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September 4, 2011

From “Hanna Maurer, Age 109, Tells All” by S. David Toepfer

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“When I played Carnegie Hall in…it must have been 1918 or 1919 or so…the result was a near riot,” Hanna said. She lit a fresh cigarette but didn’t inhale, letting the smoke wreathe her head. “My own composition–very dissonant, very futurist, full of radical tone clusters and other such nonsense. The result was a near riot.”

“They didn’t like it?” Berne asked.

“It was one thing for young turks like Ornstein and Schoenberg and Scriabin to play music like that. But a woman? There was an editorial in the Times the next day saying that I was childishly beating my piano and letting my handlers–my male handlers–transform it into something avant-garde.”

“What did you do?”

“I sent them a copy of one of my sheets with all the music there in full notation. Never did get a response, but I loved the fact that little old me could case such a sensation.”

Bern delicately cleared his throat and swatted away some encroaching smoke. “Why’d you give up performing then?”

“Two things, really,” Hanna sighed. “For one, I grew bored with futurism and dissonance. Experimenting with tonality…now that was enough to get me attacked from all sides. The futurists who’d made me their poster child weren’t happy, and the people I’d irritated in the first place weren’t either.”

“And the second thing?”

“I fell in love.”

 

September 3, 2011

From “Pizzazz the Parakeet Needs a Smoke Break” by Vernon L. Traverse

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Doug had his best ‘manager face’ on. “There aren’t enough orders in the middle of the day to keep everyone busy.”

“I know that.”

“You can’t work nights because of your class schedule this semester. So I need you to do something to pick up the slack.” Doug held out the Pizzazz the Parakeet costume and a sign advertising 6 pizzas for under $6! Pick-up only!

“Look, I appreciate the thought, Doug,” I said gingerly, “but I’d rather be fired than wear that thing in 100-degree heat waving at cars.” It was like being the ultimate pariah–cars virtually swerved into the other lane to avoid having to look at someone in a costume, and people on the sidewalk were about as polite with Pizzazz the Parakeet as they’d be with Hermann Goering.

Worst of all, the bird’s mouth was open, clearly revealing my face to all who cared to look.

“Fine, then, you’re fired,” Doug said. “Clean out your cubby.”

I tried calling his bluff by walking away, hoping to hear his voice from behind me like in the movies.

I made it about five steps.

“All right,” I said, snatching the costume. “I’ll do it.” The specter of unpaid loans, evictions, and–worse–moving back in with my parents were too horrific to ignore.

 

September 2, 2011

From “Behold, Corisio!” by D. K. MacDuff

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“Behold, Corisio! Land o’ the fair and strong, city of kings and cradle of emperors! Oh, to gaze upon thee’s to experience the wondrous, rapt’rous joy of an auspicious pigeon’s flight o’er Jove’s thunder’d brow!”

The words were like thick, Bulwer-Lyttonesque dust in Drummond’s mouth. T. Serge Poller may have been a native son; he may have once been considered a luminary of mid 19th century theater; he may even have been on the shortlist for Poet Laureate.

But times change, and Drummon fervently wished as he rehearsed that anyone who ever derided Shakespeare as dry and formal had complimentary tickets to the show.

 

August 29, 2011

From “The Editor’s Lament” by Carson O. Dolarmuth

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It had been a good idea.

The city had produced more than its fair share of writers, thanks to the local college’s endowment from an old benefactor, and many of them were still alive, still active. Asking each for an original essay or story about their hometown seemed like a stroke of genius, to say nothing of a ticket to easy street for the savvy editor.

That was before Peter had seen the submissions.

Of the eight authors that had agreed to participate, three had submitted nothing despite repeated promises to the contrary. One had turned in a typewritten manuscript in a manilla envelope, one so jumbled and muddled with pen and liquid paper corrections as to be nigh unreadable. Another had annotated a grocery list with a list of organs that the various items reminded them of.

And then there was Auguste Jones, who had apparently dropped his given name “Kevin” to appear more literary. His submission had been an index card with a citation for a 1948 edition of Goethe’s Faust, a cassette tape with the repeated phrase “chickpeas are angry” in a female voice interspersed with heavy breathing, and an embalmed hummingbird wrapped in plastic with the letter “Y” painted on its back with red nail polish.

 

August 28, 2011

From “The Suren Paradox” by Cris V. Flemming

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“We call it the Suren Paradox.”

“Suren was a great general in Parthia–Iran–who led less than ten thousand men. But with them he managed to defeat Crassus–the guy who killed Spartacus–even though the Romans outnumbered him three to one.”

“You’d expect something like that to earn you a pretty rich reward right?”

“You’d be wrong. Suren called attention to himself and his ability, which made the Shah afraid that his general would try to seize the throne. He got himself executed on some trumped-up charge.”

“So in the end the only winner was the Shah, who got a Roman invasion repelled and got to use Crassus’ head as a stage prop.

“The lesson, kiddo, is this: if you shine too brightly under someone who has absolute power over you, like your boss, chances are even that they’ll axe you for making them look bad.”

 

August 27, 2011

From “Denounced” by Glinka Konstantinovich Lyadov

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“If you are to tell your story–musically, theatrically, operatically–you must do it through proscribed means and with proscribed methods,” Dr. Stasov said. “It is like walking a tightrope.”

