Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Name: Charline Blue
Codename: Azure
Skillset: HUMINT
Description:
Former model and exotic dancer. Recruited after stealing the identity of a patron’s estranged wife and living as her for six months.

Name: Sterling Pizarro
Codename: Inca
Skillset: Data analysis
Description:
24th-great grandson of Francisco Pizarro through one of his mistresses. Recruited after redirecting all funds for internet game company Whiteout Entertainment through his offshore credit account and using the accrued reward points for free Amazon purchases for two years.

Name: Sherman Purtee
Codename: Gorgeous
Skillset: Safecracking, burglary
Description:
Former model and exotic dancer. Recruited after using a wild bachelorette party to crack a Sausalito safe and steal $200,000 in diamonds, which he then fenced.

Name: Pamula Parreira
Codename: Vine
Skillset: Acrobatics, lockpicking
Description:
Former Olympic-class acrobat and tumbler. When her trainer attempted to stunt her growth with modified hGH, she picked the lock and dosed him instead–fatally. Recruited after escaping custody for the tenth time while awaiting trial.

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“This is Maye Wipperfurth. Our company pays her one cent per post, up to a maximum of $7 USD per day, to leave comments on blogs with our company’s link as both her referrer and her home site. Since Maye is a real person, the comments are 100% unique, relevant to the material, and untraceable as spam.”

“$7 is a lot of money. Why not just have a bot do it for free?”

“Well, that’s $7 gross, not net. We take some off the top for taxes, a little more for a finder’s fee, and the money is only redeemable in an online store that we also operate which drop ships items from AladdinQuick. So it drives traffic to our site, most of the money stays with us, and we also build relationships with the AladdinQuick people, who’ll be running this miserable pebble in 15 years. 20 tops.

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CARL: This is Carl Drake, play-by-play commentator for NBS Broadcasting, coming to you live from my girlfriend’s living room via Zoom for a postgame breakdown of the Battle Royale 2k20 Virtual Championship.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. This is Tom Hicks, color commentator for NBS Broadcasting, and I am also coming at you live from my closet to help break down the Battle Royale 2k20 Virtual Championship. If my bitrate drops suddenly, it means the kids have started a new YouTube video.

CARL: So when we last left our players, Erasmo was 12 kills ahead of Spainhour, our two top players after master player Gsaser was banned from all tournament play in perpetuity throughout the universe by speaking in favor of Hong Kong home rule.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. China rules Hong Kong forevermore, and its benevolent hand is only reluctantly moved to violence by the actions of a few counterrevolutionaries.

CARL: Now I will admit that I am not entirely clear on the rules of Battle Royale 2k20, being as I am a professional sportscaster who has been furloughed at half pay and calling these esports games is the only way I can prove my worth to my corporate masters at NBS, who have already enacted staffing cuts so severe they border on decimation.

TOM: That’s right, Carl, and we should be grateful for these few table scraps we have been given. Higgins had to call the election live in a Republican stronghold, and he may not live through the night.

CARL: So as far as I can see, Spainhour needs to pretend kill Erasmo 12 times in order to claw back the lead in this video game.

TOM: That’s right, Carl, though I believe he can kill anyone else as well.

CARL: Even noobs?

TOM: That’s right, Carl. Especially noobs.

CARL: And the tournament is sudden death?

TOM: That’s right, Carl, inasmuch as any player may be, at any time, suddenly killed. For pretend. But Battle Royale 2k20 will allow them to respawn in the next game.

CARL: So not at all unlike the Lions, in any case. All right! Ordinarily, this is the part of our coverage where we would do a locker room huddle, but that’s how we lost Gutierrez. Also, I don’t believe that there is any locker room, since these kids aren’t breaking much of a sweat.

TOM: That’s right, Carl, though as my son will tell you, you don’t need to be physically active to need a good shower, and I imagine these e-athletes are much the same.

CARL: You said earlier you don’t think your boy has what it takes to be an esports champion, Tom?

TOM: That’s right, Carl, you have to actually play video games to get to the championship. Tom Jr. only watches other people play on YouTube, a recursive nightmare of laziness and sloth that saddens me even as I am stunned by its magnitude.

