Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

CARL: This is Carl Drake, play-by-play commentator for NBS Broadcasting, coming at you live from the 2023 Fantasy Sports Superbowl.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. This is Tom Hicks, color commentator for NBS Broadcasting, and it’s been quite a day for fantasy football fans. Carl, you want to do a quick recap for our viewers still dazzled by an onslaught of commercials that cost more than most feature films?

CARL: The score stands tied at 7-7 at the beginning of the second quarter, with overwhelming favorites the Seattle Sorcerers underperforming in the face of a surprisingly determined defense from the Baltimore Bards.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. The Bards stopped the last Sorcerers scoring drive dead in its tracks just before the whistle. And I do mean dead, we have confirmation from the field that no. 77 Axemund Bileborn, who was sacked by no. 66 Grimhorn Shattershield, did not survive.

CARL: Bileborn had just caught the snap from no. 13, Whisper Sunderbough, whose pass had sailed through the air like a clear note from a silver trumpet. That leaves the Sorcerers’ sole touchdown as the 33-yard teleportation by Fizzle McPotion, which was answered shortly thereafter by a runaway goal by Shattershield for Baltimore.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. Fantasy football being what it is, I understand that three of the Baltimore players leveled up during the break, though what if any new skills and feats they have acquired remain unclear.

CARL: If I were Shattershield I’d definitely take the Throw Anything feat. You’ll recall in 2018 that Block Granite was able to throw both the ball and Fungo Scoggins at the same time, leading to a rare double touchdown.

TOM: That’s right, Carl, and if the wizard quarterback is able to take Block Teleport as a cantrip, they can keep McPotion from sneaking in another tele-goal for Seattle. Then again, if they level up their rogue, how much damage will he do with a concealed tackle?

CARL: 4d6+4, assuming we’re talking about no. 21 Slitpipes McGee and not no. 48 Burgle Wheezegasp.

TOM: That’s right, Carl, McGee is the rogue I’d have on my line. Wheezegasp has promise–he showed that as an assassin in the NFCAA–but he’s about two levels from being ready for this sort of melee. Unless McGee is slain or incapacitated, I’d expect Baltimore to stick with him.

CARL: At this point, I’m thinking that Seattle is in a real pickle. Is it time to let no. 99, Plagueis Deathnote, out of the bullpen?

TOM: That’s right, Carl, a little necromancy is just what Seattle needs to get some more men on the field and make up for the levels they haven’t been gaining. The only question is, has enough blood been spilt on this spot, enough bodies buried warm after cold-blooded murder, to rise in appreciable numbers to make a difference?

CARL: It was built by the mob, so I’m guessing yes.

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Smith produced a deck and shuffled it like a Mississippi riverboat gambler.

“I thought tarot cards were supposed to be bigger,” Briley said. “Those are, like, playing card size.”

Madison elbowed her from behind. while ‘Madame Smith’ ignored the remark. She pulled a card from the top of the deck and laid it down.

“Malach of the Dawn, inverted,” Smith said. “An angelic creature, its inversion means evil, and peril.”

“The sun rises, but the world still feels dark,” Briley read from the card. “Pray for the arrival of the malachim—they’ll bring Dawn to the world and to our hearts.” She wasn’t familiar with tarot, but from what she’d seen in movies, she didn’t think the cards were supposed to have flavor text.

Smith laid down the next card. “Lightning Hounds. The danger will be relentless, but with quick reflexes you may avoid it.”

“What does the 3/2 at the bottom of the card mean?” Briley said, reaching out to tap it.

Madison bent over and swatted her hand away. “Reading in progress!” she snapped. “Let her finish.”

Smith flipped a run of several cards onto the table next.

“Whirlwind Denial…Mossfire Egg…Emergent Growth,” Smith read. “You try to deny the problems that beset you, but like a birth, the process must be traumatic. You will emerge in a space ready for growth.”

“Target creature gets +5/+5 until end of turn and must be blocked this turn if able,” Briley read from the last card. “By accepting my smallness I am vast.”

“Very profound,” Madison said.

Briley picked one of the cards up and flipped it over. “These are just Magic: the Gathering cards!” she cried. “What are you trying to pull here, Kayla?”

