May 5, 2018
The first time we turned the lights out and I saw the bioluminescent speckles along the back of that frog, I had a thrill like I’d never felt before. Seeing those glowing spots seemingly dancing through the darkness of their own accord, by an amphibian who seemed blithely unaware of her importance to the team…I’ve never felt anything like it, before or since.
Perhaps if I’d know where that road would have led us all, I’d have felt something else: raw dread.
May 4, 2018
So it was finally agreed, and the crown set upon the candidate’s brow. Some might have questioned the notion of giving the crown to the late King’s pug dog, but none could argue with the results. The prime ministers and the cabinet ran the country without interference. The monarch was present at every major ceremony, and never had a gaffe. He was, in every way, the perfect, silent king.
But he had been fixed, and after seventeen years the end of his reign was nigh without an heir in sight.
May 3, 2018
This week, Excerpts from Nonexistent Books published its 3000th excerpt. Over 8 years, we’ve been able to post a story every day (with occasional light cheating to fill in holes), and now we’re proud to say that there is now an EFNB excerpt for every year of human history since the development of civilization in the Nile river valley.
The nonexistent editors, nonexistent staff, and nonexistent contributors here at EFNB would like to thank all of our readers and commenters for helping make this great literary experiment an ongoing success. Here’s to 3000 more stories that never existed!
May 2, 2018
Bedknobs and Broomsticks Monthly
This glossy rag is packed to the brim with tips on keeping your housekeeping and transportation enchantments humming! No modern witch should be without it. Now available digitally on your crystal ball of choice!
Home & Cauldron
The bitter rival to Bedknobs and Broomsticks Monthly, but why not have them both? With a greater focus on enchantment in the kitchen, this periodical will keep your witchy meals filling and non-fatal.
Familiar Circle
Keep up with the world of familiars, from black cats to psuedo-dragons, with this useful publication. Veterinary tips, debugging, summoning, and more are at your fingertips every month!
Enchantment Weekly
Tap into the glitzy world of high-profile celebrity witches! Every week, all the latest magical gossip is right there in your inbox. Who’s enchanted with who? Whose ex has cursed them with frogmouth boils? The answers are inside!
May 1, 2018
Observers never see the Four Ladies apart, or in any other orientation. The specters are always facing each other, with the innermost two embracing while the others look on, impassive. The middlemost of the Four are always seen in full, while the others grow indistinct toward the ground, trailing off into wisps of vapor.
No one knows what the Four Ladies are the spirits of, if spirits indeed they are. A popular rumor about a summer camp for women that was the site of an illicit tryst is easily debunked–the summer camp started in 1960 and the apparitions had been seen for decades before then, and never at the site itself. A local legend about two pairs of twins, and one from each becoming lovers, has never had any substantiated proof. Theories about four personalities of a schizophrenic also are not supported by any real evidence other than salacious rumor.
The only thing that the paranormal investigators from Spook!TV claimed during their filmed segment was that they felt an “insidious anger” in areas frequented by the Four. The episode never aired, as the crew fell into infighting and their camerawoman quit on the spot.
April 30, 2018
It’s clear that the item is manmade; even through all the intervening centuries, fingerprints are still visible in its fired clay surface. It also appears to be largely intact. But its purpose and design remain obscure.
The name “Devil of Wickhamshire” or “Wickhamshire Devil” come from two sets of small protrusions that look like small horns depending on the orientation, and an overall “facelike” shape. Alarming newspaper coverage at the item’s discovery in 1857 sent panicked locals into a mob to demand that the evil icon be smashed; a resourceful page from London who had been sent to collect the find gave them instead a worthless potsherd upon which he’d scribbled a menacing face.
With its odd shape, two central holes, and ‘horns,’ arguments for the Devil have cast it as everything from some sort of abstract idol to an incomplete pottery experiment to a simple block and tackle. Even carbon dating has failed to settle the dilemma, with a date of 3510 years before present, ± 100 years–an era long before the Roman invasion for which there are no known records.
April 29, 2018
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April 28, 2018
We were prepared for violence, for jackboots. Totalitarianism, in its most naked and vaguely cartoonish form. And, to be sure, some tried it. But the old stahlhelms didn’t fit anymore, and things proved unsurprisingly resilient to that nonsense.
Instead, people were simply…disconnected.
Blacklisted.
Biometrics meant there was no real possibility of false identities, of begging and borrowing, at least not for most. If the powers that be decided that you were a threat, they simply took you off the grid. No access to the global data net, no access to most services, no electricity.
It was possible to live that way; many did. It was even possible to relish it, as some did. But for the average person, who had never known real want or fear…it was a death sentence.
April 27, 2018
The writing grew more ragged at this point, the previously flawless scribal Latin starting to lose some of its meticulousness.
“I had thought that the cloudiness I detected, the distraction and memory loss, was the real threat to my existence. But I was wrong.”
“I have made a breakthrough that explains the symptoms, and Imust write it down with shaking quill even though I desire nothing more than to scream in terror from te rooftop of my stuffy or to fling myself into the fire, for all the good that would do me. Living as a thousand scattered sentient ashes is only marginally less of a horror that that which I have discovered.”
“Cancer occurs naturally in our bodies over time. We never notice that fact because medicine, for all its advances during my long life, was never terribly advanced and even now people tend to die of other illnesses.”
“But what I have found is that the rate of growth is geometric. The longer a lifespan becomes, the most likely we are to develop cancer. The more likely it is to grow, and to spread. Eventually, even the hardiest person would succumb. But not I.”
The investigator set aside the codex after photographing the final, unintelligible scrawls with her cell phone. She then turned to the alchemist’study, still thick with the newly disturbed dust of centuries.
A misshapen lump of flesh, man-sized but with little recognizably human about it, laying across the floor and swathed in robes so ancient they were beiginning to crumble away. Every few moments, it would pulse, irregularly and weakly.
“He should have done a little more research before using the Stone to become immortal,” the investigator said. She picked up the delicate amber-rose crystal from where it lay on the floor and crushed it in one hand. “Losing his mind to Alzheimer’s was the only mercy this thing gave the most intelligent being on earth.”
April 26, 2018
“He thought he was hot stuff as a horse breaker,” whistled Tex. He watched, leaning against the paddock fence, as Mulligan ran for his life, his galloping pursuers rapidly gaining.
“I know he needed to be taken down a notch,” said Bud. “But don’t you think this is a bit much?”
Tex shrugged. “He needed to learn how to deal with centaurs sooner or later.”
“Oy! You!,” cried the lead centaur pursuing Mulligan. “Get back ‘ere so we can finish beatin’ some sense int ya!”
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 