Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Let me tell you about the Silent Alley.

It’s right off of Cicero, between 11th and 12th, uptown. It neatly bisects a block that includes a deli, an adult bookstore, and a plumbing supply warehouse. Though most of those businesses have loading docks out back, they all only take deliveries from the front. That’s why traffic is always so backed up there, in case you were wondering.

No one uses the alley as a shortcut, either, though it’s well-lit and in a relatively safe part of town. You never see any cyclists cutting through to save a few minutes, and pedestrians never dart in, heads down, as if they belong there as is so common elsewhere. The only things to regularly use the alleyway are the birds and rats, who pass through in reasonable numbers.

The alleyway eats sounds.

Oh, you may think you know total silence. Maybe you’ve been in a recording booth next to one of those noise-canceling foam walls, putting your ear up to a dead space just to see what it feels like. Maybe you’ve even tried noise-canceling headphones, with their eerie sine-wave quietude. But anyone who has ever gone through Silent Alley will tell you that you know nothing.

There’s a stretch, maybe five or ten feet, where sounds are just muffled, like being underwater or falling headlong into a deep sleep. But once you’re in the alley proper, you hear nothing. Not your own heartbeat. Not the blood rushing in your ears. Not even the steady ring of tinnitus, if you have it. It is a silence so complete, so overwhelming, that only someone deaf from birth could truly understand it–and even they could never fully convey it to someone who has ever heard a sound.

You’d think this would make it an oasis, an urban paradise, a place where people can go to get away from it all.

No.

The intrepid urban explorers who try usually emerge shaken after only a few minutes. Diehards have been known to last up to an hour, but much longer than that and people begin to lose themselves. There’s been more than one suicide down that alleyway, but no murders or muggings. The silence eagerly eats the sound of a bullet as any other, but you’re too consumed by what you aren’t hearing to worry about much else.

There are theories aplenty about Silent Alley, everything from a quirk of acoustics to hauntings to alien visitations. Some people seize on the fact that there used to be a mortician onsite until they realize it only sold mourning wear and never had any actual bodies. Near as anybody can tell, the alleyway fell silent shortly after its construction in 1911. Nobody paid it much heed for years aside from the tenants, and why would they? The unnerving nature of the place kept rents low.

If you’re in town, and nearby, do yourself a favor. Don’t go. Many have tried, and all have regretted it.

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Kayleigh stormed into the offices of Underhill Associates LLC and demanded to see Morgan Darkholme, one of their entry-level necromantic engineers. The undead thrall at the door tried to stop her, waving his security badge and groaning inarticulately, but she brushed him aside with a quick cantrip of holding she’d bought at the 7/11 around the corner.

Underhill occupied the first 66 floors of the Ravenloft Building, with the unholy energy labs closest to street level (to help keep the bodies fresh) and the staff offices further up. Morgan had his tiny cubicle on the 65th floor, not because he was a big wheel or anything but because as a technically living being he was not as susceptible to sunlight as many of the upper-level executives. The CEO, Lord Cyril Dreadmere IV, actually had his offices in the basement. “After his predecessor accidentally opened the shades at sunrise and turned to ash,” Morgan had told Kayleigh once, “they figured it was better not to take any chances. Liches and sunlight, you know?”

“Morgan!” Kayleigh cried upon reaching the 65th floor. “Morgan, you’d better be in there!”

The other human employees slunk terrified in their cubies. Most of them were working on engineering more efficient horrors from beyond the realms of sanity, but most were as ill-equipped to deal with the living as they were proficient with the newly deceased. As they said at school, the MN degree in necromancy was only for those too shut-in to even become computer programmers.

Morgan stood up, pale and hunched, in his cube, the lines of arcane runes for a spell of extreme deathening compiling on the computer behind him. “K-Kayleigh?” he said. “What is it?”

Kayleigh marched up to him and slapped something down on his desk. Morgan glanced over at it and immediately had a moment of flop sweat. It was a polaroid of a very nice nook in the mid-city columbarium which read “KAYLEIGH JONES, BELOVED DAUGHTER, 4/20/1990 – 2/11/2016.”

“Am I dead?” Kayleigh cried. “Did you reanimate me just so we could date?”

“Of course not,” said Morgan without thinking. “The revivification lab did that for me.”

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The detonation was heard five miles away, in Steubenville, and bits of charred lion steak were found as far as Mike’s Gas ‘n’ Gulp on Route 309.

