Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

An unfamiliar

Sensation

Drifting through the eddies of life

An air of

Introspection

Watching lifetime worlds spin by

A feel of

Desolation

Sensing time like water slipping

A search for

Resolution

Looking forward, backward, on.

Every hardened spacer knows the ixar, the space-rats: small skittering creatures with seven legs and a hide that’s hairy between plates of chitin. Incredibly adaptable and able to withstand environments from a vacuum to a hothouse, they are regarded as pests aboard ships and ruthlessly eradicated. Populations of ixar have become established near most spaceports, though their original world of origin is unknown.

Far fewer know of the nuuixar, and even those tend to be tall tales passed around spacer bars after a few rounds of drinks.

For all intents and purposes, the nuuixar resemble the ixar and are easily mistaken for them. Whether this is a natural mimicry adaptation, an evolutionary relationship, or some form of shapeshifting has never been established. But unlike the ixar, the nuuixar are deeply intelligent and are capable of sophisticated tool use and communication on psionic wavelengths.

Hence there are dark tales of nuuixar posing as simple ixar in order to steal secrets, selling tradeship routes to pirates or sabotaging key components of stardrives. There are no confirmed cases–what pirate would admit to purchasing information from a space-rat?–but many a spacer adrift in a lifepod has blamed a nuuixar, real or imagined, for their plight.

As creatures of psionic capability, nuuixar reportedly are able to form a gestalt intelligence, exponentially increasing their powers when in close proximity. Some say they use this power to overtake unwary ships and pilot them deep into the galactic core, where they are preparing a massive fleet to make their presence one day known.

Something to consider the next time you set a trap loaded with Ixar-B-Gon.

Nobody had ever seen or spoken to the Elohim, but there was ample enough evidence for its presence. The settlement of Arden had very strict codes to be obeyed in placing buildings, growing vegetables, and just about any other activity that altered the tenor of town life. When someone violated those codes, the Elohim would act.

There was Mackay, for instance, the architect who built a magnificent building that clashed with the Arden codes on north-south orientation, maximum height, and colors to be avoided (his “temple” was bedecked in clashing neon orange and lime green). The morning after its completion, the Elohim had somehow moved the entire edifice into line with the rest of Arden, all 2000 tons of it. The exterior was freshly coated with white, and the towers were each cut off clean and razor-sharp–including the room where Mackay had been sleeping.

Thugs that operated brazenly within city limits, derelicts who slept on city streets, and preachers or evangelists of any kind all risked the Elohim’s wrath. They tended to disappear, leaving behind all their worldly possessions in a small heap. For some reason, the Elohim wouldn’t suffer vagrancy, crime, or the worship of any deity (including itself) within Arden.

Naturally there was rampant speculation about the nature and form of the Elohim, speculation which it seemed to tolerate. The only thing that people in Arden have been able to puzzle out–other than the Elohim’s obvious caprice and its love of certain rules that had been worked out by centuries of Ardenites–was that it sometimes changed its mind. The city had changed axes once, with all new construction being changed from east-west to north-south in the course of one night. Disappeared people occasionally reappeared, hideously scarred but with no memory of where they’d been.

But that was all before the Descent.

The first turn brought then from paved blacktop to gravel.

“What the hell?” groused Sunny. “How far out in the goddamn boondocks is this thing?”

“John knows the way,” said Elain from the passenger seat, indicating the taillights of the Celica ahead of them. “Just keep following him.”

The next turn tore away the gravel and left them on a hardpacked dirt road, a little squishy from the recent rain.

“Are you kidding? I just washed this thing.” Sunny glared at the moist earth ahead of them. “It’s going to look like we went out ‘muddin” like a bunch of hillbillies.”

Elain sighed. “More following John, less comment from the peanut gallery.”

A moment later, John’s Celica turned onto an even narrower dirt road, wide enough only for a single car and decidedly squashier than the last. Sunny tightened her hands around the wheel until her knuckles whitened.

“John knows where he’s going. He’ll get us there, you’ll see.” Elain kept her eyes riveted on the distant taillights.

