March 12, 2014
“We’d like to buy your autobiographical essay for Esquire Magazine under one condition. Remove all the bad swears.”
“No way, man. My words are like my children.”
“Did I mention that we’ll pay you $1000, which is about 50 cents a word?”
“Would you like the bad swears removed, @#$%d out, or just bowlderized?”
March 11, 2014
In their old haunt, a slum apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, Adam Callahan detailed his plan. “It’s a pretty simple con,” he said, eyes gleaming in the late afternoon sun from beneath a stolen–and filthy–porkpie hat. “We need to get into the Baker-Barrister department store, corner of Broadway and W. 13th St.”
His confederate, Sam Goldman, flashed the winning smile that had kept him alive despite having spent 11 of the 13 years since 1900 in the gutter. “I can use a version of my ‘Mr. Mayweather’ con if you can get me a fresh suit and a business card.”
“Already working on it. I called in a favor with my pal Israel at Shoenborne Printers; cards’ll be ready tomorrow.”
Sam spat on the floor. “And the suit?”
“Picked it up from the cleaner’s on the way out this morning.” Adam’s eyes twinkled as he thought about the cleaner’s turned back, his hand darting behind the desk, and the quick but nonchalant escape that followed.
“Fair enough,” Sam laughed, effecting the nasal upper-class twang that had allowed him to rob the upper crust blind on their own promenades. “What’s the item, and the angle?”
“There’s a Turkish rug in the showroom on the fifth floor,” said Adam. “Custom-made for Baker-Barrister by Caboblanco, their rugmaker on East 19th Street. It’s on the showroom, but has a ‘sold’ tag.”
“Sold to who?”
“G. Arnold Cooper III. He won’t be coming to collect it anytime soon.”
“You…took care of him?” Sam raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t like Adam to resort to violence when skullduggery was by far his strong suit.
“He was on the Titanic. Dead fourteen months, estate in disarray. Rug is bought and paid for but never collected.”
Sam tapped his chin. “In other words, someone who looks and sounds like they belong there can just walk in, have it delivered wherever he wants, and then hawk it for some easy cash?”
“That’s right. But that’s not what we’re going to do. It’s an expensive rug, but at ten cents on the dollar none of the usual fences. My source in Baker-Barrister says there’s something even better woven into the thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Freedom, Adam. Freedom from under Cobb’s thumb for you, freedom from that bitch Sally for me, and freedom from the gutter for both of us. Body and soul.”
March 10, 2014
It was certainly a shock to see Maribelle, not least after her untimely death. The Agan had a spectacular funerary rite, laying the deceased to rest in their starship and setting it for a suborbital burn, leaving a fiery trail of immolation and honor.
“I don’t suppose,” Lars said, “that I can ask you anything about what happens afterwards?”
The spectral, serpentine form of his one-time paramour, who everyone had been certain was the love of his life as soon as he and she both figured it out, smiled. “I’m not allowed to answer any questions about things like that,” she said wistfully. “But…”
“But?”
“But I am allowed to ask them, or carry messages.”
March 9, 2014
Art Huck–and, for that matter, his moll June, 24 years his junior–always seemed a little schizoid, arguing with themselves about decisions with any sort of ramifications. That was in full swing right now, with Art riposting with himself while riding bitch on Captain Ramirez’s motorcycle about the merits of opening fire on the fleeing forms of Rosie the robot hooker and her captive paramour Rich “The Bitch” Bichovic (LAPD badge number 1138) over one shoulder and Lawrence Wong, a Buddhist clergyman, over her other.
“Shoot her in the head, I invented her and it’ll slow her down! No, no. Just wing the Bitch and it’ll slow her down even better. No, we don’t want to hit him. But we don’t want to hit her either. Damn!”
Ramirez, wondering how the meaty slab of a passenger–and a known pimp at that–had goaded him into a ride-along in the sidecar of his ’28 Indian Chief cycle, snapped back: “I’m not shooting at anything! Say your stop word like you promised.”
