Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“This is Vasily Albanov, a Russian as you might expect and the best forger in the city,” said Sedena. “He once crafted me a visa that let me cut through North Korea and Iran on the same trip.”

“To be fair, the Iranian border guard’s eyesight wasn’t so good,” laughed Albanov.

“And this is Constantine Retewo, our scrounger,” continued Sedena. “He’s a Lesbian and a veteran of just about every Middle Eastern conflict you can imagine. Scrounged for Hezbollah and the IDF in the same conflict.”

“I’m sorry…what did you just say?” Peter said delicately. “He’s a …lesbian?”

“Yes,” Retewo growled. “I was born on the isle of Lesbos. Do you have a problem with that?”

“I…well, it’s just that…it seemed…”

“Oh, I know,” said Retewo. “I know just what you thought. Those goddamn girly-girlies have stolen the good name of my island, and I have to hear the same damn jokes every time I am introduced! It is a good Orthodox island and a good Orthodox name!”

Peter drew back, startled.

“I love it when he does that,” Sedena said to Peter with a low-key smile. “Why do you think I don’t introduce him as a Greek?”

“The Ricitill knocks politely at the door,” said Sean.

“What the hell, man?” Jerry cried, his eyes–inflamed by passion and pizza–visible over Sean’s dungeon master screen. “Since when does a monster knock? And even given the remote possibility it does knock, what are the chances it does so politely?”

“And what kind of name is ‘Ricitill?'” Frank said from the left, waving his pewter token. “It sounds like they were trying to make it all menacing with flavors of ‘rictus’ and ‘kill’ but it sounds like a ‘sit down and shut the hell up’ prescription medicine to me!”

“Guys, guys,” Sean said, making the ‘cool it’ gesture they’d agreed upon before the game started. “It’s a real monster, from the ‘Chitin and Claws’ sourcebook. You want me to get it out?”

“Better do it,” sighed Matt, on the right. “Otherwise we’ll be arguing in the inn all night.”

Sean produced the book, opened to a two-page spread beginning on p. 65. “See? Monster always knocks politely since it can’t attack with its acid claws until properly invited inside.”

“Stupid,” Frank said. “All the monsters in the book and you pick that mishmash? It’s like they took half the entry on vampires and half the entry on rust monsters and pasted them together to pad the thing out!”

About to respond–whether through logical and cogent argument or smacking Frank with the rolled-up manual, he hadn’t decided–Sean was interrupted by a soft knock at the basement door.

“W-who is it?”

“We need to resort to the Dentch expediency,” Sawyer said grimly.

He was met by blank stares.

“We draw a line over yonder,” he continued after a moment. “And make the run. Whoever the five slowest runners are get a double-tap because they’re either succumbing to infection or because they’d just bog us down.”

“Saywer, have a seat while I tell you all the things that are terribly wrong with that idea,” said Cunningham, “starting with the fact that there are exactly five of us.”

“I didn’t say it was going to be easy. But the zombies aren’t going to go easy on us either.”

Reginald spat a mouthful of crumpet to the ground. “Horrid!” he cried. “No spring, no texture, no taste! These Yanks call this a crumpet?” The point was driven home by a swift kick to the end table that held the tray, scattering baked goods all over the poolside.

“Why, exactly, did you feel compelled to do that?” said Nigel, looking at the carnage over the top of his newspaper.

“Those were not fit to eat,” Reginald groused. “Not by man or by beast. The management will hear about this immediately.”

Nigel folded his Times of London across his lap. “So you’re taking a stand,” he said.

“Yes,” Nigel replied.

“You’re taking a stand against this,” Nigel said, indicating the spilled and spat crumpets with his paper. “All the injustice and violence and man’s inhumanity to man in this world of ours makes no nevermind to you, but you”re taking a stand against this.”

“Correct. A crumpet stand.”

Nigel sighed and reopened the paper. “Just making sure we’re on the same page.”

This post is part of the December Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is to write hint fiction: a story 25 words or less.

“Why do you keep requesting that same waltz?” the bandleader cried.
“Because I wrote it,” the old man said, “and it reminds me of her.”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own hint fiction:
AuburnAssassin (direct link to the relevant post)
jonjon.benjamin (direct link to the relevant post)
rmgil04 (direct link to the relevant post)
CScottMorris (direct link to the relevant post)
Proach (direct link to the relevant post)
Aheila (direct link to the relevant post)
AimeeLaine (direct link to the relevant post)
Regan Leigh (direct link to the relevant post)
HillaryJacques (direct link to the relevant post)
Ad. (direct link to the relevant post)
Regypsy (direct link to the relevant post)
Dolores Haze (direct link to the relevant post)
Semmie (direct link to the relevant post)
ElizaFaith13 (direct link to the relevant post)
ania (direct link to the relevant post)
JHUK (direct link to the relevant post)
Angyl78 (direct link to the relevant post)
GradyHendrix (direct link to the relevant post)

“What’s taking so long?” Strasser barked. Her knuckles were white around the pickaxe in her hands.