The narrow road abruptly widened into a field that was laced with deep, furrowed tire tracks and pools of stagnant water. A squirrel lapping at one of the tiretrack ponds narrowly escapes a good waffling at the hands of Sunny’s left front tire, and Sunny herself squealed as streams of mud began to shoot up out of the wheel wells and splatter against the side of her car. It fishtaled slightly as it waddled across the field-they really were muddin’ now.

“My car-” Sunny shrieked.

“Just follow John.” Elain said through clenched teeth.

“My paint-”

“Just follow John.”

“My tires-”

“Just follow John!” Elain screamed it this time.

The muddy field abruptly ended at a lakeshore–probably the Sidras Reservoir. John’s Celica didn’t even slow down as it moved through the mire, leaving a deep and furrowed trail that rapidly pooled with cocoa-brown water.

It drove straight to the shore, into the water, and out of sight.

Sunny slammed on the brakes and her car oozed to a stop on the shore, just as a single bubble rose to the surface and popped where John’s Celica had gone in.

“Want me to keep following him?” she asked Elain.

This post is part of the May 2012 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “zompocalypse now”.

“I’m not crazy.” There was nothing, not even high-pitched screaming street corner gibberish, that sounded crazier than that statement, Dessie decided the moment she heard it.

“We don’t like to assign terms to things here,” the psychologist said. “Just tell me about these ‘reality shifts’ you’ve been seeing.”

“Well, everybody knows that I’m into macabre stuff like zombies in a big way,” said Dessie, excitedly. “I mean, my last birthday cake was green and it had little plastic body parts sticking out of it. I’ve got a full set of George Romero films, and a complete (signed!) first edition run of Zomcomix. That goes for like a hundred bucks on eBay, unsigned!”

“Uh-huh.” The psychologist’s old-fashioned fountain pen made an unpleasant scratching sound as it worked over his notebook. “Go on.”

“The other day I started seeing some zombies for real. I knew they were real because if anyone would know them by sight it would be me and because the Zombie Walk isn’t until next month. I’ve already got my costume, it squirts real fake blood and everything.” Dessie took a deep breath. “They chase me just like the do in the movies and I see a few people that I recognize only they’ve been zombified and now they’re trying to get me too.”

It sounded even crazier when she put it that way; Dessie was sure the psychologist was scratching something about hallucinations and paranoid delusions. “So you’re seeing them in your everyday life, then?” the psychologist said, sounding bored.

“No, not like they’re popping up in the normal world, no. It’s like the whole world goes 100% Dawn of the Dead 28 Days Later with the burnt-out buildings and the wrecked cars and even a few survivors with big guns on rooftops. It’s like I’m, I dunno, in a world where the long prophesied (and some people say, for me, long awaited but I don’t really think like that and want everybody to die or anything) zombie apocalypse happened a month or two ago. A total shift in my reality.”

“And this reality shifting happens…often?” The painful scratching of pen on expensive paper continued.

“At first there was a good long gap between them, so much so that I thought the first one might just have been a hallucination or an episode maybe caused by stress or overwork (it’s finals time) but then it happened again and I think but I’m not sure that the time between them is getting shorter.” Dessie took another deep breath. “So I’m not crazy, I’m just slipping into a zombie world and spending more and more time there.”

More pen scratching, but no further word from the psychologist.

“Well, what do you think? You’re writing that I’m crazy on that thing, aren’t you? Aren’t you? I just told you in plain English that I’m not crazy (even though I know how crazy that sounds) and I set out what’s been happening very plainly (even though I know that sounds even crazier than me saying I’m not crazy), so the least you could do is say something reassuring along the lines of ‘I’m not crazy.'”

The scratchings were particularly violent now, as if the psychologist were jamming his pen into the paper in a frenzy of analysis.

“Well?” Dessie said. She sat up on the diagnosis couch and looked over at the psychologist. “It’s very rude of you to sit there and write while there’s an ever-present chance I might-”

Looking up, the psychologist revealed a dead and chalk-grey face, scratching and chewing at what appeared to be his secretary’s arm, still clutching a little bit of pink memo. The office was a wreck, with peeling wallpaper and a hole in the ceiling, while the diagnosis couch was red not from velvet but from blood.

