Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“You think you can intimidate me? Girl, I was in the United States Army for fifteen years,” said Vice Principal McNab. “I’ve been dealing with jumped-up little shits in the school ever since. I can handle myself.”

Charlie grinned and snapped her knuckles loudly enough that the bartender looked up, startled at the sudden sound of dry twigs. “Major, huh? Bet you fought a lot of paperwork,” she said. “Must have been some real long division in there to be harder than handling a bunch of kids.”

McNab was on his feet, his barstool toppling loudly. “You do not question my service, girl, or my patriotism!”

“Must not be very sure of it, if you think it won’t hold up to a couple questions,” said Charlie, suddenly very intent on her fingernails. “Get a lot of papercuts in the line of duty there, G.I. Joe?”

“Look, you two, if you’re gonna yell, I gotta ask you to take it outside,” the bartender said with a sigh, casting a forlorn glance at his near-empty tip jar.

“You wanna see what they taught me?” McNab shouted. “Go on than, take a swing, girl. I’ll give you one for free. But don’t think I won’t hit back on account of you being a lady.”

Charlie squared her impressive shoulders and raised a hand in a taunting “come hither” gesture. “Ain’t no ladies in here,” she said, “no gentlemen either. I don’t need a free shot. Hit me with all you got, desk jockey.”

With a huffing noise like an overheated rhinoceros, Vice Principal McNab stepped forward and threw a right hook. It was the sort of thing they might have taught in Basic decades ago, and Charlie simply leaned her shoulder into the blow, literally shrugging it off.

She followed with a slow, powerful smack to the middle of McNab’s chest, deflating him like a leaky bellows.

“Here, let me help you with that,” she said. Leaning over, she righted the barstool that McNab had upset and then picked him up effortlessly, perching him on it and laying his gasping face on the bar. “Huffing and puffing with your head down. Army desk job all over again, huh?”

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

Rubymaximum Chronofile Entry 16,060
Our local legend and recluse, Lady Simona Osborne, has turned out to be not only surprisingly friendly but also extremely helpful, bringing a long-view perspective to our current predicament that is extremely useful and even refreshing. However, decades of being essentially housebound have left her with a rather severe case of agoraphobia. Needless to say, we need her out and about if she’s going to help us lay a beating on these erasure-happy invaders. So I’m taking her to the alleyway behind Movies R Us and the Launderdrome to practice being in public. It’ll be a big enough step just getting her in the car, but I think after that the alley should be an excellent dry run for reentering society. The only folks she’ll see back there are underpaid drudges like me taking smoke breaks and the occasional kid cutting through.

“I’m not so sure about this, Ruby.” Simona was as frightened as Ruby had ever seen her; quivering visibly beneath the immaculate and stylish fur-lined coat. “Some folks are meant for meeting and greeting, and some for entertaining quietly at home. I’ve been sure I’m the latter every year since 1980, inclusive.”

“Miss Osborne, there’s no one in the alley but you, me, and the guy who unjams the Launderdrome quarter slots,” Ruby said. “And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t give a care about you being here.”

In the opposite corner of the alley, the Launderdrome guy raised two fingers to his forehead in a salute, a smoldering cigarette clutched between them, never looking up from his cell phone.

“It doesn’t matter who’s here to see,” Simona said. “I don’t belong out here! This was a big mistake, young lady, I’d like to go home now.”

“Miss Osborne, what if you’re home then? What if they come and erase the place with you inside?” Ruby said. “You were able to send them running with just a few words, and you saw right through their disguise. We need you to help us.”

Simona whirled around. “It’s nothing fancy, Ruby!” she snapped. “It’s called being assertive and standing up for yourself! Looking folks in the eyes and reading them! I had to learn how to do that, or the sixties would’ve eaten me alive and spit out my bones.”

Clearly, more drastic measures were needed. “So, you think I just need to be more assertive, huh?” Ruby said, putting a hand on her hip.

“Exactly. I can show you how to do that over tea at Osborne House. Come on, let’s go back there. I’m having trouble breathing out here.”

“No,” said Ruby. “Sit your fancy butt down, Miss Osborne, because you’re not going anywhere. I’m going to keep you here, getting used to the water in the kiddie side of the pool, if I have to throw you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes.”