“How do you mean?”

“You must set your story in the distant past or the ideal present,” said Stasov. “You must describe it in terms of class warfare between bourgeois oppressors and proletarian revolutionaries, even if it predates Marx and Engels by thousands of years.”

“I want a story of love to be told in my ballet,” Voin said. “I will write the music first and then work out the steps with a choreographer.”

“Then you must be careful,” Stasov remarked. “Perhaps a serf in the era of Ivan can cause a nobleman to devote himself to the cause of socialist equality. Or two collective farmers might bond in the fields, or in a tractor repair workshop. But whatever you do, the nuances of your story must be through that lens. The alternative is denunciation and all that implies.”

 

August 26, 2011

From “The Voice at the Other End” by Amber D. Culpepper

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The nature of TechCo’s system was to prevent any one “associate” from having any real power or information. Every bit of information came from the database software, every action had to be double-checked with the floor manager, and any really big decisions were made by “supervisors” who were, in point of fact, hundreds of miles away.

This meant that Andrea had to keep customers on the line for a long time, much of which was dead air as she waited for higher-ups or the creaky database to give her information. She felt the need to fill these spaces with something beyond the boilerplate she’d been trained to spout–“your call is very important to us”–and tried above all to give the impression that people were talking to a human being.

It was only partially successful. Most people just grunted a reply when asked about their weekend, or their history using the widgets for which TechCo handled outsourced service calls. Others were so desperate for a human voice, especially one that sounded youthful and female, that they unloaded reams of personal information that a less scrupulous person could have put to nefarious ends. Some even asked for her personal phone number, which was grounds for instant termination from TechCo, though luckily most of those appeared to be mutants who weren’t numberworthy in the first place.

 

August 25, 2011

From “The Author Vanishes” by Meyer K. Goldstein

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Cohen’s novels were characterized by intricate and intertwining multiple plots, and he had a remarkable ability to weave various complicated threads together despite prose that was often described as turgid or, charitably, plain. He wasn’t writing to the literati, of course–does anyone outside their number even aspire to anymore?–but rather for the lucrative disposable-book trade. People who needed something to read on the train, on the plane, or any of those other bottlenecks where the frenetic pace of modern life was unavoidably slowed would purchase a Maxwell Q. Cohen book and discard it like a candy wrapper after reading.

Most of the finer thrift stores overflowed with volumes stocked alongside Crichton, Koontz, and King. His were human stories, though, without a hint of the supernatural or the technological and crafted for those who were not of either bent. It was a formula for consistent success, if not renown, and most of the titles wound up selling very well. His latest, “Forest of Bloodshot Eyes,” had even debuted on the bestseller list and there was scuttlebutt of a Hollywood adaptation with the latest pretty-thing-of-the-month shoehorned into a role written for someone 20 years older and 20 IQ points smarter.

That’s why Cohen’s unannounced disappearance from his lakeside home had been such a bitter shock.

 

August 24, 2011

From “Jackknife of Fate” by Ainsley M. Strommann

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It was nobody’s fault, really.

The transit company that owned the trailer had furnished it with retread tires because they were the cheap option. The rig owner wasn’t about to replace them given how slim her margins already were, to say nothing of the punishing schedule that had her in Seattle Sunday night and Atlanta Monday by the stroke of twelve AM.

The forecaster had called for high temperatures after the front blew in, but it wound up being a cold snap. Even in early spring, it was bad enough to turn patches of rain into black ice. Nobody who had been on the road during the unseasonable warmth was ready for that, and there had been fog enough that prepared or not they were unlikely to see it.

So when the retread peeled off the semi’s rear wheel on a bridge outside of town, the driver had no way of knowing that hitting the brakes would lead to a jackknife. And the cars in the other lane, coming around a blind corner onto ice, never had a chance.

Anyone who read an ounce of malice into the truck driver, the transit company, or even the weatherman was just lashing out, looking for scapegoats in an unpredictable world. And, given the murders that followed, I have to believe that’s exactly what happened.

 

August 23, 2011

From “The Cobh Reel” by Peter McDonnell Jutland

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They called it the Cobh Reel, and it had only been played and danced once.

During Cromwell’s campaigns in Ireland, a contingent of men pledged to support a free Ireland found themselves caught between the Scylla of a Royalist garrison and the Charybdis of an advancing Republican formation. Their musicians, drawn from the hinterlands, had knowledge of the Reel passed down from the ancient time of the Irish High Kings, and proposed it to their commander. He, a coward that planned to watch the battle from a nearby escarpment and flee if it went ill, agreed.

He saw the Republicans and Royalists clash with his own force caught between. He even heard snatches of the music through the din of battle joined.

He did not see the force that emptied the battlefield of men, bearing them wailing off to parts unknown and leaving only blood and armor behind.

The few survivors were maddened by what they had seen–blinded, deafened, or shouting only in strange tongues. Every last one was caked in the blood of their fellows. Cromwell’s lieutenants reported that his forces had been wiped out by an ambush, and they were right enough about that. But as to who had done the ambushing, and what the Cobh Reel had to do with it, well…there was a reason it was only used once.

 

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