“-slip into the zombieworld again.”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
dclary
randi.lee
Ralph Pines
kimberlycreates
writingismypassion
dclary (again)
Penelope
SinisterCola
PragmaticPimp
magicmint
Diana_Rajchel
SuzanneSeese
AFord
J.W.Alden
Nissie
MonkeyQueen
areteus
pyrosama

The corner shop was a custom cake decorating place called A Masterpiece of Cake. “You know you’re in a certified megamall when they have a place like that,” laughed Merie.

“Ugh, look at all that buttercream icing,” groaned Saini, pointing at a cake that had a blue sports car sculpted on top by waves of flowery sugar. “So mercilessly sweet…makes my tongue burn just to look at it.”

“How about that one?” Merie said. She pointed to a nearby cake that, through prodigious amounts of food coloring and fondant icing, looked like a giant hamburger.

“Fondant? It tastes like modeling clay because that’s basically what it is. It sacrifices any kind of flavor at all for being moldable. It’s like eating cement straight from the mixing truck.” Saini paused. “And with about the same effect on your overall BMI.”

“There’s one in there that has that nice whipped frosting, probably,” said Merie. “It’s not a salad, but it’s better for you than sugar-cement or buttercrack.”

Saini rolled her dark eyes. “Whipped stuff can barely hold the shape of cake frosting lying flat on a cake, much less anything else.”

“So you’re saying that none of these professionally-made cakes matches up to your exacting personal standards, is that it?”

“I’m saying it’s my dream to create an ultimate cake frosting that combines the light sweetness of whipped frosting with the moldability of fondant,” Saini said with a faraway look in her eyes. “It’s the cake version of the moon landing, but it can be done if we pour enough resources into it.”

When the stormfront of the Popular Revolution broke over the Ionnes regime, the rabble of citizens and defected soldiers who stormed the presidential palace were puzzled to find that Dr. Ionnes himself was not among the family members they captured. The newly installed Directorate, mostly made up of newly “reformed” Ionnes men, promised answers. Many rumors had the dictator escaping through a subterranean railway while abandoning his family to their fate.

As they so often say, the truth is stranger than fiction.

Under “enhanced interrogation” by the Directorate, Ionnes’ son Basil made a puzzling reference to a secret buried in the turn-of-the-century catacombs beneath the palace. An excavation team recovered a badly-decomposed set of remains from a shallow grave…one which bore Dr. Ionnes’ distinctive withered arm and silver left incisor. Forensics experts hastily flown in from overseas confirmed that the body had been in place for a considerable amount of time.

Dr. Ionnes, it seems, had been dead for the last decade of his “rule.”

Eventually the Directorate pieced the situation together, leaking information at a steady rate to keep the restive populace from noticing the repeatedly slipping date for the promised free elections. Dr. Ionnes had suffered a heart attack or stroke after a heavy dinner, and his wife, sons, and bodyguard had sought to perpetuate the illusion that he was alive through a combination of old recordings, impersonation (Basil Ionnes was a good double for his father from a distance), and carefully cultivated rumors of paranoia. They’d gone on that way for so long that some of the worst offenses of the Ionnes regime, including the May Day army shootings that sparked the Popular Revolution, had happened when the old doctor was mouldering underground.

Mrs. Ionnes was asked about this over a hot glass of boiling oil and tongs–why she or one of her loathsome sons hadn’t simply taken over the family business Duvalier-style. “We hoped to blame him and scatter if there was ever a revolution,” she reportedly said; “obviously that didn’t work out too well.”

“It’s an overstamp. You see this all the time in weapons that have been captured or changed hands.” Mayotte produced a jeweler’s lens from a drawer under the register and studied the rifle intently for a minute. “The overstamp says ‘Flieger-Selbstlader-Karabiner 15,’ which I think means ‘self-loading aircraft-carbine, 1915.'”

“So it’s a German gun? From World War I?”

“I don’t think so.” Mayotte said, still staring intently at the overstamp. “The magazine’s a snail type, but it’s all wrong for the Germans. The caliber, 7mm Mauser, sounds German, but the Germans only used it for imports and captures.”

Keith squirmed. “You’re leaving me hanging in suspense here.”

