Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Why are we here?”

“Because the Todd Mansion is on the Top Ten Most Haunted Locations list in Tobin’s Spirit Guide, and you wanted to start at the top.”

“No, why are we really here? You know Tobin’s is just a bunch of sensationalism masquerading as legitimate parapsychology.”

“What, you’re not convinced by the dozens and dozens of would-be ghost hunters that have come here since the Creativity Channel aired that episode of Spook Sleuths set in the Todd?”

“Yes, their tales of one-degree cold spots, ‘photographic anomalies’ that look more like dust motes, and exhaustive online maps with scary names.”

“You don’t think the name ‘Solarium of Storms’ is compelling?”

“It’s an old lumber baron mansion built back when solariums were trendy. The room doesn’t change the weather, it just has cloudy glass; the name is an excuse for the groundskeeper to charge people an entrance fee.”

“I’d wager that for all their special equipment and fancy degrees that none of them was an actual, factual medium like you are.”

“But there’s no set standard for mediumhood. Getting impressions and feelings like I do…you’ve always been the one who says it makes me a medium. Not me.”

“I wouldn’t have that attitude about your meal ticket–and mine–if I were you.”

“If you were me you wouldn’t need…wait, do you see that?”

“See what?”

“Over there, in the…what was that idiotic name on the map? The Cold Spot Parlor. Wallpaper, blood red wallpaper.”

“There hasn’t been anything that could be called wallpaper in there for a hundred years.”

“But it’s so vibrant! And…look there, in the middle!”

“Where? What?”

It’s something, maybe writing, isolated on red, a different shade…”

“This could be it! I’m filming. What does it say?”

“It says…DIE.”

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Almost for Valentine’s Day, a gift basket
She gives marriage tips just to use famous food quotes
Of far-off movies with stock options
Brought together in estate planning trust
She has his life insurance policy, here
For the bookkeeping service
We all wish for an inflatable escape slide at our jobs
Airplane style out into the street
She thinks 80% of us would quite like that
Anybody out there?
There is an opening for a stockbroker at my job
She is smiling and weeping

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Near the edge of the canvas that is our world, the Creator’s brushstrokes grow thin, and there are places where the sketched lines that underlie all we see and feel might be seen and felt.

The hushed whispers of poets and madmen tell of one such place, beyond the unfathomable waters with no bottom and the sky-piercing mountains of infinite slope where travelers grow old and die climbing their whole lives away. It has many names in meany tongues: vicārōṁ kā samudra, shikō no umi, okean vdokhnoveniya, ámmo tou idanikoú.

To many, though, it is simply the Sea of Ideas.

The concept is at once simple and profound: what if creativity were a desert, each grain an idea? Endless dunes and windswept grit embody both the beauty and the horror of unspeakable creativity and creation for those daring or foolish enough to seek it out. For to come into contact with a single grain of sand from that impossible expanse is to experience the truest, purest form of an idea that is, was, or someday might be.

That is the reason that many a starstuck loner or struggling creator has sought out the Sea and its sands; to those for whom inspiration and ideas seem like arid wells, it is as a siren song that shakes the heavens. But when has the sand and dust of our world even gone singly? Those who trod those wastes unprepared are overwhelmed from the start, bombarded with ideas that shriek out for release. Many are so alien that they simply cannot be comprehended; the mind crumbles under such an assault. Others are more banal but shatter consciousness with sheer force of numbers.

Only the wisest, the luckiest, the most resourceful and open-minded, avoid the fate of babbling incoherence shared by so many who have sought the Sea and stumbled back from its berms broken and blasted. Wrapped tight against the wind and the scouring force of the Creator’s gifts at their most profuse and elemental, the wisest select only a handful of grains to bear hence; few are their numbers.

Fewer still are those–be they the wisest of the wise or the most foolish of the fools–who realize the deeper secret of that place. For as grains of sand are but the rocks of our world broken apart and worn by the keen edges of eternity, so too are the idea-grains shards from something bigger.