Simona’s eyes flashed dangerously and she stalked up to Ruby, and gloved finger raised toward the heavens. “Don’t you talk to me like that, you little puke!” she said in an outraged tone that was so over-the-top that Ruby had to bite her lip to keep from bursting into laughter. “I’d like to see you try to lay a hand on me when I’m not in a cooperative mood! Father had me take jiu-jitsu, and I will flip you into that dumpster with your own momentum and slam the lid.”

“Oh, will you now?” Ruby held up Simona’s keys, jangling them in one hand. “Well, you’re going to have to dumster me, I guess, if you want these back. Unless you wanna walk back to Osborne House. Its only six blocks, right?”

“Give those here, you little hooligan!” Simona rocketed forward with shocking speed, given her outfit, but Ruby was well used to playing keepaway–it was the only thing that roused Heath out of a vidjagame trance sometimes. She cut left as Simona approached, zigging and zagging in a serpentine motion to stay just a few steps ahead. The Laundrodrome guy gave them the same dual-fingered salute as they swept past him.

After about half a block, true to her threat, Simona was able to trip Ruby, bring her to the ground, and put her in a surprisingly agile joint lock.

“Keys. Now.” Simona held out a manicured hand. “I won’t ask again without constricting your windpipe a little.”

Ruby handed them over, grinning despite the pain. “Hey, Simona,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re out of the alley now.”

Simona looked up, shocked. They were in the middle of downtown Higbee, with several people scrupulously ignoring the scene while one small child looked on, avidly licking an ice cream.

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

Lebedev pounded frantically at the courthouse door, rattling the hundred-year-old panes in their hand-carved frames. “Help me, somebody!” he cried. “The sheriff’s gone, the sheriff department’s gone, and my station along with it! There’s got to be somebody in there!”

Relief flooded Lebedev’s flushed and sweaty face as he saw a shape approaching. He wiped the white hair out of his eyes, instinctively getting ready to give his “local business need government support” speech. Even in his confusion, even coming from a grassy field where his QuickStop ought to have been, it was always his first and best instinct. Whoever answered, a secretary, the judge, a clerk, it didn’t matter. He’d talked his way out of a hundred environmental sanctions for leaking gas tanks, public health citations for the noxious meats his deli sold, and even a Department of Labor person once about the low pay he offered “tipped workers.”

The shape resolved itself into someone who looked altogether too young to be working in a courthouse, and too casually dressed besides. With a wan grin, they unlocked the door and swung it open, nearly hitting Lebedev in the face.

“Aren’t you a little young to be working here, son?” said Lebedev. “I need to talk to somebody, urgently.”

“Of course! Who would you like to talk to?”

“Well, there’s no one answering the phone at the sheriff’s, and -”

“How about the judge? I can have you talk to the judge.”

Lebedev nodded eagerly. “Yes, the judge! We play golf together, you see, and my wife and his wife are-”

“You’re thinking of the old judge.” The kid smiled. “The office has fallen vacant and been filled in a by-election. ‘Course, at such short notice, there weren’t many voters, but it was still a blowout. What can I do for you, citizen?”

“This is no time for jokes, kid,” Lebedev said. He tried to muscle past into the courthouse, but found himself pushed back by a surprisingly forceful blow from the one in his way.

“Did I say anything about a joke? If this was funny, you’d know, because your sides would be splitting.” With a quick and savage jab, the kid punched Lebedev in the stomach, leaving the old man gasping for air.

“Y-you…you little…” he wheezed, sinking to his knees.

“Now, I know you don’t remember me, maybe because it was in a parallel universe or two, but I used to work for you,” the kid said. He knelt, bringing himself face to face with Lebedev. “Tell me, Mr. Lebedev, are you still as much of a greedy corner-cutter here as you’ve been in every other Higbee I’ve visited?”

“I’m…I’m not…”

“Oh, don’t try that on me. I still remember. ‘Lewy, just ignore the tank leak alarm.’ ‘Lewy, just serve the damn meat, no one cares if it’s expired.’ ‘You get whatever comes in the tip jar, so I have to pay you less.'”

