Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Robert lay in a heap at the bottom of the grand staircase. His legs were limb, numb above the waist. Dimly, he recalled a meaty snap as he had plummeted: his spine.

“My dear! Oh, my dear.”

At the sound of her voice, Robert cut his way through the forest of pain closing in around him and tried to dig his hands into the floor, to pull himself away, toward the great oaken doors, toward safety.

“My dear! Oh my sweet, sweet dear.”

Orthodontia appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed only in her nightgown. She began descending slowly, making a grand entrance. A pair of silver sewing shears glittered in her hand.

“Stay away,” croaked Robert. “Stay away!”

“You’re not well,” said Orthodontia. “Come, dear. Let me sew you back together.”

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“It’s a shame to see Oscar winners and blockbuster stars shilling in commercials for sleazy pay-to-win cell phone games.”

“Hey, if it pays the bills, it pays the bills.”

“Are…are you playing one of those games right now?”

“I can’t help it! I love the rush when I stomp some n00b good because I’m paying a little bit more than they are.”

“Huh. Looks like you’re the one getting stomped right now!”

“Son of a bitch, you’re right! How did they get all those units?”

“Say, you know what? I bet those stars get a bunch of free credits in those pay-to-win games they’re selling out for.”

“Why’s that?”

“Look at the username. You just got beaten by Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

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It was not the being they craved
But rather the becoming
Attainment was a hollow
Pursuit was everything
Even whilst pursuing
In each new pursuit
Attempts to regain
Even an ember
Of that first
Fleeting
Spark

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Today’s post is in (belated) support of Unicorn Appreciation Day at Fish of Gold. Be sure to visit to express your solidarity!

The last (1975) seal of the Unicorn Society. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Everybody knows that unicorns are endangered, but how did they go from their former abundance to such scarcity, where every last one of them must be appreciated lest they vanish like so many sparkles in the wind?

The answer, as with so many other things, lies with sex. Specifically, reproduction. Unicorns reproduce in two ways: the traditional way, where a mommy and daddy love each other very much, and via tulpa. Tulpa, as the practitioners of ostentatious trendy Tibetan meditation already know, is the creation of matter from force of belief. If you believe in unicorns, more of them will come into being. If you don’t, their ranks will be thinned by natural predation by dark wizards and red bulls and the population will crash.

Recognizing this, naturalists led by John Muir established the Unicorn Society in 1901. Branches were quickly formed all over the United States and Canada, with a Mexican branch opening in 1914 and a European one in 1919 (sadly too late to prevent European unicorns from being slaughtered by dark wizards aligned with the Central Powers). Members met once weekly and participated in a variety of activities designed to increase belief in and awareness of unicorns. Belief Derbies, Belief Races, Believeathons, and even regretful Belief Hazing in the Unicorn Society helped swell the population to its highest levels since 1492.

But it was not to last. World War II sharply curtailed the Society’s activities and their Belief-Ins were no match for the swinging 60s and swingier 70s. The membership reduced to just over 5000, the Unicorn Society dissolved in 1980, merging with the Centaurettes and the Drakebund to form the Society for the Belief in Magical Creatures, which itself went under in 1993 after federal funding intended to help the United States win the dragon race against the Soviets was withdrawn.

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“It really is quite remarkable,” said Burgess, gingerly sipping his warm tea, which he had taken in the kitchen to avoid another staring contest with Mr. Forrestal. “I have heard of and seen many deformities of the body in the literature and as a boy at the freak show. But Melinda is no Mr. Merrick, no gross and twisted creature.”

Mary, who had been put at ease by a shilling and the promise of more, agreed over the sound of her washing. “You’d never think that she were a freak,” she said, “but rather that Master Peter’s wife had a naff with a blackbird. ‘Course that ain’t the case, as those what knew her father see plenty of him in her.”

“Surely there are ways to be…less dependent…on Mr. Forrestal,” said Burgess. “An anatomical curiosity such as hers could command a healthy living in the penny gaff trade, or as a curiosity at the London Hospital…”

A clatter of dishes. “Oh no, sir. Begging the master’s pardon, but that could never be so,” cried Mary.

“Why ever not?”