At the furthest and most ragged edge of the Creator’s artwork, the deepest fastness of the Sea, they lie: great stony pillars of creation, from which the sands of ideas, inspiration, and creativity are hewn. To behold them is to feel the inconceivable claw at the ribs like a death rattle. To approach them is to be beset on all sides by the most crystalline of thoughts, thoughts so profound and simple that falsehood and self wither away as tinder in a blaze.

To touch them is to touch the original inspiration that led to the creation of our world, of all worlds. To touch them is to touch the Creator’s brush and palette.

To touch them is to Know, and in all of the wonder and horror that represents, to Cease.

From an idea by breylee.

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In 1917, war weariness and conscription had taken their tool on the morale of the British home front. As such, the Home Undersecretary beneath Sir George Cave hit on the idea of using wounded, furloughed, and reserve troops to stage a mock German invasion of the modest-sized city of Lowemouth in Yorkshire. The Undersecretary believed that such an exercise would help raise morale and generate the sale of war bonds, since the 1917 War Loan had performed only sluggishly.

The Undersecretary’s idea was to cover an “invasion” of Lowemouth by “Imperial German” troops dressed in uniforms borrowed and rented from filmmakers and theaters. The British public would be informed of the “invasion” through news coverage–which would focus on the brutality of the “occupation”–and could then “liberate” sectors of the town through the targeted purchase of War Bonds. It would, in short, serve as a cautionary tale of a Hohenzollern-occupied Britain and a powerful way to involve the home front in buying desperately-needed bonds more directly.

Preparations included a unit of “defenders,” mock entrenchments, and plans for staged battles in and around Lowemouth. Since most of the resources were under government control, and most of the personnel involved soldiers or auxiliaries, the projected costs were quite low, less than a thousand pounds to cover the expenses of printing propaganda materials and retaining journalists to cover the event. The innovative and frugal nature of the Undersecretary’s plan appealed to Winnipeg businessman J. D. Perrin years later, who organized the Greater Winnipeg Victory Loan organization to hold “If Day,” a similar event, during World War II.

Scheduled for 30 July 1917, “Hun Day” was hastily canceled by the Undersecretary on 28 July, less than 48 hours before it was scheduled to begin. All official mention of it disappeared from official news sources, propaganda materials which had been prepared were destroyed, and the soldiers gathered as both “defenders” and “occupiers” of Lowemouth were dispersed. Indeed, the Undersecretary tendered his resignation on 1 August–dated 30 July–and was remanded to a low-level job in the Foreign Office thereafter.

The aborted “Hun Day” and the mystery of its abrupt termination remained an obscure mystery for many years until a cache of Imperial German records was discovered in Berlin around June 1945. The Supreme Army Command of the Imperial German Army had been aware of the exercise at the highest echelons of command, as it happened; a frustratingly incomplete memo, damaged by fire, indicated an ambitious plan to take advantage of the situation:

An invasion at this point, and at this time…would provide an unprecedented opportunity…to seize and control…to draw out and destroy them piecemeal.

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“It’s not my fault if you don’t like what you find,” Sōgen wheezed from his chair. “I told you not to contact me in person.”

“Well, what else was I supposed to do?” I snapped. “You’re the only person who has the data I need, and I’m being tracked online.”

“I let you in, didn’t I?” said Sōgen, throwing his pale and tubby arms wide. “You’re the first person who’s been in here aside from me in 15 years. Don’t abuse my hospitality.”

I glanced out the half-drawn shade at the vast empty streets and apartment buildings below, each with only a few dozen tenants thanks to Japan’s decades-old and increasing sub-replacement fertility. “How do you manage that?” I asked. “Surely you must have a job, and need to go out for food.”

“I have food delivered and trash collected,” replied Sōgen. “People practically beg for my business so they can keep their credit, since their companies were founded in the 1960s when the country hadn’t lost 50 million people to geezerhood without descendents.”

I looked at the massive bank of computer equipment that filled 90% of the apartment, and the disarrayed twin-size mattress parked under the window.

“Well, I can see that’s not enough for you,” Sōgen said. “You’re wondering how I pay for the electric bill and everything else despite no job and making a career out of giving away things online for free.”

“More or less.”