“Man, it felt so good to wipe that inconvenience store off of the map!” Lewy stood up. “Tell you what, why don’t I send you to join it, hm?”

Lewy grabbed Lebedev by the ankles and dragged the old man inside. He kicked weakly, but wasn’t able to put up much resistance.

“Now, ordinarily, just walking away is enough to save you from oblivion along with this place, now that its ley lines are cut loose and flapping in the wind,” said Lewy. “Let’s see if you have the wherewithal to do even that, hmm, you big old hypocrite?”

Whistling a jaunty tune, Lewy closed and locked the courthouse doors behind him, snapping off the handle and bending the post with a quick flash of megastrength.

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

Elena knitted her hands and looked across the hallway, drifting on currents of memory. “It wasn’t so big back then, but this part is the same. I sat on this bench, right here, every day after school for Mom or Dad to pick me up.”

Simona nodded. “The old school’s long since torn down, but they had a bench too. I think one of the sour old ladies in the office–and there’s always been a sour old lady in the school office, it’s like a grease trap for them–likes to put the kids they don’t much care for on display there. For sins of their parents, real or imagined.”

“They thought your parents had done something wrong?” Elena said.

“They had me, didn’t they?” Simona laughed. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure plenty of Higbee’s most distinguished men had precocious little half’n’halfs like me running around. But Doctor Osborne had the bad taste to acknowledge it.”

Elena grew quieter at that. “The kids have had to sit here too,” she said. “I’ve heard they’re called Kilgore’s Bastards. Hell of a thing, you know?”

“Oh, I know. Once I could write, I kept a list. I think I was up to about thirty-five when I stopped–not because I was offended, but because it was getting boring. Bigots aren’t all that creative with their insults, as I’m sure you well know. I’ll give a cookie to whoever thought up ‘Osborn’s Oopsie’ for me, though.”

Elena laughed. “You know, we used to tell stories about you when I went here.”

“Oh goodness, I’m sure you did,” said Simona. “Let me guess. I was sitting on a pile of Confederate gold up in my luxurious mansion, and I had killed my 147-year-old husband to do so.”

“You got it,” Elena laughed. “Wow. Total accuracy. Put in a few prepubescent voice breaks and it might as well have been Jimmy Hagarman saying it.” She shrugged. “Seriously, though. Kids spreading rumors aren’t any more creative. Word was that you were a witch, that your cats obeyed your every command as an unholy army of the night, and that there was…well, Confederate gold under the house. But not from your susquicentenarian murdered husband, it was from Doctor Osborne himself.”

“And did I murder him?”

“Odds were even that he was murdered or turned into a toad.”

Simona roared with laughter. “I am fabulous, but not that fabulous. It’s good to know I had such street cred with the kids then.”

“Do you think…” Elena hesitated. “I’m doing my best. I’m sure Doctor Osborne did too. Is it enough, do you think? Or are people like us just destined to ride this bench forever no matter what the folks who love us try to do?”

“Listen,” Simona said. “I am eighty-seven years old, and in my time I’ve seen everything Higbee can cough up. Riding this bench? Some little shits whose sainted asses never touched it still found themselves awfully messed up.”

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

The old bell hung above the door to the QuickStop jingled to announce a customer. “Be with you in a sec,” Jayda said. “Just gotta finish with #7 pump.

She peeked out the window, which doubled as a drive-thru for folks who wanted to take advantage of the QuickStop’s built-in deli meats.

Tapping the mini intercom, she said in a voice that was 98% static by volume: “Can I get you anything else? Snack or deli meats?” Jayda had the dubious honor of slicing salami for anyone who wanted it as part of her shift, even though the slicer was about Truman Administration vintage. She could stuff her face for free, but after one ill-fated roast beef sandwich, and a subsequent trip to worship the porcelain goddess she packed a lunch.

“Ew, no,” said the customer at #7. “Stop asking me if I want your tainted meats, girl.”

“Look, Mr. Lebedev makes us ask,” Jayda sighed. “Don’t hold the dodgy quality of his salami against us, hmm?”