As any good part-time mad scientist with a gynoid automaton should, Art had programmed Rosie’s difference engine to stop at the utterance of a specific word. But Art was also determined to see Rosie undamaged and her passenger–and his attempted murderer–laid out on a slab. He fumbled in his vest pocket for the .32 Iver Johnson break-action revolver, loaded with armor-piercing slugs, that he always kept on hand.
For her part, when Rosie had abandoned the bus to Reno after the police had blown out its tire on the side of the road, she’d had nothing on her mind but matrimony with a side of escape. With her beau in one hand and a priest in the other, all she needed was the rest of the wedding party. It was, after all, her day. But when she saw a roadside Woolworth’s, though, Rosie the Riveting made a sudden, and sharp, turn. Woolworth’s had everything, after all, including everything you needed for an impromptu wedding.
Captain Ramirez, shaken by the report of a pistol right next to his good ear, shouted at the small-time pimp and part-time mad scientist riding bitch in his sidecar to drop his weapon. Art argued with himself about it, but was largely drowned out by the roar of a Dusenberg V12 alongside–his wife, June Huck, behind the wheel. She’d caught up with her husband by stealing his car, and was shouting something about a safety deposit box. The bitch had been trying to get into it, to make off with Art’s nest egg, since he’d met her.
That was enough for him. He shouted out the safe word.
Rosie’s mainspring unwound, and her storage compartment–with a door located about where you would expect on a hooker automaton–sprang open. Every little thing Art had ever used her to hide, from weapons to diamonds to oil, splurted out. All at once.
The massive pile-up accident that followed went pretty much like one would expect.
Inspired by Fiasco by Bully Pulpit Games, specifically the Los Angeles 1936 playset.
March 8, 2014
Officer Richard Bichovic, LAPD badge number 1138–“Rich the Bitch” behind his back, or to his face if you didn’t mind a knuckle sandwich with a pound cake for dessert–turned the tumblers on the lock to his cheap apartment. The Bryson Towers apartments, once the Mayfair Hotel, had weathered the depression about as well as Rich himself had. The interior was a dark snarl of empty liquor bottles, .38 special shells both live and spent, unspeakable stains, and private armies of cockroaches marching in lockstep as they fought fierce turf wars.
Shaking down Art Huck, that big Stonehenge of a part-time mad scientist turned full-time pimp for robot girls of his own invention, had once been Rich’s best source of quarters to stick into robo-girls (or to stash in the rainy-day fund to buy the occasional soft silk ladies’ undergarments in size 42). Now that mook had the gall to turn the tables and blackmail Rich with a pair of a pair of Lovelace-brand lacy lavender ladies’ lingerie panties and a newsreel of them in action. His wife, June Huck, had been far too uninterested in killing her husband given their 23-year age difference and her repeated insistence that the relationship had been all about Art’s key to a safe deposit box at the Commonwealth Savings & Loan.
But when the streetlamp light from outside illuminated the inside of Rich’s apartment, sending all manner of fellow vermin scrambling for somewhere dark and moist, Rich realized that his earlier thought at Florian’s Bar–that things couldn’t get much worse–had been perhaps the understatement of the year. Or at least tied with Captain Ramirez of the 77th Precinct saying that Jesse Owens had done “okay” in the Olympics.
Rosie Nuts ‘n’ Bolts–Rosie the Riveting, Art Huck’s earliest robot gal, still his number one earner, a robo-prostitute with a heart of gold (Rich knew, he’d seen it, he knew where the hatch was)–was sitting on the moldy, sheetless Murphy bed. She was wearing a wedding dress, holding a diamond ring big enough for King Edward VIII to set in a crown for his mistress.
“I-LOVE-YOU-RICH,” she said. “I-LEFT-FATHER. WE-ARE-GETTING-MARRIED.”
“…wha?” Rich said.
