Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Let me guess. Looking for the Golden City?”

“Yes, yes,” Arn said. “Finally, a man with answers. Can you tell me how to get there?”

“You have already arrived,” the man said, sweeping his arms. “You’re standing amidst it.”

With that horrible proclamation, a veil seemed to tear away from Arn’s sight. He suddenly beheld pieces of stone, long-forgotten walls, and other manmade shapes that had been twisted up in the overgrowth that lined the King’s Road.

“Yes, the city fell close to a thousand years ago, but stories do not always reflect this,” the man sighed. “The road is only kept clear because it is on a direct route from Eversong to Fillkirke.”

“W…why are you here, then?” Arm mumbled.

“I came here long ago, a young man in search of the Golden City. I learned of its history and fall, and in my twilight years I like to give counsel and aid where I can–learning the languages of the seekers that still come, and offering them a roof overhead before their return.”

People talk about flashbulb memories, moments frozen like amber in the mind. Cathy had always envied them.

The three examples people were always giving were Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, and 9/11. Cathy had missed them all. She hadn’t even been a zygote in 1941, and had been barely four years old in 1964–her mom said she had been asleep most of the day. Cathy had slept through September 11, too, having just come back San Diego and jet-lagged to hell.

Who, then, could have guessed that her first flashbulb memory would come at 11:47am on an otherwise unremarkable Saturday in June?

A puff piece, that’s all. “Last person born in the 1880’s still kicking.” Ought to entice a few readers, young turks who could barely comprehend someone born in the 1980’s, let alone 100 years prior.

But Agnes Ethel Wilson, age 116, had other ideas.

“Another newspaperman,” she said.

Rigby was taken aback, as the woman’s eyes were visibly clouded with cataracts, and he was wearing very casual clothes. “How did you know that?” he asked.

“When you been around as long as I have, you learn lots of things. Sound of a newsman’s footsteps ain’t the same as the sound of a milkman’s.”

“I…I suppose…” Rigby murmured, astonished.

“Ha!” Agnes croaked. “I’s just teasing with you, son. Orderly said you was coming.”

“Ha! Nonsense,” Shelly laughed. “Let me tell you something: I can understand people who were raised on it believing in that Chinese astrology crap, but there’s only one reason anyone without a epicanthus would buy into it. Tell me, Coop, what year were you born in?”

“1984. Year of the Tiger.”

“I thought so,” Shelly said. “People with good animals are always all about Chinese astrology. I was born in 1983, Year of the Pig. Oh, you Tigers and Dragons talk a good game about the pig standing for ‘honesty, passion, intelligence,” but if you were born in the Year of the Rooster you’d be crowing a different tune.”

This post is part of the September 2011 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is to respond to a picture.

Picture: Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper

“So, is this the lady in red you were telling me about?” he said. “The one who wanted that book of yours, and the one who—might I add—I encouraged you to contact about it?”

“Allison Flint,” she said, extending her hand.

“Charlie Bulforth.” Charlie grasped and shook it. “Flint, huh?” he chortled. “Not likely. I know a Durant when I see one. We’ve still got some of the old posters in the station…the ones your dad put out when you ran away a few years back, remember?”

“I was fifteen,” Allison said coldly. “Hardly a few years ago.”

“Fair enough,” Charlie said, shoveling a forkful of pie into his maw. “I know you think you’re being clever with that alias, ma’am, but it doesn’t do any good. I hear society folks talking all the time about how scandalous it is that Mr. Durant’s only daughter’s gone over to the reds.”

“I see,” Allison said. “Do they also talk about how scandalous it was when your and your friends broke up our march the other year with clubs? I seem to remember you alternating between using your bullhorn to shout and to batter unarmed marchers.”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
BigWords
robeiae
pezie
Ralph Pines
Cath
AbielleRose
Darkshore
dolores haze
Alynza
pyrosama

The music was still there, the bright jazz issuing forth from Cecil’s coronet.

But he found himself remembering less and less of each performance, though the raw spots on his hands were a testament that they’d happened. Between the dressing room–and all the pills, poweders, syringes, and smokes it contained–and the curtain, everything was, well, a blur.

Not only that, though. The music itself seemed to be different. Cecil had spoken with the audience, and they assured him that his playing was the same or better than ever. But what little he could remember of the performances wasn’t dizzying or joyful. No, something harsh and dissonant, straight out of Leo Ornstein, had crept into Cecil’s music.

