Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“They don’t let us have internet. We can’t have CDs because they’re too easy to make a shank out of. There’s books in the library, sure, but they’re mostly donations from like churches. Reading that stuff gets real boring.”

“I heard that some use the time to write,” said Greg. “La Morte d’Arthur was written while Thomas More was in prison for armed robbery.”

“They take pencils and pens whenever they feel like it,” Marcus said. “Pages too. I had a hundred pages of a fantasy book wind up in the toilet because the guard thought I was sassing him.”

“As someone who once left the outline of a seven-book cycle of high fantasy novellas on a city bus, I feel you there,” said Greg. “But they’re saying you killed Darius because of something he said about your work?”

Marcus recoiled. “Hmph. Like usual, they didn’t even listen to what I was telling them. Darius might have hated my story but that wasn’t a reason to kill him. No, Darius was…”

The prisoner trailed off.

“Was what?” Greg said. “Listen, from where I’m sitting, prison seems like a leveled-up middle school, my worst nightmare, where the cliques can kill and being a nerd makes you a literal target to be stabbed by literal knives. But they didn’t even want to let me in here at all, and I don’t have much time. So if you know something, tell me. I can’t promise I won’t have to tell them, but I’ll do my best.”

Marcus looked up. “What was it about?” he said. “The outline you lost on that bus.”

“I called it Epic of the Spheres,” said Greg. “Each novella was about someone in the elf-world of Sylvantine who was responsible for singing the song that bound the role together. One of them was even a prisoner who sang his song in secret to the prison sparrows.”

“Heh,” said Marcus. “That’s some geeky stuff, man. Mine was gonna be about a king who rules in secret from a prison, and someone who goes inside to overthrow ’em. All the wardens and guards were going to be elves, all high and mighty.”

“You should keep kicking the idea around,” said Greg. “I’d read it. And you know, I am the general coordinator of Nerdicon, we even get publishers there sometimes. More than one of our attendees has one home with a book deal.”

“Yeah…” Marcus said wistfully. “Yeah.” Then, his face was hard, and all business. “Darius wasn’t a book critic,” he said. “Darius was the dungeon master of a secret group of us that would get together to play Dungeons and Dragons. We made like we were a gan or a crew, but we’d just geek out together. Until last week, anyhow.”

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After all, Dad was an Edward, and Granddad, and so on. I come from a long line of Edwards, each more Edwardian than the last.

So when Dad turned out to be a violent drunk, just like his dad, and so on back down the Edward line…well, it made my silly name a very sensible course of action. And when I finally snuffed the old man out for his crimes, made it look like an accident, there was even more to be afraid of.

I’d seen what Edwards could do.

I’d seen what Edwards were capable of.

I couldn’t let myself be on the receiving end of that. So an Edwardphobe I was, and an Edwardphobe I remain.

They all must die.

And I will be the last.

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“Unfortunately, my lovely Valia Springs are currently…occupied,” said Namidine. “Drow in one pool, githyanki in another, and modrons in a third…and none of them are paying!”

Bearing down on the githyanki that had called her kind ‘accursed winged filth,’ the young strix stove his head in with a well-aimed smack from her warpwood rod, blasting foul ichor into the spring’s clear healing waters.

The springs’ healing magic washed away the crude drow disguise that Celeria had cast; “Womp Rat” no longer looked like the lead from an elfsploitation scroll. Playing it up, he moaned and cried most pitiably, trying to convince the other drow that a terrible curse affected the pool, one that could turn them into scruffy and smelly humans. Alarmed, they quickly vacated the sparkling waters.

“Womp Rat” picked up Brynhildr and tossed her over the traps. She successfully made it as far as the Valia Guildhall’s table, but landed there with a belly flop that rolled the wounded guard, Tinuviel, off the table and onto the Baleful Polymorph trap. She hit the floor as an–admittedly fully healed–French bulldog.

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And then, O Dreamer, you will come to the great and impossible plateau where the slumbering nation of Igasiz meets its neighbors. A steep-cliffed mile high, these Outer Mountains are a refuge for those who find even the dream-worlds too great an imposition. The tiny hamlet of Atogoza-Zož waits there, a refuge for those seeking an enlightened dream even within their very dreams.

It is not a journey for the weak, O Dreamer, nor for a mere dilettante in the ways of the slumbering world. The nearest city in friendly Isašžozi, land of the quiescent indulgents, is quiet and peaceful Žakož. But the cliffs above it are of such a frightening and sheet height, and frequented in those wild dreamlands by such unbound horrors, that none are known to have made the crossing safely. Ozipizo, to the southwest as the great orb rises, is the land of violent nightmares and even those who reach the relative safety of its great fortress of Mes-O find themselves able to push no further against the nameless and hungry teeth of the id that lurk northward. Of those brave, foolhardy souls who have attempted it, O Dreamer, only one is known to have reached the hamlet of Mus-Na, where the hardy inhabitants are nightly besieged by the final nightmares of the dying. Though the cliffs are far more gentle slopes from Ozipizo, none but the mad would attempt that route.

That leaves only Igasiz. A peaceful land, protected from the horrors of Ozipizo by the Outer Mountains, its dangers are mostly the dreamt rocks and ego-winds, harder and more scouring than any the waking would could ever produce. Many seekers begin their trek at the great river-city of Sames, where the mountain streams join to form a navigable river. Atogoza-Zož awaits a mile above and many leagues south, and by following the gullies carved by the waters from above, the bravest and hardiest can make the trek. It is not an easy one, O Dreamer. Many have died from the rocks, the winds, the waters that suck the warmth from a body in an instant. The shock of awakening from such a death is often enough to kill the dreamer, or to permanently eject them from the dreamlands forever after. Even if one survives such a tussle, the possibilities of rescue are slim. While the yowling dreamstalkers of the Outer Mountains will not attack the hale, these twisted shadows that were once sapient beings have no qualms about feasting upon the wounded.

