Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Greetings, gentlemen.” Greg’s scooter whirred into the office, his girth bouncing slightly at the threshhold. “For those of you who may not know me, I am Sherwood Greg. Collector, scholar, dungeon master, level 26 elven sorceress, head of the Council of Twelve, and overall coordinator for Nerdicon.”

“With all due respect, sir,” said Officer Carruthers, “this is a crime of passion, and Mr. Sherman Gregward doesn’t exactly seem to be an authority on that.”

“I’ll have you know, officer, that I have four wives and two husbands,” said Greg. “In fact, I just tied the knot last week with a lovely Level 90 troll necromancer. We’re registered at Red Canyon Mining and Jewelcrafting in Orgrimmar if you’d like to get us something.”

“Just humor me,” Chief Strong said. “Greg?”

“Thank you, Chief.” Greg whirred himself up to the table. “It would seem a simple crime of passion, wouldn’t it? Two people meet online, and one of them gets very ungentlemanly ideas when he realizes that the other player has lives outside of World of Warcraft. Precisely why I’ve never met any of my wives or husbands in person.”

“So you agree that it’s an open and shut case,” said Carruthers.

“Not entirely,” said Greg. “Based on the email that I recieved from Chief Strong, I did some digging. It’s true that both the victim and the accused have World of Warcraft accounts. But your suspect has only a Level 1 Dwarf Cleric associated with his account. It’s true that the registration dates to before the murder, but the only character maintained by the deceased was a Level 99 Orc Death Knight.”

“So star-crossed lovers then,” said Carruthers.

“More so than you realize, Officer,” said Greg. “Dwarves fight for the Alliance and Orcs for the Horde. They can’t communicate meaningfully with each other in-game. And even if that were not true, a Level 1 character falling in love with a Level 99 character? Where, exactly, would they meet? What, exactly, would they do together? A Level 99 Death Knight can kill things that would threaten a Level 1 Cleric just by standing next to them.”

Chief Strong nodded. “So it doesn’t add up.”

“It more than doesn’t add up,” said Sherwood Greg. “It’s clear to me that someone created a false World of Warcraft account using the suspect’s preferred online handle with the intent to incriminate them for murder.”

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“Any one of you could be next. Any given psycho has reason to fear for their personal safety.” The Chair pronounced this gravely, as was his wont.

Murmurs from the various figures on the webcam. “What do you expect us to do?” said the Roadside Strangler. “We can’t exactly go to the police.”

“It’s a trick,” said “Wild Bill.” “They’re trying to get us all in a net by making us nervous and sloppy.”

“You can’t deny that Serpentaurus is dead, any more than you can deny that the cops found The Butcher fried in his own crematorium,” said the Widower, her voice strident, irritated.

“Listen, the very reason we devised the Circle was to support ourselves in our endeavors,” said the Chair. “Nevertheless, it’s clear that whoever strangled Serpentaurus with her own garrote and fed The Butcher to his own inferno must be one of us.”

“Of course it’s one of us, you idiot,” snapped Clowniac. “The Butcher’s own mother didn’t know about his crematorium, and she lived with him!”

“And that is why I’ve decided to take the next logical, if drastic, step,” said the Chair. “I’ve independently funded the Circle from the beginning, and now I offer you this: $100,000 for proof on who it was. Double that if the proof is accompanied by their head. Don’t think you can feel me, either; remember where that money came from.”

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Hatched under a blood moon from a black egg laid by a hen that had been hexed by a witch or something, Peckabella the Dark Chicken was the most evil fowl ever to walk the earth.

Her Dark Eggs were sold at a local farmer’s market and uickly gained infamy both for their robust taste and their 100% evil content (by volume). Misfortune invariably befell anyone who handled, ate, or touched one of these black oblate spheroids of doom, but they also had a surprisingly robust taste.

Eventually, the farmers decided that Peckabella’s reign of doom over the barnyard had to stop. They made plans to cook her into a pot pie for the neighbors. But the evil chicken had the last laugh: while a pot pie did show up on the neighbors’ doorstep the next day, Peckabella was seen in the farmyard soon after. It was the farmers that were never seen again.

The dark chicken ran the farm under an alias until she disappered a few years later during a solar eclipse.