“Can you do this?” Donnor snapped back. “Do you know how to read Old High German? Spelling was fast and loose back then, and handwriting wasn’t exactly high on the legibility scale either!”

“Read it as you decipher it, then,” said Strasser, her tone unmollified. “What have you got so far?”

A band of knights on crusade did this way come, separated from their fellows in a strange and hostile land.

Gelanier obliged.

Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to put Paul Goerdt into the Infectious Diseases course.

Everybody knows that pre-meds are apt to take home a new disease every week–mistaking hunger pangs for the onset of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and nonsense like that. But if anyone in the provost’s office had read over Goerdt’s psych profile (which he helpfully included in his application) in addition to his grades, they might have suggested something a bit more appropriate, like lab research on rats. But no.

Goerdt, as anyone who knew him could testify, had a way of internalizing everything to the nth degree coupled with periods of extreme mania (though without any depression). Coupled with his pessimism, extreme intelligence, and decided lack of respect for the niceties of civilized life, incidents were bound to occur.

So when his fellow classmates were using an electric thermometer to make sure they hadn’t contracted this or that, Goerdt was running on a rec center treadmill to try and pass the (imaginary) toxins out of his body faster. When asked by the campus DPS why that entailed jogging with no clothes, they were assured that it was to guard against the threat of reabsorbtion and to make sure that every endocrine gland was fully employed.

When Jacques-Charles Dominique de l’Arago, duc d’Tiselly, converted to the Cathar faith in 1201, it represented an enormous boon for them. As a powerful Languedoc nobleman, he brought land, troops, official institutional support, and perhaps most importantly, prestige. Conversions of Catholics in Tiselly proceeded at a highly accelerated rate, despite rumors that the duc d’Tiselly had not fully embraced the faith himself.

When the Albigensian Crusade began in 1209, the crusading armies descended on Tiselly in full force, their lords having been promised the duc’s lands if they were purged of heresy. Insinuations to the contrary aside, the duc d’Tiselly certainly fought hard enough in defense of the Cathars; while armies flowed about his lands like water, the Chateau d’Tiselly held out until 1215, falling shortly before Toulouse. All those within the chateau walls were massacred.

And the small golden casket that the duc d’Tiselly had carried with him at the time of his conversion? It was lost in the struggle, and buried beneath the detritus of savage battle.

“I served at Al-Qadmuto and Al-Babiels,” said Garlick. The lingering scars of tropical disease caused his voice to grow more strained and gravelly the longer he spoke.

“Were…were those on the Western Front?” Samuel said.

Garlick laughed until the bandages across his chest constricted the sound into a painful rattle. “What do they teach you children in school these days? Al-Qadmuto is in Transjordan and Al-Babiels is in Iraq.”

“I’m sorry,” Samuel said. He finished changing the bandages on Garlick’s left leg and moved onto his right. “I wasn’t alive during the war, and we only learned about the Western Front in school.”

“That’s because we won the war there,” Garlick said. “Everywhere else was more or less a miserable failure or sideshow. My unit probed against the Turks in Transjordan–with the way people talk these days, it’s a wonder anyone remembers that we ever fought the Turks alongside the Germans–and got our arses handed to us. Fell back to Al-Babiels and the rutting Turks blasted us with mustard gas until we surrendered. They’d gotten it parcel post from their friends in Berlin.”

“If you surrendered,” Samuel said, “how did you defeat the enemy?”

Garlick gave another dry rattling laugh. “Defeat? We were the ones defeated, lad. My boys and I spent the rest of the war in a prison camp, and our boys didn’t get so much as a spoonful of victory on that front until Allenby.”

17 December 20–

Sir,

We have recieved your letter of the 2nd of this month, and regret to inform you that Inctel Inc. cannot be held responsible for side effects of its products’ use as laid out in the end user license agreement. By opening and using the device in question, you agreed to be bound by the terms of the EULA, and as such the company and its affiliates bear no responsibility for what you describe in your communications. Nevertheless, we can offer some suggested solutions as long as you understand that these do not represent any admission of wrongdoing and that you fully assume any and all consequences resulting from their use.

Some users have complained that, while phase shifting, they have accidentally created causality loops that appear to strand them in a skein of time where they do not and never have existed, or experienced certain other radical deviations from their point of departure. Returning the unit to its default factory setting and pressing the power button until the system reboots has worked for many of these cases. Returning to a skein prior to any noticed changes and then moving forward in increments may also work.

As for your complaint about “specters,” some users have complained about similar phenomena. Manually adjusting the phase setting on your unit may work, as hallucinations may result if the default has “drifted” into the positive or negative plane. Customers have also reported success using the anti-time bubble option at maximum setting, but this is not recommended and will void your warranty is still covered.

I am, respectfully.
[signature blurred]
“Inctel is Success.”