But beyond all these, Atogoza-Zož! It is built like a fortress-monastery of old, as safe from the elements as it is from the cares of the slumbering world. The monks there tend to those few who have successfully made the journey, seeing to what few physical needs dreamers have while allowing their wards the freedom to fall still deeper into slumber. Many never awaken, and others simply fade away–whether into wakefulness or a still-deeper dream none can say. But from those who do return, the monks take the stories and recollections, fleeting though they may be. Their writings, steady and impartial, fill the vast library of Atogoza-Zož with such knowledge as few have the aptitude to even read, much less decipher.

You may ask, O Dreamer, what possesses these monks of Atogoza-Zož to so do, and to tend the dreamers rather than joining them. Their response is recorded thus: “For every gate, a gatekeeper. For every traveler, an ear for the tale. For every bold explorer, one who recognizes they can never go so far.”

Inspired by this.

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My middle name should have been Phoebe, after my grandmother, who died the day before I was born. But thanks to the fifth my dad snuck into the delivery room, it was duly recorded as Phobe.

Edward Phobe.

He who is afraid of Edwards.

And, as an Edward myself, it sort of stood to reason that I’d be terrified of…well, myself.

So wouldn’t you know it, I was. But not for the reason you might expect. I’m terrified of myself because I might kill again.

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When John Mazzello topped out the skyscraper that bore his name in 1906, he insisted that it be connected to the nascent subway system, and he had the pull to make it happen. Officially the Cicero Square station, work began in 1907 and Mazzello, ever the micromanager, insisted on hiring designers and architects to make “his” station a grand statement. His stinging primary election loss to Mayor Robert Van Wyck and Tammany Hall may have contributed to a desire to “outdo” the ornate City Hall station.

Cicero Square Station was never finished. Mazzello died at his desk in 1908, and without his personal influence, Mayor McClellan canceled the project. Himself no friend of Mazzello’s, McClellan ordered the Cicero Street Station sealed. It was further forgotten when, in 1931, the Mazzello Building itself was razed to make way for new construction.

The station remained a closed-off and half-finished oddity, known only among a handful of urban explorers, until the night of October 20, one hundred and eleven years to the day after the first stone had been laid.

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“They glued the Ethernet cable in. Didn’t want to be disconnected. Pretty sure it’s still in there, in the dump.”

“That’s nothing. Someone brought in an iMac for an upgrade in ’07 or so, they’d been chain-smoking for 10 years in front of that thing, and it was black and brown. The office smelled like Pall Mall for to weeks.”

“Let me tell you about this broken iPhone we had…”

“Dude, everyone sees six of those a day. I said ‘horror stories,’ not bore-er stories.”

“Well, this one had a bullet in it.”

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When the deluge had finally cleared away, the townsfolk emerged, dazed, into a world of downed trees, twisted signs, and battered shingles. There was no sign of Holly; a scrap of what might have been fabric from her red dress was found weeks later in a midtown gutter, but it could just as easily have been a magpie leaving. Joan’s shotgun was found on the riverbank two days later, jammed with a final spent shell stovepiped in the action.

None one ever saw the two again, nor was what had driven them both, terrified, into the worst of the storm ever identified.

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Nodding head
Gravity doubled
Lead-lidded eyes
A savage yawn
There will be
A poem tonight
But it
Will not
Be my
Best

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Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness—a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

But there was life, abroad in the land and defiant. Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur was rimed with frost. Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths, spouting forth in spumes of vapour that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged along behind. The sled was without runners. It was made of stout birch-bark, and its full surface rested on the snow. The front end of the sled was turned up, like a scroll, in order to force down and under the bore of soft snow that surged like a wave before it. On the sled, securely lashed, was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things on the sled—blankets, an axe, and a coffee-pot and frying-pan; but prominent, occupying most of the space, was the long and narrow oblong box.

In advance of the dogs, on wide snowshoes, toiled a man. At the rear of the sled toiled a second man. On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toil was over,—a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the Wild to like movement. Life is an offence to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man—man who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.

But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable, toiled the two men who were not yet dead. Their bodies were covered with fur and soft-tanned leather. Eyelashes and cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible. This gave them the seeming of ghostly masques, undertakers in a spectral world at the funeral of some ghost. But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space.

They travelled on without speech, saving their breath for the work of their bodies. On every side was the silence, pressing upon them with a tangible presence. It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of deep water affect the body of the diver. It crushed them with the weight of unending vastness and unalterable decree. It crushed them into the remotest recesses of their own minds, pressing out of them, like juices from the grape, all the false ardours and exaltations and undue self-values of the human soul, until they perceived themselves finite and small, specks and motes, moving with weak cunning and little wisdom amidst the play and inter-play of the great blind elements and forces.

An hour went by, and a second hour. The pale light of the short sunless day was beginning to fade, when a faint far cry arose on the still air. It soared upward with a swift rush, till it reached its topmost note, where it persisted, palpitant and tense, and then slowly died away. It might have been a lost soul wailing, had it not been invested with a certain sad fierceness and hungry eagerness. The front man turned his head until his eyes met the eyes of the man behind. And then, across the narrow oblong box, each nodded to the other.

A second cry arose, piercing the silence with needle-like shrillness. Both men located the sound. It was to the rear, somewhere in the snow expanse they had just traversed. A third and answering cry arose, also to the rear and to the left of the second cry.

“They’re after us, Bill,” said the man at the front.

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