literally. Right there in his goddamn workshop. His kid found him there the next morning, at the bench, lookin’ like he was asleep.”

“Heart attack?” I asked, trying to sound interested, even though I didn’t know Karol Kazdemu from Joan of Arc. It’s always a tragedy when somebody dies–in the abstract. But if you don’t know ‘em, the most people can muster is a vague sorry feeling before they forget all about it. It doesn’t pay to dwell too much on death anyway.

“Stroke.” Mack gestured at Sunday’s Times, crumpled on his coffee table. “The obituary was very specific–I bet that was his doing.”

“Terrible tragedy,” I replied. “What’s it got to do with us?”

Mack took a fresh drag from his cigar and exhaled, filling the room anew with that sweet, dusky smell. My mouth tightened; God, I wanted a cigarette.

“For most people, yeah, stroke’s a terrible tragedy all right. But not Karol. For him, a stroke means he weaseled his way out of payin’ me back.”

The veneer was cast aside almost instantly, and I saw Cela’s bright eyes harden to slate gray.

“You insolent pup!” she shrieked. Wreathes of white-hot fire burst from her fingertips, blazing a path across the room towards me.

My sword stuck in its scabbard as I tried to pull it free, forcing a quick duck and roll that left the bench I’d been sitting on a smoldering cinder.

“Don’t do this!” I cried.

“You had your chance to be sensible,” hissed Cela. “Now you’ll see how the Crimson Order swats down troublesome flies!” Her hands were ablaze again, directing rivulets of living flame toward me as everything flammable in the manse’s anteroom began to blacken and curl.

Finally, the stubborn blade was loosed, and I held it in front of me, cruciform-style, with the point on the ground.

“How quaint! The little boy thinks he can scratch the grown-up with his toy!”

Cela’s cackle turned to sputtering rage as she saw my blade do its work, sucking up the energies she’d unleashed as they approached. It glowed and sparked but remained cool to the touch.

“A saugendolch!” she exclaimed. “Clever, perhaps, but not clever enough!”

The support beams above began to twist and crack apart.

Every class invariably had its Procrastinator, who would have a story idea but never finish it. Procrastinators invariably showed up to workshops with half a text, and while some tried to conceal the fact, most were brazen about it. Sean was brazen; he’d come to class with a page or two written and describe, in glowing detail, the novel-length treatment that was to follow “when he had the time” or “in the next draft.” Some of Dave’s old teachers had loved the Procrastinators, as their vague descriptions of the assignment could be mentally twisted into something brilliant–Dave had once been issued a C for a completed story only to have his instructor wax poetic (and award an A) to a story that had ended in a cliffhanger after one and a half pages.

“On that note,” Dave said. “Sean?”

“Mine’s not finished yet,” Sean said. “But it’ll be totally great when it is. Picture this: there’s this guy, okay, and he thinks he’s asleep but he’s really awake! And he goes out, and he’s all like ‘hey, I can do whatever I want, this is just a crazy dream,’ and everyone else is like ‘what’re you doing?’

“I see,” Dave said. “Read us some of what you’ve got.”

“Oh, uh, here it is.” Sean shuffled his papers around. “I had this dream once, or at least I thought I did. I, uh, had that kind of, uh, floaty feeling you get when, uh, you dream, and that was, uh, enough to make me sure I was dreaming.”

Dave noted that Sean’s eyes weren’t moving as he ‘read.’ “Sounds interesting!” he said. “Did I mention that I’m collecting your drafts today?”
Sean paled a bit and sank in his seat.

“I think there’s potential there,” Mark said next to him. “You might be able to invert the form, play on the audience’s expectations. Good flow too.”

Excerpt from Noah Waverly’s entry in Who’s Who in American Graphic Arts (New York: Pequot Press, 2005):

Noah Waverly was born in Cascade, MI on January 13, 1953, to Emmett, a schoolteacher, and Rebecca, a homemaker. The Waverly family had lived in the Cascade area for more than three generations, and both Noah’s parents were graduates of nearby Osborn College. Noah grew up in Deerville, a short distance from Cascade, where his father taught mathematics.

Noah Weatherby hadn’t been seen since his comic strip ended, and I was determined to interview him for the capstone thesis of my journalism degree.

Professor Legrand hadn’t been enthusiastic about my idea. “What if you can’t find this man?” he’d said. “After all, he hasn’t had an interview in ten years.”

