Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Sneezes are like fingerprints–utterly unique to each person.

Some men have such powerfully overblown sneezes that they echo for minutes afterwards, and the neighbors telephone to say ‘bless you’. Sneezes that are too thunderous to be natural; it’s obvious that this kind of man, in days gone by, had sneezing contests with their buddies over a pint of snuff.

Likewise, certain women have sneezes so proper, so dainty, that it’s obvious they’ve been rehersed for hours in front of a mirror. Such a powderpuff ‘ah-choop!’ is best left to poodles.

Charles had once been told by an old girlfriend with an obsession for hygine that his sneeze was ‘perfectly average.’

“You’re the only person I know who actually says ‘ah-choo’ when they sneeze.” she’d said. “Jim used to wake me up when he sneezed.”

Rolling his eyes at another reference to his girlfriend’s ex, Charles had said “I thought everybody did.”

“Nope. It’s not unique. People like to be unique. Your sneeze–perfectly average.”

Perfectly average described many things about Charles, not the least of which was the minivan he was driving down the interstate nearly fourteen years later to the day.

And he was sneezing a lot.

The screen blinked, and Jenny accepted the incoming transmission.

“Low-priority target in your sector,” a voice said. “Level 2 compensation, plus bonuses if applicable.”

“Ah, what the hell,” said Jenny. A Level 2 was barely worth getting up for, but with a nice bonus it’d pay for a generous Thai take-out dinner. Granted, that was more time on the treadmill or another pricey Fem-A-Slim injection, but she was hungry.

Jenny opened her bedroom closet arms locker. “The Denel?” she muttered. “Nah, for a Level 2, let’s stick with the Accuracy.” She contemplated putting on a robe, but the transmission had been audio only. A t-shirt was more than enough.

The sniper rifle was well-oiled, and Jenny’s practiced hands assembled and loaded it quickly. Her window slid open at the touch of a button, with the gun mounting easily to the lug on the sill. Within a few moments, she had the target in sight–a portly man making a poor attempt to make himself inconspicuous.

“Boom,” said Jenny. “Easy money.”

Bert’s team specialized in “turning around” houses—buying them cheap on good land, fixing them up, and then selling them at a profit. If they’d been doing business the normal way, he never would have looked twice at the ad in the paper, but sometimes business was slow, and the team had to be willing to take jobs for hire.

He’d gotten a call from Harvey, the realtor who Bert did most of his Cascade business with. A vacation cabin, smack dab in the middle of nowhere, at the end of a two-track road that didn’t even have a name, only a vague description.

“Who the hell’d want to vacation that far out?” he’d said.

“Hey, some people like to get away. Maybe they were Australian looking for a bit of that homely feel. The point is, Bert, the place is sitting with the next of kin, and they’re ready to give it up as a derelict. I’ve already got some interested buyers lined up—more Aussies, maybe, who knows—but they’ve all got ten thumbs. City types, you know.”

“I know,” Bert had grunted. Part of the beauty of his job was that the noise and pointy things tended to keep people away.

There was no question of who was to blame: Thompson has said it himself, in blood-red oil paint wired to his neighbors’ fence. Gilvery had done it—or, rather, had driven Thompson to. That much was plain as day.

The real wrinkle was that no one knew who Gilvery was, or what they could possibly have done to provoke such a response.

That morning found Vincent Gaines strolling down Main Street in Porthaven, hands in pockets and a satisfied grin on his face.

“Congratulations, Mr. Comissioner of Schools,” called Sam Joliet, Porthaven’s premier greengrocer, from his storefront. “I voted for you, so I knew you’d win.”

“Thanks, Sam,” said Vincent. “I can’t say I’m too happy myself, though. Whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth. Unless that’s the rutabagas I bought from you yesterday, that is.”

“If the rutabaga leaves a sour taste in your mouth, it’s just doing its job,” Joliet laughed. “No, I mean Thompson. Run into him?”

Vincent sighed. “I’m not sure I want to see him. You saw the posters that he put up?”

“Which ones? The ones that accused you of being an anarchist, or the ones that said you’d spawned a mulatto bastard in Port au Prince?”

It was 1990. I was 27; I was invincible. And I was working as a courier for International Solutions, LLG. Never heard of them? I’m not surprised; the company was never really interested in publicity, only in getting jobs done and stashing checks in the Cayman Islands. We specialized in getting things where they needed to go, no questions asked, signed and sealed, guaranteed.

