August 6, 2012

From “Mutt of Ice and Fire” by Altos Wexan

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This post is part of the August 2012 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “fire and ice”.

The other night I just about lost it. My dog was pacing endlessly, refusing to go to bed and running downstairs every time I brought him up. I’d taken him out dozens of times during the day and during the night but he’d only gone inside the house where it could be tracked all over. Then my mom called and said she had decided to put the dog, who is technically hers, down not at the end of August but immediately, one week from today. She and my brother fly in today.

Kind of puts things in perspective, having to call the vet and the funeral home to schedule euthanasia and cremation.

In my head, I know she’s right. He has end-stage senile dementia and incontinence that won’t respond to the most powerful medication we can throw at it. Despite or perhaps because of the anipryl, which he’s been on for two weeks, my dog’s sundowner pacing and incontinence have gotten worse. Since I picked him up from the boarder a week ago 75% of his excretions have been in the house, to the point where I had to cover the floor with puppy pads just for my own peace of mind. I’ve gone through nearly 50 pads and 2 bottles of cleaner in that time. And, as happened the other night, sometimes his pacing is so bad that neither of us sleeps a wink.

In my head, I know it’s no kind of life for either of us to live. My dog is always afraid, always confused, and not at all himself. I’m bound to him like a straitjacket, with no ability to live my own life; I have to come home in the middle of the day, I can’t go out at night, I can’t even work out upstairs for more than half an hour. Mopping and Glade plugins can only do so much for the cleanliness of my house when the flow of excrement just won’t stop.

And yet in my heart I am devastated, I am torn apart, by the thought of euthanizing my dog. Despite all my frustrations, when I’m confronted with what our life has become versus his death, I’m almost willing to take that on as a burden. To keep him alive, I’m willing to put up with a level of responsibility that any dog owner or even me circa 2009, would cringe at. I can take it, I tell myself. For his sake.

After all, he’s my mutty buddy who’s lived with me for two years, the puppy who used to run with us on the Lake Michigan sands, the dog who was always so happy to see us that he’d charge back and forth barking with his favorite squirrel toy. He was born into a house of giggling Michigan teenage girls in 1998, named after a character in Titanic, an enthusiastic snowpuppy who used to come in with snow and iceicles matted into his fuzz. Even moving down here to the land of volcanic summers and no winters with my parents abroad, he’s been the only one to greet me, the only one to be happy to see me, the only one who I could hug after a long day in what’s been a very lonely and often depressing period for me.

It may be that we’d do the same for any family member, if we could, who was too far gone mentally to have any quality of life. For me, making those surreal calls to vet and crematorium in which I couldn’t bring myself to use the real words for what I was doing…I can’t honestly say which is worse, not knowing when a loved one may die, of knowing down to the second. The man at the crematoria took pains to tell me how they treat pets like humans, giving them all the dignity and care that they would any other body. He mentioned having to lose his own three dogs, which I appreciated, one pet owner to another.

The vet said I’ll have the option to be there with him at the end. It will destroy me, but I think I should.

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March 9, 2012

From “Beneath Metromart #832″ by Altos Wexan

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Tom Shandler was frustrated. Not just in business, but in life as well.

It had become more and more apparent that he was trapped in a rut at the Porthaven Metromert. The managers that he originally trained with at his home store in Newport News had long since outranked him; he’d read about their promotions in the company newsletter that appeared every Friday at his apartment like clockwork. At first, he’d hung them on a nail in the kitchen, the way a writer might hang rejections slips. Now, though, they went straight in the trash after a brief perusal.

To be left forever in a dead-end middle management position as no kind of fate for a man like Shandler, no kind of fate for the man who had pulled himself up by his bootstraps from a lowly sales position at that first store. He was destined for great things, and every snag along the way—every former friend promoted over him, every smartass worker beneath him, was carefully noted in a mental register, for retribution when the time came. He had the letter he’d send them all written in his head for years.

