Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

It rained all day today
The snap-pop of amateur fireworks
Replaced by rolling thunder
Any lit fuse, a damp squib
Any pyrotechnics, gunpowdery mush
Is it unpatriotic to suggest
Am I a downer for thinking
Would it make me a bad person to feel
Joy?
Fewer limbs will be blown off
Emergency rooms breathing a relieved sigh
Joined by those they might bankrupt
Dogs will not spend the night cowering
Under assault from forces they can’t grasp
Fewer fires to be started
Less siding melted
No hungry sparks drifting downward
Those are all well and good
But I think the most joy comes from
The idea that with the year we have had
The decade we have had as a country
We don’t deserve celebrations
Perhaps a celebration of wild dangers
Explosive death from nowhere
Beggaring injuries
Reckless abandon
Is what we deserve
Perhaps my joy is such
That with it all rain-drowned
We avoid the celebration we earned

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Mr. Bonesteel had been very clear in his team briefing that morning at 7am: “Five-star ratings are where it’s at, people. It’s how Metromart corporate measures out success. So when you’re out there, you are earning five-star reviews at the self-checkout. I’m setting a quota, and you all need to meet it. Our top stars will earn some great prizes, but if you fall behind, you’ll be written up.”

Tanisha stood looking over her domain, a bank of 16 self-checkout machines, and wondered how she was going to make it work. At first, people were just ignoring the star rating, since the Metromart software automatically dismissed it after five seconds. She was able to catch a few of them to leave five-star reviews herself, before Barbara warned her while on a store returns run–Demetrius had been caught doing the same by Bonesteel and been written up. The ratings had to come from customers, and they had to be five stars.

“Why even have five stars if we’re only using one of them?” Tanisha said. “Why not thumbs up thumbs down?”

Barbara shrugged. “They don’t pay me enough to get written up for asking. Good luck, kiddo.”

By lunchtime, Tanisha had resorted to approaching people as they were checking out and asking them to leave five star reviews. There wasn’t much else for her to do, after all, since it was impossible to keep an eye on 16 machines at once for someone sticky-fingering an extra item or two, and she figured Bonesteel would probably approve of her moving about and interacting with customers, just as he would probably not bother to stop and listen to the substance of their conversation.

Most folks were understanding, giving a “sure” or a curt nod and obligingly leaving ratings. A few were very supporting; one customer mentioned working at Metromart in another life and how often people had been written up for too many returns in their department. Tanisha could only smile nervously, the memory of Bobby White in Electronics being written up for too many returns (in between write-up for unsolicited discussion Transformers fanfics with unwilling customers) still fresh.

But as always a few were dicks about it.

“Well now, missy, why should I leave you five stars?” one old white guy said. “Convince me.”

“Our manager says we need them for corporate,” Tanisha replied.

“Well, now that’s your problem,” the man said. “My problem is why I should give you a rating you haven’t earned. I checked myself out, with no help, so that’s five stars for me if anybody’s counting. You did nothing, which here I come from is zero stars.”

“I asked nicely,” Tanisha said with a forced smile. “People are always complaining that no one asks nicely anymore.”

“Fair point, fair point,” the old man said. “Tell you what, we’ll met in the middle.” He selected three stars and collected his groceries before Tanisha could protest.

As he moved away, she saw the manager approaching on his rounds, the screen to her left lit up with a wholly unacceptable number of stars for all to see.

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Parked along a blind curve, the dump truck completely prevented anyone from passing without taking their lives into their hands against onrushing traffic. Ordinarily there’d be a flagman or two, but in this case it was just three guys sawing limbs and filling the bed with fresh-fallen, fresh-cut wood.

“Hey, do you mind letting me know if there’s anyone coming?” Juan said, rolling down the window of his work truck.

“We’re on break,” the cutting crew called back.

“C’mon, this is the only way to get to Federal Drive,” Juan said. “Will you just tell me if the way is clear?”

“Sorry, can’t,” was the reply. “Somebody parked a big dump truck in the road, I can’t see nothin’!”

Juan sighed, muttered a commingled prayer/curse, and floored it. His truck, a dualie, had great torque but poor acceleration, and it lumbered around the curve just n time to elicit an angry honk–but luckily nothing worse–from a motorist passing the other way.

A little later, the cutting crew pulled the dump truck back onto the road to drive the branches up to a dump site above Federal Drive. They soon found themselves stymied by Juan’s dualie, parked so as to impede traffic going both ways, as he filled a pothole with infill and asphalt from his truck bed, as per his city contract.

“Hey! Out of the way.”

“I’m on break,” Juan called up to them. “Some guy from the city parked a dualie across the road, can you believe that?”

