November 29, 2012

From “The Household Golems” by Micaela K. Rachele

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“Well–and I’m surprised you don’t know this–using an item by necessity imbues it with some of your life force,” the tiny golem said, its “eyebrows” made from housekeys around threaded screw “eyes” waggling. “Everyday things tend to absorb more life force, and when the humans leave…well, that life force has to go somewhere.”

“That’s…weird.” Melody said, scrunching her nose.

“Oh, and I suppose being made of meat imbued with a divine spark by the All-Creator is ‘normal’ then?” The golen huffed, jabbing its fork-fingers at Melody accusingly. “I suppose you’d rather that life force went into a poltergeist, then, or a barghest? Yes, that’d be a loverly fate for grandpa’s old house, wouldn’t it?”

“Calm down, calm down,” Melody said, afraid that someone might–impossibly–stumble upon her arguing with animate metal pieces living in a teapot.

“Calm down, she says, after impugning my very origins and nature! Your family’s fallen a very long way since you’re grandfather’s time.”

“Wait,” Melody said. “You knew my grandfather?”

“It’s mostly his life force that gave me animate life,” the golem said. “Oh, so you’re interested now that I can give you something, is that it? Well, missy, I bid you good day.”

The metal face–tea filter, keys, screws, and all–disappeared back into its teapot with a clank.

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November 28, 2012

From “The Other Side” by Becket T. Hallworth Jr.

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I took my proposal to the Department of Infernal Affairs. Never heard of it? There’s always one nearby if you know where to look. Someone’s got to coordinate for the Other Side, after all, and what could be more hellish than bureaucracy for which the normal human meanings of time and space don’t apply?

That day, I had a modest proposal all typed up with the proper forms filled out in quadruplicate and properly stamped and sealed with blood. I was ready to pledge my soul to the Other Side in exchange for something in the here and now, like many people (more than you’d think) have done in the past. I was ushered in to see the local Department Manager after a wait of only 97 hours; that they sped things along, I thought, was indicative of how important the issue was.

Unlike most of the workers for the Other Side, the department manager wasn’t a human sympathizer or required to wear a disguising glamour. He was all raw and evil, leaking noxious fumes and fluids. The only concession for my sake was a business suit, which must have been made out of teflon to withstand all that Other Side hellish ichor.

“It’s a nice proposal,” he said in a voice that sounded like two concrete blocks being ground together. “But I’m going to have to turn you down. We don’t want your soul, not for this or any other bargain.”

“What?” I said. “Why not?”

“I’m going to be honest with you,” the Department Manager said, tenting the clawed pseudopods that served him for quasi-arms. “Fulfilling wishes, making changes to the physical world from the spiritual? It has costs. Effort, time, and soul energy. In the old days, when souls were pennies a gallon, it was no problem. But things have changed, and the arithmetic isn’t always as good.”

“But it’s a small request,” I said. “Hardly anything needs to be changed, and you get my soul forever!”

“That’s the other thing,” said the Department Manager in his ruinous voice. “We on the Other Side have quite the actuarial staff, and we’ve done a few calculations. Turns out that the kind of person who’d sell their soul, or even consider it, is usually a right bastard in their own way. 90% of them, they’re ours anyway in the fullness of time; we get the whole soul without having to expend any effort at all.”

“So what are you telling me?”

“No more soul deals anywhere, ever. Only exceptions are for mass cults, business leaders, and politicians. That one comes from the Big Guy himself, incidentally, so don’t try going over my amorphous eyestalk to the District Manager either.”

“Then why see me at all? Why make me wait just to shoot me down? why have the forms in the first place? I wasted almost a year of my life getting this ready, all for nothing!”

The Department Manager grinned with all six of his tooth-ringed mouth-suckers. “We’re still the Other Side, kid. It’s what we do.”

