“You’re a Javamancer, Henry. Come to Earl Grey’s School of Brewing and Baristery to join the struggle against the Bean Eaters, masters of the dark roast. And then obsess over the school’s Competitive Brewing team to the exclusion of world-shattering threats and let your friends or luck do most of the heavy lifting.”
Excerpt
Archived Posts from this Category
December 7, 2013
From “Henry Roaster and the Goblet of Java” by Joline Rangnow
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: Bean Eaters, Earl Grey, fiction, Harry Potter, humor, parody, story |Leave a Comment
December 6, 2013
From “Mesage in a Chronobottle” by Roger Crighton
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, science fiction, story, time travel |[2] Comments
You find the message in your inbox, just like any other:
Greetings,
This is a message from Chronological Communication Systems LLC. Your reply to this message will be sent, by email or appropriate messaging services, to yourself at a past date and time specified in the first line. The message is capped at 250 words, and cannot be re-sent. There is a lifetime limit of one message per customer. You have 24 hours from the time of receipt to respond; at the end of this period, your slot will be re-assigned. You will receive a bill upon successful transmission proportionate to message length, complexity, and distance in time.
Sincerely Yours,
The Chronological Communication Systems LLC. Team
You sit and stare at the screen, silent and wracked with doubt. The message will be sent, that much is certain–it is worth almost any price, and others have reported success.
But what message to send?
December 5, 2013
From “A Heartfelt Message from PATIO” by Barb Terrekor
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: coat hangers, fiction, humor, story |Leave a Comment
[BUD BRAYER appears in a fashionable suit holding a microphone, his spray-on tan and white pompadour immaculate]
BRAYER: Hi, I’m Bud Brayer. You might remember me as the host of game shows like The Cost is Correct and Consequentiae Nec Veritas, but what I’m here to talk to you about today is no game. I would like to urge all of you viewing at home to participate in a program of spaying and neutering that will reduce population pressures and cruelty on a beloved member of our household families.
[Soft music begins to play, specifically Grasp of the Seraphim by Chana Marschall]
BRAYER: I am, of course, talking about coat hangers.
[An image of a closet jammed with coat hangers appears]
BRAYER: We all know that, when left to their own devices, coat hangers will breed ferociously, overcrowding closets with nightmarish tangles of metal. Many families, unwilling or unable to care for the hangers, are forced to abandon them, or leave them in overcrowded and underfunded shelters.
[An image of a trash can stuffed with coat hangers appears, followed by a group of forlorn hangers on a thrift store rack]
BRAYER: Excess coat hanger population also leads to horrible acts of cruelty, as the innocent hangers are used for art projects, opening car doors, and other terrible abuses.
[An image of a coat hangar unfolded and in use to open a 1989 Honda Civic is shown, followed by an image of a ramshackle papier-mâché pig with a coat hanger skeleton]
BRAYER: Feral populations of coat hangers also lead lives of deprivation and struggle, and they are often too wild to be adopted.
[An image of a feral coat hanger lying by the side of the road appears]
BRAYER: So please, I beg you: remember to have your coat hangers spayed or neutered before putting them in the closet together.
ANNOUNCER: This has been a public service announcement from PATIO, People for the Acceptable Treatment of Inanimate Objects.
December 4, 2013
From “Behind the Rubber Mask” by S. D. Dondestas
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, story |Leave a Comment
“So that was you?” said Anderson. “The messages scrawled in blood?”
“Pig’s blood, from Poledouris’s Gyros and Deli,” Annelise said. “Those Keystone Cops sent it away for tests that won’t be done for months.”
“The apparitions?”
“Smoke and mirrors, literally. Fog machine, dry ice, and a projector with an image I printed out off of the internet.”
Anderson reeled visibly. “But…why?”
“Business was slow at the paper…we were in danger of going under. Don’t you see? Everyone was as bored with it as I was, and some Scooby-Doo shit was just what we needed.”
Anderson shook his head. “Then why come to me? You could have kept going indefinitely, until you were caught.”
“Well…” Annalise said. “You know the stuff that’s been happening recently? The screaming in the old Clarke Building, the mutilated squirrels in the park, and the people being stalked by shadows?”
“Yeah?”
“That wasn’t me. I didn’t do it,” Annelise sobbed. “I’ve been faking supernatural occurrences…but now they are happening without me. inputI’m afraid that in faking all this stuff…I may have awoken something that does it for a living.”
December 2, 2013
From “Worthy of the Glass” by P. Jake Sherri
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fantasy, fiction, stained glass, story |Leave a Comment
The stained glass windows in the Imperial Chapel had been designed centuries ago, before the Art had been all but lost, to reflect the fortunes of the Empire. Triumphant victories, calamitous defeats, the crowning of new Emperors…they were all duly reflected in the shifting panes. The Pontifex had been silent on how he had affected such an enchantment, but the subsequent Emperors did not care. They trumpeted each feat they performed which was noted in the Chapel as “worthy of the glass” and hired artisans to copy the designs for reproduction throughout the realm once they had vanished.
