Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Well, this is a fine situation you’ve gotten us both into, isn’t it?” Milton said, his doughy face brimming with contempt. Beesen was tempted to smash the butt of his rifle into the ex-major’s jaw to try and roll out some of the lumps, but necessity stayed his hand.

“You hear me up there?” the calvaryman with stripes shouted again. “This is the 5th United States Cavalry ordering you to surrender the fugitive Isaac J. Milton. We won’t ask again!”

“That you, Ed Campbell?” cried Milton. “Quit your negotiating and shoot this son-of-a-bitch already!”

“You shut the hell up, sir,” the man–Campbell, apparently–cried. “Do you think we’re here to take you back to the stockade, Milton? Go before a judge and a jury of your peers and all that bullshit?”

Milton seemed suddenly aghast. “What?” he snapped.

“I’m gonna be square with you, on account of that’s the decent thing to do when a man’s about to die,” Campbell continued. “Me and then men here, we think that what you did was just fine. Saved us the trouble of clearing the territory of savages. Lots of people in town do too. But here’s the thing, Milton: those ornery boys back east, with their newspapers and their bleeding hearts, they got wind of what you did. It’s an embarrassment to the brass now.”

“Who gives a flying shit about the brass?” Milton cried, a hint of desperation in his voice.

“We do, when we’ve been promised a month’s pay a man to make sure that ‘the Butcher of Silt River’ eats a .45-70 breakfast.”

Milton had gone quite pale. “What are your terms, then?” Beesen shouted.

“You give us Milton, we let you go,” Campbell said. “With the promise that if you breathe so much a word of what happened here you’ll get the same vittles as Milton. Unless you’d rather wait for the Dog Soldiers, of course. They’ll kill you both, and they’ll do it like a slow roast, honey glazed.”

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“It’s not cheating,” I said to myself. “I came out here for digital detox, and I’m doing that. I just need a video camera, that’s all.”

More towers of rocks had appeared overnight on the beach, but the high winds had scoured away any footprints in the loose sand and they would have been lost in all the prints I’d left knocking them down in any event. The gate was still locked, and I couldn’t see any tire tracks.

A little video was all I needed to prove my suspicion that some local good ‘ole boys were having some cheaper-than-basic-cable fun with me.

Setting up my laptop just right and getting the recording settings for its built-in webcam took some time, and I found myself moving in a haze of wandering focus. I could have used my cell phone, I suppose, but that would have required improvising a stand and scaring up an extension cord. When I looked up at the kitchen clock, I’d spent longer on the thing than I had thought. But it would be worth it for my peace of mind, to finally know that the “mystery” of the stacked rocks that Oscar had warned me not to concern myself with.

The webcam ran perfectly, and I’d set it to change to a special low-light mode at dusk. Satisfied, I turned back to the kitchen to gab a snack. Instead, I instinctively backed against the opposite wall in a panic.

Drawers had been emptied, cupboards ransacked, and the resulting detritus piled throughout the kitchen. Piled just like the rocks, as much as different shape and texture would allow. Deeply engrossed in my digital cheating, I hadn’t heard a thing.

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“You was warned, tosser.” The foremost of the men donned a pair of brass knuckles, and Weissmüller could see that they were embossed with the Radiant and All-Devouring Commode–the secret symbol of the Bathroominati.

“But…but all I wanted to do was design a place of comfort and serenity where people might void their bowels in peace!” the fixturemaker protested.

“And all we want to do is knock a little sense into your blinkin’ block for it,” the thug said. “It ain’t square with the Code of the Bathroominati, see? We as a species ain’t never gonna evolve out of the need for fixtures if you make using ’em too posh, berk. They’s got to be the way they is.”

“I’m…I’m sorry!”

“Oy, and sorrier still once we’ve cut your posh fixtures up and forced ’em down yer gullet. Tossers can’t be thinking they can defy the Great Bathroominated Ones without a sound beating from the Radiant and All-Devouring Commode, now can they?”

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“I was thinking Chinese for dinner tonight. Wife says I need to lay off, but then she eats just as much as I do when I bring it home.”

