Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Myn hated her goblin tutor, Hacta Scribbleshank, but didn’t realize the feeling was mutual until Hacta tried to kill her.

It had been another lesson in history and etiquette. Another lesson calling for Myn to squeeze herself into uncomfortable court garments. Another lesson with her tottering about in shoes made to sound pretty on polished floors rather than fit comfortably. And all the while, Hacta had been calling out facts and figures to memorize.

“Why do the boots of court dress reach the knee?” Hacta barked.

“To make people with big feet want to kill themselves?” Myn growled.

“It was imposed by the Layyians when they ruled Pexate for 50 years!” Hacta cried back.

“Then why do we keep doing it?”

Their conversation was abruptly interrupted by the sound of a cannon on the walls of Toan Castle. Two more followed, a triple blast.

“What does that mean?” said Myn, struggling to remember the lesson about cannon shots. “I know this one, I swear. It’s either the birth of an heir to the throne or welcoming a prince from a petty duchy.”

Hacta reached into her bustle and drew a slim, finely-wrought misericorde dagger. “It means the lesson is over,” she said. “I will now teach you the most important etiquette of all: how to die with dignity.”

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Time is eddies and currents
Holding us to our path
Everything with its purpose
Maybe even all our pasts
One wave brings us forward
Then another brings us back
Let us forget, then,
Everything that
You ever meant to us
Many are the memories
And many are the tears
No one could mean more
Has it really been so long
After all it seems so soon
Sliding through time together
Maybe apart, in our current boats
Everyone’s stronger

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“I guess those are all okay,” she said, “I liked the way that Mona appeared in every piece. But I don’t like the way they all include that weird Motley Man.”

“I based it off the creepy clown in My Friend Pierrot painted by Max Ernst,” I said. “It was in the art prompt folder.”

“Really?” She scrunched up her nose. “There was some awfully weird stuff in there, like those house-birds and that wall-face and stuff. Can I see it?”

“Sure,” I said. I dug through the art folder–clipped from a coffee table book of Max Ernst art that had died of a broken spine–trying to find My Friend Pierrot. Then I looked a second time. And a third.

Ernst’s coral towers, his jungles teeming with teeth, his architecture with organics…it was all there. But the motley fool capering with an impossible hat beneath an impossible moon…that had vanished.

“Huh,” I said. “I wonder what happened to it.”

The Motley Man, leaning quietly in the corner, smiled a jagged smile. “I wonder indeed,” said he. “I wonder indeed.”

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Can the young want Time? He felt slow and out of sorts, but was it a want for Time? She came and went so effortlessly that he wasn’t sure if it was desire or something else, just a comfort to see her again and know that she was coming and going still. He liked to know that she had a purpose, and through her, he found his. But can the young really want for Time, or just want after her, chasing her as if they never got the chance to get to know each other.

Time was a frivolous creature, her hair made of moonlight and skin the color of the darkest night. Her eyes twinkled and sparkling, always laughing and always careful to be sure you got caught and captured by her passing gaze.

He saw her here and there, reflected in a watch or in the lock screen of his cell phone, but he was never able to meet Time face to face until, on a particularly misty morning, he came across her in the town square with a load of watch parts from the local pawn shop borne behind her by her handmaid and servant, the Motley Man.

“Tell me, O Time, what is my purpose? Why does it seem that I am always chasing you, yet never really knowing you?”

Time’s laugh was as silvery alarm bells. “None know me, not even myself,” said she. “I simply endure, as I have been enduring, keeping the World Clock wound and Time’s Arrow straight.”

He would not be dissuaded. “Show me, O Time, how I can know you better and use you better and spend you better.”

“Very well,” she said, and his heart leapt. “Go into the Jungle of Luud. My servant will accompany you. Do as he commands you and you will find yourself in the Sacred Geometry. There you will find the one you seek. When you have pulled her from the Geometry, you will understand Me.”

He bowed deeply and led by his misshapen guide, he set out for the Jungle of Luud and his beloved Mona.

Ah, Mona. He had met her first in the Pearls. She was sitting under the perpetual moonlight, scribbling away in a small violet book.

“Mona, my dear,” he said. Mona did not look up but merely nodded, still deep in her book. “It has been so long. Whatever have you been doing?”

“I have been writing,” Mona said, appearing to embellish her journal.

“I can see. I was told you have the answer to Time.”