“If you’re sure you want to know, the answer is in the bedroom,” said Sōgen. “But if I hear one word of judgement or complaint from you, I’ll erase that data and make you watch before throwing you out on your ass.”

Another odd look from me.

“Information wants to be free. That’s the creed I live by, and I’m too fat and lazy to try and stop you. But freeing information means living with its consequences. I practice what I preach.”

There was no letting the thing go, not after a speech like that. I approached the bedroom door, its knob coated with dust, and opened it. Second later, I slammed it shut and stumbled backwards, retching. “What the hell?” I cried. “Are those…?”

“Yes, of course they are,” Sōgen said dismissively. “There are no jobs for someone like me in this country anymore, so I lived off my grandfather’s pension, and my parents’. When they fell ill…well, they had always talked about becoming Sokushinbutsu, suicide monks, practicing holy self-mummification. So I let them do it.”

“You mean you…you locked them up in there when they were dying?”

“I cared for them in their final illness like any dutiful son would,” snapped Sōgen. “And I have let their pension checks keep coming in to pay the bills. Don’t think I’m the only one who’s done this, either. The government can’t handle the record keeping of a nation of geezers, and they’re 50% of the electorate so tampering with benefits is a good way to exit the Diet in a hurry. Grandpa will be 123 this January, and nobody cares. My friend down the block has a 215-year-old still collection a pension.”

Struggling to avoid laying into the disgusting blob in front of me for his vile rationalizations, I instead found myself retching.

“Toilet’s down the hall,” Sōgen said drily, turning back toward his monitors. “We’ll talk after you’ve composed yourself.”

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That’s what Ryder loved about the aircraft. They hadn’t made many Dalien D-270s, but that was just because the world wasn’t ready for something with that much maneuverability and cargo capacity (whilst sipping fuel) that could take off and land on a shaved dime.

“Get the tower on the horn,” Ryder said softly. “Tell them we just need to buy fuel for a mail run. Nobody knows which aircraft that took off from the Capital Aerodrome they’re looking for, and nobody knows where we came from. Let’s keep it that way.”

Orlov nodded as Ryder idled the twin engines and taxied the Dalien over toward the fuel trucks. He could see Revolutionary Guards stationed all over the compound, many of them wearing pieces of government uniforms they’d captured in their most recent lightning advance. There didn’t seem to be any antiaircraft guns or fighters–the royal air force hadn’t been an organized force for months before the capital fell.

“Attention unidentified aircraft,” the tower squawked through the radio. “Please state your origin, cargo, destination, and purpose for landing.”

“Returning empty after a milk run, headed for Southport,” Orlov said. “Just need to buy a little fuel.”

“Come on, come on,” Ryder whispered under his breath.

“Why didn’t you request permission to land?” It sounded like a kid on the other end, probably an ideologically reliable rebel rather than whoever had run it before.

“Have you seen what’s going on out there?” Orlov said. “We haven’t requested permission to land in months. And we’re willing to pay for fuel in gold.”

A pause. “Someone will be out to meet you with a fuel truck. Don’t try to take off before you pay, or the Guards will blast you out of the sky.”

Ryder patted Orlov on the back. “Good going,” he said.

And to the member of the royal family shivering in the cargo hold–the contents of the “package” they had been hired to deliver to Southport right before the capital city had fallen…Ryder put a hand to his lips.

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Xinyidali was the brainchild of Chinese resource developers at the beginning of the property boom that gripped the country in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Built in an inland area with good road and rail connections to major population centers, it was the site of several major heavy industry plants built astride major trunk lines during the crash industrialization program of the Great Leap Forward.

Like most industrial sites from that era, the old settlement–which had no official name, only a post office address–was rapidly being rustbelted out of existence in favor of much better-built facilities closer to the coast. Sensing an opportunity, developers from Shanghai entered into an agreement to purchase the land as the industrial plants wound down one by one and were dismantled. In exchange for the burden of tearing down the old structures and assuming liability, the investors got the land practically for free.