CARL: Takes after his mother, then?

TOM: That’s right, Carl, though since the ‘rona I have managed to keep temporary custody of the descendants, since ex-Mrs. Hicks doesn’t want to be cooped up with them any more than she wants to stop draining my wallet for alimony.

CARL: Up next, some greatest moments from the most recent game, including spawn-camping, an epic headshot, the Halo Hump, and of course, our Teenage Trash Talker of the day! Stay tuned.

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A secret, it lies
On the pavement below
Spreading stain from eyes
The blood it does flow
What is the form there
Crumpled, deceased
I admit I don’t know
A secret, indeed

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The King’s personal favorites, however, were eligible to serve in the 1st Gustatory Hussars, also known informally as the Hungerssars. Though they carried ranks, wore uniforms, and went on maneuvers, the Hungerssars were more preoccupied with cooking, feasting, and making merry. They were issued skewers instead of sabers, the fronts of their uniforms were the color of meat juice so that stains would blend in, and they moved not with the other cavalry but with the supply wagons. On the rare occasions that the King or the Crown Prince would accompany their troops for any length of time, they would do so as Hungerssars.

This arrangement lasted until the Battle of Gateau, when enemy troops routed the army and tore into the rear units, catching the Hungerssars at their feasting. Many influential royal favorites were killed or captured, though some were able to fight off their attackers with their skewers or other cookery and escape. Songs are still sung about Baron Liégeois the Younger, who was able to escape with a skewer in each hand, alternately striking (blunt) blows and taking enormous bites of roast seasoned pork shoulder.

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In the darkness of the third and deepest level, the Butcher lurks. It is not always there, and when present it does not always react to the presence of others. But when it does, the consequences are almost invariably fatal.

No photographs exist of the Butcher, and the few who have survived their encounter with it describe a humanoid, ghostly white, with no face. Its head has been described as being like a blank sackcloth pulled over a real, hidden face, but no one has ever seen any movement from that organ.

Even when it speaks.

One thing that accounts unanimously agree on is that the Butcher carries a large blade of some kind, a carving knife in most tellings. Everything from a short filleting knife to a full sword has been described, leading some to surmise that the Butcher simply digs through the refuse until it finds something sharp.

Whatever the exact nature of its weapon, the Butcher will become aware of intruders when both it and they are present, and it will more unerringly toward the closest. If it is close enough to be seen, the Butcher will speak that person’s name. It seems to do this even if the person does not see it, or cannot hear it, and the Butcher always uses the name that a person prefers–it does not reach back to birthnames and deadnames, for whatever reason.

Once the name is spoken, the Butcher will move toward that person at high speed, which some have compared to a brisk run. Upon reaching them, it will stab repeatedly with its weapon until they perish, leaving the body where it falls. The Butcher has been known to quickly find weaknesses in armor, and those who have attempted to fight back have been unable to wound it in any meaningful way.

Fleeing seems to be the best option, and it is how all known survivors of a Butcher attack have escaped. However, the Butcher will follow its quarry to the second floor if necessary, and was even once seen on the first floor. A quarry which makes it to the foyer is safe, and those few survivors that have reentered the third floor have reported that the Butcher has not seemed to remember them.

One reason the second floor is still fraught with danger is that the Butcher has been known to speak the names of those it encounters there, should its quarry escape, and attempt to kill them as well.

Otherwise, it simply walks back to the third floor and disappears.

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A dingy back staircase leads to the third–and so far as is known, final–floor. It is coated with hardened grease and grime, and a noxious odor is known to waft up. In an ordinary store, it would be employees-only.

But the employees here do not even enter the first floor.

All is darkness below, and the only light is what the intrepid explorers bring with them. Vast piles of refuse exist down there in great heaps, mound upon mound of cast-off items. Some work, many do not, and all must be dug for in piles of wrappers, broken plastic, and cardboard. Unlike the other floors, too, the final level seems to be much larger.

It may, in fact, be endless.

Wondrous things have been located, often by the most ardent explorers equipped with infrared and ultraviolet lights. High quality consumer electronics like working computers are occasionally salvaged, and finding one can pay for a dozen failed searches, but the wonders go much further than that.

