Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

AGENT SMYTHE: Hold on, I can hear something. Boost the signal.

[Static, followed by the sound of gag-muffled speech and heavy, panicked breathing]

FAUSTINO: I am going to kill you, my friend. It grieves me, as it often does, but I must not allow my feelings to influence my judgement. I would speak with you now, though, because it is my great hope that you understand my decision. I cannot ask you to agree with it, but I hope you will understand it.”

[Inarticulate gagged speech]

FAUSTINO: You see, I have invested too much of my family’s life and livelihood in my business to allow any threat, no matter how vague or remote, to endure. If I could talk to myself as a younger man, knowing what I do now, perhaps I would urge him to take a different path with his life. But I am in too deeply; the web that I have spun traps me as surely as any prey. Not just myself; it it were myself only, as an old man, perhaps I could not need to take such steps.

[Sharp metallic sound, perhaps a handgun being loaded or cocked]

AGENT DYLE: Should we do anything?

AGENT SMYTHE: We can’t, not without exposing the wire.

FAUSTINO: But it is also my family: my daughters, their children. Many of them have been shielded from the nature of what I do, but to risk destroying them, if not by prosecution then by the public…it is too much to ask of a man whose family is all that remains to him. I won’t–I can’t–let that happen. Like the sin eaters of old, I have gathered all the wickedness of my family into myself, and I will add to that burden to protect them.

[Frantic muffled speech]

FAUSTINO: I’m sorry to ramble on, but that is also the lot of an old man. I hope now that you understand. Perhaps, when you meet the Almighty, you can tell him what I said. I certainly will be in no position to do so when the violent retirement of my kind claims me.

[Suppressed gunshot; static]

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Graphic design was something you were either passionate about or not. And if not, all of it was completely invisible to you unless it was memorably bad. Not so for Carson Talley. His big break into that world had been redesigning his high school’s letterhead as an art project. Within a year, he’d redone the school paper masthead, the school cafeteria menus, even the one-sheets for the battle of the crappy bands.

But all throughout school and college, even as he excelled, Carson was racked with self-doubt and worry. He was a polyglot, a generalist, who loved all graphic design everywhere. From a box top to a pop can to a cigarette butt, all of it was, in Carson’s mind, exciting and equal. The idea of having to give up the possibility of designing anything, to specialize, was anathema.

Luckily, he was able to land what was essentially a dream job, a designer for the major prophouse Studio Properties LLC. Every production from theater to Hollywood needed realistic-looking graphic designs (without having to pay a major corporation); Carson and his team provided them. In fact, he was able to revise and tinker with existing designs in such a way that it would have a copyright violation in any other field. Some of his favorites included:

amazing.com – For productions that needed boxes from a certain online retailer. Carson deftly revised the famous “smile-arrow” logo into a lightning bolt.

Gurkha-Cola – A soft-drink in an off-red can and cursive font that looked similar enough to a sugar-water-selling behemoth (especially in cursive) to pass muster. Carson designed everything from cans to bottles to full-size ads featuring penguins. He also designed a fierce competitor, Parsi Cola.

O’Douls – A franchisee for fine fatty foods, from signage to discarded wrappers. The O and D were designed in such a way to suggest a certain set of golden-fried arches.

Talley’s – Perhaps Carson’s most sentimental creation, a faux liquor company. Responsible or everything from Talley’s Premium Dark Lager to Talley-Hauser Golden Ale to Col. Talley’s Private Reserve Brand Old No. 9 Tennessee Sour Mash Whisky.

Inspired by this very real business.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

The truest way to measure years
Is not in hours but in tears
We weep for others when part we must
For friends, for family, for those we trust
With joy-stained faces eye to eye
With bitter dregs when saying goodbye
No one’s lived who hasn’t wept
For the memories, the souls, the covenants we’ve kept

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

PLAY-BY-PLAY: It’s the 2nd down and there’s 10 yards to go on the Chicago 30 yard line, with 6 minutes left in the quarter. We just saw Masterson tackled by Tennison on Chicago’s 26, 4 yards lost.

COLOR: Fitz is not happy about that, you can see it on his face.

PLAY-BY-PLAY: There’s Masterson back for the throw. And there go his boys, swept by Detroit. And there goes Masterson himself, sacked by Tennison for the second time in as many minutes.

COLOR: Good day for Detroit and Tennison out there. Man’s writing pure football poetry.

PLAY-BY-PLAY: Isn’t he just? Okay, I think that’s the warning siren I hear.

COLOR: That’s right, Jim. Later than usual, but then randomness is part of the game. How long would you say they have? Five minutes?

PLAY-BY-PLAY: Maybe two. I’ve seen it as low as thirty seconds and as high as ten minutes for arenas with a lot of obstacles between the field and the gates.

COLOR: Definitely adds some spice to the game. Looks like Masterson is up again for Chicago.

PLAY-BY-PLAY: Yes, he’s in position to make the kick for the final down. Detroit has got themselves set up with Tennison again…there’s the snap. Masterson is through! He’s on the 20, the 15…Tennison struggling to catch up.

