Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Tread lightly.”

Shi Qin had been given that advice, and that advice only, when the map had been sold to him. The old man claimed that he’d been an architect for Emperor Gaozong’s tomb, and had let the map go for surprisingly little. Shi Qin had asked for advice in getting inside, and that was all the architect would divulge.

“Tread lightly.”

The map was simple and clear enough, and Shi Qin had found the hidden tomb without much difficulty. He had come alone, as a scout, before attempting to bring in any confederates, bearing only a torch and his wits.

“Tread lightly.”

Repeating the advice to himself seemed pointless as the floors were made of solid stone. It wasn’t until Shi Quin saw glinting in the distance that he thought of anything but the old man’s utter foolishness.

“Tread lightly.”

It wasn’t a warning; it was a prophecy. Shi Qin could scarcely believe his eyes. At the lowest room of the tomb, Emperor Gaozong’s sarcophagus stood surrounded on all sides by a floor of clear and polished silver. The torchlight was magnified and spilled into an elegant twilight, while Shi Qin could only wonder at what riches lay within the emperor’s casket if he had used such silver for the floor.

“Tread lightly.”

The first step onto the silver surface was Shi Qin’s last. With all his weight forward, he was unprepared for his foot to simply slip upon the silver surface entirely. The floor was not silver; it was mercury, pure liquid mercury, and there was no way to get any purchase on its quicksilver surface. Shi Qin had a thought to scrambling back the way he’d come, but instead he flailed about, trying to worm his way across to the coffin.

“Tread lightly.”

Instead, all Shi Qin managed to do was break the surface of the liquid, which began to close in around him. Struggling made him sink faster, and within a half-hour there was no sign on the shining surface that anyone had ever been there, as Shi Qin sank to the bottom of the mercury lagoon, to join the others there, forever preserved.

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

Suddenly, far from being seated in an underground laboratory, Rodriguez was the metal almond. He was being removed from a tray, set in a bag, and then placed in a car by a man in a uniform who was walking backwards. The car backed its way to an old columned building, where Rodriguez was backed into a basement and set in a tray of other things like himself.

Then darkness–so much darkness. An occasional rattle and shake as the case was moved, until once again the drawer slid open and a hand withdrew him. Rodriguez was walked backwards to the outside of the building, now glistening and new, and thrown in a horse-drawn carriage. Images flashed by in rapid succession, a glimpse of docks, a boat, sunlight slicing through a hold, and then a donkey-cart in a light-dappled land, backing into the hills.

An older man seized Rodriguez and after holding him up admiringly a second, plunged him into the ground. Darkness closed in, such darkness and cold as he’d never felt, overwhelming.

A splash of red, and then a sensation of flying–so rapidly that Rodriguez had no chance to ponder what had happened. He was arcing through the air, though, with just the briefest glimpse of stony castellated walls beneath before he was caught in a worn leather loop. Three spins and he had come to a stop, dropping into the hand of a man in copper armor.

One quick glimpse of a smiling face and he was tossed into a basket with hundreds of other sling bullets. Hauled a short distance away, near a glowing kiln, Rodriguez had one last fleeting glimpse of an iron mold with the word “CATCH” writen in it, backwards, and in Latin. Then he melted away, and knew no more.

Until, gasping, he was back at the table as the ancient Roman sling bullet tumbled out of his fingers.

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

“Now, we’re prepared a few objects to test the effectiveness of the psychometry we hope that 212-G will allow you to temporarily experience,” said Higgins. He laid a tray of small items in front of Rodriguez.

“What are they?”

“Well, we don’t want to affect the results too much by telling you,” said Higgins. “But suffice it to say that they are mostly bits of worked metal or pottery shards from archaeological digs. Someone has to have touched them thousands of years ago, someplace.”

Rodriguez glanced over the tray; most of the items seemed very mundane, but there was one that intrigued him. Almond-shaped and a dull grey, it seemed to have a letter on its surface, though he couldn’t make it out. He reached for it first, picking it up. From the heft and weight, it was clearly metal of some kind.

A moment later, he froze.

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

“Son,” he told me, smiling an untroubled smile
The air of a good-ole-boy rolling off him like valley mist
“Your problem is, you’re acting like I’m the misfit here”
When I protest, and begin to speak of ethics and cronies
Of the public trust and of honor and integrity, he stops me
“I’m not the misfit for doing what needs to be done,
for having friends in high places who look out for me
and looking out for them in return,” he says
When I ask which of us is the misfit, he jabs at me
“You are, son. All that idealism won’t do you any good
won’t put food on the table, won’t make you six figures”
I say I would rather be poor and honorable, a misfit
Than rich and corrupt, and fit in with his circle
He smiled again, that unconcerned grin widening
The smirk of someone who’s never been challenged
And knows he never will be, not in this life
“If you want to be poor, well then
you’re headed in the right direction
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a check to cash”

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

Irrawaddy was pale from blood loss and while his wounds had been cleaned and bound, it was clear to look at him that he was looking at a burial shroud rather shortly. Despite the sepsis eating away at him from the inside already, and the sweat beading heavily on his trembling brows, he was lucid.