Some of the IS couriers were about what you’d expect—tough, ex-military types with pistols under their shoulder, in their sock, jammed up their ass. They had their uses, but IS had found out that, in general, more shooting meant less profit, and the gung-ho Rambo types tended to shoot first and ask questions never. That’s where I came in.

I wasn’t a rippling sack of meat and the only gun I’d ever held had been at IS’s orientation, but the company was more interested in my tongue (silver, of course) and my eye (golden, I suppose, since I wore those terrible 1980’s shades all the time). My first orientation test had been to talk my way into a car-impound lot in LA; my second had been to deliver an unwanted package to a high-security area of my choosing. I passed the first by renting a limo and writing a bad check; I passed the second by studying an FAA badge and pretending I gave a shit about the Red Sox.

When he awoke, the doctor was nowhere in sight. But clearly someone had been by, since there was a folded piece of notebook paper in his lap.

“…a poem?”

Let me tell you the story of one Etaoin Shrdlu
Not a normal man like me or a normal man like you.
He was only present as a mistake some people made
Until it happened once too much and Etaoin up and stayed.
The printer was astonished and dropped his coffee cup
When Etaoin walked right in and asked him what was up.

It was signed, or perhaps titled, simply Shardborn.

I found myself waiting in his office with plenty of time to kill ans not a whole lot to look at save the mammoth bookcase behind the desk.

The volumes on the shelf ranged from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to the second edition of Integral Calculus. The bindings weren’t worn, and I got the feeling that these books were present not for the entertainment of their owner but rather served to intimidate any lesser minds who happened to glimpse the shelf’s contents.

“Maybe that’s his strategy,” I grumbled. “Sit people down and have his library intimidate them. Softens ’em up.”

Idly, from behind her counter, Leah watched the Sunday shoppers bring up their carts. Checking groceries didn’t require her full attention, so there was plenty of battery power left over to classify the customers by genre and genus.

Students from O’Knesyl College were easy to spot, as their carts were full of beer and things that only tasted good while drunk, like Cheez Doodles. They almost always paid by credit card, and the names on the card often didn’t match with the sex of the person using them.

Then there were the people who pulled into the “9-items-or-less” aisles with fully loaded shopping carts and the people who stood in regular lines to buy single bunches of bananas. Management had made it clear to Leah and everyone else that customers were not to be turned away no matter how grossly they exceeded the item limit; often those “express” lines moved slower than any other.

Most entertaining were the cart derbies that sometimes went on, when two shoppers noticed a short line or newly opened register and would dragrace for it, trailing screaming children and knocking down passersby as needed, all for an extra few moments. Maybe that’s why Nascar is so popular with our shoppers, Leah mused. It gives them the cutthroat racing skills they need to cut off other shoppers every Sunday.

Ever mindful of the story, told early and often, of her parents meeting in an ENGL 250 class, Susie had attempted to duplicate that magic in her own relationships. And, in the three subsequent years of frustration and heartbreak, she had noticed a few strange trends.

Like blueberries. Three of the last four men she’d dated had been fierce blueberry fans to the point of all but ordering them on pizza. Then there was the strange case of band–it seemed like every one of them was a current or former band member. And not “band” in the sense of “rock band” either, but full-on brass bands in high school, college, or beyond.

There was Chaz, for instance, a trumpet player for the Marching Emus, who was always sucking on a blueberry Dum-Dum. He’d left Susie for an old flame, sending a “Dear Joan” via text message. Then there was Gus, former clarinet section leader in high school and fierce patron of the blueberry muffins at Schneider’s Bakery. He’d decided that Pin Chakrabongse, the Thai girl in the textile arts program and a regular patron of the Intercultural Beauty Pageant held every summer, was a better match despite her loose command of English.

It got to the point where, when a potential suitor ordered blueberry pancakes at IHOP or began fingering along with the college fight song, Susie would, with weary resignation, begin looking for a way out.

“You can’t treat people like that,” Jerry cried, leaning forward in his seat and filling the camera. “Doesn’t matter who they are. He crossed the line!”

“Uh, okay,” the interviewer said, sounding every bit of their 16 years. “Could we get back to the…”

“No,” Jerry said. “I’m going to finish what I had to say, and you’re going to sit there and tape it for your class.”

Whispers were heard as the interviewer conferred with his cameraman and note-taker. “Kay,” the interviewer whispered, miserably.

“You don’t treat people like that. You just don’t. So I got to talking to some of my friends about how to set things right. And soon they got to talking with even more people. Seems like he and his made a fair share of enemies acting the way they did…but I bet they never thought they’d see twenty of us coming to put them down for good.”