“So,” said Don Capri, drug lord of the western Mediterranean. He was wearing only a t-shirt and tenting his fingers, fat and sausagelike and glinting with rings. “Tell me of this proposal, of how it would benefit me, and why I should not kill you this very moment for the insult you have wrought.”
November 14, 2016
From “Don Capri the T-Shirted Drug Lord” by Blythe Hilson
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November 13, 2016
From “Don’t Call Them the Decapitator” by Natalie J. H. Able
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November 12, 2016
From “Amid the Stalks” by Khalid Massett
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“Carefully, carefully.”
They were steering into the fishing grounds now, amid the fully-grown stalks. Bursting from the sea and rising to heights of a hundred yards or more, they were as alien as they had been at the moment they had arrived. To touch one of their many spreading tendrils was to invite death, either by being swatted aside or through the toxins they bore. But only among their many spreading fleshy roots could fishermen find any of their companions, the little wrigglers, and those were worth their literal weight in gold. Or, perhaps, gold was worth its weight in little wrigglers.
“Cast it just so, just so,” said Donovan. “The little wrigglers have to come to you. Touch a tendril and you’ll be sorry.”
“Like that boat over there?” said Carey.
Donovan glanced over at a wreck, cut neatly in twain by the mindless thrusts of a stalk. “Yes,” he said. “They are why the war ended, you see. Anything like that which we used to do excites them to terrible violence, but we also came to depend on the little wrigglers they brought with them.”
“Did someone send them to us, to stop the fighting and make us all think about the wrigglers only?” said Carey.
Donovan looked at the bobbing nets. “Maybe so,” he said. “Maybe so.”
November 11, 2016
From “Exotic Foods: Alpha Centauri” by The Gastro Network
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[ARTHUR MIZZENMAST is in a mid-range restaurant, facing the camera and emoting with his hands.]
MIZZENMAST: And, of course, any visit to Alpha Centauri wouldn’t be complete without a plate of Qin’Xai mindworms. You can get them anywhere, but the floating city of Jxr’Nn is famous for its particularly vivid mindworms.
[DINERS are enjoying plates of weakly twitching, bright-blue MINDWORMS at the restaurant. Their exposed feathery gills make a wet sucking sound as they go down the hatch.]
HUMAN DINER #1: The mindworms here are great. I’ve had them other places, but the hallucinations aren’t anywhere near as vivid.
CENTURIAN DINER #1 (subtitles): I ENJOY THE FLAVOR AND THE FACT THAT THEY ARE STUNNED ENOUGH BY COOKING THAT THEY CANNOT TAKE OVER MY NERVOUS SYSTEM OR LAY EGGS.
MIZZENMAST: Since Alpha Centauri is a crossroads of cultures and cuisines, a lot of interesting flavor combinations have arisen. Like adding a little cardamom to the illusory world created by a mindworm, or mixing some curry powder into the nutrient slurry that helps the worms sustain illusions that seem to last for lifetimes?
HUMAN DINER #2: Spicy hallucinations are my favorite! It may seem like 50 years on the inside, but that’s just how Mom used to make them!
CENTAURIAN DINER #2 (subtitles): I ENJOY THE TRACE ELEMENTS THAT THEY ADD TO MY SYSTEM AND THE MENTAL IMAGES ARE A DIVERTING DISTRACTION FROM MY PATHETIC DAILY EXISTENCE.
November 10, 2016
From “Silent Alley” by Lael Tinsley
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Let me tell you about the Silent Alley.
It’s right off of Cicero, between 11th and 12th, uptown. It neatly bisects a block that includes a deli, an adult bookstore, and a plumbing supply warehouse. Though most of those businesses have loading docks out back, they all only take deliveries from the front. That’s why traffic is always so backed up there, in case you were wondering.
No one uses the alley as a shortcut, either, though it’s well-lit and in a relatively safe part of town. You never see any cyclists cutting through to save a few minutes, and pedestrians never dart in, heads down, as if they belong there as is so common elsewhere. The only things to regularly use the alleyway are the birds and rats, who pass through in reasonable numbers.
The alleyway eats sounds.
Oh, you may think you know total silence. Maybe you’ve been in a recording booth next to one of those noise-canceling foam walls, putting your ear up to a dead space just to see what it feels like. Maybe you’ve even tried noise-canceling headphones, with their eerie sine-wave quietude. But anyone who has ever gone through Silent Alley will tell you that you know nothing.