“THIS-IS-MY-DAY,” Rosie said, her vacuum tube eyes flickering brightly and sparks shooting from her mouth. “WE-ARE-GETTING-MARRIED. I-LIKE-IT-SO-I-AM-GOING-TO-PUT-A-RING-ON-IT. FATHER-O’HOULIHAN-WILL-MEET-US-IN-RENO.”
“L-look, babydoll, this is all a little sudden,” Rich slurred, through half a bottle of Olde Fortran Malt Whiskey from Florian’s private reserve. “Don’t you think that you could get those panties from your ‘dad’ for me? Burn that film? What good’ll it do it get married if my reputation’s in tatters?”
“THIS-IS-MY-DAY,” repeated Rosie. Rising, she seized Rich’s tottering form with a whirring of flywheels and servos, thrust the ring onto his right index finger (spraining it and drawing blood). Against his half-hearted protests, she carried him to the bus stop.
“WE-ARE-GETTING-MARRIED,” she repeated to the bust driver on the Reno Express, departing hourly from the Del Mar racetrack. “THIS-IS-MY-DAY. TAKE-US-TO-RENO.”
The bus driver, uneasily eyeing the automata carrying a semi-conscious uniformed LAPD officer, demurred. In addition to worries about the law, he was a Traditionalist Catholic who strongly objected to Pop Pius XI’s recent recognition of robosexual marriage, and explained his concerns to Rosie as simply and straightforwardly as he could.
In response, the mecha-bridezilla flung him bodily through the window. Depositing Rich in an empty seat, she slammed the accelerator and headed for Reno with twenty terrified nuns, a tour group from Chinatown, and a typewriter salesman from Sacramento.
Inspired by Fiasco by Bully Pulpit Games, specifically the Los Angeles 1936 playset.
March 7, 2014
Arthur “Art” Huck had bigger dreams for the small-time auto garage and filling station he’d inherited. The small-time crook and part-time mad scientist had transformed the oily floors and smoky, squealing lifts into a smouldering den of sex wreathed in cigarette and exhaust smoke. LA was full of pimps in ’36, preying on girls that came to the big city with stars in their eyes, but people tended to notice when they turned up with a shiner or rigor mortis. Art Huck’s girls, though, had no such problems.
All they needed was an oil change every six months or 3000 miles. Whichever came first.
The first client into Art’s garage bordello, illuminated only by the late-afternoon sunshine streaming through grimy windows, was Officer Richard Bichovic, LAPD badge number 1138. He might have been handsome had he not been so irredeemably greasy, but luckily Art’s robot gals liked ’em greasy. “Rich the Bitch,” as he was known behind his back, had a fixation with Art’s number one bot, Rosie, that was matched only with his fixation for money and self-affected swagger. Rich’d been hustling Art and his young wife for protection money for years, ever since being put on the beat.
All that was about to change, though.
“Hey, Art,” Rich said. “What are you doing, standing in my way like a rock out of Stonehenge? You know how much I love shaking you down for quarters to put in Rosie’s slot, but that cycle of life doesn’t work unless I get in there to meet her.”
Art, as much a thick cut of beef at 42 as he’d been in his prime, was unmoved. “Look, Bitch-ovic. You and me, we got business.”
“It’s pronounced Beak-o-vick,” Officer Bichovic snarled. “In the old country it meant ‘fierce warrior,’ so show a little respect.”
“Well, it don’t mean that here,” Art said. He shifted his oily cigar in his mouth. “Bitch,” he added, with a deliberate cloud of smoke.
“You just keep at it, then,” said Rich, shaking with barely concealed fury. “I’ll slap another percent onto your ‘rent’ foe every time you say it. Now beat it. I got a hankering to see Rosie again, put some more of your quarters in her slot.”
Ah, Rosie. Rosie the riveting. Art’s first robot creation, with a copper bodice molded onto her like the hood ornament of a Rolls-Royce Phantom III. She was a robot with a heart of gold, Rich knew. He’d seen it. He knew where the hatch was.
“I got another thought for you,” said Art. “You’re not gonna take any more of my quarters from now on…Bitch.”
“Beak-o-vick!” Rich snapped.