Still, despite pushing his workers hard and increasing sales in his division by five percent, there was no sign of that kick upstairs. Marcus, in produce, was being considered to manage his own store—or so Gus, the manager, had said over lunch the other day. This made Shandler resent him all the more; Marcus was popular with his workers, and handsome.

Something had to be done, and time was running out to do it. A grand gesture of loyalty to the company was what he needed—some extraordinary act that would throw him into the limelight and show that he, Thomas Darren Shandler, was the man for the next big opening. Since nothing ever seemed to happen in Porthaven, he was ever on the lookout for a break, the one chance that would see him covered in glory or resigned forever to his niche, even fired. There was a plan for that too, in the desk drawer, freshly oiled and loaded.

 

February 19, 2012

Happy Two-Year Blogiversary, EFNB

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Can it really have been two years since EFNB started? As amazing as it sounds, my count confirms 730 days in the archive. They may be short, but if nothing else we here at EFNB can be proud of sticking to the schedule. By way of celebration, the editors at Excerpts from Nonexistent Books have updated and expanded the list of our most prolific, albeit entirely imaginary, contributors.

First, updates on those who made our list last year:

Anonymous
Stepping Out, Satire on the Big House, A Gamer’s Thoughts at 5am, Portal of the Infinite, Meediv’s Lesson, Everyday Coincidence, The Leaky Vessel Empties, Writer’s Razor, The Last King of Ujram, The Day the Network Died, On Hypocrisy, A Continuing Story Parts 1, 2, 17, 18, 19

Our editors’ suspicion that at least some of the excerpts by “Anonymous” shared a common author was confirmed by a note received at press time: “While I didn’t do all the stuff with no author on your site, a lot of it is mine. Why the anonymity? Let’s just say that my true identity would, in the words of J. M. Barrie, ‘even at this date set the country in a blaze.'” The writer went on to assure our editors that heor she was in no way involved with the 2011 film (“rubbish”), the hacktivism group (“busybodies”) or the 13th century English student of medieval music theory (“wedded to an outdated notion of tonalism”).

Van Bullock
The Team, Icechip Heart, Speaking with Dead Leaves, High-Caliber Children, The Accountant and the Assassin, Olympian Memories, No Regrets

Vance Bullock’s novel about an icy assassin and her hapless male counterpart is making good progress. Bullock is at pains to point out that it is an adventure story, not a romance, and that there is absolutely no truth to the allegations floating around certain circles that the helpless male character is autobiographical. “If anything, it’s the woman that’s autobiographical,” he says, adding “that sounded a lot weirder out loud than it did in my head.”

Eric Cummings Jr.
Nothing vs. Firewall, Cynical Blows, Intercepted, The Firewall, The Last Email, Bases Unloaded, Santa Djinni

Eric Cummings Jr. is still toiling away on his autobiographical opus, which he hopes “will do for underemployed slackers what “Catcher in the Rye” did for spoiled and entitled brats.” At press time he could offer no definitive plot summary or projected date of completion, nothing that such uncertainty “comes with the territory.”

Calvin Higgins Joachimthal
Rejected!, Reboot This, The Dread Scale

In his communications with us, Calvin Joachimthal has blamed either “severe overwork” or “severe underwork” in Hollywood as the reason for not being able to write more. He has also made claims ranging from six-figure options on major scripts to “living in a refrigerator box uner an overpass.”

Nokin Kobayashi and Irene York
Sōtan and the Wayze, Novels, Reed Dolls of the Soul, Not Quite to China, The Tale of Nfashō in the Illustrious North, Major Tōakenkyūjo and the Exiled Mountain, The 1000 Insane Poets of the Late Dynasty, Fall of a Forgotten Emperor

Nokin Kobayashi (小林) has had a busy year, which has seen his literary output increase significantly. He donated all of his royalties for the last year to victims of the March 2011 earthquake, raising almost $25 for international relief efforts, and attributes the latest string of ideas to “jade teardrops from the throne of the sun, blessed with radiation” according to his partner Ms. York.