One explorer pulled up a machine that produced an endless trickle of 9-volt energy, enough to run a small table lamp perpetually. Another returned with half of a book that listed every winning lottery number for fifty years.

Of course, the lowest level also has its dangers. A seemingly normal plastic bin turned out to react with sunlight to give off cyanide gas. A disinfectant was so powerful that it killed all an explorer’s gut flora before they died of perontitis.

There would be more exploration, and more discovery, were it not for the ever-present danger of the Butcher.

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The second floor is reached through a wide set of interlocked staircases and escalators. There is no elevator; perhaps this is for the best, as there would be no escape for anyone who did not have the full use of their limbs.

Lights are dimmer here, and everything is dingier in comparison to the spotless floor above. Items are unpackaged, and laid out on shelves and in troughs, many with signs of use from unknown, previous owners.

What there is may be dirty or broken, but it is often far more useful that what lies above. Small appliances are common, home and consumer electronics, even the occasional computer. But they are also from, perhaps, further afield. Much further.

Very few items have any intelligible language on them, and the few that do are riddled with spelling errors. Even seeing a familiar alphabet is rare, as the warning labels and instructions are all in scripts wholly unknown. The corpus is always too small for any decipherment, of course, but many a linguist has puzzled over them in idle hours.

The appliances often need to be rewired to work, and indeed there are some small nearby shops in the industrial park which do just that. Few have plugs that will fit any outlet, and those that do tend to have the prongs dangerously misshapen or expect live current from the ground.

Toasters are especially common, and perhaps half of them have slots that are designed for some fantastic shape. Curved slots are common; it is easy enough to bow the bread and use them after a $5 rewire. But the toaster with four round slots is curiouser (they have been used for hot dogs, but leakage of grease suggests this was not their original function), as is that with wavy openings. Many have no openings at all, despite possessing heating elements inside. A few seem to be pre-assembled with bread inside, almost always spotted with dazzling mold which withers away into ash when exposed to air or light.

There is also media–music, movies, and more–laid out and roughly sorted. The discs and tapes will sometimes work, but virtually none of the moving images have been deciphered or decoded. Almost every album that has been successfully played is an instrumental.

The second floor is as low as people often go, even the most regular visitors. It is generally safe, but the Butcher will follow the unwary up from the darkness, and it will not hesitate to kill a new target should its quarry escape.

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The first floor is brightly lit, with windows looking out onto the surrounding area (an industrial park) as well as the foyer, with fearful cashiers charging a pittance for items.

This is the floor of the new, but also of the mundane.

Items here are sealed in their packages, laid out in cardboard displays, latched onto shelf hooks. They proclaim their brands with bold colors and graphics. Many are toys, plastic and clam-shelled.

Most have just one or two things that set them apart from what one might find in a normal store. Misspellings abound, with vowels especially being swapped about willy-nilly. A few packages are in languages that are totally unknown; linguists have been known to purchase toys here, give the figures to their children, and then spend years puzzling over the packaging.

Barring a few outliers, though, the products generally work. The toys are toys, the cookware cookware. Many of the appliances also function, though the occasional plug must be rewired as it fits no plugs on this world. Perhaps this is also why the products tend to be useless entertainment, books and toys and games, with a smattering of novelties and unitaskers for kitchens.

To find something really useful, one must descend down to the second floor, and to danger.

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They close it every night not because they must, but because the objects inside will only come into being if the store is empty of all people, of all cameras, of all beings larger than an insect. A stray dog staying over one night caused the store to be empty, once. But a fly did not. No one knows why, and none have dared find out.

Inside, every morning, the department store’s three levels are filled with products, many of them artfully packaged and attractively displayed. Since they appear overnight, the cashiers charge only a pittance for them, and the money goes only to pay those same cashiers and to light the small foyer in which they work.

Inside is every consumer product known to exist, perhaps. Perhaps it is only a subset, reaped from universes parallel or skeins of time alongside. People who visit and buy report that they are real, useful items often enough. But just as often, they are dangerous, unusable, or fatal.

Let us step inside, past the cashiers (who never go inside themselves, out of fear) to see what we may.

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