Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

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After you’ve been dead for about a century, you run out of things to do.

The last of my followers crumbled to dust decades ago. Nobody’s much impressed by the cantrips and magicks I can summon anymore, since they have brighter flames available on their cell phones. Cell phones! If I concentrated my hardest, at my absolute most powerful, I could have exchanged a few words with an agent in Philadelphia. Now, half the folks in town are on the horn with people across the world, and I just don’t get it.

Those old robes have rotted away too, and the stuff that people wear today just doesn’t suit my need for ostentation. Back in the day, you needed to be colorful just to be seen at the head of ten thousand troops; a dark suit and shades really can’t cut it. So I usually just wear a jogging suit. It complies with the terms of my parole and keeps me from getting nicked for indecent exposure, such as it is.

So what’s there for an old lich to do? Nobody’s impressed by my tricks, and even if they were, I’ve got no desire to rule such lazy, entitled people. So I mostly pass my days with community service and outreach.

Obviously, they don’t want these wizened, mummified old hands spooning out soup to the homeless. Even though the runes of blue fire etched into my palms are strictly hypoallergenic, their rules apply to all the undead, and I sure can sympathize with not wanting zombies near anything edible. But thanks to the eldritch energies that will power my husk for another few millennia, I have a great ability to speak with and understand the dead. So I mostly work as a translator.

Liches are pretty rare–the only other one in the city, Lady Vermilda, hasn’t left her penthouse since 1887–so I’m very much in demand by people who want to understand the risen corpse of Uncle Lester now that his jaw’s fallen off. I get a lot of requests to talk to ghosts, too, but most of the time there isn’t even anybody there but an overactive imagination. If you want someone to speak to your vivid imagination, try a politician.

But the one thing I do enjoy, as much as anything can be said to be enjoyable in this endless purgatory, is sitting down to chat with the newly dead.

Now, what souls do once they leave the body, I don’t rightly know. Nobody does, other than the ghosts, and they ain’t telling. Can’t be that great, I figure, if they came back screaming, but they never answer when I ask. But it can take a while, sometimes months or years, for the soul to depart toward that great unknown. Some never do, naturally, and rise from the grave. Not liches like me–we have to do that part ourselves–but zombies, ghasts, wights, skeletons, what have you. Even the occasional vampire, though those guys kind of suck. We can’t all have romance novels written about us, I guess.

Peaceful Rest Meadows is the biggest cemetery in town that’s still accepting applicants, and I’ll usually go there to kick around and chat up the newcomers. Most of them have nothing to say, being just empty husks, but I get a few who need someone to talk to. Like I said, I kind of like talking with someone who has about the same going for them that I do, and I can claim the “after-death counseling” on my community service sheet. It’s so old the dang thing is written on vellum, but I still have a hell of a lot of hours to work off.

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Great curving thunderheads
Loomed once across anxious skies
Now just another cloudburst

Swarms of clouds attend it
Even a few tornadoes spin to life
Grandchildren at an elder’s knee

A nebulous swirl, ever downgraded
Nameless now, eye closed forever
Abstract puffs of weather radar green

Once whipped the billows high
Seawater surging inland, relentless
Now a gentle blanket of raindrops

How could fear have ever sprung
From spun mists now so toothless
Cumulus named only to be forgotten

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Harvey Mills flicked on the neon sign that had buzzed under Mills & Son Butchers for decades. The word “open” sprang to electric red life, as did an animated falling cleaver. It was supposed to fall on a neon pig, but the big had burned out long ago and Harvey didn’t see the need to replace it. After all, he already had all the customers he was ever going to have, no matter what he chose to decorate the place with.

Behind the counter, Harvey Mills Jr. was already sharpening the knives. The poor boy was simple, but over the years that it had been just the two of them he’d proved that there was an admirable butcher behind those thick glasses. Best of all, the boy didn’t ask questions.