There’s a stretch, maybe five or ten feet, where sounds are just muffled, like being underwater or falling headlong into a deep sleep. But once you’re in the alley proper, you hear nothing. Not your own heartbeat. Not the blood rushing in your ears. Not even the steady ring of tinnitus, if you have it. It is a silence so complete, so overwhelming, that only someone deaf from birth could truly understand it–and even they could never fully convey it to someone who has ever heard a sound.
You’d think this would make it an oasis, an urban paradise, a place where people can go to get away from it all.
No.
The intrepid urban explorers who try usually emerge shaken after only a few minutes. Diehards have been known to last up to an hour, but much longer than that and people begin to lose themselves. There’s been more than one suicide down that alleyway, but no murders or muggings. The silence eagerly eats the sound of a bullet as any other, but you’re too consumed by what you aren’t hearing to worry about much else.
There are theories aplenty about Silent Alley, everything from a quirk of acoustics to hauntings to alien visitations. Some people seize on the fact that there used to be a mortician onsite until they realize it only sold mourning wear and never had any actual bodies. Near as anybody can tell, the alleyway fell silent shortly after its construction in 1911. Nobody paid it much heed for years aside from the tenants, and why would they? The unnerving nature of the place kept rents low.
If you’re in town, and nearby, do yourself a favor. Don’t go. Many have tried, and all have regretted it.
November 9, 2016
From “The Necromantic Events of February 11th, 2016” by Constantine McVere
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Kayleigh stormed into the offices of Underhill Associates LLC and demanded to see Morgan Darkholme, one of their entry-level necromantic engineers. The undead thrall at the door tried to stop her, waving his security badge and groaning inarticulately, but she brushed him aside with a quick cantrip of holding she’d bought at the 7/11 around the corner.
Underhill occupied the first 66 floors of the Ravenloft Building, with the unholy energy labs closest to street level (to help keep the bodies fresh) and the staff offices further up. Morgan had his tiny cubicle on the 65th floor, not because he was a big wheel or anything but because as a technically living being he was not as susceptible to sunlight as many of the upper-level executives. The CEO, Lord Cyril Dreadmere IV, actually had his offices in the basement. “After his predecessor accidentally opened the shades at sunrise and turned to ash,” Morgan had told Kayleigh once, “they figured it was better not to take any chances. Liches and sunlight, you know?”
“Morgan!” Kayleigh cried upon reaching the 65th floor. “Morgan, you’d better be in there!”
The other human employees slunk terrified in their cubies. Most of them were working on engineering more efficient horrors from beyond the realms of sanity, but most were as ill-equipped to deal with the living as they were proficient with the newly deceased. As they said at school, the MN degree in necromancy was only for those too shut-in to even become computer programmers.
Morgan stood up, pale and hunched, in his cube, the lines of arcane runes for a spell of extreme deathening compiling on the computer behind him. “K-Kayleigh?” he said. “What is it?”
Kayleigh marched up to him and slapped something down on his desk. Morgan glanced over at it and immediately had a moment of flop sweat. It was a polaroid of a very nice nook in the mid-city columbarium which read “KAYLEIGH JONES, BELOVED DAUGHTER, 4/20/1990 – 2/11/2016.”
“Am I dead?” Kayleigh cried. “Did you reanimate me just so we could date?”
“Of course not,” said Morgan without thinking. “The revivification lab did that for me.”
November 8, 2016
From “The Backyard Blast” by Byra Blackstad
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The detonation was heard five miles away, in Steubenville, and bits of charred lion steak were found as far as Mike’s Gas ‘n’ Gulp on Route 309.
But those pieces of meat which did survive were quite well-roasted, and had seared in an incredible flavor that the surviving sauce complemented nicely. And the mostly unscathed dessert, served to survivors, was delectable.
Yes, despite a few fatalities, everyone agreed that Mindy’s first cookout was a roaring success.
November 6, 2016
From “AdVille” by Bapic Games LLC GmbH
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Bapic Games is proud to present its newest hit game for Facebook, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Nintendo 3DS and Nokia N-Gage!
AdVille puts you in the shoes of an advertising executive just starting out. It’s up to you to design eye-popping ads for major brands and to watch existing ads to mine their valuable secrets!
Thanks to Bapic Games’ groundbreaking new licensing agreements with major brands, you will be able to view ads for real consumer products and the ads you design might even be picked up for national distribution! Reap fabulous rewards (in in-game currency) for making major ad campaigns for multinational corporations!