“Well, you’ve seen her. A delicate, gentle creature with the soul of a songbird. Such a cage would flatten her! And Master Forrestal would never allow it, besides. To see the family name besmirched, his secret shame revealed to all the world?”

“Yes, I suppose not,” said Burgess gravely. “Mr. Forrestal does seem rather concerned with appearances.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Mary said darkly. “You don’t know the half of it.”

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Melinda’s voice was raspy. “You are…Mister Burgess, are you not?”

The former greenhouse was a warren of books and genteel tintypes, with a narrow path winding between them. Burgess could hear the squeaking of Melinda’s chair nearby, but could not immediately see a way to reach it.

“Yes, that’s right,” he said. “Your uncle spoke to you of me?

“Oh, no.” More rusty squealing as Melinda reoriented herself, sight unseen, to seek out Burgess amid the chaos. “Uncle is…terribly protective. I’m sure you noticed.”

Burgess rubbed the spot on the small of his back where Uncle Forrestal’s gun had been pressed. “I did indeed. But I am here because of your father.”

The squeaking, and the rasping, were closer now. “Uncle has told me of Father. I remember…little of him, but I am sure that he had my interests at heart when he left. Mother’s death at my birth was, I am told, quite the blow.”

Burgess snorted softly. The man the constabulary had fished out of the Thames had clearly only had his own at heart, judging from the betting slips in his pockets. “Well, Miss Forrestal, your father was, if nothing else, a registered barrister and the owner of not inconsiderable assets. If you are of age and of sound mind and body, you stand to inherit all of his holdings in lieu of your uncle, the only other next of kin.”

“I am quite sound of mind, thank you, Mr. Burgess,” croaked Melinda. She turned a corner into Burgess’s field of view, covered in a shawl, her twisted and thin legs beneath a blanket clearly unable to support her weight. “As for sound of body, well…I am told that, while she was in the early stages of bearing me, Mother was attacked and nearly killed by a flock of ravens.”

She cast back the hood, and Burgess recoiled in horror from the visage, far more birdlike than he had expected. Melinda’s beak clicked as she continued: “And, as those things do, it has…left its mark on me.”

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The ride had lasted nearly ten hours, with the last five spent under a black hood. Academy Award winning actress Ann Pense had won plaudits for her portrayal of a mentally handicapped, wheelchair-bound serial killer in 1944 Warsaw. But The Rusty Wheel was nothing compared to her most demanding role so far: interviewing one of the world’s most notorious fugitives and monsters.

After seeing nothing but the straws her escorts had shoved into the hood to allowe her to sip vegan gluten-free smoothies, Ann found herself seated in a padded chair. The hood was whisked off, and she found herself face to face with her quarry.

“Well, Ms. Pense, here I am,” said Vampire Stalin, fangs glistening beneath his impressive mustache, dripping with the lifeblood of the proletariat. “What would you like to ask me about my unholy armies of the people?”

“There’s been a lot of misconceptions about your drive for equality and dignity through vampirism,” Ann began, drawing on the list of questions she had memorized earlier. “So let me ask you: are you a saint?”

Inspired by this.

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The trek across the taiga had been a bruising one. Paved roads had run out a few hours north of Yakutsk, and the dirt tracks some hours north of that. John had prepared as best he could for this eventuality, but even with all his groundwork he found himself making the last part of the journey on foot, across game trails cut by reindeer across the lower reaches of the Verkhoyansk Range, the coldest place ever permanently inhabited by man.

By the time John had arrived in a small valley carved fromt he Range by an unnamed river, he was suffering from frostbite, saddle sores, and bites from the stinging insects that swarmed eagerly around him, desperate for blood in the short quasi-summer that was their lives. Deep within the valley, visible only from the place indicated on the map, was an old ostrog–a single-tower fortress within a mouldering palisade, erected by the earliest Russian explorers.

When he was nearer, the unmistakable resonance of Tuvan throat singing could be heard echoring through the forgotten valley. This was the place.

John found the Porok at the highest floor of the okrug, at a window that had once served as a lookout post, projecting the eerie sound into the world through dead lungs. The Porok was rotted and embalmed, like a badly preserved mummy with just enough flesh and sinew to hold together its bones and support the worn finery it sported.