“Are you even listening to yourselves?” I said. “Talking about moo goo gai pan when a man is dead and murdered in his own home?”

The officer shrugged. “It’s no worse than one of his movies. You ever see any of them?”

“Yes,” I said, my insides heaving at the splatters of blood and the outline on the floor which depicted the unrecognizable heap in which director Candon Verbridge had been found. “I wasn’t a fan. Too gory.”

“Too gory?” the officer said. “That was the best thing about them. Best splatterpunk director to come out of America during the last fifty years.”

“And you don’t find it at all odd that he was, himself, splattered and cored?” I asked. A police officer with a fondness for splattercore seemed a much better preparation for the scene of a violent homicide than a lifetime of reviewing films.

“Huh. I suppose it is,” said the officer. “Maybe it was a copycat. Some nutty fan. The scene looks a lot like The Scattered Stains, doesn’t it?”

It didn’t just look like that nauseatingly, horrifyingly gory movie, I thought. It was nigh identical, at least from what I could remember seeing through my fingers at the screening. I was about to say something in reply, to confirm the officer’s theory, when a thought struck me:

The Scattered Stains had been about an incorporeal entity that had murdered anyone who refused it.

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T. BRAVEN LAST SURVIVOR
15 MEN FROM [unreadable] GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
TRAPPED IN CAVERNS [unreadable] DAYS
DETAILS BURIED AT [unreadable]
SAVE YOURSELVES

The name rang no bells, but they had clearly done their best to make their mark, even if it was in a weak and unsteady hand on the cavern’s sculpted limestone walls. It looked like whoever had left the message had meant to continue it, as a partially carved list of what appeared to be peoples’ names, dates of birth and death, and location of their buried bodies within the cave system followed.

The body of the author, partially decomposed and partially mummified, lay nearby.

Another observer might have felt a surge of pity or respect at the end of a man who, up to the very last, had apparently tried to do right by his fellows. But the being that read it was one intricately linked with the caverns in which Traven had found himself lost and confused amidst geological impossibilities.

With no emotion whatsoever other than that of duty, the silent watcher began to chip away at the surface, smoothing over the rock so that it would appear as if no human eyes had ever beheld the area before.

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“So, Sean,” said the day shift manager at Hopewell Tri-County Airport. “I understand that you have been making our airport announcements for third shift for some time now?”

“That’s right,” Sean said.

“And are you aware of any…complaints…regarding the content or tone of your announcements during that time?”

“Not a one,” said Sean.

“Uh-huh.” The day shift manager said. “I’d like to read some feedback that I have gotten, if I may. ‘I was greatly confused when your airport announcer said that Flight 1066 to Brussels was departing from the vegan restaurant on Concourse A.’ ‘I heard that all cars parked in the structure after midnight would be subject to towing by a pair of angels armed with grappling hooks, but I did not find this to be the case.’ Shall I go on?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what they’re talking about,” Sean said. “People get a little loopy after midnight, don’t they?”

“Ah, I see.” The day shift manager did his best to keep a poker face but a vein could be seen quietly throbbing on the side of his large and domed forehead. “I have in my inbox, in addition to those complaints, a recording of an announcement made last month someone took on their cellular telephone. If you don’t mind, I’d like to play it for you to see if it jars anything loose, memory-wise.”

“Please do,” said Sean.

“Attention passengers for Edinburgh,” said what was unmistakably Sean’s voice, wavering as if besotted and filtered through a cell phone’s tinny speaker. “I regret to inform you that, due to black magic, your pilots have timed out and turned into lemurs. Columbia Airlines apologizes for the inconvenience but will be unable to provide lodgings during the estimated 97-hour wait before we can take off.”

“I don’t know who that is, or where it was recorded, but they clearly need to lay off the sauce,” said Sean earnestly.

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“I can give you a faithful answer, or I can give you a true answer,” said the luminous figure. “Only one, not the other. And I can guarantee you that, whichever you choose, you will be wracked with regret until you cease to be.”

“I’ll take the true answer,” I said.

“Ask your question again, then.”