In time, though, the glass began to shift. Fewer scenes were of triumph, or even of defeat; instead they showed scenes of misery and disorder from throughout the Empire and abstract visions of death and decay. The Emperors soon realized that, as the royal family and its entourage were the only ones with access to the chapel, they could easily lie about the windows’ content. As far as the populace knew, the deeds of later Emperors continued to be “worthy of the glass.”
Things came to a head with Emperor Septimus IX. He gathered an army to repulse a challenge from his half-brother for the throne, only to have the Imperial Chapel glass reflect a terrible defeat–before he had even set out. Fearful of the prophecy coming true, Septimus IX avoided open battle, conceding field after field and undermining confidence in his leadership. When the glass finally changed, appearing to predict a great victory, the Emperor triumphantly rode with his troops into battle…and a massacre. The Battle of the Three Rivers has entered the annals of Imperial history as one of the most disastrous ever fought; meeting on poor ground in a wood that prevented effective communication, the two armies all but wiped each other out, with both Emperor and usurper unhorsed and killed.
Chaos descended over the realm, until a minor noble from a cadet branch of the royal family entered the Imperial chapel and, to his surprise, found words written in the glass for the first time: LET US RULE THROUGH YOU.
As the long-ago Pontifex Maximus had neglected to mention, the Imperial chapel glass was sustained by a gestalt of the spiritual energies, the souls, of the strongest of the departed Emperors. No longer content to watch, observe, and reflect, the glass had sought and obtained total power over the realm through a series of weak puppet Emperors. Dependent on the glass’s ability to see a short distance into the future, and given succinct orders etched in blood-red translucence, these late Emperors were unworthy of the glass in the old sense–for the glass itself had become worthy in a sense.
The Empire was, in effect, ruled by the glass for the next two hundred and fifty years, until the Imperial Chapel was sacked and smashed by the Holy Successors.
December 1, 2013
From “The Colorful Characters of HHM” by Hyacinth Lew Macek
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, humor, mall, story |Leave a Comment
Hopewell was a college town, and any large public space in a college town is a magnet for crazies. The HPD had a reputation for being a little fascist despite the open campus policy, so repeat offenders tended to congregate at a nearby venue: the Hopewell Heights Mall.
On any given day, colorful characters abound. There’s Erica Erotica, a very prim and proper looking matron of retirement age who comes in and writes the most tawdry, sex-drenched prose in giant letters in a pink gel pen (reserving blue and other colors for her occasional “clean” writing). No one is sure what happens to the erotica once it’s penned, but theories ranging from tin-under-the-bed to lucrative-POD-publishing-on-Valkyrie.com have been advanced.
Hermit Harold sells pet hermit crabs at the behest of an absentee employer who pays his kiosk rent and salary seemingly independent of the fact that few if any crabs were ever sold. Faced with such a steady income and lack of an incentive to succeed, Hermit Harold responds by showing up to work stoned out of his gourd and making awful ribald puns on the fact that he “has crabs.”
There’s Bathroom Bessie, the 40-something sex addict (noticing a pattern here?) who is functionally homeless but uses the HHM washrooms to clean herself up before aggressively pursuing single-looking males, only stopping when she was offered “a ride home.” No one ever complained vociferously or consistently enough to bar Bathroom Bessie from the premises, though.
And who could forget the denizens of Hopewell National Forest, which abutted the property? The deer that crashed through the plate glass window to roam the mall unchecked for two weeks has become legend, as has the colony of bats that bedeviled security guards with butterfly nets for over a year.
November 30, 2013
From “The Muse Rides Into the Sunset, For Now” by Altos Wexan
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: Altos Wexan, fiction, humor, muse, NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, Stephen King, story, western, writing |Leave a Comment
“Who’s this strumpet?” asks my muse as he walks into my writing den–otherwise known as the single room comprising my kitchen and living room.
Sure enough, a young woman in a duster and hat, both heavy with dust, is sitting on the couch, arms folded, and glaring bullets at me. Luckily, the revolvers heavy on her hips are loaded with strictly imaginary bullets.
“This is Virginia McNeill, the heroine of my National Novel Writing Month novel for 2013,” I say. “I’ve been toying with her as a character since 2007 and finally got her story underway this year.”
“Uh, okay, great, sure,” says my muse. “I’m very happy for you. But why is she here, on your couch, which ought to be my place of honor? I am, after all, the imagined personification of your muse, shamelessly ripped off from an author so much richer and more powerful than you that I’m surprised you haven’t been sued back to the stone age?”
“If anyone asks, you’re fair use,” I say. “Or one of Stephen King’s Dollar Babies.”