COLOR: Aaaaannnnd here come the zombies!

PLAY-BY-PLAY: Three of them between Masterson and the endzone, and two on the field to his right. He pirouettes, goes wide, can’t shake them. Clipped by Tennison, still behind him and, zombies closing in…he’s down! Masterson is down!

COLOR: I count a minute thirty on the clock since the warning siren. One of the better performances by the “third team” in terms of hustle so far this season.

PLAY-BY-PLAY: Masterson is down and the ball is fumbled! Looks like Tennison’s going for it while the zombies finish up with what’s left of the Chicago offensive line. He’s got it, but the zombies are on him now…and he’s out of bounds.

COLOR: Looks like he decided to play it safe and settle for possession and twenty-five yards. The refs are clearing the zombies off him with shotguns and putting up the plexiglass. Looks like Chicago just took a time-out, stopped the clock, probably trying to regroup. Tennison’s on fire today.

PLAY-BY-PLAY: Isn’t he?

COLOR: He got that interception for the touchdown earlier, and here he’s got the zombies all over Chicago’s best offensive lineman without a scratch himself. I smell an NFC defensive player of the month.

PLAY-BY-PLAY: The month at least!

COLOR: That’s what every defensive lineman wants. Lots of sacks, lots of interceptions, lots of zombie-kills. Sack numbers, interceptions, those are good. But then, when you start getting into the zombie-kill numbers, and the opposing-players-zombified, now you’re talking.

PLAY-BY-PLAY: Oscar Earle is back to punt for Detroit. He’s done well against the zombies in other games. Any word from the field on Masterson?

COLOR: Well, to judge by the blood stains he’s probably…yes. Yes, you can see him rising from the grave right there, with that distinctive shambling gait. Masterson is taking the field again as a zombie, no doubt about it.

PLAY-BY-PLAY: One of the better draft picks by the “third team” this season. Looks like he and Tennison get a rematch.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

This post is part of the February 2013 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “Suggest-A-Prompt,” in which the previous poster chooses the topic; mine is “Yuppies Who Hate the Family Business”.

“Maynard and Company, Lilly Maynard speaking. How may I direct your call?” Lilly said into the old-fashioned handset.

“That’s too stiff and formal,” said her father, greying old Augustus “Gus” Maynard. “We’re a friendly family business, not a bunch of goddamned robots.”

Lilly’s brother and fellow Harvard Business School graduate Dennis massaged his temples, eyes closed. “It’s a fine, professional way to answer the phone, Dad.”

Gus’s eyes glittered in his raw and wrinkled face. “Not the way we do things; my father left me this business, and he helped build it with his father by not being a robot.” He struggled to make a hand gesture to emphasize his point, but the mild stroke that had brought Lilly and Dennis back to help run the business made it impossible to form a coherent one.

“Well, Mr. Burton, have you done business with us before?” Lilly was palming through Gus’s records system–namely piles of yellowing paper heaped atop the desk. “I’m not seeing your name here.”

“Is that old ‘Burt’ Burton?” Gus cried. “For the love of Pete, Lilly, don’t go talking to one of my oldest and best customers like he’s a pup off the street!”

Lilly stared daggers at him. “Well if you’d like to come in, you’re certainly welcome, but we can’t honor any verbal discounts without a record or a receipt.”

“You let him have that ten percent off!” Gus thundered. “Or so help me I’ll…”

“Dad, calm down,” Dennis said, laying a hand on Gus’s shoulder. “You have to keep your blood pressure under control.”

“Well, maybe you and your sister need to keep your fancy robotic accountant big city attitude under control,” Gus groused. “I knew those scholarships were a bad idea.”

“We didn’t choose this, you know,” said Dennis, as Lilly chattered on in the background. “It’s your business, not ours.”

“Well it ought to be. We’re doing the noblest work known to man, after all.”

“It’s disgusting,” Dennis said. “It’s a cruel and barbaric and exploitative firm, Dad.”

“Well, then you probably know all there is to know about running it then,” said Gus icily, “seeing as that’s the kind of business they like to teach up at Harvard. I hear somebody up front: go take care of them.”

All too glad to get away, Dennis stood up and smoothed out his suit coat and tie. At the front of the business, he saw old “Pop” Wolverton standing with a bag slung over one shoulder.

“Got the good stuff for you today son,” he said, whistling through missing teeth. Dennis winced as the bag fell away to reveal a dead fox, which “Pop” joyfully pressed into his arms. “Try for a bit of an active pose this time, snarling. Cost is no object; been a good year on the poultry farm.”

“Of course,” Dennis said, forcing a smile as unspeakable fluids began to work their way into his suit. “At Maynard and Company Taxidermists, we aim to please.”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Amanda R
ConnieBDowell
bmadsen
MsLaylaCakes
HistorySleuth
writingismypassion
katci13
KitCat
Briony-zisaya
CatherineHall
Angyl78
randi.lee
Lady Cat
pyrosama
Ralph Pines
dclary

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“And why should I care?”

“It’s an Oswald, man. An Oswald OS-1. They only made like 100 of these cars.”