Irene York remains committed to the literary efforts of her other half, and served as a volunteer translator in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. She claims to have been moved to action by the ¥1000 ($13.01) of damage done to her summer home in a neighboring prefecture.

Joe Kull
Fortress Gilvery, Soulstorm, Island of Souls

After a relatively long hiatus, Joseph Kull’s most recent submission had an attached note that read “Torn between using this and a not supernatural scene. What do you think–too bloody?” He was assured that we here at EFNB make no judgements on the content or bloodiness of any of our submitting authors.

D. P. Patterson
Healing Visions, Sara Dinch, Darkness Has Its Delights

Dona P. Patterson has been dabbling more in poetry of late, either items that depict her own state of mind or, increasingly, the outlook that her twin schnauzers Galaxian and Jaina, or her goldfish Yggdrasil, have on modern life.

C. Alton Parker
Prosperity Falls, Prosperity Rising, The Prosperity Play, The Prosperity Holdup

Catherine Alton Parker has made on and off progress with her epic feminist Western, but has admitted to distractions from a variety of sources. These include a prolific series of rejected short stories, health problems with her cats, a near-continuous string of sales at her local outlet mall, and a nagging feeling that the story will never be as good on paper as it is in her noggin.

Phil “Stonewall” Pixa
Beyond New Providence, Beyond the Interstellar Application Form, Beyond the Morning Star, Breakdown, Dome, Convergence at the Bar, Lights of New Providence, Peg’s Awakening, Peg’s Story, Reigo and Sauvagine
Phil Pixa has been throwing himself into his work of late, which he avers is the cause of his sluggish contribution schedule. While the middle chapter in his science fiction story is complete, he is at loggerheads whether to complete the others or try to move the story into a more contemporary setting. When asked about a setting change, Pixa cites the sci-fi section of a local independent bookstore where heaps of “shovel-literature” wait, unsold.

Jeanne Welch
Locke’s Specter, Locke’s Phantom

Jeanne is still working on her “tapestry that asks deep questions about identity, information, and Web 2.0 in the context of death and/or online stalking,” but record business at her public library job due to the global depression has made progress, in her words, “glacial.”

Altos Wexan
Across Worlds Book I: Heden’s Psyche, Across Worlds Book IV: Sands of Taas, Across Worlds Book V: Xencobourg’s Fury, Bullhorn Charlie and the Amazing Automat Pie, Dusk at the Diner, Lebedev’s Specter, Major Problems, Noir Rapids, Precinct Amputation, Purple Nights in the Furniture City, Second Chances, The Baroness in Winter, The Rise of Metromart #832, The Battle for Metromart #832, The Decline and Fall of Metromart #832, The Muse and the Completed First Draft, Tunguska Butterfly Back Cover Blurb, Verisimilitude, Winter Nightmare

Altos Wexan has continued his run as our most prolific contributor. He credits explorations of Borges and Lovecraft with his recent purple patch of creativity and experimentation. His “Across Worlds” remains sadly in limbo as Wexan’s obsessive need to take on new projects has led to unfinished forays into noir, action, and metaliterature. He speculates that university tenure will bring further efforts, corssing his fingers as he does so.

 

February 7, 2012

From “Second Chances” by Altos Wexan

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This post is part of the February 2012 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “second chances.”

I had prepared very carefully, from packing everything days in advance to dropping the dog off at the kennel early to renting a car to get me to the airport as well as run those last few crucial errands. I even bought an extra waterproof camera the night before I left, remembering that I’d used up all my shots early last year.

Yet as I got up at 4am to be at the airport bright and early for my 7am flight, I had a vague feeling that I was forgetting something. It wasn’t until I was at the airport, staring at the electronic ticket kiosk, that the circuit finally closed.

My passport was sitting in a drawer at home, 90 minutes away.