But those pieces of meat which did survive were quite well-roasted, and had seared in an incredible flavor that the surviving sauce complemented nicely. And the mostly unscathed dessert, served to survivors, was delectable.

Yes, despite a few fatalities, everyone agreed that Mindy’s first cookout was a roaring success.

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The heirophant was insistent. “Now, under our terms of mutual respect…”

Ladon slugged him in the jaw. “Mutual respect sends its regrets,” said he. “It won’t be able to join us.”

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Now, I know what you’re all thinking.

But really, how bad is it? No one is aging, so no one is dying. All those cuts will just hang there now, never bleeding, unless you’re silly enough to sever something and then you’ve basically earned it.

Granted food will run out, but no one has to eat. If they do eat, well, that’s their problem. Bathrooms just don’t work under these circumstances.

I mean, yeah, we COULD point the fingers of blame for having a New Year’s Eve party on the site once occupied by the Temple of Chronos. And we COULD argue for hours about who did what rituals while roaring drunk, and who stopped the flow of what.

But really, what good is that going to do any of us?

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Three men, all accused of piracy, were before him on their knees, guarded by troops from the fortress. They’d each petitioned for the Corrigador, the effective governor of Veracruz, to hear their cases personally.

“Gabriel Hernandez y Juarez,” Exposito said, sounding utterly bored. “You stand accused of piracy before His Majesty King Philip. You were caught aboard a pirate ship that was detained and captured by our fleet off the coast a week ago, one which had made several attempts to take His Majesty’s ships as prizes. What do you have to say in your defense?”

“Please, sir, please,” blubbered the man. “I apologize before you and before God, and I throw myself prostrate on your mercy. I was captured by those buccaneers when my ship was taken and forced into their service as a carpenter.”

Exposito perked up at this. “Oh? I know a thing or two about carpentry myself, you know,” he said. “The table before you wobbles. Go on, get up and try it.”

Hesitantly, Hernandez got up and tested Exposito’s small end table. It did in fact wobble.

“Tell me,” said Exposito. “How would you fix it?”

“Well, I suppose…um…well, that is to say…” Hernandez stuttered.

“Bah,” said Exposito. “You expect me to believe pirates would impress a ‘carpenter’ who can’t even do such a simple task? You could glue a small disk to the bottom of the leg, or put in a wedge at the top.”

“Please, it is nervousness!” the accused man cried. “I was just about to suggest glue!”

“Take him away and hang him,” said Exposito with a wave of his arm. “A real carpenter would have noticed that the wobble was because one leg is on my rug.”

Wailing and blubbering, the man was removed.

“John Samuels, of England,” said Exposito to the second man, rolling the foreign name around between his high cheeks before spitting it out. “You stand accused of piracy before His Majesty King Philip. You and your skiff preyed on the fishermen out of the harbor until you ran aground. What have you to say in your defense?”

“I only stole a few fish, on account of I was starving,” said Samuels. “If a fisherman can’t even protect a few measly mackerel, what good’s he going to do in life? If anything, I was making the fishermen around here better by culling out the weak.”

“I see,” said Exposito. “But what does it mean for your theory that you were captured?”

“It means that my services are now at your Lordship’s disposal,” said Samuels. “If you’d put me to work for you, I’d make you stronger as well. But if you mean to hang me, even if only for a bit of sport, I’d ask that you get to it.”

“I like this man,” said Exposito. “A full pardon for him. See him escorted to the docks and issued orders as a pilot.”

“As your Lordship wills,” said Samuels. “Thank you for not wasting our time.”

Exposito dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “Jean Legrand, of France,” he said to the third. “You stand accused of piracy before His Majesty King Philip. You were found illegally trading in the port of Veracruz for lumber you illegally cut from His Majesty’s forests on Santo Domingo.”

“As I have told your brutish men at length,” Legrand said, “I was selling lumber from Saint-Domingue, which is rightfully part of the French crown as your own King has recognized.”

“And I hold that yours is an illegal occupation, one that is soon to be stamped out, regardless of what temporary concessions King Philip has made to his grandfather, your so-called king. Who are you to say otherwise?”

“Tell me then, how is a simple farmer to support himself when he has neither the land nor the slaves to grow sugarcane nor anything else of value, and is the sole support of his family?”

“That is not my concern,” said Exposito. “Take him away and hang him.”

“I protest!” cried Legrand. “I protest in the name of my King and my family!”

