March 16, 2011

From “No Regrets” by Van Bullock

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“I don’t regret what I’ve done. I sleep like a baby every night. Most of them were bad people anyway, killed at the behest of other bad people maybe but usually as deserving of death as anyone on your death row. People don’t target the crusading lawyers and politicians like they used to, at least not in this country. Too many questions, too many badges. But if a drug middleman dies, who cares? That’s where professionals like myself make a living.”

“Then why leave it behind?”

“No one sees the work. No one appreciates the work, not even the clients. I’d like to do something people can see and appreciate. That’s not to much to ask after an early retirement, is it?”

 

March 1, 2011

From “The Last Email” by Eric Cummings Jr.

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Her note continued:

“I never believed your routine about being a cynic. You believe in things. Not good things or worthy things, but things nonetheless. From my point of view, every position I’ve teased out of you is utterly repugnant, but in taking them you’ve set yourself apart from the others.

Don’t pretend to be something you’re not. It’s a cruel world we live in when somebody has to hide their idealism behind a cynic’s mask, to feign apathy about something they care deeply about rather than confronting it head on. I’ve worn that mask many times in my life, and only recently have I had the courage to remove it for good. I think, in time, you will too.

This isn’t like the end of the book you told me you wanted to write–the one where everyone manages to live happily if not ever after without reeking of sickly-sweet sentiment. I don’t know if even such a qualified happiness can exist in this world of ours without a platform of lies to stand upon, much as we all desperately need to believe it can and does. But it is an ending.

I’ll go my own way–don’t worry. But whatever happens, I want you to be strengthened by it. Go out there and believe repulsive things, but believe them sincerely, just as I sincerely believe that you’ll get your happy ending–whether in real life or in a world of your own making on a manuscript page.”

 

February 28, 2011

From “Obstinate Similarity” by Alisa K. Feldnacht

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I began to look for something different. I didn’t have a sense of the possibilities innate in that wonderful word–different–only a vague clenched feeling deep in my chest, a tension that was boiling over at the regularity with which I’d been confronted so far.

My first implulse, like many before me, was to leave Deerton. That is often enough for someone I grew up with to declare victory, but I found the next largest town up the road to be more of the same. The same buildings, the same people, the same cars. Oh, there were superficial differences to be sure, but even the lightest nick or cut would reveal tired old archetypes in new skin, a town created from the same set of stencils as Deerton.

The regional center? Add taller buildings that looked much like the shorter ones when you wormed into them. Biggest city in the state? A beltway that’s nothing more than pieces of I-313 back home re-skinned and re-used. Even the really big places–even New York, Los Angeles–added simply another layer of ornamentation to the basic structure. What, after all, makes a meth addict on the street all that different from a heroin addict–other than the size of their wallet? What, after all, makes the corrupt boss of Deerton’s Republican machine all that different from the corrupt boss of New York’s Democratic one?

Everything I saw and experienced was obstinately similar to what had come before, and that knot in my stomach refused to fade away.

 

January 18, 2011

From “Rising Presence” by Aisenne L. Royeaux

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Edith had what I like to call a “rising presence.” Her involvement in any meeting or debate followed a predictable pattern:

Stage 1: Listen and observe. Edith would carefully absorb what she could about the information in play, the personalities behind it, and the opinions of her fellows.

Stage 2: Asking questions. Edith would ease her way into the discussion by asking questions. Innocent ones at first, then more probing.

Stage 3: Wading in. Having formed, or reinforced, an opinion, Edith would charge into the debate, scoring critical hits with well-placed rhetorical blows informed by all the information she’d gathered.

Few opponents could withstand the last phase, and those that did were usually driven into ossified and ultimately untenable positions. So when Edith slipped in five minutes after the meeting began and started scribbling notes, my heart sank. She might have been a nonentity then, and for the next several rounds of discussion, but her “rising presence” would make itself known soon enough.

 

January 15, 2011

From “Sōtan and the Wayze” by Nokin Kobayashi, translated and adapted by Irene York

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Early in the Ashikaga shogunate, a samurai known as Sōtan who had performed exceptionally well in the recent civil wars was summoned from his daimyo’s side to the Imperial court at Kyoto. Sōtan had fought furiously against Emperor Daigo’s forces during the Kemmu Restoration, and personally thought it odd that he would be summoned by that same emperor’s son, now a powerless young figurehead under the rule of the shogun. But, bound by duty, he went anyway.

Sōtan was not allowed to view the Chrysanthemum Throne, but was instead received in an antechamber and given a letter with the Imperial seal, along with a small lacquered box sealed with pitch. The Emperor wrote that, shortly before his father Emperor Daigo’s death, he had given the box to his son with the warning that it contained a “wayze,” a word which neither the new Emperor nor Sōtan knew. Whatever the “wayze” was, it had been found by the Hōjō clan during their rule and reclaimed by Daigo when he attempted to return power to the Emperor.

Sōtan found himself cleverly retained by Daigo’s son: having been commanded by his daimyo, who must have thought the mission a trifling one, to do as the Emperor bid, he was duty-bound to carry out the mission. The Emperor had turned one of his father’s fiercest adversaries into an ally.