“It’s beautiful,” said John. “The singing.”

The Porok did not turn to him. “It is the only sound that I can make that one might think came from something young,” it said. Its voice was raspy and choked with dust, the death rattle of an old general cut down in single combat. “And it serves as a beacon to those who, like you, have made the long trek north from Yakutsk.”

John was susprised that the Porok’s English was so intelligible, as he had extensively practiced his rusty Russian and Latin. “So I am not the first,” he said.

“Nor will you be the last.” The Porok now approached John. Its face was eyeless, its lips and gaping nasal cavity devoid of all but the most base of flesh. “To those who would seek the Porok out, the long trek is a welcome…filter. The cool climate also agrees with me, as you may imagine.”

It led John downstairs, throught the main room decorated with trinkets that others had brought in supplication. The pretty things, tapestries and china, were heaped in a corner. It was the utilitarian things that occupied a place of honor: a wind-up short-wave radio, a shake-flashlight, a water filter.

“I know why you have come,” said the Porok. “All is known to me, always, forever. It is my curse and my gift. However, I long ago made a pact with myself, and with the Ancients measured against whom I am but a zygote. I only act on that which people say, rather than what they think or what they are.”

“Very well,” said John. “I will give you your gift and tell you now, if it please you.”

“Do so,” croaked the Porok. “But be warned: once you speak, your lost is cast, words set forever in stone. You may leave now, safely, or stay an evening to fortify yourself. But once you speak, you will face the consequences. Your request may be granted, yes. Or I may tear out your throat for your insolence. In asking, you accept this. Do you understand?”

“I do.” John set his jaw. “I will proceed.”

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Lady Scylla sat in an old oak chair at the head of the table. It was ornately carved, solid after even a hundred years of life and twenty-five of neglect. The lumber barons of Deerton had known their business.

And Lady Scylla knew hers.

“To me, my faithful,” said she, rubbing softly on the amber gem that hung around her neck. “To me, my unwinders of the world’s webs.”

A chair at the far end of the table was suddenly occupied. It was Pate, digging into the magnificent and ever-enduring feast laid out by Lady Scylla, as was his wont. Saved from a place that had starved to death, he was always hungry even though he did not need food.

“Bah,” Pate snorted. “Midwestern food. Bland enough to make British cooking jump like fireworks in the mouth.”

Much closer to Lady Scylla, on her left, a chair scraped at it was turned backwards. Touchstone, who had named herself from a play that he had never read, cackled. “It’s been too long,” she laughed. “Too long since we heard the call.” She had been born in a stultifying town that had withered away in its own seriousness; her first laugh had been its destruction.

And finally, at the foot of the table…Nyx. It had been a crisis of identity that had torn apart Nyx’s home, and so Nyx had none. No form, no shape, no gender, only what Nyx assumed, as long as Nyx saw fit to assume it.

“You’re a gorilla tonight, Nyx,” chuckled Lady Scylla. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m hungry,” laughed Nix. “And I wanted to see if I could get a reaction out of you.”

“And so you have.” Lady Scylla clapped her hands together. “Now then, my friends. To the task at hand. Let us discuss how we will go about sucking the marrow from this place.”

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The birds parted on either side, as if Lola were somehow unpalatable to them. They squawked and flapped but otherwise allowed her boots to crunch over the hard-packed snow of the frozen lake.

Lola did her best to remain nonchalant, hands in pockets. The bitter lake wind tore at her unbottoned jacket, but she dared not make the move to bundle up. The geese honked at her, outraged, but in a small miracle not one bit of down escaped from them to touch or even approach her.

The sullen, rotting tower of the Baikash refugees with its tattered banners and faded signs, slowly began to sink below the treeline. As Lola continued her trek, some of the geese keeping pace while others fell back to look for stragglers.

As Joyce had said, and as the occasional bleached bones on the ice attested, the birds’ feathers were highly toxic and being near enough to be nipped could impart a fatal dose of ionizing radiation in moments.

It was a long way, an awful long way, to the orange dot on the far shore.

Inspired by this.

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