I was trying to board an international flight.

People who work the ticket counters must get a lot of sob stories (even if most probably come from people trying to avoid paying a $25 baggage charge). I think the fact that I was trembling uncontrollably from sheer overwhelming stress did a lot to lend credence to my tale of woe. As my house was a 120-minute round trip away, and I had an hour until boarding, you can probably see where I was coming from there.

I hoped that the Dominican Republic might be like Mexico at El Paso in 2000, when all I needed was a driver’s license–but no, not in this age of international shoe and underwear bombs. The lady at the counter instead booked me for the second and final flight from the USA to Punta Cana, which left from Philadelphia at 10pm.

“I’m shocked that there’s another flight,” I said, with no small measure of relief.

“I’m as surprised as you are,” she said. “You have three and a half hours to get back here with your passport.”

Lucky for me I’d chosen to rent a car instead of taking a taxi–I really would have been out of luck then. Even if I’d been able to hire another ride, I doubt that any taxi driver would have been willing to violate the speed limit as flagrantly as I did on my way home. The trip usually takes 90 minutes one way; I did a round trip in nearly the same amount of time. I actually only missed my original flight by about a half-hour.

I introduced myself to the baggage handler as “the unfortunate with a tale of woe” as she reflected how quick my passage had been. The gate agent had changed shifts, with the matronly and helpful agent who rebooked my flight replaced with a male agent more or less my own age.

“You’re lucky she did that for you,” he sneered as my itinerary printed. “Normally, ‘I forgot my passport’ isn’t an excuse for waiving a rebooking fee.” I was able to make it to the gate without injuring him, an action which I believe qualifies me for a Nobel.

That aside, I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Bizarrely, my path took me further away from the Dominican Republic–first to Charlotte and then to Philly. Each connection was super-tight, less than 45 minutes from arrival to boarding. A delay of any kind would have stranded me overnight.

Amazingly, both flights were not only on time, they were early. 30 minutes early, both of them, a feat probably never equaled before or since in this age of delays and just-in-time arrivals. I had enough time to buy lunch and dinner and keep my family up to date on my progress via text.

Whoever scheduled the USA-Punta Cana flights clearly did so under the influence of powerful narcotics. There were two a day: one from Charlotte arriving around 5, and one from Philly rolling in around 10pm, long after the airport had basically shut down. When my flight landed (also 30 minutes early!) my tour company had long packed it in. The only fluent English speaker I could find (other than my fellow passengers) was a German expat working for another tour company who confirmed that a $70 taxi ride to my resort was the only option.

I split the ride part of the way with a couple from Connecticut (interestingly both academics, like me) but once they were dropped off at their rented Punta Cana townhouse it was just me and the driver with only my high school Spanish and his handful of phrases between us. I was, understandably, a bit nervous.

It didn’t help that he clearly had no idea where the resort was. We stopped three times for directions–a gas station, the Connecticut townhouse, and a police post–and most of the route looked to be raw, howling wilderness. I felt like I was being driven to the ends of the earth, and it was all I could do to maintain a cheery facade by tapping my bag along with the Caribbean beat in the van’s speakers.

Needless to say, I was so relieved when my resort appeared that I paid the asking fare, $80, without even haggling. The driver attempted to negotiate an airport return in a week, but I left him at the front desk while I went to my room, where my brother was already checked in, and basically collapsed.

But you know what? Aside from my slip, which I attribute to lack of sleep more so than anything, I was extraordinarily lucky. I got a second chance at my long-awaited tropical paradise vacation with my family, and I seized it. The rest of the week seemed like a beautiful waking dream, made all the sweeter by the fact that I almost missed it.

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Turndog-Millionaire
Ralph Pines
magicmint
Tomspy77
MamaStrong
in_one
LilGreenBookworm
Literateparakeet
Diana Rajchel
sambgood
Bogna
writingismypassion
kiwiviktor81
AFord
randi.lee
Areteus
Domoviye
pyrosama

 

January 8, 2012

From “Winter Nightmare” by Altos Wexan

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This post is part of the January 2012 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is a “winter nightmare.”