His mission? Destroy the “wayze” by any means necessary–short of opening it.

 

January 14, 2011

From “Cynical Blows” by Eric Cummings Jr.

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“Hey, I stand for things,” I said. “I feel ways about stuff. Look at my columns! I’m not writing controversial stuff like that for the fun of it.”

“I don’t think that’s you standing for anything,” Karen replied. “I think it’s you being deliberately contrary to stir up a hornet’s nest so you can feel smug and superior.”

“That’s…definitely an unusual thing to say when being deliberately contrary’s paying for the meal.”

“See?” said Karen. “Someone with a pulse talks back, you’re caught in person, and you immediately backpedal. If you really cared about that shit, Eric, you’d be meeting me blow for blow over it.”

“And what about you?” I finally had to say. “Reaming me out like this? If you feel so strongly, why aren’t you writing a column? If you think I’m such a cynic, why’d you even come?”

 

January 11, 2011

From “Muriel’s Music” by Kenton Gaines Rowena

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Muriel managed one final twist of the music box’s spring before her strength deserted her.

But it was enough.

The box sprung open on the ground where she lay in a spreading pool and began to plink out its simple melody. According to those that heard it, though, the sound quickly became far warmer and richer, almost like a harp or piano. Its music also spread far beyond what normal acoustics should have allowed–in addition to the Public Safety officers near Muriel, it could be heard by government troops in the base and on the firing line, along with their Revolutionary Guard opponents on the other side. Even riot police moving against a hostage situation twenty miles away, along with the hostage taker, reported hearing something.

The effect on all of them was the same: a feeling of overwhelming peace, safety, and tingling warmth like being held in an unconditionally loving embrace. Weapons clattered to the ground. Helmets were pried off to allow the divine sound to be heard with greater clarity. Many fell to their knees or wept openly.

One of the Public Safety officers approached Muriel and held out his hand. Weakly, she grasped it, and smiled–the last thing she was ever to do.

 

January 1, 2011

From “Cutlip Confections” by J. J. D. Smith

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Nobody was quite sure how Cutlip Confections got its moniker. Some said that founder Jacob John Dunwiddie had named it after his friend and business associate Jeremy Cutlip. Others maintained that for many years the company’s signature candy was the cutlip, so called either because its cracked edges resembled chapped lips or because they could occasionally be suck’d into sharp shapes that actually could cut one’s lips.

Needless to say, the name was something of a liability, and generations of Cutlip board members lamented the sales lost through such an unappetizing name. But Dunwiddie family members were in control of the firm and notorious for their love of tradition–besides which the name “Dunwiddie Confections” was scarcely more palatable. But with the 1989 death of Jacob John Dunwiddie VI, who left no heirs, the board was finally in a position to effect the change they wanted. The initial suggestions tended to focus on fads–one board member suggested “Neon Confections” just as that craze was peaking–that focus groups rightly saw as ephemeral. So the company, in a bid to turn public relations straw into gold, announced a contest for a new name.

Entries poured in from around the globe, but the ultimate winner was something no one could have expected…and it would have consequences that Jacob John Dunwiddies I-VI could never have foreseen in their wildest nightmares.

 

December 31, 2010

From “Three Decades of Catching Up” by Candice P. Hellermann

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The silence begun after that argument lasted far longer than either could have predicted–over thirty years passed before the sisters spoke again. If this seems an excessive amount of time, remember that both felt themselves deeply and unfairly wronged and that both maintained that a full and complete apology was necessary. As both were proud women, neither offered one; as both were nervous women, neither suggested one.

It took a chance encounter to bring the full weight of those lost years to bear on the sisters, a chance encounter with undertones both grim and laden with kismet. Under their maiden names, since both had been divorced–their personalities causing as much friction with spouses as with sisters–found themselves in the same hospital room due to simple alphabetics, both with the same complaints.

Though there was an initial shock, the wall that had build up over the years soon came tumbling down. The real hurdle, therefore, was not in resuming communication but in relating to one another to contents of those lost decades and the loves and sorrows held within each.

 

December 24, 2010

From “Uturry She” by Hank L. Erickson

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Chateau Uturry had fallen on hard times since the beginning of the century, with the dissolute Monsieur Uturry (fils) abandoning his family with most of his fortune in 1902. Monsieur Uturry (pere) was unable to bear the shame of his son’s desertion, and took his own life. The various members of the family drifted away until only three remained of the seventeen Uturry family members who had once lived there: the wife of Monsieur Uturry (fils) and two of his daughters. Though the youngest, Thérèse, had been a notable beauty and had made quite a splash in fin de siècle Paris, her parents had always brought her up as a caretaker of her mother and invalid sister, and she had been recalled to the chateau for that purpose in 1903.

When the war started, the battle lines snaked directly through the chateau’s grounds. All three inhabitants refused evacuation and were caught in the crossfire as Chateau Uturry became a landmark in no-man’s-land. At first their sector was relatively quiet, and with a well and the provisions laid in by Monsieur Uturry (pere) there was no immidiate danger despite being cut off from the world. But as the offensives of 1916 began, Chateau Uturry found itself in two sets of crosshairs.

And Thérèse found herself once more ready to make a splash.

 

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