A grandiose plan emerged to develop the area into a mixed-use shopping area, theme park, and retirement village catering to Westerners and the wealthy. Renamed Xinyidali–roughly “New Italy” in Mandarin–the owners built a concrete half-scale replica of the Colosseum as a centerpiece and arts venue while surrounding it with blocks of flats with shops on the first floor in the Mediterranean style. Broad parks were laid out in between the blocks, radiating out like spokes, to be filled with light amusements and food stands.

The site was roughly 40% complete and some early tenants had already moved in when one of the industrial plants being demolished nearby suffered a major accident. A pesticide plant, it produced carbaryl for agriculture but had not been properly decommissioned before demolition started. Several large holding tanks that were assumed to be empty were instead full, and when breached released large quantities of phosgene and methylamine into the air and soil.

Phosgene had been used as a biological weapon in the First World War, while methylamine is a flammable toxin in its own right. The resulting explosions and leakage killed 27 people and forced a hasty abandonment of the site. Further testing confirmed dangerously high levels of chemical waste in the surrounding environment, even in places uncontaminated by the phosgene or methylamine. The investors, it seemed, had simply thrown a layer of topsoil over the industrial sites and hoped for the best–a hope buttressed by lavish bribes.

With the site contaminated, the investors bankrupt or in jail, and a government embarrassed by the negative attention the incident, the site was simply fenced off and abandoned. Xinyidali remains in a broken state even today, attracting a small trickle of photographers, urban explorers, and other thrill-seekers drawn by its stark decay despite the danger.

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“Fire, fire!” Seconds ago, it had been an order from the lieutenant, impatient with his men’s slow reloading of their muskets as the discipline of drill broke down under heavy Rebel fire.

Now it was a frenzied warning.

The snarls and brambles of the Wilderness of Spotsylvania had been bad enough when they were merely preventing maneuver, but sparks from Warren’s artillery battery had caught the underbrush on fire. As the Union men and the Rebels struggled hand to hand with rifle butt and bayonet, the surroundings had been transformed into a maelstrom of crackling sheets of flame. The cries of the wounded rose in pitch to frenzied shrieks as they were burned to death.

Amos Callahan had broken and run under the strain, as had many of his fellows in the 27th Michigan, and many of the Rebels. He morale had been utterly broken when he had witnessed a sergeant, bleeding from a gut shot and immobile on the dry spring grass, press his rifle to his throat and thumb the trigger rather than face a screaming death amid the flames. It had been close enough to fleck Amos with gore, and he snapped under the sensory assault. He had a wife, after all, and had only held their little Andrew once since his birth.

But he had stopped dead. Among the cries from the wounded men about to be engulfed, Amos heard a familiar voice: Nathan. Nathan of the homestead next door, Nathan of the desk behind his in the schoolhouse, Nathan of the fast carriage rides around town courting young ladies. They had enlisted together, bivouacked together, and now they were about to die separately.

There was only a moment to act, to make the decision to flee or stay rooted stock-still in mute horror…or to act. Amos chose to act.

“Take my gun, Nate!” Amos cried. The heavy rifled musket that he had been about to cast away instead became a lifeline; Nathan, wounded in the knee, was able to grasp and hold onto the proffered aid. As fire swirled around them in a holocaust, consuming Federal and Rebel alike and rent by the cracks of Minié balls and cannonades, Amos dragged his best friend to safety. There were embers all over them, and Amos felt his eyebrows singed off by the heat, but it didn’t matter.

“You could have left me there to die, Amos,” Nathan sobbed amidst the inferno. “Thanks for coming back for me.”

“The fire was so hot,” Amos murmured. “I didn’t know what to do…I barely had time to think…”

“What’s he talking about?” said the nurse, who had come in to change Amos’s dressings. She switched on the electric light overhead and peered at the old man’s pallid features.

“Dad lost his best friend from school in the war,” said Andrew, sadly stroking his long grey beard. “At the Wilderness with Grant, he burned to death when the battlefield caught fire. Dad says he never really left that field; I think he…goes back there sometimes, when things are really bad.”

“I wonder why he would return to someplace so painful,” the nurse said with a concerned look.”

“I’ve no idea,” said Andrew. “But when a man is on his deathbed, I suppose he’s apt to go where he’ll go.