Making good time despite a late start from my brother’s, I was thinking about what I was going to post for New Year’s on Facebook and LiveJournal. I was thinking how much I’d miss my brother and his crazy kids after spending a week with them. I was even thinking about my priorities at work this coming week.

The one thing I wasn’t even remotely considering was a massive doe jumping directly in front of me.

All I can remember is a flash of brown in the headlights, a terrific crunch, and being showered with shredded glass as the driver’s side window shattered. I must have had the presence of mind to immediately pull over onto the shoulder and park the car, since that’s where I found myself.

I sat there, staring at the broken glass and what I could see of the mangled fender, listening to hooves on asphalt somewhere behind me. I actually had to take a deep breath, look at myself in the rearview mirror, and say–as calmly as I could muster–“That just happened.”

All those previous concerns were wiped away, replaced with just two notions: “I’m lucky to be alive” and “What am I going to do now?”

The 911 dispatcher might have been surprised at how calm I sounded, but I think that was just shock talking. While waiting for the police, I found myself focused on the glass. It was everywhere, in bite-sized yet razor-sharp chunks: on my seat, in my clothes, in my shoes, in half-a-dozen tiny cuts on my hands and back. Methodically, I picked the stray pieces up with my gloves and threw them out the window.

Guess I really needed something to focus on, something that I could control in a situation that was otherwise pure chaos.

The night guy at the Knights Inn was bemused but sympathetic when he saw a mangled Honda dragging bits of bumper pull in escorted by a county sheriff’s car. I had to keep telling myself that I could handle this, that I was an adult, that this was just another kind of reference question and as a librarian I had to do was find an answer.

I returned to the Honda and managed to cut away most of the really mangled portions of the bumper and wheel well, which was easier than it sounds due to the car being mostly plastic. Duct tape and a garbage bag served to keep out the wind and the dew until the next morning.

Not knowing how the day would turn out, I went to the motel office for their “continental breakfast”: a loaf of bread and a toaster, a rack of Little Debbie cinnamon buns, two boxes of cereal, and one pitcher each of milk and orange juice in a minifridge–all tucked away in a dark corner of the motel lobby. I took two of everything, and sat in a rickety chair pulled up to a cheap pressboard table, watching the sun rise out the window and friends post jubilant New Year’s photos on Facebook.

It’s been a long time since I felt that pathetic, or that alone.

Lord knows what those people must have thought, seeing me hacking away at a clear plastic storage tub lid with a hacksaw and shears in the Wal-Mart parking lot the next morning at 9am. It took me an hour to get the plastic cut to size and taped in place. It seemed to hold well enough, and the car seemed to run all right.

Then the window came off entirely a few miles down the road.

I was able to grab it in time to hold it on and pull over to the shoulder, but three-quarters of the tape had come off, and freeway traffic was whizzing by at 70-80mph, to say nothing of the chill wind and light rain. Made sitting in the motel lobby seem like paradise, to be honest. Desperately, I reattached the window with latticed strips of duct tape, one over another, and damn if that roadside patch job on I-70 didn’t see me through to Memphis.

I skipped lunch, skipped dinner, and drove the entire ten hours with nothing but snacks, cinnamon rolls, and Red Bull. The stereo still worked; perhaps in the spirit of danger and adventure I keyed in the complete Indiana Jones series to see me home.

Almost kissed the pavement at home when I finally limped in.

Fired up my old Escort to serve as a stopgap, went for a few quick essentials at the store…only to find as I pulled out that the Escort’s brake pedal had gone completely slack. Worse, the emergency brake, which hasn’t worked well for some time, completely failed too.