“Then it can’t have been that good.”

“It was great! Ahead of its time in just about everything. Look: power windows, power locks, power steering…all before that stuff was standard or in some cases even invented by the Big Three.”

“So why’d it fail?”

“Why does anything that’s ahead of its time fail? The world wasn’t ready and no one wanted to buy one.”

“Mmm.”

“Come on, you’ve got to let me buy it.”

“Look, the junkyard regulations don’t allow it, okay?”

“But you’ve got to! You can’t just consign what might be the very last Oswald to the crusher!”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

There was nothing sinister about 1123 Adams St.

Once a private residence, it had been bought out by developers when Adams had exploded after the highway went in around 1995. But their neighbors in back refused to sell no matter the price, meaning that the builders had to make do with a thin strip of land–not until the occupant died in 2006 were they able to acquire the rear property, and even then their backyard neighbors refused to sell either, and there was no room for expansion on either side what with the other businesses that had developed there.

So you had a very attractive building with all its parking out back, an arcane arrangement that meant most people on Adams could never figure out how to get in at all. That, and its tantalizing location so close to the shopping district, the student ghetto, and campus, meant that every restaurant that filled the space inevitably failed.

The first occupant (sliding in a year after construction began) was 6 Dudes Pizza, which quickly became a campus legend due to their beer-battered breadsticks (served with a pitcher of beer and beer nuts). They didn’t deliver, though, so eating in was the only option; despite the efforts of a handful of devotees, it folded after a year and a half. Drunken freshmen with the munchies couldn’t be relied upon to figure out its tiny and arcane lot (or the parsimonious solution of parking next door).

Next was The Vegan Fork, which sought to capitalize on the tendency of those with extremely particular dietary wishes to orbit university campuses like asteroids around the Sun. Those who wanted to eat food that had never been, had never had the potential to be, and had never been produced by anything with motor neurons could surely be relied upon to walk or cycle there, making the parking situation irrelevent–right? Wrong. For all their pouring of blood on the fur-wearers of Sigma Qoppa Nu, they tended to drive the same Land Rovers. The Vegan Fork capsized after twenty-two months.

A college entrepreneur with a little venture capital remade no. 1123 next as Movie Eatery. Each booth was transformed into a mini theater with a big screen, and diners were able to select either a full-length movie or a TV episode or two to watch while they noshed (in theater-style seats no less). The rather slim selection of entertainment dinged Movie Eatery somewhat, as did a nuisance lawsuit by indie distributor Shutter Features. Dreadful advertising and amateur signage didn’t help, and Movie Eatery was belly up before the local annual film festival could come to its rescue.

Locals who had been providing barbecue to tailgaters at the university bought the location next and turned it into Big Jim’s University BBQ. The joint earned rave reviews for its sauce, which had long been an open secret among the ‘gaters, and its meats were locally sourced and slaughtered, which played well with the granola crowd. It earned less than rave reviews for cleanliness, though, and the state health department shut it down after a surprise inspection. Big Jim, without the capital to make the needed improvements, slunk back into the world of back-alley BBQ where there were no inspections.

And who could forget Hrvatska, the Croatian restaurant that occupied the site and expanded the parking lot? It was trendy for a time among the avant-garde who wanted to boast about a cuisine that the bourgeois had never heard of. The revelation that zagrebački odrezak was actually veal hurt their cachet among that demographic, and the overwhelming preponderance of lamb-based dishes eventually became tiresome to most.

Today, the site is occupied by a local independent maker of submarine sandwiches, and locals have begun taking bets as to how long it’ll last in what locals nerds have begun calling the “Defense Against the Dark Arts” building, as no restaurant there seemed to last much more than a year.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Chip waited until his participants had noshed on cookies and punch for a bit before calling the support group back to order. “That was a nice break, wasn’t it? Mary-Anne, why don’t you go next?”

“Hi, my name is Mary-Anne.”

“Hi Mary-Anne!”

“It’s been ten years since I gave up on career advancement, starting a family, and all other ambitions in favor of cats,” Mary-Anne said. She patted her handbag to quiet a soft yowling. “I have 227 at home at the present time.”

“27? That’s quite a few,” Chip said.

“227,” Mary-Anne corrected.

“Okay!” Chip said brightly. “Next is Erich. Erich?”

“Hi, my name is Erich.”

“Hi Erich!”

“It’s been about five years since I started tightening every nut and/or bolt I come across,” Erich said. It was sometimes hard to hear him, as he was busily engaged in adjusting screws on his chair. “It’s to the point now where I carry a toolbox and universal adaptor set with me at all times and it takes an hour to leave my house.”

“What do you do for a living, Erich?” asked Chip.

“Computer programmer.”

“Fantastic! I think you’re last, Al.”

“Hi, my name is Al.”

“Hi Al!”

“It’s been about two years since I started hearing sinister voices,” Al said. “They are always urging me to do things, even if I don’t want to.”

“What sort of things?”

“Buy detergent, mostly.”

“All right then, that’s everybody!” Chip said, beaming. “A great start for our first support group for people without support groups, wouldn’t you say?”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!