#7 was already replacing his pump, grumbling, and slipped into the front seat of his ’87 Lincoln Town Car without so much as a glance at the plastic “TIPS” cup duct-taped to the pump–the very loophole that allowed Lebedev to pay Jayda about $6 an hour.

Now grumbling herself, Jayda turned to the pump controls. She reset the leak alarm, which had been going off more or less continuously since 1978, zeroed out Mr. Lincoln’s balance, and smiled slightly as she had the brief, gratifying thought of covering his car in sliced, noxious salami as revenge.

“Now, what can I do for you, Mr.-” Jayda began, turning to face the customer waiting patiently at her counter. She stopped when she saw the imposing figure there.

“She bid the attendant a fond hello, and inquired about the existence of a…shall we say…lost and found.” The woman standing at the counter was tall and regal, dressed all in black, and despite the searing brightness of the QuickStop’s cheap fluorescents, her face seemed indistinct, shadowed. That buzzing, unfriendly light didn’t seem to want anything to do with her.

Jayda recognized the strong, eccentric figure at once–probably the crackpot who’d moved into the old Fox place, and another weirdo in a town that was already well above its dosage. “A lost and found?” she said. “Sure, there’s one right here.”

She dipped beneath the counter and reappeared with an old cardboard box. It was bursting with lost keys, questionable t-shirts both greasy and torn, and other bric-a-brac. Mr. Lebedev tended to help himself to anything more valuable that got lost, quietly hawking it on eBay.

The woman pushed the box aside; it seemed like a gentle, almost motherly motion, until it slid off the edge and clattered to the tile with a noise that made Jayda jump where she stood.

“No, there was nothing in the moldy old box of rightfully forgotten detritus for her,” the woman said, airily referring to herself in some hoity-toity tense. “What she had lost was far more personal and dear. One might say it was stolen, even.”

“Look, lady, the police station is five blocks down and three blocks right,” said Jayda. “It’s in the same building as the library and the county health office. You can’t miss it.” The cops did come in to gas up their cruisers on occasion, with Lebedev giving a rather bribelike fleet discount that probably helped keep him in business, but they tended to pay at the pump and never made small talk–much less collecting anything lost or stolen.

“The attendant was not understanding. Was it mere ignorance, or was it because she knew the truth and could not bear to speak it?” The woman paused, smiled in the shadows, and continued. “And so her guest continued to speak, outlining a thing that had been stolen–stolen from one of her very good friends, and something that was vital to her ongoing work. A map, of sorts, in a special case.”

Jayda tried to maintain a poker face as her stomach skidded into the leaky fuel tanks ten feet below. The worthless little case she’d mistaken for a laptop? The MacBook bandit’s first bum score in her nearly one-year Robin Hood crusade? How could this bizarro customer know about that?”

“She saw a flicker of recognition on the attendant’s face, and knew that she had come to the right place. She made her next words firm, but clear. That map was a map of many things, and they ley lines inscribed upon were the web on which accursed Higbee rested. She would have it back, or the young attendant, not yet known to all as a daring thief, would find herself in a most…dangerous…position.”

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

For this year’s Camp NaNoWriMo, I’m going to try doing some prewriting with random characters and scenes from my next project! 2 d20s and a d10 to choose a main character, a minor character, and a location, and then write out a little scene. It should be fun!

Locations
1. Dex’s Grocery
2. QuickStop gas station
3. Richemont Dairies LLC
4. Orville’s Bakery
5. Grand Tecumseh Hotel
6. Movies R Us
7. Higbee Public Library
8. Higbee Public Schools
9. Chandler County Court House
10. Gaius Cassius Longinus (G.C.L.) Maddox Statue
11. Haverford Park
12. The Chuck Wagon Bar and Grill
13. Fox Manor, on the outskirts of town
14. Higbee Town Hall
15. The Osborne House, Leelanau Street
16. Higbee City Cemetary
17. River Bluff Apartments
18. A back alley, downtown
19. Stubb’s Coffee
20. The streets of Higbee