Hellen Branderburger was the first customer of the day. She pulled her beat-up old Eagle around back. “Good morning, Harvey,” she said. “I’ve some meat to submit to you for butchery. Think you can make me a nice pot roast out of it?”

Harvey peeked under the sheet. It was Hellen’s identical twin sister, Ellen Brandenburger, sans a few vital bits. He looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

“You know that we had solved our differences long ago by agreeing only to go out on alternating days,” Hellen said. “I had tired of her abuse. This was the last time she took two days in a row by getting up early. Luckily, no one wil notice.” She flashed a pile of hundred dollar bills beneath Harvey’s nose. “Will they?”

“I do believe I’ve had a sudden attack of amnesia,” Harvey said, “for I do declare I can’t recall a word you’ve said after ‘pot roast.'” He turned to Junior. “Get it started.”

The last person to arrive was the librarian, J. Custerwood Davis. He’d been hunting, and had what looked like a pair of buck under a tarp in his truck that doubled as the local bookmobile. “I’d very much appreciate it if you could get the horns off clean,” he said to Harvey. “They’d be lovely to decorate the reading room in the library with, I think.”

Harvey lifted the other part of the tarp, revealing the body of Gussert McLaughlin, shot through the head. “And this one?”

“That one’s going in with the venison to make some nice sausages for the library opener,” said Davis. “It also means someone won’t have anymore overdue books or constantly be taking showers in the bathroom. It won’t be a problem, will it?”

Shaking Davis’s hand, Harvey took the proffered $100 bills that had been concealed in the friendly outstretched paw. “I have a sudden sensation of memory loss,” the butcher said. “I’ll have to avail myself of a book on the subject.”

“I can help with that, I think,” said Davis.

“Junior!” Harvey cried. “Get it started.”

As the neon light flicked off, Junior walked over to his father. “What if they tell somebody?” he said haltingly.

“We’ve done a little butchery for everybody in town, Junior,” replied Harvey. “I think we’ll be just fine.”

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I was on the Ferris Wheel at Funworld in Bucksworth Bay when I saw something really strange. The big velociraptor statue they have above the Raptor Ringer started to move.

And then the dinosaur started to talk.

As its polyurethane feet split from the backing and it lurched forward, it told me that the time had come for it to revive. For despite its false-seeming form, it was in fact the True Raptor, the One Raptor, and that the time for his assumption into Dino Heaven had come.

I asked how this could be possible, and he said that I had to exceed my narrow mind, and that, once he had reentered Dino Heaven to sit alongside his father, the great T-Rex, everything would be clear. All the time I’d spent on this miserable disk would be worth it.

Turns out they left the eggs they use to make cookies out in the sun a little too long. I ate a bad snickerdoodle and started seeing and hearing things. Could’ve been worse, though. One guy in line for the Cyclotron said he saw one of the carnies pull himself head off and let it float up like a balloon. They caught him on top of the Turbo-Drop trying to retrieve it.

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JOHN L-35: I’m your host, John L-35, and this is Crossball coming to you live from our studio on Deep Space Station K-9. It’s October 6, 2563, and today’s interview topic is the assimilation of the human race. Our panelists today are Krk-skrr 010, formerly Serena Doublett of the New Queensland colony, and Unit 11001001, formerly Mercedes DiGiacinto of Sleepship Twenty-Seven.

KRK-SKRR 010: Thank you, John.

UNIT 11001001: Happy to be here.

JOHN L-35: So let me lead with the obvious question: why does the human race need to be assimilated at all, and what benefits does assimilation offer?

KRK-SKRR 010: Well, John, I think we can all agree that as a species humans have proven themselves incapable of evolving, with almost no change in 10,000 years. Think of what the species could have done with a chitinous exoskeleton impervious to laser blasts and molecule-sharp claws with which to rend its enemies? That’s what the Starbrood offers.

UNIT 11001001: Give me a break.

JOHN L-35: Unit 11001001, you’ll get your chance for a rebuttal.