“You’re gonna put your own quarters in Rosie’s meter from now on, or you’re going to sit at home with your new gal Hoover. Unless, of course, you want the boys at the precinct to see this.” Art held up a pair of lacy lavender ladies’ lingerie, Lovelace-brand panties, up with one finger.
Lacy lavender ladies’ lingerie, Lovelace-brand panties with a 42-inch waist, that was.
“Those could be anyone’s drawers,” Rich said, trying his best to hide the nervousness in his voice.
“Rosie’s got a photographic memory,” Art said through a cloud of fresh sun-dappled cigar smoke. “Want to take my word for it, or would you like to see the newsreel?”
Inspired by Fiasco by Bully Pulpit Games, specifically the Los Angeles 1936 playset.
March 6, 2014
March 5, 2014
“Shit, it’s Orlov,” said Kaminski. Pale from the cold and from the sight of his fellow guard’s mangled body still staining the Siberian snow red with weeping blood.
“Are you going to give me a weapon now, perhaps?” said Maksim, sarcastically. “Or would you prefer for me to take it off your still-warm body, assuming that whatever it is doesn’t tear through the rest of us first?”
“You’ll kill me,” Kaminski snarled–though he didn’t cuff Maksim with his rifle butt as he had before. “As soon as my back is turned.”
“You think I can survive out here, in prison clothes, on my own? You think any of us can?” Maksim snapped. “Arm us, and we can help you against something that makes the Gulag seem like a resort–death.”
“They’ll shoot me for even the thought of arming a prisoner, an enemy of the people,” Kaminski said. “Or worse, throw me in with you.”
“Wouldn’t that be a shame?” said Maksim. “I would suggest that we deal with the problem at hand, the one that tore Orlov’s throat out even when he was as well-armed as you. You can make up any story you want, later, and who are the other guards going to believe? Assuming we can find them again.”
With an exasperated, grudging intake of breath, Kaminski retrieved Orlov’s pistol and his spare magazines. He handed them to Maksim. “Do you know how to use it?” he sneered.
Maksim released the Tokarev’s magazine, checked the chamber for brass, and replaced the bullets. “I was a combat engineer during the siege of Sevastopol,” he said, racking the slide and half-cocking the hammer before putting the safety on. “I know more about how to use this pistol than you do. My unit killed a hundred fascists in the tunnels under the city before we were ordered to lay down arms. Nothing that is out there could possibly carry more horror than that.”
March 4, 2014
March 3, 2014
“We’ve retitled your course this semester, Reginald,” said the dean. “Take a look.”
Reginald took a copy of the catalog and blanched. “This is too much, Fred,” he said. “It really is. Do we really want to reduce British literature to something so glib?”
“You’ve mentioned it in class before,” said the dean, bristling. “I’ve read the evaluations.”
“Only to keep the kids from sleeping,” Reginald continued. “Only as a low-rent, bargain-basement entry in the the greater world of literature. They have been producing fine literary works in Britain since the reign of Claudius, Fred. That canon has Beowulf and Chaucer and Spenser and Milton.”
“Well, who’s to say this won’t be in the canon?” the dean asked.
“It’s a bit early for that, wouldn’t you say?” snapped Reginald. “There were books considered absolutely essential a hundred years ago that no one reads now. I’m sure a deacon at Oxford would have thought teaching The Water-Babies was a good idea in 1914, but who remembers that soggy moralizing tripe now, popular as it was?”
“Well, when people forget about this, we can change the name of the course back,” the dean said icily. “Until then, in this climate of cuts for arts and humanities, hitching your carriage to something popular is the only way to keep teaching this course. Unless you’d like to take 5 sections of English 101, of course.”
“Welcome to ENGL 433: Harry Potter and Friends,” Richardson grumbled to his class six weeks later. “In this course we will look at British literature through the lends of boy wizards, and read texts that J. K. Rowling may have been influenced by, referred to, owned, or seen on a bookstore shelf at one time or another.”
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 