Characters
1. Elizabeth “Ruby” Kilgore, part-timer and student
2. Heath Kilgore, student and tinkerer
3. The Margrave, Malika Anax, destroyer of worlds
4. Syd, the Margrave’s enigma
5. Charlie, the Margrave’s muscle
6. Gnat, the Margrave’s brains
7. Lewy, the Margrave’s right hand
8. “Lady” Simona Osborne, socialite
9. Sheriff Teddy Decker Jr., lawman
10. Jayda Benning, the MacBook Bandit
11. “Major” Thomas McNab, vice principal
12. Ms. Rosalita Inez, librarian
13. The Orville family: Rita, James, and Jim Jr., bakers
14. Dexter “Dex” Buford, grocer
15. Ian Lebedev, gas stationer
16. Elena Salgado Kilgore, mother of two
17. Dr. John Clement, physician
18. Nameless bystander
19. Create a new character
20. Talking to themselves

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

The six of them looked down the shaft, seeing only a dim radiance below. Shaurya moved toward what looked like crumbled concrete steps leading further down, but he froze at the sound of a dull, throaty voice.

Come no closer. I will hurt you, and I do not wish to.

There was no echo. The words were entirely in their heads.

Maria put a hand on Shaurya, and pulled him back. “Are you the thing we’ve been seeing in our dreams?” she said. “The thing born of that…that terrible blast I saw?”

I do not know if it was war, or an accident. It does not matter.

“Something like what Maria saw…it must have killed almost everyone around here,” said Shaurya.

They buried what remained, entombed the earth itself.

“Who are you, then?” asked Kumi. “A ghost?”

I am what remains. A radiative being, buried and terrible.

“I don’t understand.” Maria felt like she had heard that word before, buried in an old history book, or tossed off in an excavation of the old city, but the association was there. Fire, death, and a poison that did not go away.

I am dangerous unto a thousand lifetimes.

“Why did you bring us here, then?” Shaurya cried. He started hyperventilating again at the thought. “Do you want to kill us?”

You are the ones best able to withstand the death that is my life.

“It reached out to us, because it knew we wouldn’t die.” Maria said this as if she had always known it, even if thinking about it made her headache worse.

I kill all that lives.

“But…?” Kumi said.

I wish to hurt no others, and to be alone with my solitude.

“You were alone!” Shaurya cried. “Then you brought us down here for company! You ruined our lives! Why?”

You must convince the others to leave.

“You mean…everyone?” said Maria. “The whole city?”

They will all die if they stay. The cracks are already spreading.

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

The memory came in flashes and fragments, causing Maria to gasp and lean against the mucky side of the tunnel as her legs buckled.

She saw an eerie glow looking over a dead city where people—bodies—remained where they had fallen.

A building, clean and modernism the memory but so ancient-looking and so alien to Maria herself that it was difficult to comprehend. People sat there, in chairs, laughing as strange symbols glowed and bizarre dials danced.

Light, blinding light, so intense that Maria’s eyes ached.

Waves of destruction moving out in every direction, shattering the very air.

Row after row of trees, bright red instead of deep green.

And then, last of all…a great movement. Bodies, things, even the earth itself, brought together.

Filling a great crater.

A circular hole, smoking and lambent with unearthly glow.

“Are you okay?” Shaurya said, coming up and laying a tentative hand on Maria’s shoulder.

“It’s trying to tell me something.”

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

Maria spoke first.

“We all know why we’re here,” she said, wincing at the stale air of the tunnel. Five pairs of frightened eyes looked back at her, silently.

“The dreams.” The boy on the far side whispered–Maria might have seen him in school, but she couldn’t recall his face.

“Yeah,” Maria said. “Why don’t…why don’t you tell me what you’ve seen?”

Their initial terror seemingly overcome, the five began rapidly talking over each other.

“…there’s a glow…”

“…I’m falling…”

“…voice I can’t understand…”

“…big circle…”

“…glowing in the darkness…”

Maria held up her hands, and after a moment the others stopped talking. She’d been the first one to speak up, so they were looking to her for leadership, even though she felt small and weak and terrified. What was it Candi had said?

“Fake it until you make it,” Marie whispered. “They need somebody to keep their cool.”

“What?” said the faintly familiar boy.

“Nothing,” Marie said. “Sorry. Here’s what I think. It’s pretty clear that whatever we’re dreaming about is down here in these tunnels. And I think…I think it wants us to come to it.”

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