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A fallen tree, like a knocked-out tooth
Sky and light the gap in a smile
Mangled roots below, piled limbs above
Cleared from the road but not from the glen
60 years’ work to raise a successor
If we start now
Or will the mown grass already surrounding
Simply absorb the ground-out stump
Shade and leaf fading into memory
As the crop that bears no fruit
Further stakes its claim

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With the heat wave, critters had been increasingly been looking for relief from climate change inside the house, forcing their way inside through rubber seals and around pipe fittings from the inferno that was the forest to the cool air within. Most of them did not survive the journey, and Alan or Shelley would find them on the floor in various places: ex-cockroaches, departed centipedes, spider-angels. Shelley had a particular phobia of spiders, and would ask Alan to clean them up so she wouldn’t have to handle them; he always obliged, having no problem with the arachnids unless they decided to crawl on him (and the penalty on the books for that was death).

So when Alan found a big wolf spider, larger than a quarter, curled up on the kitchen floor, he immediately wanted to dispose of it before Shelley could see. It would just upset her, even if it was dead, so he gathered it up in a kleenex and threw it in the trash before she could see it. He had a passing thought to crushing it in his hand–to make sure it truly was dead for good and all–but the idea of wet hemolymph spider-juice between his fingers for nothing put him off, and he simply chucked it in and forgot about it.

Until that afternoon.

Opening the trash can to dispose of a granola bar wrapper revealed the wolf spider, very much alive, clinging to the inner garbage bag. And with Shelley about, Alan couldn’t squash it without raising a variety of uncomfortable questions. Not could he take his preferred way out and capture the beast for release outside. No, Alan was left hoping that Shelley didn’t see the spider in the trash as she prepared her lunch, feeling his gut clench every time she opened the trash and bracing for a scream.

She didn’t see it, but neither did the spider lay low as Alan tried to subtly encourage by dropping additional trash on top of it. It continually flaunted itself near the top of the bag, as if daring Alan to look upon what he had inadvertently wrought. When he threw away his Chinese take-out container after lunch, the spider moved right in, gingerly sampling the leftover chunks of chicken.

When Shelley excused herself to use the bathroom, Alan saw his chance and sprang into action, snatching the container from the trash and sprinting outside with it, racing against his wife’s potty break as well as that particular arachnid’s impish lack of self-preservation. It tumbled into the front garden bed along with a half-dozen chicken chunks and a sprinkling of General Tso’s sauce, while Alan secreted the container in the outside trash, Shelley hopefully none the wiser.

And indeed she wasn’t. The spider, though, learned nothing from its sojourn, as Alan learned when it reappeared the next day–this time on the ceiling.

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Madame Ludec stepped over Baueaz to Warden Z’bari, neither of them able to do anything more than move their eyes.

“I’m sorry, my friends,” she said, plucking the key from the warden’s belt. “It took me so very long to synthesize that botulism toxin with what I have at hand, I simply had to use it. You were both doomed when you touched my doorknob.”

The heavy key clicked in the lock, while Ludec carefully turned the knob with a handkerchief, which she dropped onto the ground in front of Z’bari’s wide eyes.

“The good news is, if your men can find you inside of the hour, there’s an antitoxin that will allow you to live, paralyzed of course, for a bit more. Nothing personal, of course, my dears: you have your job, and I have mine.”

Ludec collected a small set of vials and poultices hidden behind one of her needlework pieces on the wall. “And don’t worry–I intend to catch this ‘mad poisoner’ of yours and show them the folly of their ways. There is no one yet alive that is the match for Madame Rajki Ludec, and if it be her time to die, it will be in the service of the noble poisoner’s art.”

With practiced hands, Madame Ludec locked the door behind her and threw the visitor’s cloak over her. With a gruff voice, she told the first guard to escort Conjurer Baueaz outside, and that Warden Z’bari was staying behind to interrogate the prisoner.

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“That is most troubling, most troubling indeed,” said Madame Ludec. “Such a master poisoner operating under your very noses, I can see why you would turn to another, falsely accused though she be.”

“Can it with the false modesty,” Warden Z’bari said. “It might work on this witless conjurer, but it won’t work on me, not while I’ve lost six men to you on my watch.”

“Your dedication to your work does you credit, Warden,” Ludec said sweetly. “As does your determination to reward your men with a noble death. Dysentery, food posioning, and sepsis are all such ignoble ends for the Landgrave’s guards; if a mad poisoner looming over them gives their deaths any meaning, and their families any closure, it is a stigma I am happy to bear.”

“No ideas, then, how it could have been accomplished?” Conjurer Baueaz said, sounding disappointed.

Ludec cocked her head. “Tell me, did they vomit blood? Was there blood in their stool?”

