Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Danya wasn’t terribly good with firearms, but the rules of her order forbade open use of elemental power among the uninitiated (she, along with many of the younger initiates, glibly referred to this as the “Harry Potter Rule”). Many cantrips involved a small projectile, a sudden burst of speed, and maybe a flash and crack for theatricality–not unlike a gunshot.

So by loading a pistol with blanks and heading down to the Rio de Janiero shooting range (creatively named after the January River that wound through downtown Sutton, Ohio), was a way to practice in public without much suspicion. And, if an assailant threatened on a lonely winter’s night, who could have told the difference between a clean gunshot and an Invocation of Stony Ignition and Animation?

She was enjoying herself, and attempting to draw a star on the paper target using Invocations of Base Metals From Air combined with Invocations of Airy Speed, when a shooter in the next booth leaned over.

“You have wonderful aim. Where’d you learn to handle a pistol?”

My office hours tended to attract three kinds of students:

First was the OCD Overachiever. You know the type: straight-A’s since they’ve been getting grades, always going the extra mile to ensure the streak remains unbroken. OCD Overachievers would usually stop by to prove how Committed and Dependable they were, and to establish a rapport with me so I would be less likely to grade them harshly. If I wanted smoke blown up my ass, I’d have been at home with a pack of cigarettes and a short length of hose; nevertheless, they were something of an ego boost.

Next was the Needy Wheedler. They typically needed my signature on something or other, usually something from the athletic department or one of the variety of student offices that managed academic probation or at-risk students. Needy Wheedlers had to get my signature to play polo against State, or to avoid expulsion, or something along those lines. They’d get very nervous if I didn’t sign the forms immidiately, even more so if I began asking questions or musing about what the criteria for judgment were. As long as my John Hancock was on that all-important slip of paper at the end, they didn’t paricularly care–which could be kind of fun as I led them through roundabout conversations and red herrings to claim their prize.

Finally, and most commonly, was the Desperate Bargainer. They typically showed up after a major assignment or test, desperate to dredge up some extra credit or other way to stave off imminent failure. Often, I’d never seen them in class before the assignment was due, and then they were in my office, trying to be my best friend or telling a sob story about how success in my class was the only thing keeping their family off the street and paying for little Jimmy’s insulin.

Macy was a Desperate Bargainer, one of the most desperate I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t until later that I realized what exactly it was underlaying it all.

“We call it the Cabinet of Horrors, you know,” the nurse said.

Jeremy’s eyes widened. “You’re making that up.”

“Oh no. It was donated to the hospital by Dr. Julius Rhinehart, a notorious rogue and quack who owned what they used to call a ‘cabinet of curiosities,’ a collection of wierd and deformed plants, animals, and even…body parts.”

“For real?” Jeremy was still and attentive for the first time since he’d been admitted.

“Some say that the ‘curiosities’ in Dr. Rhinehart’s cabinet were stitched together from failed experiments or patients that his vile, poisonous patent medicines killed.”

“They wouldn’t let him get away with that,” Jeremy said confidently, though there was a hint of quaver in his voice.

“Maybe not today, but back in the old days, well…anything went! Dr. Rhinehart was on the hospital’s board of directors even though he didn’t have a proper degree, after all, and people were happy to look the other way if it kept the money coming.”

“How’d the hospital get it, then?” Jeremy asked. “Is all that…stuff…still inside it?”

“Rhinehart eventually died after taking some of his own medicine, and he left the cabinet to the hospital. As for what’s inside of it…well, I’ve never seen it open!”

Jeremy had more questions–and barely even noticed his IV change–but no answers were forthcoming, and the nurse sauntered out with a knowing look on her face.

“Janice, that was mean,” one of her fellows said. “Scaring the poor kid like that.”

“If it means he’s quiet and still, I’ll tell him Dracula himself is buried under the west parking lot.”

Of course, there was the matter of the substance’s alchemical properties, as well. Johnathan had been experimenting with its rational, scientific aspects, but was quite thrilled to take it “off the books” to see what its interaction with the fantastical might be. He wasn’t so naive as to expect it to the lead-to-gold bullet ameteurs had so long sought, but he had enough of the Knack to see that the ore was particularly drawn to the ley line which ran through the laboratory.

His thoughts were interrupted on seeing a light on in the lab.

No, not a light–a flashlight, swinging to and fro, accompanied by scrapings, crashes, and other generally unhealthy sounds.

Creeping up as silently as he could, Johnathan eased the door open and flicked on the overhead light, illuminating a scene of utter ruin with a slim intruder at its heart.

“May I ask what you’re doing redecorating my laboratory at the witching hour?” he asked. Behind his back, one hand began to silently go through the motions of a holding charm.

“Ah…janitor in training?”

“Nice try.”

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.