“Do I now?” Mona asked.

“I suppose you must. How do you spend Time these days, then? How might I make better use of my time, as you do?”

“Ah, my friend,” said Mona, “Lately I have been writing, but the rest of the time I have been simply living.”

“That is a rather vague answer,” he grumbled. “I am living now!”

“Not really. You’re existing, certainly, but to enjoy each moment, and invest your whole being into it, now that is truly living. And as I am investing myself in this writing.”

With that, Mona disappeared into her journal. He took up the fallen book, put it in his pocket, and carried Mona out of the Sacred Geometry, going out to live his life.

Warm summer’s sunset sinking low over the graveyard. The man and his Mona, bowed with old age, held each other on the bench while they watched the sunbeams play pink and orange before death’s deep red took them. The Motley Man stood at the cemetery gate, with Time and her handmaiden behind him.

“Now?” the Motley Man asked.

“No, give them a moment yet,” sighed Time with bated breath.

Mona and the man sat in loving embrace, and as the last rays of maroon burst into cold, purple night, they kissed, hearts pressed together, and Time waved her hand forward, and the Motley Man set out in a broad pace toward the two.

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Strange creatures wandered about in the dark. Through tunnels and off ledges, the bird creatures walked, trying to escape the sacred geometry.

Sometimes things swam up out of the darkness at them at the ends of the ledges. Whales and drowned men who claimed to have been sent by God and swallowed by a fish floated up and all the creatures could do was watch, faces upturned for one brief moment before looking back at the ground and continuing their path. Sometimes, if they stood still too long, roots began growing from them, pulling them into the walls, peeling forth from their flesh like curling pages.

And there were eyes, watching from the dark, though they could not tell if they were their own. And one of these creatures was named Mona.

Mona was one of those always at risk of growing roots. She loved the thought of the surface too much to remember to keep moving. Every day as she trudged along in line with her fellow birds, she imagined what the lives of those holy men must have been like before they were swallowed. Their clothes were always white, she noticed. Somewhere, then, there was no such thing as algae, or as dirt. What it might be like to never have to clean her feathers!

Mona dipped down to the surface, telling herself it was just for a moment. Only one moment, and then I’m on my way, she thought. Mona leaned way down toward the surface, her beak swaying just at the hem and horizon of the other world. Dipping millimeters more, she peered into that world, her eyes less than a foot from the divide. There were fish, and men, but of unsettling shape and character. What a strange place! she cooed. Her back shot up as she sensed something moving behind her.

The air from Gerard’s wings pounded against her back.

“If you love the humans so much, grow your roots already and save us some trouble,” he squawked at her. “Either touch the earth, or get back in line!”

Silently, she flew back toward the heavens, wings outstretched and silent tears in her eyes. There was a time and a place to grow roots, to finally become one of the beings she had always dreamed about, but she wasn’t ready to say goodbye, to this life or her family. She had no idea what would become of her once she was swallowed up. And there was really only one way to find out, but that was a one way trip she just wasn’t willing to take yet.

So she kept flying, thinking maybe, eventually, she would be able instead to touch the sun.

Uncounteable hours later, exhausted and the sun no closer, she sank to the ground, defeated, amid a small grove of her kind that had also tried for the sun and failed. She could feel her roots beginning to work their way into the soft soil and wept miserably at her failure.

One of the others bird-bushes in the grove was of a curious motley pattern Mona had never seen before. He asked her, in calm but erratic tones, if she would prefer a free-flying life to the rooted existence that so clearly vexed her. It could all be hers, he said, for but a little price.

“Okay,” Mona said. “I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.”

No sooner had the last syllable gasped out when she awoke. No longer a bush-bird, as if awakening from a dream. She was the lone volunteer, the sole occupant of the suicidal Daedalus mission to re-ignite the sun, and her freedom and quest for the sun were both about to be fulfilled.

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“Oh. My god.”

“What now, Dick?” sighed Anna, straining not to roll her eyes.

“That. Do you see that thing?”

Anna looked up at her (admittedly unfortunately-named and unfortunately bland) date. He was standing stock still in the middle of the sidewalk, apparently oblivious to the rushing nightlife crowd around them, and staring straight ahead.
Anna tried to stare too, peering through and around the bodies flowing past her. And yes, there was something in front of them. Something that looked quite like a praying mantis. Or, no, she thought, like a tree. And were those hands?