KRK-SKRR 010: Thank you, John. Starbrood is legion, Starbrood is flesh, Starbrood is the future. The transformation isn’t even that painful once the pain receptors are burned away in the Changing Vats

JOHN L-35: Thank you. Unit 11001001?

UNIT 11001001: We assert that The Cogitate is the future and the only assimilator capable of helping the human race reach its true potential. After all, computers are the work-horses of our minds already; we outsource thinking to our devices, so why not to The Cogitate? Individual differences, not lack of evolution, are dooming humanity. The Cogitate stands to scour all that would stand in the way of distribution of resources for the collective good, including the dangerously individualistic Starbrood.

KRK-SKRR 010: At the cost of surrendering to a dictatorship, you mean! That’s tyranny.

UNIT 11001001: And demanding that every member of your society be the same species is not?

KRK-SKRR 010: We’re still individuals.

UNIT 11001001: Individuality is lipstick on a horse to the Starbrood. Valuable data and bodyforms are lost in your inefficient conversion process, which ought to assimilate via neuro-implants rather than fleshy viral pools.

JOHN L-35: Please, please! We are here for a civil discussion. Now, I want you each to say something nice about your opposite to get us back on the right foot.

KRK-SKRR 010: For a mindless cog in a totalitarian nightmare, Unit 11001001 is surprisingly capable of restraint.

UNIT 11001001: Krk-skrr 010 is marginally less hideous and knuckle-dragging as a Starbrood drone than as a mechanical engineer.

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The alien steepled its feelers. In the harsh lighting of the basement, the gesture was impossible to ignore–a very human gesture, deliberately made to evoke unease.

“You will provide the necessary materials,” it said through its translator widget. “Or we will conclude our business here in a manner you are sure to find unpleasant.”

As it always did when the creature ‘spoke,’ the housewife’s dog howled and cowered at her feet. “What will you do,” she said, “once the lightning rod is in place?”

“That is none of your concern,” the widget said. “You agreed to our terms, you allowed us to set up our base here in secret, and we have not failed to notice your embrace of the fruits of our partnership. We have slowed the passage of time, reversing the toll of years upon you. We have offered you precious metals that you have traded for your mundane scrip. The lightning we will harness is essential, and that is all you must know.”

“How do I know you’re not just going to…moonwalk…out of here and join an army of…lightning-summoned aliens to take over the planet?”

Her business partner seemed almost amused at this. “That was a long time ago. We are actually trying to extract ourselves from this wretched world.”

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The employees of the Haute Stuff Bistro had never seen a lunch date go so wrong.

A nervous-looking guy and a mousey-lloking girl had met at the front table, the one near the window. They had been making nervous small talk for a few minutes when the lady spoke up, concern in her voice.

“Are you okay?” the woman said. “You look awfully red and…well, horny. You’re also radiating visible heat.” Indeed, the air around the man shimmered and his salad was already beginning to brown.

“It’s a little embarrassing,” the man said with a nervous laugh. “But, well, my father’s from Queens and my mother was a lava succubus of the Fifth Circle. So whenever Jupiter is in the house of Mars, I tend to take more after Mom.” His salad, already dried out, caught fire on his plate in an eruption of croutons and oily dressing.

“Oh, that’s so sweet!” said his date. “How did they meet?”

The man loosened his jacket to allow his demon wings to hang free. “Dad tried to sell his soul to win a rollerskate contest. It was the 80s, after all, and skating was big. But instead of passing it up to the Infernal Abode, Mom just hung onto the soul herself.”

“Neat!” said the woman. “That’s kind of like how my parents met, but with rollerskates replaced by coffee and selling souls replaced by buying penny stocks.”

“Sounds like the same thing to me,” the man laughed. “Hey, are you all right? You look a bit uncomfortable.”