I’d flashed a confident grin and pushed the form he had to sign across the desk. “I’m just a student,” I said. “What could possibly be wrong with something only you and I are going to read? Besides, even if I get the run-around, I can still write about it.”

Of course, once Legrand was done with it and had assigned me my final grade, who’s to say the Times or the Post wouldn’t be interested? It would be quite a coup to start my professional career, and the fact that I loved Weatherby’s work would help make the writing sparkle.

Noah was a quiet student, and led a relatively undistinguished academic career, though he was active in drawing cartoons for the school newspaper and yearbook. He later attended Osborn College, studying education with an art minor—his parents recall that he wanted to be an art teacher—and drew editorial cartoons for the student-run Osborn Beacon and occasionally for the Cascade Herald.

I had fond memories of the bizarre world Weatherby had painted for me every Sunday—eye-poppingly colorful adventures and flights of fancy, as Keith and Harry jetted across the universe, confronted bizarre aliens, wrestled dinosaurs, and plotted world domination without ever leaving their shared yard. It had been something of a bad influence on me in my formative years—I tried to form my own neighborhood anti-girl club, and begged my parents to build me a treehouse despite the fact that we had nothing bigger than a lavender bush.

I snickered at the memory as I pulled into central Deerville and parked in front of the local whistle-stop café, thinking of the strip where Keith had gotten stuck in a square of wet concrete after trying to make an impression of the seat of his pants.

Have you ever seen a movie with an audition montage? The kind where it quickly cuts from one awful aspiring actor to another, and throwing in the director’s horrified reactions for good measure, despite his best efforts to maintain his composure?

My first conferences were like that this past year.

It’s something I carried over from Osborn College–over there, we were expected to be the kinder, gentler “good cop” teachers to the “bad cops” that did unpleasant things like fail students and give tests. Composition was about growing your students’ writing abilities, not fascist grades.

Of course, I assigned the fascist grades anyway, and just took care to document each step thoroughly, but the idea of a face-to-face conference before each paper was due stuck with me, since freshmen who might otherwise hand in a piece of shit can sometimes be cajoled into improving their work if the instructor is right there.

To get things rolling, I had assigned the kids a movie analysis paper. We didn’t have time to read a novel, and they all would have watched the movie anyway, so I drew up a list of critically acclaimed movies that met the most crucial criteria of all: I liked them.

The first thing students would do was claim they didn’t have any idea what to write.

“I just don’t know what to write about,” said Ted, who had chosen Braveheart.

“Well, consider the character of William,” I said. “What was his motivation? Why did he do what he did?”

Ted shrugged. “Because he hated the English. That’s all I’ve got right now.”

“Well,” I asked, “Why did William hate the English?”

“Because they were the bad guys,” Ted said.

“Did you even watch the movie, or just read the back of the DVD case?” I wanted to ask.

“Think harder,” I said. Of course, I invariably did all the thinking, using guided language to get the student to realize, seemingly of their own free will, that William Wallace hated the English because they robbed him of the oppurtunity to live a simple life and raise a family.

Then there were the people that actually watched the movies, but whose mental dictionaries had an entry for “analysis” that read “see: summary.”

“I’m doing pretty good,” said John, handing me his draft. It felt heavy enough to be the requisite three pages, but that could be deceiving.

My trained comp instructor’s eye zoomed over it: “John Nash is a college student. He is having a hard time coming up with an idea. He doesn’t go to class, just hangs around with his roommate. Then he comes up with his original idea and..” I flipped to the end. “…and he starts ignoring his hallucinations, and John Nash is able to save his beautiful mind.”

“Do you have any questions about what an analysis entails?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Do you need a little help in, uh, polishing your rough draft with more details?” That was always the key word: details. Why the hell did John Nash do all that stuff? I know that he did it. I saw the damn movie in the theater when it came out.

“Nope.”

“Do you need me to roll this up as tight as I can and shove it up your ass?” I should have said. Instead, I read through the entire thing asking that magic question–why?–like a five-year-old. The conference time I had with the students was the only time when I could be sure those questions were being asked, and I meant to make the most out of it.

“Calm down,” Shaun said. “Harvey gives the same damn speech every quarter.”

His words didn’t calm Aaron’s shakes. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“Look, I’ll do a play by play if it’ll make you feel better. First he’ll tell us we’re the greatest thing since Jesus invented sliced bread.”

