Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Albert Smathers moved to Mexico in 1933 to escape what was, as he saw it, a communist takeover of the United States in the person of FDR. A former broadcast engineer for WHN in New York, Smathers purchased a ranch near Juarez and set about building a powerful radio transmitter of his own.

Smathers had been an initial partner of WHN and had sold his founder’s shares dearly, leading him to be quite wealthy. By setting up a clever series of accounts in Mexican banks, with the aid of a lawyer he retained from the Mormon colony at Colonia Juarez, Smathers ensured that all his bills were paid and that a regular, daily delivery of food was made to his remote holding. Ordering all the parts he needed via mail order, he was able to build a transmitter rivaling that of KFAK in El Paso.

Starting in 1936, not long after FDR defeated Al Landon to win a second term, Smathers began broadcasting from his station. He was not a powerful speaker, with a weak and reedy voice, but his broadcasts were full of conviction and quickly attracted a reasonable following. His diatribes, mostly with communist conspiracies at their center, became popular as much for their inadvertent humor as anything. One listener recalls a 1941 broadcast where Smathers switched from an anti-Nazi to a pro-Nazi viewpoint mid-broadcast as he recieved a newspaper detailing the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Smathers broadcast 16-20 hours per day, leading to complaints from stateside radio stations of interference from his pirate signal. Without any legal teeth to enforce a cease-and-desist, Smathers became the model of later “border blasters” to follow in the 1950s and 1960s. Popular legend has it that Smathers helped XERB and Wolfman Jack set up their initial operations, but that is untrue. Jack, speaking in later years, in fact recalled being chased away from Smathers’ ranch by a blast of rock salt.

As time went on, Smathers became more and more disorganized in his thinking. Communists, renegade surgeons, mind-controlling aliens, and more all began appearing in his shows. Smathers began raving for hours on end, often digressing into almost unintelligible gibberish and shrieking. This cost him most of his audience, such as it was, though his ravings later acquired a certain caché with the counterculture of the 60s and 70s.

After a particularly rabid session of raving, Smathers’ station abruptly went dead on August 4, 1974. It wasn’t until a check to his Mormon solicitor bounced that the Mexican authorities investigated. They found Smathers’ mummified body, weeks old, slumped at his microphone, surrounded by warrens of filth. The official coroner’s report, delivered to the US consulate in Juarez, speculates that Smathers was suffering from undiagnosed and untreated paranoid schizophrenia before succumbing to a intracranial hemorrhage.

Strangely, the autopsy also confirmed extensive needle marks on Smathers’ arms, despite the fact that no intravenous needles or hypodermic supplies were found among his effect.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“What would the government of Celebes II want with that?” whispered Pauline in a hushed voice, one so low her suit could barely pick up on it. Maria couldn’t see her face; the glow before them was simply too strong.

“Nothing,” said Maria flatly. “Whatever we were told before, it’s obviously a lie.”

The light pulsed, playing against their suits like the reflection of a tropical sun across the ocean.

“I think it knows we’re talking about it,” Maria added.

“How can it know? How can it even be something that could know?” Pauline cried. “It’s just light.”

“No,” Maria said. “No, it’s not. I think it’s alive, and I think we’re under contract to sneak it through a blockade.”

Maria honestly felt like she was having a failure of imagination. Jessie wouldn’t have had that problem. There would have been theories bubbling out at a mile a minute, half of them funny, half of them brilliant, half of them again 150% ridiculous. Alone, without Jessie, Maria wasn’t able to take that same light and reflect it into vision and creativity.

Her speculation was just a pale glow.

The lights contracted and began to swirl, appearing like some sort of impossible galactic vortex in miniature. “What did you do?” Pauline cried.

“I…I thought about Jessie,” said Maria, her voice now filled with wonder. “And it responded. How could it have known?”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

The SS Hooverian was a freighter six days out of Antares Prime, bound for Betelgeuse IV with a cargo of freshly-manufactured vacuum cleaners.