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Originally native to the island of Great Britain, the roundabout is an urban spirit that takes the form of a massive circle blocking an intersection. It feeds off the energy of wasted time, momentum, and frustration to grow and reproduce. The largest and oldest roundabouts have multiple lanes, having become far more efficient in their harvesting of misery.

A pregnant roundabout was imported to New York in 1989 in the mistaken belief that it could reduce fatalies at Dead Man’s Corner in Queens. From that single progenitor a massive infestation of invasive roundabouts resulted, and with no native predators they have expanded aggressively at the expense of native four-way stops.

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I had exhausted all the usual avenues of dating. The bar scene, online matchmaking sites, the local matchmaker in my shtetl, nothing seemed to being the prospect of love any closer.

Then I tried Astral Affections™, the award-winning dating program for out-of-body experiences. By leaving my mortal shell and projecting my ego into the Realms Beyond, I was able to stroll the streets of mighty Celephaïs free from the constraints of mortal affection.

Without Astral Affections™, I never would have met the love of my life, Shar-Udar. Some back home may say that a guy like me could never work things out with a being of pure dreamcrystal coalesced from the souls of drowned insectoir concubines. But I say that we, and our family of precipitate dreamworms, are proof otherwise.

Try Astral Affections™. It works.

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“But why do you have to kill?” said Mercedes. “And steal? Surely a truly free man would be above such things.”

“Listen to yourself,” said Cooke. “The only reason people don’t have to take for themselves is because they’ve given that up. When you surrender your freedom to a king, you’re less likely to die in battle, more likely to die in bed. But the killing? The stealing? It doesn’t stop. It just moves. There are people killing and stealing for you every day of your life. Soldiers, sailors, merchants.”

“Only if they have to.”

“And we’re just doing what we have to,” Cooke said. “We take what we need to live as free men.”

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Hawg Phillips drew Screamin’ Mimi aside. “Look,” he said. “I didn’t want to say nothin’ before, but I saw Death’s Head sneakin’ into the garage for The Undertower.”

Screamin’ Mimi’s tattoo (“Vaya Con Muerte”) lowered along with her suspicious eyebrows. “When was that?”

“Just before The Undertower wrecked at the last Truckasaurus Wrex in Cascadia.”

“Have you told anyone else, Hawg?”

Hawg stroked his waxed mustache. “I might’ve mentioned it to Popeye Phipps.”

“Might’ve?” Screamin’ Mimi said. “Hawg, this is the third monster trucker we’ve lost in a month. You gotta do better than ‘might’ve.”

“Look, I was loaded like a .38 when we was talkin’, okay?” said Hawg.

LEss than 12 hours later, he was dead.

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Part 1
“Dammit, why won’t this makeup come off?” said Jamie. “It says it’s waterproof.”

Part 2
“I don’t like putting makeup over makeup, but what choice do I have?” muttered Jamie. “I’ve got to leave the house.”

Part 3
“It’s okay, Jamie,” said the makeup, slipping on a pair of sunglasses to hide the hollow eyes that exposed it as a shell of indestructable flesh-colored concealer. “I’ll be just fine without you.”

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But then, what were the Vyeah but the dark parts of every fairy story since the war? Like any other heroine, our Myassa had been raised up on tales of monsters cast down in defeat by those who were clever enough to keep their heads in times of trial.

But our heroine had more than a level head swaddled in black cloth. Our girl was not like those heroes–and we must say heroes, children, because the only women in Myassa’s tales were wives, mothers, and the occasional schoolmarm. The girl had a M885 automatic marksman rifle with the optional electric ignition and sabot ammunition, a tool that any dragon-slaying prince would envy.

The first Vyaeh that entered the kill-box that our heroine had expertly marked out was ushered from this world into the next before it even heard a sound.

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It was made of cheap plastic, the kind that wobbles and won’t hold its shape under gentle pressure but snaps like a twig is pressed even slightly too hard. There were seams, warps, and wobbles throughout, and what details there were had the look of lazy vacuum-forming.

The nameplate read “BиW JAGUR SPURT.”

“Wow,” he said. “These new Chinese sedans aren’t even trying.”

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