“Why yes, both,” Baueaz said, excitedly.

“Shortness of breath a day, perhaps two, after showing flu-like symptoms?”

“Exactly, exactly,” the conjurer said. “You know what it is?”

“It is an inelegant cudgel where a subtle scalpel is called for,” Madame Ludec said. “Anthrax, likely put through a process of aerosolization so it is inhaled rather than merely settling upon the skin.”

Baueaz was scribbling notes on a scrap of paper. “Yes, yes, it all makes sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Madame Ludec.

“And why, pray, is that?” said the warden.

“Why, because anthrax should have been detected by any member of the Magician’s Guild,” said Ludec. “Especially with such symptoms. So either your friends looked for it and could not find it, or it was somehow undetectable. And surely your friends are not so dimwitted as to not know the symptoms of anthrax.”

“Certainly not,” Baueaz said with a nervous chuckle.

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The warden turned to Baueaz. “You are not to accept anything that Rajki Ludec has touched, not so much as a glass of water. You are not to touch her, or touch anything that you have seen her touch, other than the floor and the chair that we will bring in for you.”

“Madame Ludec is in prison, and a strongly held prison at that,” Baueaz said, “to say nothing of my standing as a member of the Magic Guild. Surely there is nothing she can do to harm me.”

Warden Z’bari snorted. “There is nothing magical about Madame Ludec,” he said. “She is simply a powerful alchemist and inveterate poisoner. She has killed seven of our guards since being admitted, though of course she denies it.”

“Seven?”

“She somehow synthesized cyanide from peach pits and slipped it into a water jug. Killed the guard and a man he shared it with. Before we put her on restricted rations, she got ricin out of her dinner beans and managed to contaminate Boll d’Efort when he was filling in as cook. He and three others shat themselves to death. Last one was my predecessor as warden, who made the mistake of accepting some needlework as a gift. It was contaminated with thallium, and we are still not sure how that was obtained. Trace amounts in some metals, perhaps.”

“Why is she still alive, then?” Conjurer Baueaz followed the warden through the heavy cellblock door, watching as it was locked behind him.

“Well, for one, she is related by blood to the Landgrave,” Z’bari said. “And for another…well, you will see.”

The final key turned, and the cell door opened to reveal Rajki Ludec. She was an old woman, at least seventy, finely dressed in the manner of a grandmother. She rose, politely, to greet the men as they entered with an extended hand. “Good day you you, my lords,” she said. Clutched in her hands was what looked like needlework, and the specious cell was decorated with completed stitchwork of a high quality and detail.

“You know the rules, Madame Ludec,” said Z’bari. “Keep your distance.”

“Oh, of course.” Ludec lowered her hand. “Forgive me, warden. An old woman’s memory is not the sharpest of traps, eh?”

“Hmph.” Z’bari jerked his thumb at his guest. “This is Conjurer Baueaz from the Magician’s Guild. He wants you to consult on a poisoning.”

“Oh, but I wouldn’t know where to begin with a poisoning, Conjurer Baueaz,” said Madame Ludec. “You see, I am quite innocent of the crimes levied against me, blamed through no fault of my own for circumstantial reasons. Not that I blame dear Warden Z’bari for this, mind, as he is merely honorably discharging the duty given him.”

“Indulge me, please,” said Baueaz.

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“State of California v. Greenwood established in 1988 that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy with regards to refuse, and that it is permissible to take things without trespassing or violating local ordinances,” said Earl.

“Trespassing, then,” the cop said. “Beat it.”

“This is a public library,” Earl retorted. “And a public space besides.”

“The librarians might not agree,” said the cop. “Come on.”

“Librarian said to fill my boots. Offered me a box.” Earl smiled. “I just want to save the books, officer. Donate them to a thrift store, put them in a little free library. You’re gonna stop me for no reason?”

“Yes,” the cop said. “Now get out of here. One more word out of you and it’s a $150 fine for trespassing and a free ride in a police car.”

“Very well,” said Earl. He picked up a book off his scavenged pile–Constitutional Law, 17th ed. and handed it to the cop. “Here. for next time.”

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“So what do you think led him to do it?” said Jason. “Fill this place with more books than any person could ever read, despite being nearly blind?”

“My uncle used to say that if everybody assumed someone else had a copy, eventually every book in the world would see its last copy thrown out and no one would know,” Marianne said. “I think he was trying to give them all a safe home, in his own way, to keep them from being destroyed.”

“And where does that leave me, the estate salesman, seeing the collection broken up?” Jason said. “It’s not too late to send us away, if you’re having second thoughts.”

“I suppose sending them to new homes is what he would have wanted.”

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