And of course, the patented Bapic Games micro-transaction system is in full swing. All major credit cards are accepted for purchasing in-game Ad Coins, and spending a few Ad Coins can help your own ads get noticed at the very top!
November 5, 2016
From “The Very Last New Year’s Eve Ever” by Wesley Vantrease
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Now, I know what you’re all thinking.
But really, how bad is it? No one is aging, so no one is dying. All those cuts will just hang there now, never bleeding, unless you’re silly enough to sever something and then you’ve basically earned it.
Granted food will run out, but no one has to eat. If they do eat, well, that’s their problem. Bathrooms just don’t work under these circumstances.
I mean, yeah, we COULD point the fingers of blame for having a New Year’s Eve party on the site once occupied by the Temple of Chronos. And we COULD argue for hours about who did what rituals while roaring drunk, and who stopped the flow of what.
But really, what good is that going to do any of us?
November 4, 2016
From “Exposito’s Mercies” by Georgia Rainford
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Three men, all accused of piracy, were before him on their knees, guarded by troops from the fortress. They’d each petitioned for the Corrigador, the effective governor of Veracruz, to hear their cases personally.
“Gabriel Hernandez y Juarez,” Exposito said, sounding utterly bored. “You stand accused of piracy before His Majesty King Philip. You were caught aboard a pirate ship that was detained and captured by our fleet off the coast a week ago, one which had made several attempts to take His Majesty’s ships as prizes. What do you have to say in your defense?”
“Please, sir, please,” blubbered the man. “I apologize before you and before God, and I throw myself prostrate on your mercy. I was captured by those buccaneers when my ship was taken and forced into their service as a carpenter.”
Exposito perked up at this. “Oh? I know a thing or two about carpentry myself, you know,” he said. “The table before you wobbles. Go on, get up and try it.”
Hesitantly, Hernandez got up and tested Exposito’s small end table. It did in fact wobble.
“Tell me,” said Exposito. “How would you fix it?”
“Well, I suppose…um…well, that is to say…” Hernandez stuttered.
“Bah,” said Exposito. “You expect me to believe pirates would impress a ‘carpenter’ who can’t even do such a simple task? You could glue a small disk to the bottom of the leg, or put in a wedge at the top.”
“Please, it is nervousness!” the accused man cried. “I was just about to suggest glue!”
“Take him away and hang him,” said Exposito with a wave of his arm. “A real carpenter would have noticed that the wobble was because one leg is on my rug.”
Wailing and blubbering, the man was removed.
“John Samuels, of England,” said Exposito to the second man, rolling the foreign name around between his high cheeks before spitting it out. “You stand accused of piracy before His Majesty King Philip. You and your skiff preyed on the fishermen out of the harbor until you ran aground. What have you to say in your defense?”
“I only stole a few fish, on account of I was starving,” said Samuels. “If a fisherman can’t even protect a few measly mackerel, what good’s he going to do in life? If anything, I was making the fishermen around here better by culling out the weak.”
“I see,” said Exposito. “But what does it mean for your theory that you were captured?”
“It means that my services are now at your Lordship’s disposal,” said Samuels. “If you’d put me to work for you, I’d make you stronger as well. But if you mean to hang me, even if only for a bit of sport, I’d ask that you get to it.”
“I like this man,” said Exposito. “A full pardon for him. See him escorted to the docks and issued orders as a pilot.”
“As your Lordship wills,” said Samuels. “Thank you for not wasting our time.”
Exposito dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “Jean Legrand, of France,” he said to the third. “You stand accused of piracy before His Majesty King Philip. You were found illegally trading in the port of Veracruz for lumber you illegally cut from His Majesty’s forests on Santo Domingo.”
“As I have told your brutish men at length,” Legrand said, “I was selling lumber from Saint-Domingue, which is rightfully part of the French crown as your own King has recognized.”
“And I hold that yours is an illegal occupation, one that is soon to be stamped out, regardless of what temporary concessions King Philip has made to his grandfather, your so-called king. Who are you to say otherwise?”
“Tell me then, how is a simple farmer to support himself when he has neither the land nor the slaves to grow sugarcane nor anything else of value, and is the sole support of his family?”
“That is not my concern,” said Exposito. “Take him away and hang him.”
“I protest!” cried Legrand. “I protest in the name of my King and my family!”
“Oh, very well,” said Exposito. “Hang him, but sell his ship and his cargo and give the proceeds to Ambassador La Croix. He may compensate this squatter’s family at his discretion, I suppose.”
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 