And he was the only one who could hear it.

Easy money.

An artillery shell slammed into one of the adobe buildings across the compound. The defenders within, who had been returning fire with small arms, went out as a fine mist.

Easy money. That’s what Campbell had said.

The first line of skirmishers arrived, disembarking from a BMP. Most of them were killed or wounded, but there was far less, and far less accurate, fire from the rebel positions than there had been moments ago.

Easy money. A tottering autocratic regime, enthusiastic rebels rising up all over the country. Only a few firefights and then cash and poontang from grateful locals.

A second BMP–or, rather, a Chinese-made copy bought and paid for not three weeks ago–disgorged its squad. Bull raked them with heavy machine gun fire, but these weren’t the militia they’d fought earlier. They were disciplined, organized, took cover, laid suppressing fire. Polymer helmets, gas masks, and Chinese kevlar.

Easy money.

Shawn tossed the manuscript onto his desk. “I’m gonna be honest with you, Marilyn. It’s good, but it’ll never get picked up.”

Marilyn cocked her head and gave her editor the best ‘you’re-making-no-sense’ stare she could muster. “One doesn’t seem to follow from the other, Shawn. If it’s good, it should be able to be picked up, right?”

“Listen,” Shawn sighed, puffing out his cheeks. “There’s exactly two kinds of young adult literature that sell these days. And this isn’t either one of them.”

“It’s unique!” Marilyn protested.

“The publishers are looking for the next Harry Potter, or at least a knockoff good enough to inspire a major motion picture,” Shawn said. “Kids discovering secret powers and fighting evil, preferably with just enough spice so people with public hair might read it as well.”

“But a more realistic…”

“Right, that’s the other kind,” said Shawn. “Hard-hitting novels about kids coming to terms with things. No kid in the universe will ever read it on their own, but it’ll win awards and get assigned as a course reading and maybe even cook up a little sales-boosting controversy.”

“I think that…”

Shawn tapped the manuscript with a bony finger. “This is too in the middle. Realistic kids, underground killer squids, sibling rivalry, multidimensional travel? It’ll never sell.”

“When I played Carnegie Hall in…it must have been 1918 or 1919 or so…the result was a near riot,” Hanna said. She lit a fresh cigarette but didn’t inhale, letting the smoke wreathe her head. “My own composition–very dissonant, very futurist, full of radical tone clusters and other such nonsense. The result was a near riot.”

“They didn’t like it?” Berne asked.

“It was one thing for young turks like Ornstein and Schoenberg and Scriabin to play music like that. But a woman? There was an editorial in the Times the next day saying that I was childishly beating my piano and letting my handlers–my male handlers–transform it into something avant-garde.”

“What did you do?”

“I sent them a copy of one of my sheets with all the music there in full notation. Never did get a response, but I loved the fact that little old me could case such a sensation.”

Bern delicately cleared his throat and swatted away some encroaching smoke. “Why’d you give up performing then?”

“Two things, really,” Hanna sighed. “For one, I grew bored with futurism and dissonance. Experimenting with tonality…now that was enough to get me attacked from all sides. The futurists who’d made me their poster child weren’t happy, and the people I’d irritated in the first place weren’t either.”

“And the second thing?”

“I fell in love.”

Doug had his best ‘manager face’ on. “There aren’t enough orders in the middle of the day to keep everyone busy.”

“I know that.”

“You can’t work nights because of your class schedule this semester. So I need you to do something to pick up the slack.” Doug held out the Pizzazz the Parakeet costume and a sign advertising 6 pizzas for under $6! Pick-up only!

“Look, I appreciate the thought, Doug,” I said gingerly, “but I’d rather be fired than wear that thing in 100-degree heat waving at cars.” It was like being the ultimate pariah–cars virtually swerved into the other lane to avoid having to look at someone in a costume, and people on the sidewalk were about as polite with Pizzazz the Parakeet as they’d be with Hermann Goering.

Worst of all, the bird’s mouth was open, clearly revealing my face to all who cared to look.

“Fine, then, you’re fired,” Doug said. “Clean out your cubby.”

I tried calling his bluff by walking away, hoping to hear his voice from behind me like in the movies.

I made it about five steps.

“All right,” I said, snatching the costume. “I’ll do it.” The specter of unpaid loans, evictions, and–worse–moving back in with my parents were too horrific to ignore.