“Madame Smith if you please!” came the curt reply. “The form of the cards does not matter, but rather the spirits that guide them. Maybe I can’t find an affordable tarot deck. Maybe my parents freak out about occult stuff and borrowing the roomie’s Magic deck is the best I can do. But your reading is still very important, very psychic, information.”

“Come on, Maddie,” Briley said, standing up so violently that she upset the folding chair. “Let’s go.”

Frantically, Smith continued turning over cards and reading their pronouncements as Briley left and dragged Madison along with her.

“Angler Turtle! Beware of something that seems helpful but is a trap!” she cried. “Draconic Disciple! Your enemy has an assistant to help with its bidding! Illumination! You will be blinded, and then illuminated, by your discovery!”

Briley slammed the door behind her. “Well, that was a waste of time,” she groused.

“Don’t be so hard on her,” Madison said. “The other tarot readers wanted money, and I think she’s rebelling against like fundamentalist parents or something.”

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Madison knocked on the door.

“Maddie, this is literally a dorm room,” said Briley.

She looked sideways at the very ornate Cajun-flavored door decorations. Dark doilies, red lace, and a name plate that read “Madame Smith.” The built-in dorm name tag, for one Kayla Smith, had been crossed out with a dry-erase marker.

“You said you wanted a Tarot reading, so I got you a Tarot reading,” Madison said. “It’e even free.”

“Enter!” a voice said from within. Ignoring Briley’s trepidation, Madison opened the door and led them inside.

The interior of the room was decorated in a very New Orleans French Quarter style, with dark lights, knickknacks, and drapes. The furniture that came with a Schneider Hall dorm room was all pushed aside or repurposed, from the bed that was lofted and hung with Spanish moss to the armchair that had been covered with damask cloth.

“I am Madame Smith, and you have come to see what the cards have to say.”

Briley squinted. ‘Madame Smith’ was a girl her own age, a sophomore at the most, wearing a fortune teller costume that was somewhere between Halloween and Comic-Con. She was blue-eyed, with wisps of blond hair peeking out from beneath a shawl, and the teeth she bared were InvisAlign™ perfect.

“Uh, yeah,” Briley said, stepping in. “I have a problem and I need a tarot reading to tell me what to do.”

“Sit,” Smith ordered, gesturing to a folding chair that was draped in black.

Madison nudged Briley violently; the latter reluctantly sat, forcing the dark fabric on it to bunch up and partially slide off.

“Now then,” Smith said, laying both hands on an overturned trash can in front of her, covered with that looked like a repurposed bedsheet. “Let us see what the cards have to say about your fate.”

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In international media news today, author Winnifred Xavier (W.X.) Paddleford lashed out at critics who had called for her to retract her controversial remarks on social media, instead doubling down on her tirade through an additional series of posts.

Though her publisher, Giraudoux & Strauss of New York, Paddleford repeated her views that a secret cabal of Hebrew industrialists is plotting world domination, that LGBTQ+ people “did not exist” until they were created by the Chinese Communist Party using biological weapons in the 1980s, and that vaccines cause autism because “Big Pharma wants to sell you a cure.” Though the Giraudoux & Strauss representative was sure to label Ms. Paddleford’s remarks as “a matter of personal opinion,” he nevertheless dismissed reports that the publisher was planning to drop the author as a client.

“We remain excited to work with Ms. Paddleford’s expanded universe of novels, stage plays, Hollywood films, video games, and NFTs,” the spokesman, Hal Fischer, said. “I understand that many may personally disagree with Ms. Paddleford’s strongly held personal and religious beliefs, but we ask that they simply separate the author from the work.”

Paddleford, whose works include the Sorcerer’s School, Techno Training, and Post-Apoc Academy series, is in the middle of a media tour promoting the new Sorcerer’s School: Multiverse MMORPG. Preorders of the game have already lead Giraudoux & Strauss Interactive to record Q4 profits last year, and response to the closed beta has been very positive. G&S Interactive declines to comment for this story other than to stress that potential game buyers should “separate the author from the work.”