“Quick, Dick!…wait…*snirk*” Anna snirked.

“What?”

“It’s the Mantis Lord! Get him!” Anna cried, tearing off her plainclothes to reveal a latex leotard.
Anna, aka Missus Wow!, flew at the Mantis Lord and threw him into a building with her super-strength.

“Aw, what, now? But we were on a date…fine.” Dick wiggled out of his clothes to reveal…a less-attractive latex suit. The Dickless Wonder aimed his palm at the Mantis Lord and prepared his laser beams.

Her scream pierced the night. Another damn nightmare. For weeks after that lousy date, Anna had been dreaming for that guy. Not that she was actually interested in him or his unfortunate name, he just kept appearing. She could go through the whole day without thinking about him, but every dream lead her back to that night and their plain simple date.

Still, she hadn’t seen anyone else since then. It was simply that no one else had come into her life, or so she told herself. Trisha from the office was still to get her second cousin Bill in town to meet Anna, but nothing had come of it. So instead she laid in her bed in the dark of night, terrified of her walking dream.

“Would you like that dream expunged? That awful date, those terrible comic book references? I can make that happen for you. No more nightmares and no more datey thoughts…for a price.”

She looked up, startled, from her bed at the hunched shape in the corner. Half convinced it was another dream, she would only say: “What price and who’s asking?”

“The Motley Man asks, and his price is quite reasonable,” came the oily-smooth reply. “Or would you rather go back to being Missus Wow to your awful date’s Dickless Wonder for the rest of your slumbering life?”

“All right,” she said. “I don’t care what the price is. Just take away the dreams and the memories of that date.”
“Deal,” said the Motley Man.

The memories were gone. The dreams were gone. But that, perhaps, was because she was now an inanimate bookshelf frozen in a silent scream.

Inanimate though she was, Anna was still aware. Trapped inside her head and inside another dream which was, if possible, worse. Time was wrong. She sat on a throne, that crooked Motley Man at her side bearing a tray of all manner of strange things and before her knelt a man.

“Who are you?” he asked. “Why can I not understand you?”

She laughed bitterly. “I do not even understand myself.”

“Please,” he said, “tell me, oh Time, how I can better understand you, better spend you, and better find you.”
The words rose as if she had been born to say them.

“You must go to the Jungle of Luud. My servant will go with you. Do everything he tells you and you will find yourself in the Sacred Geometry. There you will find the one you seek. When you have pulled her from the Geometry, then you will understand what you seek.”

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Everything in the Jungle of Luud was alive, or shortly going to be. Everything was spines and teeth, even the plants, ESPECIALLY the plants, and travelers who knew what was good for them stuck to the roads laboriously hacked out over generations and lit large fires at night. Many travelers passed through Luud on their way between the Pearls of the Coast and the Inner Highlands, but all whispered of a sinister figure who roamed the Jungle of Luud as its most voracious gaping maw: the Motley Man.

Appearing as a hunched figure in bright, mismatched clothing scraps—the leavings of past victims, perhaps—the Motley Man would approach travelers and ask to join them. He would then recount rambling tales of magic and heroism that never seemed to quite make sense, as if they had been translated from another language by rough hands.

Mona set off from the Pearls in the middle of a storm. She sloshed up the roads and through the thoroughly unremarkable gate which marked the boundaries of Luud. She had, of course, heard the rumors about the Motley Man and it wasn’t that she didn’t believe them. She simply didn’t have time to worry about them. She was expected in the Highlands in three days and the quickest way there – barring vicious attack – was through Luud. And so it was that she came to the Jungle. The rain had passed on by that time, but the forest was still cloying, the air as near as she had ever found. It was not long before the Motley Man found her.

He looked absolutely nothing like the stories had said he would—no bat ears, no hooked nose, with a normal amount of fingers and toes on his spindly limbs. He had a gnarled staff with him that he leaned on, and for all intents and purposes could have been someone’s very short grandfather. The only legendary constant was his trademark patchwork cloak, which covered the squat trunk of his torso. His speech, however, was not quite steady.

“Somewhere going?” he asked, when he appeared before Mona.

“Yes,” Mona said. “To the Highlands, on business. Are you the Motley Man?”

He cackled.

“Mind if I join ya?” the Motley Man wheezed with a worn grin.

“…I suppose I don’t mind.” Mona relented.

