Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The fallen angel sat there, looking squint-eyed at passersby, with a lit fag clinging to his lips. He glowered from under a newsie cap, and idly fingered an ivory-handed fillet knife with a whiff of the supernatural about it.

He might have been any other tough lounging about the docks save for two things. There were the massive pair of wings half-folded behind him, for one. And there was the fact that he sat a full three feet above the mooring bollard one would have expected to support his weight.

“They like to do that to unnerve people,” said Nïs just before we got into earshot. “Just don’t make eye contact. He’s looking for a chance to prove he’s still got it, even as a mortal.”

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Posh Hall
Named after Waverly University economics professor emeritus J. Herbert Posh, this dormitory houses the honors students as well as members of Beta Sigma Sigma Gamma too young to live off-campus. Posh Hall is well known for furnishing outstanding members of the rowing, tennis, and golf teams.

Annie Hall
Former state senator and alumna Amy Annie Smith, who dropped her last name as a political protest, gives her name to this dormitory. It is notable for being the only dorm at Waverly University that is carbon-neutral. It is also the only Pronoun-Free Zone on campus and the designated No-Kill Shelter for campus cockroaches.

Cox Hall
A former men-only dorm, Cox Hall gets its name from James Cox, through he never attended Waverly. University officials were sure he would win in 1920 and named the hall to curry favor with who they assumed would be the new President.

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“I know that the daemons ever seek to invade and influence our world,” said Claudia.

“Yes, but do you know that all too often that influence takes the form of, shall we say, tainted children?” Miss Tiberia said. “I presume that I need not go into further sordid detail.”

Claudia nodded. “No, Miss Tiberia,” she said.

“Good. Tainted girls are brought to us from all over the countryside, just as tainted boys are sent to our sister school at Illumoor. Our job is to see that the taint is extinguished.”

“You’ll pardon me for saying so,” said Claudia, with a nervous glance upward as her words echoed into the Gothic rafters of the ex-cathedral, “but how do we do that, and how do we know it’s done?”

Miss Tiberia harrumphed a bit. “It is intuitively obvious, is it not, that the daemons are reliant on lies and illusions in their dealings with mortals?”

“Yes, Miss Tiber.”

“Then it ought to be equally obvious that the girls in questions will be protected by the very same.” Miss Tiber reached into a pouch on her chatelaine belt and produced what appeared to be a set of reading spectacles. “But with the diopters, all becomes clear.”

She unclipped them and handed them to Claudia, who donned them. Suddenly, the scene before her was awash in a yellow glow; it took a moment’s adjustment to see that the glow was coming from the girls in their dormitories, perfect silhouettes visible even through walls and fading only with considerable distance.

“They…they are aglow!” Claudia whispered.

“Indeed so,” said Miss Tiberia. “They are aglow, each of them, with a daemonic taint from their ancestors’…intimate…dealings with the unholy. It is our charge, Miss Withers, to diminish this glow through discipline, rigorous virtue, and moral certitude.”

Claudia was still agog from the view before her. “So when a girl is no longer glowing, she will be released from St. Gaius’s?”

Miss Tiberia nodded. “Naturally. But if the glow remains, or strengthens, it is our duty to see that the taint is contained.”

“So the girls remain here?”

“That they do,” said Miss Tiberia. “Forever.”

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COMING TO NBS THIS FALL: SPUDINA MCSHAW, POTATO FARMER

Our scene is eet in Idaho during the rough and tumble Potato Rush period of 1882-1904, when potato barons competed with free-spudders for access to land and water from the Snake River. Spudina McShaw, a brash and fiery immigrant from the south, arrives bearing a gift from her godfather Luther Burbank: the fabled Russet Burbank.

Large, white, mealy, and delicious, the Russet Burbank will revolutionize spud farming–if Spudina can successfully bring her first crop to harvest. But it won’t be easy. Potato rufflers are after a slice of the crop. The notorious potato baron Joe Marshall is casting a dark shadow over the industry. And what truly motivates the mysterious young fertilizer salesman J. R. Simplot?

Spudina will have to deal with them all to make Idaho potatoes the envy of the world. Tune in to find out how–and if–she is able to deal with a world where all eyes are on her taters!

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Remember, graduates: you are the future, and you will go forth and bring the past to those who need it least. You’ll impose it on them if you have to, since the past is when the good times were, times of eating brains and other things that have been denied you by SJWs.

You’ll look back on these days as among the worst in your life. Here you were constrained by rules, rules about not eating brains, and were forced to eat brains quietly. From here on out, there are no rules. Every brain will be yours.

You haven’t made lifelong friendships here. Rather, you’ve sized up competitors. Ally if you must, temporarily, but always be prepared to eat each others’ brains if neccessary.

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“At first it was only a few minutes, but it’s been getting longer and longer each time. Nobody says they see me when I’m…out…but I turned on the GPS on my phone to see if it could track me.”

“Uh huh,” Mike said. “And so that’s why we’re at a cell phone tower in the middle of nowhere.”

“It’s where Locate My Phone says it is,” snapped Emmy.

