Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Thanks to a little street called Dearly Boulevard in my home town of Deerton, I always thought that the abbreviation “Blvd.” on street signs actually stood for “Beloved.”

Isn’t that a nice thought?

Instead of an old French-Dutch loanword for fortification shamelessly slathered over streets to give them a dash of European class, the name suddenly becomes a loving tribute. Gardner Beloved–beloved so much that the street was named after him. Patterson Beloved, for he was one of the founders of our town. Melissa Ann Carroll Beloved, and taken from us too soon by a crash on the lane which now bears her name.

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“Are…are you sure it’s okay to play here?” Jared Bowen, one of the usual players in Blaine Saunders’ Ruins and Rogues roleplaying group, shifted nervously in his chair. They were set up in the Frontier Books store that had once dominated downtown Hopewell, MI, surrounded by empty shelves and torn-up displays and walled off from the remaining functional parts of the store by still more empty shelves and torn-up displays.

“This place is going out of business in a month,” said Blaine irritably. “The fixtures are for sale. I bought this table and chairs that used to be in the Stubb’s coffee upstairs for fifty bucks, and until I con borrow my cousin Jimmy’s truck it stays here. Also, I’m assistant manager and about to lose my job after firing everyone who worked under me.” He tapped his soon-to-be-turned-in maroon vest for added effect.

“But still…I dunno…” squirmed Jared.

“Okay, look. There’s a shelf of gaming books by the exit. The Ruins and Rogues Adventurer’s Guidebook, the Creature Compendium, even the Interverse Guide, all 5th edition, all 40% off. Please buy one to support your local failing Frontier Books location. There, I even made a sales pitch. Are we cool now?”

“We’re cool,” said Neal Tate, Blaine’s other Ruins & Rogues veteran. “But just so you know, the 5th edition is the Antichrist. 2nd edition for life.”

“Of course.” Blaine rolled his eyes. Before he could continue setting up the gameboard and Adventure Master screen, he squawked at the sight of Neal placing a small–and bright international orange–bag of dice on the ex-Stubb’s table. “Whoa-whoa-whoa! What are you bringing out the Unholy Rollers for?”

Neal shrugged and dumped out the dice onto the table. “It’s supposed to be a fun game, right?”

The Unholy Rollers were dice that had become indisputably jinxed, a fact which all the players in Blaine’s group believed unquestionably. The Unholy Rollers would unerringly roll a low number when a high one was called for, or a low number when a high one was ideal–unless you anticipated the jinx, in which case it would refuse to work. Worst of all, the effect was contagious. There had been only one Unholy Roller to begin with, a bone-white d20 that had been given out as a tchotchke at a long-ago WyvernCon, but every dice it had come into contact with had acquired the curse. It was a cherished in-joke and a source of much humor among the players.

“Listen, Neal,” said Blaine. “I was able to get Rosetta McFadden to join us as our noob this campaign, okay? I have been working on turning her mild interest in boardgames into actually showing up for months, literally months. I held the game here specifically so she wouldn’t see my apartment–or, gods forbid, my parents’ place, which is where I’m headed when I get laid off and my rent check bounces. You’re not going to jinx me, or her, with the Unholy Rollers. Not this time.”

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“This isn’t about the softball game on Saturday. You know that, and I know that.” Amelia Brewer, wearing that ever-present Nuwaqchut Alaska Navigators ballcap with her ponied-up hair sticking out the back, regarded her shortstop and star player across one of the back tables at Guapo’s Pizza. It was the only pizzeria in town and the only eatery with a convoluted enough layout that a private conversation at the back tables tended to stay private.

“You planning on sticking me with the check?” Paige Nielsson said with that breezy self-confidence that Amelia found so irritating. “I thought that, after last week’s game, you might give me a break on that. But I’m good for it, coach. You can buy the pizza when we win the Cup.”

The way Paige was always so cocksure, so seemingly at ease…it had rattled Amelia a bit ever since high school. But this time was different. “I know,” she said. “I know about you and Gunnar.”

“Gunnar? Is that what’s got you all worked up?” Paige said. “You worry too much, Amelia. You think that will all the lumberjacks and gas workers in town, those big strapping guys with forearms just fit to squeeze, that anyone would want your shabby slab of a bush pilot?”

It wasn’t enough for Paige to be better than everyone else by the grace of her athletic skill and easy, breezy, blonde good looks. No, she had to tear people down to increase the distance, had to do it with that crooked smile on her face like it was all a big joke.

“I don’t doubt that you’ve got room between those legs for plenty of guys,” Amelia snapped. “I don’t care so long as none of them are my husband.”

“I knew you thought I was fast when you made me shortstop, Amelia. I didn’t know you thought I was that fast.” Paige laughed at her own joke, but her eyes were steely behind the hazel flecks.