“Oh, very well,” said Exposito. “Hang him, but sell his ship and his cargo and give the proceeds to Ambassador La Croix. He may compensate this squatter’s family at his discretion, I suppose.”

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The City Diner had taken over the name and location of a famous Hopewell city dive that had closed in 1988. But it was anything like its namesake, offering a rarified atmosphere with swank prices to match. The owner was Jack Raisin, who had earned a Michelin Star at his boutique in New York before deciding to be a big fish in a little pond and returning to Hopewell.

City Diner was at the forefront of the farm-to-table movement as well as molecular gastronomy and any other number of buzzwordworthy terms, but as anyone who was anyone in Hopewell knew, the real deal was the quarterly Diner Tasting.

Writing for the Democrat-Tribune, I’d heard all sorts of things about the Diner Tasting, many of them from the City Diner itself. Whenever someone ate there, their reciept would include a star ranking based on how well they had conducted themselves. It was possible to get up to three stars by simply dressing well and behaving in a genteel fashion, but four and five star rankings were reserved for those who were somebody.

Naturally you had to behave yourself too. The Southern Michigan University football coach Brock Manfred found that out much to his sorrow when he got zero stars for showing up in muddy practice clothes and getting tipsy despite being the highest-paid and most-important honcho in town.

God only knows how I merited an invite. I guess they were interested in a little free publicity.

I showed up in a suit and tie only to find that, to my astonishment, the dress code was actually business casual for men and dresses of strictly medium swank for ladies. The usual City Diner tables had been cleared away in favor of very tall standing-room-only ones, and a steady stream of waiters were bringing out incredibly froufrou dishes. It looked like incredibly fresh sushi or sashimi, thin-sliced and raw to the point of being bloody or very barely seared.

It didn’t look very appetizing despite the moans of pleasure all around me when my fellow attendees took a bite, so I mostly filled up on bread and water. That came back to bite me soon enough when I needed to pee, and like most restaurants north of 7.5 on the Hipster-O-Meter, City Diner’s bathroom was well-hidden.

I waited until my bladder was bursting before taking the door that seemed likeliest to hide a privy. I timed it for when Jack Raisin was giving an address to all the waiters and diners to minimize my potential embarrassment.

The room I stumbled into wasn’t a bathroom but rather the kitchen. There, splayed out on a kitchen table, was a dude who had been very neatly cut open, surgery-style. He was surrounded by plates and immaculately clean tools for shaving off and shaping meats.

“Help me,” he croaked in a sedated, barely audible whisper.

On the plus side, my bladder wasn’t bursting anymore.

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June had thought it was a slam-dunk: pizza and a full wet bar. People loved pizza, people loved booze, and tipsy tips were legendarily good.

Six months later, June was having second thoughts. Or, rather, her fourth set of second thoughts, which would make them eighth thoughts or somesuch. To wit, she had not considered the following points when founding Hops ‘n’ Toppings:

1. Pizza takes time to cook and most drunks are hungry NOW.
2. Liquor licences in Tecumseh County involved bribery on a biblical scale.
3. Pizza makes the worst vomit imaginable.
4. A bar can be comfortably run with 1-2 people. A pizza parlor, even one that doesn’t deliver, will run 1-2 people ragged.
5. Cheap beer has low profit margins.
6. PIZZA MAKES THE WORST VOMIT IMAGINABLE OH MY GOD

Sitting at the bar around 3pm, wiping off the last flecks of what had once been a pepperoni and anchovy medium before its liquefaction and distribution the night before, June heard the last thing she’d wanted to hear.

“Yo! We’re out of sauce and cheese!”

“We’ve got plenty of sauce,” said June, pouring herself a shot of Loch Lomond. “Just not that kind that goes good with pizza.”

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TO: Me
FROM: Your Muse
RE: National Novel Writing Month

Well, here we are again. Why do you do this to yourself every year? I’m thinking you can name your first kidney stone “Nano” after all the coffee you’re chugging.

But really, I know. Nothing’s more exciting, or terrifying, than that blank page with (what you think is) a great idea waiting to be realized. Nevermind the 8 or so novels that have fizzled out after that first plunge, or the 4 or so that are finished but may not ever be publishable.

How are you going to find the time to write while also inspiring others to write? How are you going to find your way around the week of Thanksgiving, when there’s so much else going on that you want to, and have to, do?

I guess we’ll see, won’t we? I guess we’ll see.

Good luck, pal. You’re gonna need it.

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