Luckily traffic was light on the way back, and I was able to coast home at low speed. I refilled the reservoir with fresh brake fluid, only to find that there was still no pressure and that the fluid was leaking out of the line. I immediately set out for the tire and brake place across the street–carefully, using park, my hazard blinkers, and what little braking power there was judiciously.

The mechanic said the problem was irreparable. My Escort’s brake line has rusted through, and with the car now eighteen years old and eligible to vote or be drafted in time of national emergency, the spare parts aren’t made anymore. I drove–well, coasted–the Escort home and took stock. Two cars, both with working engines, both crippled by other problems. It’s such a cruel coincidence I would have laughed if I hadn’t been crying.

Happy New Year indeed…

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Areteus
MamaStrong
LilGreenBookworm
Domoviye
writingismypassion
pyrosama
kimberlycreates
Turndog-Millionaire
AbielleRose
Proach
SuzanneSeese
Alpha Echo
Diana Rajchel
Ralph Pines
Alynza
Literateparakeet

 

November 30, 2011

From “The Muse and the Completed First Draft” by Altos Wexan

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“Well, that’s it,” I said. “I’m done. Or at least as done as I’m going to be.”

My muse, seated in the tattered desk chair behind me, cracked open a fresh beer, not even bothering to mop up the droplets that splattered on their beat-up t-shirt. “Well, was it everything you thought it would be?”

“Sort of,” I said. “I mean, it’s always a thousand times better in my head.”

“It always is,” said my muse in between slugs of Pabst. “But was it worth it?”

“It was a real slog sometimes, especially with the deadlines,” I said. That wasn’t the half of it. Late nights in coffee shops on the weekends, struggling to craft a sentence or two between shifts at work…Sometimes the words would flow out so fast I was afraid I’d type my fingers into raw and bloody nubs. More often I’d sit there sweating bullets at the sight of a blank page, that most pale and personal of horrors. For every piece of prose that soared, there were two more that sank in the morass.

“That’s not what I asked.” My muse tore open a bag of greasy potato chip and began to eat. “Was it worth it?”

I looked at the words on my screen, the pages upon pages that, bad as they were, hadn’t been there before. I glanced at my story notes, breathing some tiny spark of life into people that would never exist, no matter how cardboard or inconsistent they might be.

“Yes,” I said. “It was worth it.”

 

November 4, 2011

“Tunguska Butterfly Back Cover Blurb” by Altos Wexan

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This post is part of the November 2011 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is a back cover blurb from a book you have written or would like to write.

The early 1980’s: the depths of the Cold War. The Soviet Union has never been stronger.

Yet there are cracks in its monolithic facade in the form of a group of young anti-nuclear activists. Roman Korovin: the brains, a dedicated revolutionary with very personal reasons for acting against the “demon atom.” Mirya Meloa: the beauty, a deadly fighter and skilled propagandist inflamed with passion for the cause. Vasily Albanov: the brawn, and ex-KGB forger with a penchant for bad jokes. Together, they seek to create a Soviet utopia free of nuclear power…through sabotage.

But when a mission goes awry the three find the full resources of the Soviet state arrayed against them, from an aging despotic general secretary to a ruthlessly efficient KGB major. When one of the revolutionaries inexplicably goes wild and begins cutting a bloody path to the heart of the regime’s terrible secrets, the activists are caught up in an unfolding plot which threatens not only the survival of their country but the future of the human race. The stage is set for a confrontation that will shake the state to its foundations.

“Tunguska Butterfly” is a tale of the Weird East, mixing a dash of real history with intrigue and science fiction in an adventure that stretches from the dreary heart of the USSR to the poisoned steppes of Central Asia.

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Ralph Pines
MysteryRiter
AuburnAssassin
Jarrah Dale
SinisterCola
dolores haze
pyrosama
Alynza
anarchicq
writingismypassion
CScottMorris

 

September 8, 2011

From “Dusk at the Diner” by Altos Wexan

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This post is part of the September 2011 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is to respond to a picture.