Sure enough, a few moments’ poking around led to a phone, thankfully still in its weatherproof case, lying by the massive support girder for the cell phone array. There were no footprints in the soft earth nearby, nor were there any signs of disturbance.

“I’ll be damned,” whistled Mike. “There it is.”

“Run the GPS to see where I went while I was…out…” said Emmy. “I can’t bear to watch.”

Mike opened the app and scrolled through the data. “It says that you haven’t moved.”

“What?”

Flipping the phone over, Mike held it out. “See? 0.0 miles. It has you in your apartment until 1:01AM and then suddenly it’s here without recording a single inch of travel.”

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Once the cameras had snapped and the first shovelful of ground had been broken for the new McDougal’s fast-food joint, the owner waited until the crowd had dissipated before making a quiet call into his cell.

Fifteen minutes later, an unmarked car drove up. It was from the local McDougal’s lodge, no. 421, and out stepped the local representatives of that most noble order. First an Apprentice, wearing only the striped shirt and hat. Then a Journeyman with a striped cape, fluttering in the afternoon breeze. And finally the Master himself, with a striped robe and a staff topped with the symbol of the Most Sublime Double Order of McDougal’s, the All-Consuming Maw.

“Is the way prepared?” said the Master.

“Yes,” the owner said. He led them to a small concrete receptacle that had been prepared at the exact mathematical center of the new building’s footprint. A small stone casket lay there, prepared with mortar to seal it for all eternity.

“Very good.” The Master reached into his voluminous robes and produced a freshly-made McDougal’s milkshake, still glistening with condensation. Reverently, he placed it in the receptacle whilst singing the sacred words: “Pull up, pull up, pull up to the second window.”

“The second window will take your money and give you healing,” said the Apprentice and Journeyman.

Grasping the proffered spade, the Master covered the milkshake with earth while repeating the singsong liturgy. Once that was done, he sealed the container with the mortar. “This McDougal’s is consecrated now,” he said. “Mind that you treat McDougal’s #3891 with the due reverence it demands.”

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Maybelle had always been a girl with an odd coffin.

It dated back to a tie when she was very much alive. Her father, Augustus, had been a joiner and amateur silversmith. He had made a hobby of preparing lavish coffins for every member of the family, to spare the bereaved the expense. His own coffin was guilded in stainless silver leaf taken from an old serving tray, with griffin claws at each angle holding orbs engraved with dog Latin, for instance.

For Maybelle, even after she went to live with her fiancée, Augustus had seized upon her love of Dickens to produce an engraved tableaux of mourning characters from Oliver Twist and Bleak House. Rather than griffin-clawed orbs, the corners were protected from postmortem breakage by the shapes of London buildings, at least as they were known to a book-loving South Dakotan of modest means and no money for a railroad ticket.

Ironically, when the time came to lay Maybelle amid her Dickensian silver, a load of bricks topped with mementoes was put under instead, for the boiler explosion had left nothing to bury. Maybelle herself thought this rather a waste, and began her career as a specter orbiting the casket much as she might have if it had been filled with her mortal form rather than her diary and the contents of her hope chest.

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By the end of 1944, the Soviet summer offensive led to the German troops around Pzevsk being completely cut off. They were isolated from both the retreating forces of Army Group Center to the south and the remnants of Army Group North which had been trapped on the Courland Peninsula in Latvia.

All told, about 10,000 Germans were trapped around Pzevsk. The Soviets, preoccupied both by the much larger Courland pocket to the north and the continuing offensives to the west, were content to blockade Pzevsk in order to starve their opponents out. Pzevsk was a city of modest size with no natural resources, and there were not enough supplies to sustain a large group of soldiers without resupply. Naturally, the German command refused to evacuate or surrender Pzevsk; the last orders sent to the pocket in April 1945 called for it to resist.

After the surrender in Europe, the Courland pocket was surrendered to the Soviets but the much smaller Pzevsk pocket did not respond to demands for surrender. A belated Soviet attack on May 10 met no resistance, and rapidly overtook the position.

This was because every last soldier in the pocket was already dead.

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“So wait,” said Zane. “Every ant in this hill is a Platonic ideal?”

“That’s right,” Queenie said. “Over there? That worker is the platonic ideal of a slice of pepperoni pizza. The one crawling up your leg? She is classical music.”

“What happens when one of them is…you know…squished?” Zane said, looking very carefully at the pepperoni ant.

“I beg your pardon,” Queenie said. “Are you thinking of squishing pepperoni pizza out of the universal experience?”

“N-no! Well, maybe. I am a vegan after all.”

“My anthill is eternal,” said Queenie. “When one of my daughters dies, the concept dies with them. It is as if it never existed.”

“That’s impossible,” Zane said. He took a moment for the absurdity of saying that to a talking ant queen and expecting an answer to sink in before he continued: “I’d remember the pizza I ate before I went vegan.”

“Oh really? Do you remember zorgbl? My daughter representing zorgbl was taken by an anteater two weeks ago.”

“You’re just making that up.”

“See? You don’t remember. Pity, too. Zorgbl was the favorite food of many a human. And I’m sure you don’t remember cypipre either, or yttuggmix.”

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