Harvey climbed up on one of the meeting room tables, using it as an impromptu stage even as it wobbled dangerously. “First, let me say I’m honored–privileged, really–to have such a solid sales team behind me,” he said.

“Then we’ll hear how we stink like a Manhattan dump on a hot July morning,” Shaun muttered.

“But our solidarity is meaningless if we don’t deliver results,” Harvey continued, pumping his fist in the air as if he’d scored some kind of touchdown. “I look at our numbers from the last fiscal year, and there’s a little disappointment there.”

“There’ll be a touch of a challenge next,” Shaun whispered. He paused, thoughtfully adding: “Maybe a little us-versus-them.”

“Rutherford’s team has exceeded their last quarterly profits for five quarters running. Are we going to let those pansies on the 57th floor take our lunch money?” Weak cries of “No!” issued from the assembled sales staff.

“Then the inane comparison to selling retail products and war,” said Shaun, “full of reminders that the closest he ever came to military service was owning a G. I. Joe.”

“All great battlefield commanders lead their armies personally, so I will be in the trenches along with you the entire way!”

The town was lit with a strange light, the sort that sometimes appears just before a sunset storm. Everything flashed an unhealthy shade of orange, nothing more so than the belfry of the old church.

Even though it’s been all but abandoned when the newer one was built, somehow the sinister twilight had buffed out the cracked and broken facade. It wasn’t a homely visage, or even an imposing one–rather, there was a deep and abiding feel of wrongness about the structure, the exact opposite of what one should feel upon beholding a small-town tabernacle.

Yet Fay had run in there, clear as day, before the light overtook the world, and the belfry had sent clouds of dust through its windows to mark her passage. Who could say what she’d do in her disturbed state?

There was only one way forward: up and after her.

Everything was bright colors, smiling faces, and infectious salsa music.

Donovan stood up on the bar to address the assemblage. “My friends!” he cried. “Through adversity and times of utmost trial, we have persevered. Now is the time to wash all that away with laughter.”

I weaved my way through the crowd, unable to keep from grinning or bobbing a little to the music. Sanderson was there, and Lowell, still arguing over their silly real estate development. Mary’d had her baby, finally, and Sean was beside her with pictures, flashing them to all passersby whether or not they demonstrated a speck of interest. Even Richard sat at the bar, having an animated conversation with some minor functionary while liquor flowed freely into glass after glass.

The person I’d most wanted to see, though, wasn’t at the bar or on the dance floor but on the balcony outside, alone.

“Tell me something, Bethany,” Karl said at my approach. “How do they do it? Celebrate in there, after everything that’s happened? Everyone we lost? Is it wrong that I don’t want to drink and dance after that?”

I handed over my drink, which he gratefully drained, and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “The way I see it, they’re all in there with everyone else. Kim’s at the bar ordering another one of those ridiculous mixed drinks of hers, the kind with no alcohol. Mark’s hitting on anything without a ring on as well as a few that do. The others as well. I think you can see it too, if you look hard enough.”

Karl nodded. “If there was anyplace out there they’d be, at least in spirit, it’s here,” he sniffed. “They wouldn’t want me out here moping like a refugee from a spring prom.”

“I don’t either,” I said. “C’mon, let’s go back to our friends. Alive or dead, everyone’s together tonight.”

“Why do you think everyone is being so cagey? They’re protecting something.”

Kevin waved his arm, but the fever-addled could manage only a feeble swat.

Fiona continued, never breaking her gaze. “This is bigger than you realize. Maybe bigger than you can realize.”

“You…you’re just a fever dream…” Kevin mumbled weakly.

“Who’s that you’re talking to?” Marcia said in the next room. “You need your rest!”

“No. This place, that’s the fever dream. The tortured hallucinations of something we can’t comprehend.” Fiona approached, hand outstretched. “Come with me.”

“No…no,” moaned Kevin. “I’m not listening anymore. Even my own subconscious won’t give me a straight answer.”

Her stare didn’t waver, but Fiona began to grow agitated. “I’m trying to save you, can’t you understand that? What does the truth matter if you can’t understand it?”

“No…”

Marcia entered the room carrying a stack of hot towels. “These’ll have you right as rain soon enough. Who were you talking to?”

“F-Fiona…”

“Well, you’re in a bad state now, but not so bad as to be talking to the dead.”