“I found your…things…in Gunnar’s 170, Paige,” said Amelia darkly. “There’s no way they could have gotten there otherwise. Gunnar doesn’t charter that kind of flight.”

“I suppose they had my name on them did they?” Paige said with her lopsided grin unchanged. “Or did you just jump to conclusions? A Cessna 170’s an antique, Amelia, and there are oilmen in town with Learjets sometimes. Now unless you’d like to make some more accusations about who did what with who in the conservatory with the pipe…”

“This isn’t over,” said Amelia darkly. “Not by a long shot.” Ignoring the half-eaten pizza before her, and the unpaid bill on the table, she left through the back door.

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“Don’t come near me,” sniffed Celeste. “I’ve got the Xenofever.”

“I’ve heard of that on TV, I think,” said Akeisha. “Is it really as bad as they say it is?”

Celeste turned her head and sneezed violently. The mucus sizzled and smoked where it hit the cinderblock wall, burning a pitted opening through three inches of solid concrete as the molecular acid therein did its work.

“You tell me,” she said, reaching for a denatured asbestos tissue.

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A small but still capacity crowd had gathered in the Cyril Theatre in Hopewell that evening to hear The Garbage Fries. It was perhaps a recognition of how far the group’s star had fallen since its late-1990s heyday that it has been booked into such a small venue. Then again, it could just as easily have been a savvy agent who could claim that The Garbage Fries were still playing to packed houses, even if said houses could barely hold 2000 people on a good day.

Most of the audience were students who appreciated The Garbage Fries for its retro and ironic appeal thanks to their prominent inclusion in once-contemporary movies that were now seen as adorably dated. The lead singer and lyricist of the Fries, Julida Patil Veblen, had decorated countless adolescent boys’ sanctums and fantasies and been a fashion icon for their female compatriots as well. There were not-insubstantial members of those original, older fanbases in attendance.

The Hopewell show would have been like any other, a mix of old hits carefully calibrated to appeal to both the ironic and the sincere devotees–Julida was a smart cookie, even if her star had long since faded. But as the evening wore on, a problem quickly emerged.

The Garbage Fries never arrived, and their tour bus hadn’t been seen since departing from a show nearly two days before.

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Those are the mountains of the Apathy Range. One would think it less a barrier than what had come before, but it is perhaps the greatest natural defense that the Greener Valleys has.

Most isolated ranges are outcroppings of rock worn down and laid over with soil and vegetation with the passage of time. The Apathy Range is an outcropping of pure emotion under the dirt and trees, and to walk its passes and byways is to be influenced thereby. That’s the real danger – wavering in one’s pursuit of the Greener Valleys thanks to the slow seep of disconnectedness that’s in every dock and twig and shrub.

The slopes are littered with little cabins built by people who didn’t see the point in going on, and often the bones of the same can be found inside.

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There are times
When I simply cannot bear
Myself, in a mirror
In the shadows
Looking at the old man
I will become

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Norris Construction was a major contractor in that area in that it was a large-ish fish in a tiny pond. Based out of Cascadia, it did occasional off-the-books work for Osborn University but most of its projects were in neighboring Tecumseh County and the ramshackle county seat of Deerton. And they were mostly in the business of tearing things down as that particular notch in the rust belt went to seed.

Francisco Garza, originally of Nuevo Leon, could have been assigned to the teardown of the Royal Tecumseh Hotel downtown. It was easy work, for all the talk of ghosts, and right down the street from a diner where there was cheap hot food (and a steady stream of Deerton High townie girls walking back home). But no, his assignment was the abandoned Tecumseh County Airport. And not even the terminal or the hangar.

The runway.

“Why did they even build this in the first place, if they weren’t going to use it?” Garza grumbled in Spanish. He was in the connector between the freight hangar and never-used FAA/TSA offices, watching the equipment roll in from Cascadia.

His supervisor, Vicente Mejia, also of Norris Construction and originally from Baja California, stood nearby. “They thought it would help attract businesses if they could fly in on their big fancy jets,” he said. “Maybe even get a few tourists in. But those cheapskates in town voted down the taxes they’d need to keep it up.”

That much Garza already knew; not a single flight had landed at Tecumseh County Airport. They’d sold the land to Norris Construction for $1 on the condition that the airport be torn down for liability reasons. And Garza was to tear up the runway, himself, without pay.

“It’s not a question of right or wrong,” Mejia had said. “It’s a question of can or can’t. Either you can do the work to pay off the cost of hiring and training you, or we can’t let you keep the job and we can’t keep INS from sniffing around.”

When Garza had protested, Mejia had flashed his green card with a predatory grin. “Norris Construction takes care of its own,” he had added. “You play ball with us, maybe we get you one of these. You don’t, and we replace you with someone who’s sick of picking Traverse City cherries.”

But though he was many things, Francisco Garza was not stupid. He had quietly Xeroxed documents he found lying around the Norris trailer and offices and taken them to his daughter Estela to translate. Mejia had been given a budget for the airport demolition, and he’d been quietly skimming off the funds while threatening and overworking his skeleton crew.