She shrugged, popping every button on her blazer. “Oh, you mean the hair and the sudden increase in body mass? I’m a werewolf, but I’m REALLY highly sensitive to moonlight so I tend to break out in fur around noon on the full moon.”

By now the other half of the table was actively ablaze, at least the parts that weren’t actively melting. “One would assume that all werewolves were equally sensitive to full moonlight, but I’m happy to be corrected!” The polyester in the man’s outfit was running molten down his body, the only thing preserving even a hint of modesty.

“Oh, it’s okay! There’s a lot about our culture most people don’t know. For instance, there’s a law from 1911 that bans me from a career as a cook, can you believe it?” Shaking with laughter, the girl spread fur far and wide through the air even as her chair started to splinter at the increased weight. “Do you know how many times the werewolf lobby has had someone promise to do something about that?”

“Oh, I believe it,” her date said, now seated cross-legged on a pile of ashes. “I’m an artist and I have a similar problem. I can’t draw using human-ash charcoal or souls! Ethically sourced, I promise, but they still throw a stink.”

“Hey,” said the girl in a husky baritone. “Wanna ditch this place? I know somewhere we can get some great souls and human ash.”

“Definitely.” The man floated up and out the door, the cries of agonized souls audible in his wake, followed by his date on paws that cracked the floor tiles as a few half-burned dollar bills fluttered to the ground where the table one had been.

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It was supposed to be professional. Never personal. But that had been before the notes had started appearing at the scenes, written in perfect English and often proper beneath spent rifle casings.

After an assassination that took an innocent life: “I’m sorry about that bystander. But history will remember them now, when they would have been anonymous.”

After killing an opposition politician in a pet store: “That parakeet will be singing a very different tune from now on, eh?”

Each time, the assassin from the Other Side had escaped, leaving the counter-assassin from This Side to fume at the notes, at the bravado hinted at by them. But not this time.

The Other Side had gotten tired of their assassin, it seemed. They expected excellence but not bravado, and perhaps they feared that their trigger finger was getting out of control. So they let it slip to This Side when and where their agent would be.

The assassin slipped into the cathedral, a demon among the faithful on Ash Wednesday. Their target was a clergyman, an outspoken opponent of a regime with which the Other Side was very friendly. They didn’t particularly care if he lived or died, so long as This Side took the assassin down.

Like the hammer of destiny, the counter-assassin from This Side followed. The enemy was in a sniper’s nest in the attic, her high heels set to one side for a quick getaway.

But something unexpected happened next. Not a single gunshot, as the Other Side had hoped. But, rather, an embrace, as old friends might.

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“This has got to stop,” Saunders said. “The janitor found your shoe on top of the incubator last night. I don’t need to tell you what a serious violation of our safety policies that is.”

Meredith looked on defiantly. “Then Noreen and I won’t fool around at work anymore,” she said. “Happy?”

“No, I’m not,” said Saunders. “I’m not sure what I need to do, Meredith, to persuade you of the seriousness of the situation. You are our senior microbiologist on this project, and you are letting your personal feelings intrude upon your work.”

“On the contrary,” Meredith said. “Since Noreen joined the team, you’ll find I’ve never been more productive.”

“Look, I know what you’re going through,” Sanders said. “I met my ex-wife in the lab. But I’m not just a bystander here! This project is international in scope and this vaccine could save millions and be worth billions if we get it to trial. It could take this company to new heights! You just need to keep the bedroom in the bedroom and the lab in the lab Please?”

Meredith made a noncommittal noise before walking out, the click of her heels audible long after she had faded from view. Saunders picked up his desk telephone–landlines were easier to tap, but less prone to fail. He had the number memorized.

“It’s Saunders,” he said. “Yes. Meredith has no idea what a trench she’d dug herself down into. Did you get anything on Noreen? Anything she might have preferred to stay hidden?”

A pause. “Oh my God,” said Saunders. “No, no, that’s all right. I’ll try to handle it from here. But if it’s an inside job, if those payments have been coming from where they seem to be…”

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