UPDATE:
As a “No to Sorcerer’s School: Multiverse boycott petition on social media grew to over one million signatures, W.X. Paddleford responded by promising to donate $10 of her royalties to the Bible Sexuality Institute for every signatory at the time of the game’s release.

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“Why don’t you have more of a social media presence? It’s pretty much required for an artist these days.”

“If being an artist means strangers get to see my face, then I guess I’m not an artist.”

“Well, what are you then?”

“An enthusiastic amateur.”

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The parcel was wrapped in mauve paper, secured by some sort of adhesive tape that appeared to be visibly breathing and sweating. The shape was irregular bordering on the non-euclidean, and occupied more or less space in the room depending on the angle from which it was viewed.

“Here’s the problem,” the postal worker said. “There’s an extra ‘2’ in the ZIP code here. That’s only used for Alternate Counter-Earth deliveries.”

“How do I send it back? It’s digesting your floor just like it did mine.”

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A murmuration of starlings
And
A supercolony of ants
May
Yet
Give
Us
The greatest enemies-to-lovers storyline of all time

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807 in the wild
807 in the world
When you see a
Creature through
You viewfinder
They seem forever
Innumerable
But if every
Object in your
House was a crane
Your captive flock
Would outnumber the
Wild ten to one

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They say that John Sutton found one of those Japanese balloons. You know, the ones they sent over to try and cause wildfires? The ones that didn’t do anything but waste time, money, and kill a church picnic group? Old John, he always was a tinker, working away in the garage on his folks’ land. But while there’s lots of ways to make tinkering pay an honest living, he wasn’t interested in any of them.

Met him once. Big guy, tall, but wiry. Very polite, had a soft high voice, wasn’t much for talking. But he’d come into town every so often to try and trade bits of junk at the hardware store for parts he needed. Most of the time they’d turn him away, but he brought in something good just often enough that they didn’t ban him. Heck, old Gunderson still laughs about how he paid for a box of screws with an old engine block. It was worth a hundred times that in scrap, but it was also a royal pain getting it to the scrapyard.

Now, by that time, both Big John Sutton and Little Mae Sutton were dead, so it was just John out there. They owned the land, sure, but he didn’t pay the taxes on it. Weren’t much, but after a few years he owed well north of a hundred dollars and there was talk of the property getting seized. Well, when that happened, word is John said he’d simply fly away. He supposedly found that old Japanese balloon years ago, got it fixed up, and hung a chair under it instead of bombs. Guess he thought if he ever needed to get away be could puff it up with gas and set sail.

Well, that’s what they say he did. Just up and soared until the winds caught him and took him off toward Montana. Now, did that really happen? I can’t honestly say. Wasn’t there to see. But I can tell you this: when they eventually took his parents’ property for the back taxes, they accidentally set of an explosion. Killed three deputies it did, and blew out windows for a county mile. Now what would old John have need of that much gas for, if not a balloon?

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In the beginning, the great World Tree grew, and on each of its branches was a cone, and in each of the cones there was life. Gradually, each of the cones opened and the life within left the World Tree and went out. Each time, the World Tree offered them its wisdom, but each time the life, heady with young pride, turned them down.

The nuthatch, like all other birds, had spurned the advice of the World Tree and lived isolated and alone, always hungry and always lonely. But, unlike the others, the nuthatch came to realize its folly and returned to the World Tree, contrite, to ask for its forgiveness and its wisdom.

The World Tree was moved by the nuthatch’s humility, but it too was proud, and had been greatly wounded by the hubris its creations had earlier showed. So it offered the nuthatch a bargain: in exchange for something dear, the World Tree would give it three pieces of wisdom, timeless and immortal.

After considering the offer, the nuthatch agreed, and gave up its sweet song in exchange for what the World Tree would offer. The Tree then bestowed the three wisdoms that have since come to define the life of all nuthatches:

First, the secret to digging out homes from trees. By this wisdom, the nuthatches never needed to be cold and vulnerable again.

Second, the secret to banding together as a family unit, with siblings helping to raise their parents’ new brood. In this way, the nuthatches never needed to be lonely again.

Finally, the deepest secret of them all, one that only a handful in the world were privy to: tools. By using tools to seek for insects in the scaly bark of lesser pines, the nuthatches never needed to be hungry again.

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