And that’s why, when Mejia passed the trash cans on his way to his Norris-branded Taurus, there were pieces of the car’s brake system concealed under some drywall, destined for the junkyard.

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Sedena Vorobyova, assassin-for-hire, glared over the sights of her high-powered rifle. “You should be terrified,” she intoned evenly in her butter-thick but comprehensible Gorky accent. “It’s not every day that someone takes out a contract on your life, least of all goes to the trouble of hiring one from another story.”

“Oh, I’m terrified, I assure you, ma’am.” Priscilla “Prissy” Deerton said. Her elaborately embroidered duster was spotless over fine silk trousers and a matching blouse, with a glistening broach and a pair of fine hard leather boots to match–the benefits of being the daughter of the town haberdasher. “I will endeavor to keep Reynard calm, though I must warn you that, while terrified, I am not so much so as I’d be were you a spider.”

The assassin’s workaday cargo pants and combat jacket were certainly no match for Prissy’s finery–the drawbacks of being the daughter of a long dead Soviet apparatchik who’d drank himself to death. “Reynard?” said she, cocking her head. “Spider?”

“Where? Where?” Prissy shrieked. She undid the button on what looked like a small bulging at the bottom of her coat, revealing a fancy rat with a vaguely cow-like pattern of splotches. “Reynard! Spiders! Go to Pattern Delta!”

Her rat obligingly scurried up one of Prissy’s trouser legs, and Sedena incredulously followed the resulting rat-shaped bulge with her telescopic sight until it emerged above its owner’s starched collar to perch on her shoulder.

Reaching into her pants, Prissy produced a pair of small-caliber derringers—.32 caliber Sharps Pepperboxes by the look of them—and scanned nearby nooks and crannies for eight-legged interlopers.

“It was a question,” Sedena growled. “I didn’t actually see a spider.”

“Oh,” Prissy said. “Don’t scare me like that.”

“Thank you, though, for revealing to me where you kept your weapons,” Sedena added coldly. “On the ground, please.” The .32 caliber blackpowder bullets wouldn’t even make it to her position a short distance down the road, let alone pierce her ballistic vest, but it was always better to be thorough with a mark.

“Spiders are ruthless, you know,” Prissy continued, lowering the hammers on her Pepperboxes and placing them neatly on the ground. “Vicious, remorseless killers…not unlike you in that regard, but where you face my enemies down and kill them honest-like with bullets, spiders sneak around and use venom and poison like assassins in the Crusades.”

“I’m sure they do,” said Sedena, rolling her eyes. “I’m beginning to wonder if all the characters from your story are crazy or at least mildly imbalanced.”

“Don’t you know that aranea mactans, the black widow spider, has a bite that can cause premature birth, heart attacks, false death, actual death, agonizing pain, and pain like unto a thousand suns? They’re tiny, they wait for you under the bed or in the privy, always in wait, and the little red hourglass on their butts gets redder as the hour of your death approaches!”

“Then they must be awfully red right now,” Sedena said grimly.

Prissy, looking for a moment of distraction to dip down and scoop up her oft-abused Pepperboxes, saw something moving in the sand near Sedena—a very large, very brown camel spider. Her eyes widened.

“So where are the rest of your compatriots?” Sedena continued. “I’ve a contract to fulfill and if they’re as weak and pitiable as you, it should be the easiest I’ve ever had. I might even be able to claim a double bounty for bringing you all in alive.”

The camel spider began a leisurely scuttle up Sedena’s boot; for her part, Prissy had gone ashen-colored and could be heard hyperventilating, but with the assassin’s M14 trained on her more carefully than ever, she couldn’t cry out to Reynard to go to Pattern Delta.

“You’re right to be scared, but that’s not going to keep me from learning what I need to learn.”

Reaching the top of Sedena’s boot, the spider continued onto her cargo trousers, oblivious in the way that only arthropods can be that its presence was on the verge of shattering Prissy’s mind.

“I said-” Sedena began. Then she noticed the camel spider herself. The resulting scream echoed off the canyon walls, audible for miles around.

Prissy retrieved her fallen guns and aimed one at the rapidly diminishing silhouette of the assassin. “That’s right!” she cried. “You’d better run!”

The camel spider, flung far closer to Prissy by Sedena’s sudden retreat, began to scuttle towards the only remaining victim possible. Prissy, her face hard, blasted it with her other Pepperbox, flinching only when it seemed like the resulting spray of goo might splatter on her finery.

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“We’d like to buy your autobiographical essay for Esquire Magazine under one condition. Remove all the bad swears.”

“No way, man. My words are like my children.”

“Did I mention that we’ll pay you $1000, which is about 50 cents a word?”

“Would you like the bad swears removed, @#$%d out, or just bowlderized?”

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