“The tiger…” he whispered. “The tiger, yes? As you see…the tiger has got hold of me, dug its claws in deep, left me to die…”

“A tiger did this?” said Sint. “They haven’t been seen around here for centuries.”

“You are aware, yes, of the Three Senseless Creatures? The buddhas tell us that the tiger is anger, senseless and without focus. That was what I felt”

“So it wasn’t a tiger, then, but attached like one.”

“It came at me with no weapon but anger yet anger was enough.” Irrawaddy smiled weakly. “I imagine we would not be speaking now if they had slashed with claws of steel.”

“A man, then,” Sint said. It was a statement, not a question; clearly Irrawaddy was spiraling into delirium.

“A man who attacked with enough ferocity that we actually believed it had been a tiger, for a moment,” added Hayma. “One of the workers, perhaps, starving?”

“Maybe,” said Sint, turning away. “But I wouldn’t expect such canniness from a madman dying of thirst. They waited until Irrawaddy was cut off from the rest of us until they struck.”

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

Wild, family said
Crazy
Lost their mind
Clearly
Something had slipped
Maybe
Hanging out with all
Those
Freethinkers had driven
Lunacy
Into their soul
Because they had dared
To repost an article
Saying that people
Shouldn’t die
For lack of
Health
Care

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

I scream at the wind until I’m hoarse
Before holding a sign and shouting

I lash the frothy waters with a whip
Before signing a petition for a good cause

I break a stone with a hammer for tripping me
Before posting a flier about injustice

Why do I feel that I am doing the same thing
Over and over again, identically
And expecting
Different
Results?

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

He sits there, with that smile
You’ve seen a thousand times
Crossing the lips of folks
Who know they’re getting away
And there’s nothing you can do

Unearned man in unearned chair
Get him in there, they said
And it won’t matter how he did
Get him in there, they said
And it’ll be hard to get him out

They say we need to face facts
They say we need to be realistic
Work with him, give him a chance
It’s really not so bad, is it
That he doesn’t fit the chair

And as they speak, you see the smile
They didn’t need to face facts
They didn’t need to be realistic
They just did, confident in the fact
That they would get away with it
As they always have and always will

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

“Ne strelyayte, ya odin iz vas!” Jones cried. “Ne strelyayte, ya odin iz vas!”

The oncoming Russian troops looked at him quizzically. Jones, apparently glad of their curiosity, fired his revolver in the direction of his fleeing companions.

“See? See? Ne strelyayte, ya odin iz vas!” he yelled. “Look, Bolo, I’m on your side!”

One of the Americans, falling back while reloading, was caught by Jones’ revolver. He slumped to the ground, spilling cartridges in a shower and dropping his Mosin. Jones turned to the advancing Russians, grinning.

“Chto nam s nim delat’? one of them cried. “Etot predatel?”

“Pristreli yego! shouted another. “U nas dostatochno!

The first Russian nodded, and racked the bolt on his Mosin. He fired, and Jones went down hard, a “Ne strelyayte-” on his lips. He lay on his side, eyes and mouth open as if in surprise, as the attackers swarmed past him.

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

“Well, my grandfather was a soldier too,” Leigh said. “Hardly a knight, though, or a samurai. He did have a sword, though, and he carried it into battle all over the United States until he was wounded and lost his leg. Didn’t keep him from finding a girl or having ten kids, of course.”

“So your father was a soldier as well?”

“Dad? Ha! No, he worked in a paper mill. Every day for twenty years until he dropped dead sweeping up the pulp. There were a lot of mouths in the family, and we all got the same idea early on. He loved us, but he could barely feed us when we were small. So there’s the great Leigh clan for you: Edith the seamstress, Thomas–just like dad!–the paper mill boy, Catherine the mother of four boys of her own now, and of course me, the soldier. I joined for three square meals a day and damn if I haven’t made a go of it.”

Yamaguchi took a moment to digest this. “So you, like me, have come back to arms after your family had turned away from it.”

Leigh nodded. “And like you I wonder if I really came that far. Don’t get me wrong. My boys are good boys, and I’ve learned a lot from them. Rosenthal’s from New York, Davis is from Tennessee, and I’d never have met either of them if not for all this. Even that son-of-a-bitch Jones, may God have mercy on his Kentucky ass, has taught me a lot.”

“What do you hope to get out of all this, when it’s done?” said Yamaguchi.

“Three square meals a day,” laughed Leigh. “And seeing all my boys home safe.”

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