“Who are you, and why am I here?” I said. I suppose it might have counted as two questions, but the being of blinding light accepted it nonetheless.

“I am a manifestation of your need to believe in an all-knowing and higher power,” came the reply, “a comforting voice to tell you what you already believe and, in your heart of hearts, know. And what you know is this: the injury was fatal, and you are experiencing the slow death of neurons that will lead you and all you have ever been down into darkness. All that can be said has been said, all that can be done has been done, and there is nothing left but the throes of a mind turning on itself left to you.”

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Human-spec android Z001/19, better known to the crew of the cruise ship Kerguelen as James, stepped over the bodies of its security team. Though they wore body armor and carried police-grade weapons, the team had trained to repel boarders in the form of heavily armed but lightly armored pirates.

They were no match for a human-spec android, who despite his prosaic work in the reactor core was just short of military grade.

Her stateroom was unguarded now, save for alarms and a lock. James dealt with the latter easily, applying 4000 meters per square inch of pressure to the emergency release. A form was huddled, shivering, under the blankets in the master bed.

Without breaking stride, and without saying a word, James throttled the form where it lay. Only when he’d squeezed every ounce of life from the prostrate form did he cast back the covers to reveal…a woman in the livery of a Kerguelen housekeeping staff.

On hearing a scuffling noise, James tore open the ornate doors to a nearby closet. Through a forest of expensive garments, he saw the pried-off cover of a panic chute disguised as ductwork.

“I hate her,” James said again, leaning over the opening that was too small for him to fit though, “and I hate that she is here.”

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At first the raid appeared to have uncovered a brothel like any other, but it soon became apparent from the subsequent investigation by the London Metropolitan Police that the establishment, known underground as “The Xenophiles Club,” catered exclusively to extraterrestrial tastes. The initial confusion stemmed from the apprehension of six Betelgeusian shapeshifters, who attempted to pass themselves off as call girls before running out of stamina and reverting to their natural gelatinous forms in custody.

In total, the raid uncovered 12 Centaurians, 8 Barnardians, 2 Wolf 359ians, 17 Sirians, and 29 Greys (a nomadic race who our devoted readers will remember has no known homeworld) in addition to the aforementioned Betelgeusians. Xenophilia of this nature is of course punishable by law under several acts of Parliament, including the Formic Statute 1533 (better known as the Bugger Act), the Offenses against the Planet Act 1861, and the Interstellar Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885.

The names and affiliations of those arrested in connection with what is already being called the “Jupiter Street Scandal” have not yet been released, but sources within the London Metropolitan Police have confirmed that they include at least five members of the House of Lords, six life peers, and several of London’s most prominent mercantile heads.

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“I’ve got you now.” The personification of my creative muse, wearing give-up-on-life pants and what might once have been a t-shirt, is lounging on my couch while ignoring the cigar ash and drops of cheap beer accumulating on what passed for his clothing.

“I wasn’t under the impression that ‘getting’ me was your goal,” I say. “Aren’t you, as ever, an appropriation of a concept used by Stephen King (without permission) to give form to my creative angst during National Novel Writing Month?”

“No.” My muse takes a deep drag and a deep sip before continuing. “I’m also a personification of your fear of creative failure and occasional reminder that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. And I’ve got you this year.”

“How’s that?” I say defensively. “This year I’m writing a fantasy novel, going for something that’s not at least quasi-realistic for the first time. That’s practically my normal mode, my comfort zone.”

“Yes, but you’re also signed up as a municipal liaison. Officially this time, with real responsibilities and stuff, and not the half-assed kind of quasi-ML you were before. You think there’s enough time in the day for a full-time job, finishing what promises to be another 100,000-word novel, and supervising a bunch of other writers and events? Especially considering you’ll be arriving back from a trip to France one day before November starts?” My muse laughs a bitter laugh.

“We’ll see,” I say in return. “Being an ML could energize me.”

“Or it could leave you a dried-out husk, as dead on the inside as on the outside, so dessicated that Egyptian mummies will look at you askance and say ‘what the Helios happened to that guy?'”

“We shall see, my friend,” I say. “We shall see.”

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