Picture: Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper

“So, is this the lady in red you were telling me about?” he said. “The one who wanted that book of yours, and the one who—might I add—I encouraged you to contact about it?”

“Allison Flint,” she said, extending her hand.

“Charlie Bulforth.” Charlie grasped and shook it. “Flint, huh?” he chortled. “Not likely. I know a Durant when I see one. We’ve still got some of the old posters in the station…the ones your dad put out when you ran away a few years back, remember?”

“I was fifteen,” Allison said coldly. “Hardly a few years ago.”

“Fair enough,” Charlie said, shoveling a forkful of pie into his maw. “I know you think you’re being clever with that alias, ma’am, but it doesn’t do any good. I hear society folks talking all the time about how scandalous it is that Mr. Durant’s only daughter’s gone over to the reds.”

“I see,” Allison said. “Do they also talk about how scandalous it was when your and your friends broke up our march the other year with clubs? I seem to remember you alternating between using your bullhorn to shout and to batter unarmed marchers.”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
BigWords
robeiae
pezie
Ralph Pines
Cath
AbielleRose
Darkshore
dolores haze
Alynza
pyrosama

 

June 23, 2011

From “Lebedev’s Specter” by Altos Wexan

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“He said he saw something, in the heart of the reactor, just before the meltdown,” Valerian said. His eyes seemed to grow cloudy with the weight of remembrance.

It was painful to even hear those words, after what had happened in the Ukraine. “What did he see?” Vasily asked, trying not to let his voice crack.

“Captain Lebedev…he’d gone aboard to try and stop Berenty, to try and leave the rest of us a way off of this rock. We were in radio contact the entire time. There was so much static…so much gunfire…it was hard to understand, hard to make out.”

“Uncle Valerian…what did the captain say he saw?” Vasily pressed.

“I thought I heard Petr Ulyanovich say that he could see into the pod the Elbrus IV had constructed, into the heart of its design. Something even that snake Berenty couldn’t conceive.”

“Uncle…”

“The captain said he saw a young girl. Not unlike his wife when she had been a young woman. It was the last thing he ever spoke of.”

 

June 5, 2011

From “Across Worlds Book I: Heden’s Psyche” by Altos Wexan

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This post is part of the June 2011 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is a simple descriptive setting.

It was raining in Heden. This was evident in the way its citizens scuttled to and fro in the few open spaces, avoiding the heavy droplets as best they could.

It always rained in Heden. There was a faint shimmer to the bright, bizarre fabrics worn by the people that indicated waterproofing, and each person shed a wake of droplets that collected near thousands of drainage grates.

It would always rain in Heden. There was no way to be sure of this, but the water-worn and rusted surfaces of the Towers suggested it. Looming up into the ever-dark sky, they seemed resigned to an eternal pelting from the neverending storm.

The original design of Heden had called for six of the great Towers, forming the simple hexagon shape found on many of the great neon billboards and television screens that dotted each Tower much as lichens dotted the occasional real rock. The Towers had grown together, fused into one great shapeless mass by centuries of construction, destruction, rust, and rainwater. The simple glass walkways that had connected them had been long shorn of their panes, and hundreds of homegrown, rickety, winding paths of iron and steel had appeared to supplant them.

A monitor was suspended above one such improvised walkway, placed to ambush passersby with its message. Its bright, flashing image wasn’t an ad. Ad Boards were hard to afford, anymore; people who wanted to advertise just added more crumpled paper or laminate fliers to the mass that coated every surface reachable by human hands. This screen was an Info Board.

Info Boards were there to ‘illuminate possible interpretations of information for the purpose of educating the people’ according to the Boards themselves. This particular Board was playing the ‘History of Heden’, and everyone passing beneath had seen it before.

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
juniper
LadyMage
dolores haze
jkellerford
Ralph Pines
TheMindKiller
AuburnAssassin
pezie
WildScribe
Inkstrokes
Irissel
Guardian
Lyra Jean
egoodlett
cwachob

 

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