“Whatever boats your float, slick,” says my muse with a hearty belch. “Now answer the damn question. What’s Annie Oakley doing in my ass groove?”
“I’m cross at him,” says Virginia. “I don’t like how my story turned out.”
“Ohh, and the crowd is crestfallen!” crows my muse. “All those years of thinking about Virginia’s story in the shower and you whiff on it like Casey?”
“I didn’t do any such thing!” I cry.
“I beg to differ,” snorts Virginia. “I thought my characterization was trite and two-dimensional, my character arc was more like a straight line, and that more often than not you were making fun of me.”
“Sounds like she has your number, slick,” says my muse. He tosses the cowgirl a cold beer from the fridge. “Here, have a brewski.”
“I for one think her story turned out well,” I say. “Sure, there are always edits and revisions, but-”
“Did you finish it?” snaps my muse.
“-I feel that I did enough justice to the outline of the tale that-” I continue, trying to ignore the question.
“DID you FINISH it?” my muse says again with exaggerated emphasis. “That WAS your resolution, wasn’t it?”
“It’s finished enough for now,” I say airily, evading the question.
My muse rolls his eyes afresh and turns to Virginia. “Did he finish it?”
“Far as I’m concerned,” she drawls acidly, “he never started it.”
November 28, 2013
From “The Inadvertently Purloined Letter” by Armand M. Arkema
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, hostage, hostage situation, letter, mystery, story |Leave a Comment
“Addressed to Bianca Lattimer, no return address.” I said, examining the envelope critically. “How’d it come? I don’t know any Bianca Lattimer.”
The student shrugged. “It was in your pile, I put your pile in your office.”
I shot him a poison arrow look–that’s what happens when you aren’t in charge of hiring your own office staff. “Wow, so very helpful. Take it back.”
“There’s no return address,” he said. “It’ll just end up at the dead letter office. Open it and see what’s inside.”
Ignoring him, I marched to my office, the size of a monastic cell but crammed with far more books and Chinese takeout containers. The letter sat on the corner of my desk as I graded papers for about two hours; in time, though, curiosity got the better of me and I groped for my letter opener.
The message that fell out was typed in bog-standard Times New Roman and dated midnight yesterday:
Bianca Lattimore,
We have your daughter. Bring the package to us within 48 hours of the marked date and time, or she dies. We are monitoring police scanner frequencies; any attempts to contact the authorities would be most unwise.
-SD
November 27, 2013
From “Every Bed a Story” by Lisa Spod
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: bed, books, covers, fiction, hotel, houskeeping, maids, sheets, story |Leave a Comment
“Take this here,” said Cándida, speaking to her trainee in soft Spanish so as not to disturb or be comprehended by the Anglos still sleeping off hangovers nearby. “Bed unmade, one pillow propped up, and the comforter thrown across the room to cover the air conditioner. What do you think made it like this?”
“Hm,” said Silvia. “Well, I think that maybe the gentleman wanted to read in bed, so he propped up the pillow. And it’s been warm these past few days, so he threw the comforter over there because it was too hot.”
“Maybe,” said Cándida. “But that’s awfully naive–and awfully tame. When you’ve been here awhile, you’ll see it differently. We cleaners notice things that other people don’t.”
“Well, what do you see here?” Silvia asked.
“It was a booty call, and things got so rough that he needed to put a pillow up to keep from bashing his brains out on the headboard. And he threw the comforter across the room in a fit of passion–or, more likely, to make his pretty little girlfriend think it was passion, which would make her less likely to tell her husband about it.”
“Does everyone who works here get that cynical?” said Silvia, beginning to gingerly pull the sheets off the hotel bed.
“Sooner or later,” said Cándida. “But I’m sure that my version is the right one.”
A knock at the door interrupted her. “Hey, can I tiptoe in?” said the Anglo lady standing there. “I forgot my book.”
Silvia folded her arms and gave Cándida a self-satisfied look as the woman retrieved a novel from the bedside drawer nearest the propped up pillow.
“Come on, honey! It can’t be called sex on the beach if the tide has come in!” Another Anglo, this one in a bikini and thong, was at the door.
“Coming, honey!” The other woman skipped off carrying her book, leaving Cándida with an expression that was half-surprised, half-smug.
“Let’s call that one a draw,” said Silvia.
November 26, 2013
From “Those Listless Gambling Eyes” by Nicosia Trosper
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: casinos, fiction, poetry, story |Leave a Comment
The loneliest people ever accosted by bright lights and blaring sounds
Flow about me like a river, borne in currents of cheap tobacco smoke
Either window dressing or bad luck, they bark at me for losses
Blame the interloper, not the machine designed for soft bankruptcy
I dare not pull the lever myself, even as the lights twinkle and sing
For the dead eyes I see at every turn, the listless mechanisms of loss
Were they once as wary as I, before beckoned into the neon arms
Sure that just one pull, just twenty dollars, would be the end of it?
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 