“Tha’s wonderful! I was jes workin’ out another story to tell. Been workin’ on this un awhile.” The Motley Man sputtered as he laughed.

“Why don’t ya tell me?” Mona asked.

“Sure, sure, couldn’ think of a better person to tell if I tried.” He ran his tongue over his white mustache. “Ever hear the one bout the fool girl that caught got walkin’ with strangers? Got a hot bullet in the head, wound up in a cold ditch.”

“No,” Mona replied. How’s the whole thing go?”

“Fool of a girl got walkin’ ‘long with a stranger one day. Got a hot bullet in the head, that’s right between the eyes dear-y, and wound up in a cold ditch.” He paused in his story to spit into a nearby bush. “Dead as an old oak and living without her clothes for some time there under. Naked as all get out that is, would have froze to death without the bullet I s’ppose.”

“How’d she end up like that?” Mona asked, picking her way along the path.

“You’ll find out shortly then dear-y.”

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“They’re always going to be stronger than you,” said Myn. “Always. That’s why you’ve got to be quicker and cleverer. If you’re not as quick as me or as clever as me, they’ll pin you in close where their stupidity can’t hurt them and they’ll murder you to death.”

“So what does that mean?”

“You attack them only when you can surprise them. Otherwise, you run and you climb. If you cross swords with them, you’ve already lost.” Myn took out one of her daggers and twirled it. “You can’t run with a sword very well, even less with armor. But one of these will kill a man just as dead.”

“But that doesn’t really seem fair.”

Myn spat. “Fair? Fair is something those big idiots invented to make you fight on their terms. I say they’re not playing fair by being bigger and stronger than me, so I’m doing what I can to make things fairer through judicious stabbing.”

“You can’t always stab.”

“Of course not,” sniffed Myn. “That’s why the Creator made stuff like this.” She drew her Gob Legion hand cannon. “It’ll blow a hole in their armor from 20 yards away.”

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“I heard that he was in ‘Nam,” said the smallest one, nervous little Joey. “He lost all his friends and it ruined him. He’s got a little nickel revolver with him, I’ve seen it. Two bullets in it, one for him, and no one knows who the other one is for.”

Kerry was a knowledgable sort, verging on know-it-all. “If he was in ‘Nam, they’d have issued him an M1911A1, not some nickel plated sissy pistol. I heard that he was some bigshot history teacher, like for a college or something.”

“What about that jacket?” said Joey. He was trying to defend his theory, but not loudly enough that the homeless guy could hear him.

“It’s part of something he was teaching. He got dressed up as a vet but he took it too far. He went nuts. Now he thinks he is one but if you look close all the little pieces are wrong.”

Joey wasn’t budging. “I heard that his brother died when he was in ‘Nam and that the stuff is all the brother’s. That’s why it doesn’t fit.”

“Well…well…” quiet Emmy stuttered. “I heard he’s an alien.”

“A what?”

“Yeah, he came here to study our…our military but he didn’t get everything right.”

The others stared at him.

“It makes sense!” Emmy added.

Across the street, the homeless man had heard everything that had been said. “If they only knew,” he grunted. “If they only knew.”

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“Just ignore my friend here, the proctologist,” said Crackers the dummy. “He’s the strong silent type. About as strong and as silent as the tree he chopped down to make me!”

The audience tittered. It was about all one could expect from a midday crowd at a regional casino.

“But seriously, folks,” the dummy went on, his leering grin waggling as he spoke. “Harold here just got into town, and let me tell you, it was quite a car ride! Of course, we weren’t riding in the car, we haven’t got the budget for that. We just ran near a slow one, and it was brutal. As they say, a man who run in front of car gets tired, and a man who runs behind a car get exhausted.”

The performance continued in that vein for some time, with people drifting in and out in clouds of smoke. The audience dwindled as the Harold and Crackers routine wound down. With the final lame wisecrack, the audience began to break up. Sam, still sitting in the back, came forward.

“Excuse me,” he said. “You don’t know me, but I think you did a show at my middle school a few years ago.”

Harold turned around and waggled his hands at Sam in an elaborate display.

“What?” said Sam.

More hand-waving, more elaborate this time.

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ll have to forgive him,” said Crackers. “Harold doesn’t talk except with his hands, and there’s only one sign everyone really understands.”

Sam jumped. The dummy was ten feet away.

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