“Ah, here we go,” said Mayotte. “‘Fusil Porfirio Diaz, Systema Mondragon, Modelo 1908.’ That’s what the Germans stamped over. ‘Porfirio Diaz Rifle, Mondragon System, Model 1908.’ It’s a Mondragon.”

After a short blank stare, Keith cleared his throat. “No offense, ma’am, but that sounds like something that ought to be breathing fire in a fantasy movie more so than a long arm.”

“It’s Mexican,” Mayotte said. She removed a glove and touched the barrel; the first tingling sensations and images began to flow immediately. “The first semiautomatic rifle ever adopted into service. They were made in Switzerland by SIG but the Mexican Revolution and the fact that the rifles don’t much like dirt and rough handling got the order canceled.”

“And the Germans?” said Keith, eying Mayotte’s faraway expression with some unease.

The roar of a radial engine, the howl of the wind with the brutal nip of a few thousand feet altitude… “The Swiss sold them to the Germans,” Mayotte murmured. Her pupils visibly dilated as she talked. “They gave them to observers in two-seater biplanes to defend themselves.”

“And?

Racking the action, taking aim across the sights and the wind and the world at the French bastards, who’d been good enough to paint a bright target on the side of their plane… “Let’s see what she can tell us,” Mayotte whispered.

On June 16, 1984, strange lights were seen over the distant and isolated farming settlement of Saraa in the Mongolian People’s Republic, as reported by a group of Soviet troops on exercises in the nearby mountains. The central government in Ulaan Bataar reported that their sole link with the isolated community, a telex line, had been cut off.

Concerned–the hills had been a refuge for pro-Buddhist rebels during the collectivization of the country in the 1930s–the governor of Ömnögovi Province asked the Soviets to investigate and to garrison Saraa temporarily. The troops found nothing amiss, and settled down for what they thought would be a leisurely occupation–a furlough from their intense training and expected combat deployment to Afghanistan.

Within a month, nearly all of the 250 men who had been stationed there were dead.

The first deaths occurred when army rations ran out and the Soviets began eating local foods. Dozens died instantly or in the following hours due to what the regimental medic described as an “intense allergic reaction.” Puzzled, the Soviet commander rounded up locals on suspicion of poisoning his men, but no evidence could be found.

Eventually, despite generous gifts of food from the locals, the other Soviets began exhibiting signs of acute malnutrition and starvation. For some reason, only their army rations seemed to have any nutritive effect at all; Merchants from relatively nearby communities and Saraa citizens returning from trips suffered the same fate. The locals and the provincial government in Dalanzadgad could not explain why.

Eventually, the Soviet commander pulled his troops out and recommended a full quarantine to deal with a suspected bioagent. Scientists from the Vozrozhdeniya Island biological weapons unit, in full NBC containment gear, found nothing. The only effects they noted were a number of odd quirks: nearly all the residents had become left-handed, for instance.

Eventually, the quarantine was made permanent, and it survived democratization. Until a group of missionaries arrived in Saraa nearly 25 years later, no Mongolian or foreigner entered or left the village.

Everything would have been fine if the Spanish tourists had arrived on time.

Kay and Alice had met them at the bus stop, clearly bamboozled and lost (as the island’s easygoing bus schedule was wont to do for foreign tourists). As it so happened, no one at the bus stop spoke any more than pidgin Spanish…that is, except the two young American education students fresh out of Advanced Spanish 499.

There were still problems, largely because the tourists were Galician and spoke Castilian Spanish with a heady cocktail of Galician loanwords and a strong accent. Kay and Alice, who had studied Latin American Spanish–specifically the Mexican variety–were able to communicate only with considerable difficulty. Still, they had been able to describe the bus schedule, tell the Spaniards when the next bus was probably due, give them directions to their hotel, and even attempted to impart a few useful English phrases.

That would have been that, deeds done by good Samaritans, if the Spanish tourists had arrived on time.

Only they hadn’t.

The two Spaniards, Isabella Sanchez and Inez De Rojo, never arrived at their hotel, and never left on any of the ferries. There were no bodies, and no leads–except for Kay and Alice, who were the last ones to have any contact with the missing and who had spent the following week at a rustic and secluded beach on the leeward side.

It wasn’t until they tried to take the ferry home that Kay and Alice realized they were the only suspects in a missing persons case.