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November 26, 2012

From “A Pro-Pirate Counterpoint” by William “Black Bill” Cubbins IV

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This rebuttal to a rebuttal was received yesterday from prior editorial contributor Black Bill Cubbins, whose prior article elicited a lively discussion and a contentious response from ninja activist Felisa Lloyd Matsumura-Tamaribuchi. In the interest of covering both sides of the contentious pirate-ninja conflict with armed neutrality, we present his statement here.

-The Editors

I was disappointed but not surprised to learn that my plea for tolerance of pirates and pirate culture was viciously appropriated as an opportunity for the pro-ninja lobby to make its vile and disenfranchising views known. I am used to the pro-ninja bias in the media and the constant agitation of ninja-affiliated terrorists and lackeys using whatever excuse they can to forward their anti-pirate agenda, after all. My essay on the disgusting and disenfranchising use of my people as Halloween costumes became just another excuse for an anti-pirate diatribe by ninjas for whom civilized discourse instead of violence is as foreign as giving open battle.

If I mentioned ninjas as a costume possibility, it was only because they do not constitute a nation unto themselves like pirates. That label has been forced on discourse by the pro-ninja movement despite the fact that ninjas have never been anything but a small subset of larger peoples. If you had asked the ninjas living on Plunder Harbor, Jolly Roger Cove, or Dead Man’s Cay (the Takeshima, Okinotori, and Senkaku islands, to use the invented ninja terms) what they were before the war they would have said anything but ninja. That would have been the same as giving “construction worker” as your nationality today.

Therefore it’s impossible for my remarks to have been racist, as the loosely ninja-affiliated Ms. Matsumura-Tamaribuchi claimed, because ninjas (unlike pirates) are not a race but merely a mongrel people who made their living by assassination and sneaking and just happened to live on the islands in question when pirate resettlement began. Each island was historically dominated by pirates until their expulsion by the shogunate a thousand years ago, after all.

But pro-ninja activists like Matsumura-Tamaribuchi and her friends in the pro-ninja mass media refuse to engage in civil discourse with pirates, despite the pirate nation’s status as a representative democracy (unlike the feudal and dictatorial ninja government, dominated by terrorists). To them, violence and name-calling are the only forms of communication. Perhaps I shouldn’t encourage children to dress up as ninjas for Halloween, but then again perhaps Ms. Matsumura-Tamaribuchi shouldn’t bear the cross of an apologist and project moral equivalency on the peaceful pirate people and the inherently unreasonable and violent ninjas.

Like many, I look forward to the day when pirates and ninjas can live in peace. But that day will never come if racist anti-pirate demagogues like Matsumura-Tamaribuchi and her cohort of terrorists hell-bent on disenfranchisement have their way.

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November 18, 2012

From “Libyan Opera” by A. Halworth Kaois

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The Royal Opera House! A name that, all on its own, evoked visions of Second Empire furniture, dazzling chandeliers, the cream of a potpourri of baronetcies and earldoms.

And Annie was there in a t-shirt and shorts.

Even the man in the ticket booth was wearing the usher equivalent of top hat and tails, and he gave Annie an odd look as she paid.

“I didn’t have time to change,” she said, trying for a sheepish grin.

“The performance is beginning in fifteen minutes,” the usher said. “They’re no longer seating people in the main gallery. You’ll have to be seated in one of the side galleries and take your seat during the intermission.”

Annie blanched. “A-are you sure? There’s still fifteen minutes left!”

“Sorry, house rules,” the usher said with a shrug.

“That’s right,” his tone and posture seemed to say. “Unlike you Yanks, we Britons know how to run a proper opera house.”

A second usher, more opulently dressed than the first, led Annie through a side door onto a small balcony with a double bench seat. To her relief, there were several others already there—mostly matronly old ladies and middle-aged men. They were all dressed better than her high school prom king, save one.

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November 8, 2012

From “The Big Chills (and Fever)” by Vena Otta Humberto

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“So I managed to stagger to the health center to ask about the fever, headache, and chills that’ve kept me on my back all week.”