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But above all, the Emperor wished to be perceived by his subjects and enemies alike as an honorable man. Much as his predecessors had maintained the fiction of limited government and subservience to the Senate, the Emperor sought to build up the edifice of himself as a benevolent and reasonable monarch. This in spite of the fact that his grandfather, the great Emperor Kaysar Irum, had severed Imperial power from all oversight and reduced the Senate to a mere debating society.

In time, the Emperor heard of the philosopher Sulnahk, a popular and forceful advocate of a democratic society along the lines of the ancient Republic of Laconia that now made up one of the Empire’s central provinces. Rather than have this offense answered by death or exile, the Emperor sought to show his honor and mercy by debating Sulnahk before an audience in the Hall of Columns. Parts of their exchange have been preserved.

“I have been trained my whole life for the wise exercise of power and the administration of a great realm,” the Emperor said. “How can one not so trained hope to rule?”

“If ably supported by a bureaucracy and advisors, any man may rule, and a limited time in power will safeguard against choosing the wrong leader,” replied Sulnahk. “Many of your august predecessors came to the throne early upon the death of their fathers, as well. Were you to be replaced tomorrow, and the machinery of empire remain, few would know the difference.”

“Yet none can argue that I have ruled wisely and well, without war or strife, as did my father,” said the Emperor, who had thoroughly cleansed the official record of the assassinations and intrigue which had made him heir presumptive instead of his four older brothers. “Who would argue for the replacement of such strong rule with such weak?”

“There is no guarantee that the next prince of your line will share in your enlightened rule, with naught but your teachings and the weight of tradition or threat of rebellion to restrain him,” said Sulnahk. “Sooner or later, a tyrant will come to the throne, or a mediocrity, and the only recourse to save the empire will be rebellion and strife.”

“Would there not be rebellion and strife if an elected Emperor promoted the cause of his own people and gens ahead of others?” countered the Emperor. “It would be an invitation to a tyrannical demagogue exploiting a powerful minority to retain their control at the cost of ruin.”

“I cannot think of a smaller minority, nor a more powerful one, than the imperial family,” said Sulnahk.

That was too much; the Emperor angrily ordered Sulnahk to be taken away into “exile” for his brazenness; the philosopher was killed and cremated, and the records altered accordingly. In a final touch of irony, the Emperor died before his only surviving son came of age…giving Sulnahk’s final debate the ring of prophecy.

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This post is part of the August 2013 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “Child of the Devil.”

Maria Nguyan had been skeptical of the woman in the dark dress at first. She’d even manged to get the first two numbers of 911 dialed on her cell phone. The mumbled intimations of being a child of evil and the prophesied doom of the world hadn’t helped. Mom had always warned of strangers, after all, though that warning coming from someone who greeted door-to-door salesmen with homebaked cookies had never seemed particularly dire.

But that had been before Ms. Dark had shown Maria that she had mysterious and inexplicable powers. Local flies did her bidding, being pushed in front of a speeding semi had sent the truck driver to the hospital, and releasing the heartburn rather than keeping it in had led to a gout of flame breath powerful enough to reduce Mr. Feigenbaum’s hated geraniums to ashes.

“So do you see now?” said Mrs. Dark. “Do you see how I speak the truth? You are the child of evil, the spawn of the most profane and evil Devil of every faith on Earth.”

“I do, I see it now,” Maria said. “Mom always told me that Dad was a rotten, no-good, devil.” She remembered little of her father save an unpleasant smell, eternal arguments, and the motorcycle jacket emblazoned with e red imp that he wore the day he had left. Well, that and his immaculately groomed mustache and goatee. The mention of Maria’s father was the only thing that got demure Mrs. Nguyan into a full-throated rage.”I guess…I guess I should have known all along.”

“Oh, child, child,” Mrs. Dark said. “You have it all wrong, I’m afraid. It’s your mother who is the Devil.”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
ishtar’sgate
BDavidHughes
areteus
Ralph Pines
articshark
pyrosama
Anarchic Q
meowzbark
MsLaylaCakes
grace elliot
milkweed

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