Then the master alarm went off, the first mate knew what had happened immediately. The Hooverian and its precious cargo of vacuums was being sucked into the maw of an uncharted black hole.

Turning to his captain, the mate said: “Sir, this is gonna suck.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“My god,” said Eddings.

Selwig came alongside. “Is it the Holy Grail?”

“No,” Eddings said. “Even better. It’s the Growly Hail.”

He threw a rapidly growing and rapidly growling ball of atmospheric ice at his erstwhile partner.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Cursed Antique American Renaissance Carved Walnut Parlor Chair, Death Curse, Fully Tested

Listed in category:
Death Curses > Antiques > Cursed Furniture > Cursed Chairs > 1800-1899

Seller:
snugggmuffin365

Price:
$175.00 Buy It Now

Item location:
Florida, New York, United States

Item number:
222358700455

Item description:
you are bidding on a 100% tested and proven cursed death chair
my grandma owned it and died in it and ever since then anyone who has sat in it has had an accident after a little while
cousin billy hit a hog and died after he sat on one of the arms
tammy sue drove off a bridge in the dark and she only sat on it for like a sec
local pickup is okay at your own risk
shipping thru fedex c-class curse mail
you have to sign for it or the delivery guy gets the curse
serious bidders only plz

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Misty
Misty is a 3-month old terror dog, one of the heralds of the coming of Gozer the Traveler. She is very affectionate, rambunctious, and curious. Misty has not been fixed yet, so owners who wish to prevent the gate from being opened and the Destructor from arriving should look into spaying her. She also has a slight tendency to posess living hosts, so be sure to switch to a garlic shampoo.

Snuggles
Snuggles is a 5-year-old hellhound, a creature formed from the raw suffering of the damned and only summonable to this plane through a blood sacrifice and virgin ritual. Snuggles was previously adopted by an older witch who had to give him up after being cast into the infernal realms during a failed summoning circle. Snuggles is a special-needs dog, and must be fed a steady diet of tainted souls. He is very affactionate and loving.

Bon-Bon
Bon-Bon is a 10-year-old special-needs husky. While she is very rambunctious and affectionate, she was attacked as a pup by a rampaging werewolf. As such, she has opposable thumbs and an upright posture during every full moon, which she has been known to use to open doors, steal cars, and other mischief.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“Freeze!”

The door flew open on the wings of a battering ram and armed women flooded the room. Beatrix simply stared at them, paused in mid-brushstroke.

“Hah!” said the apparent leader. She grabbed Beatrix’s hand, examining it under a loupe. “Just as I thought. Tangerine and chartreuse nail polish! They don’t match each other or anything you own!”

“So what?” Beatrix cried.

“So you’re under arrest!” the woman snapped. “Take her away and book her.”

“Wait, you can’t do this!” Beatrix shouted as she was bodily hoisted up and borne forth. “Who are you?”

The woman-in-charge looked over her shoulder and swept her sunglasses off in a stylish motion. “We’re the Nail Police,” she said. “And we’re polishing you off.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Over time, the clonal trees continued to spread, sharing the same roots but sending up many different trunks. In time, much entire forest was all part of a single organism.

Then the fire came.

Trees that were singletons, without deep and intertwined roots, were consumed, leaving the commingled boughs as the only survivors. And that summer, researchers noticed for the first time that animals in the forest had begun to act…strangely.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Did you hear that they are moving the factory that makes unbreakable kitchenware to the island of Barbados?

It’s the Pyrex of the Caribbean.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Cyra shuddered, and the branches that had already blossomed from her skin shook their boughs, heavy with green buds.

“The woods have already claimed me,” she murmured in a reedy voice through a throat choked with roots. “You know it is our way.”

I hefted my axe. “And you know it is not our way to accept that.”

“Even if you could…even if you cut away every branch as it grows…I will still slow and cease to quicken. What will you have then? A wooden trophy? Allow me to take the path of my kind in peace.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!