“And?”

“Health center thinks whatever I have is a viral infection against which they can do nothing, though they jabbed me with a sharp object just to be sure. They encouraged me to keep shoveling ibuprofen at the problem.”

“So you think that even after bloodwork they don’t know what it is?”

“Yeah. I’m totally doing a patient zero here. I bet it’s Ebola, or maybe Super Aids.”

“Wouldn’t Super Aids require you to have sex with somebody that isn’t, well, you?”

“You get Super Aids from direct eye contact. That’s why they call it Super Aids.”

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November 7, 2012

From “The Prosperity Alarm Clock” by C. Alton Parker

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Adam knocked on his sister’s door. “Virginia? Why are you still in bed?”

A groan from inside, something that might have been “long night.”

“Virginia! It’s past six and we need to get you fed and warmed up before the test!”

“It’s not ’til the 27th,” Virginia mumbled. “Go away.”

“Today’s the 27th, you lazy good-for-nothing! Get up or you’ll have to wait a whole year to take the test!”

“Yeah, sounds good. Wake me then.”

Adam shook his head. Another wild, late night no doubt–might even have something to do with the shotgun blasts Elmer Culloden mentioned at the pump earlier. But he wasn’t about to let Virginia throw away her chance to be a Prosperity Ranger…and to be out of his hair. He squared himself, put his weight on his good leg and battered the door open with his shoulder.

Virginia had pried up a plank from the wooden floor and set it against the door, one of her favorite tricks. It splintered and the door loudly crashed down upon it, raising a cloud of dust and sand (the girl never had been able to keep her room clean). Despite the racket, the pile of blankets and skins on the rough frame bed barely stirred.

Adam hobbled into the room. “Virginia! I don’t care what you were out doing last night, but if you don’t get up now, there’s gonna be hell to pay.”

“Put it on my tab,” his sister mumbled.

Adam sighed. As much as trying to oversleep didn’t become Virginia MacNeil, daughter of Marshals Vincent and Patricia MacNeil and soon-to-be Prosperity Ranger, it surely became Virginia, the little sister he had to live with day in and day out. And with his bad leg, there was no dragging her out of bed.

The alarm clock then. It was a luxury, it was dangerous, but there was no choice. Adam had been holding it back for a time when his sister’s unbecoming sleep patterns and the work that needed to be done clashed in the most desperate way.

He limped outside and returned bearing a heavy Remington 1858 black powder revolver.

At the first shot, Virginia started violently under the covers. At the second, she poked her head out, wild-eyed, from beneath them. “What the hell, Adam?”

Her brother cocked and fired once more. “What’s that, Virginia?” he cried. “I can’t hear you over the ringing in my ears.”

The last shot had appeared to be aimed directly at her; Virginia rolled out of bed snarled in a heap of covers. “Have you gone crazy? You could’ve killed me!”

Adam, noting with some amusement that his sister had been sleeping in her work clothes again, dropped the hammer on an empty chamber. “Just a blank powder charge, Virginia,” he laughed. “But even then, shouldn’t a Prosperity Ranger be ready for an attempted bushwhacking in bed?”

His sister swatted black powder fumes out of her face. “Not funny.”

“Says you. Now put out those embers before your bed catches afire and come to breakfast.”

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November 3, 2012

From “A 57,435 Kr Delivery Charge” by Sven-Kristian Halvorsen

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A man in the red and grey uniform of the Posten Norge was at the door. “I’ve got a letter here for Hjaldir, Sword-Brother of Skaerdjin, 6th mead-hall on the right, Plane of Ngalgir,” he said. “They paid extra for confirmed delivery. Is this the right address?”

“This is the mead-hall of Rovsdottir, Shield-Sister of Skraedyn,” said the Svartálfar thrall-maiden who had answered the knock. “Try two halls down; look for the one with stags of gold carved into the roof timbers.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. We get Hjaldir’s mail all the time. Is it from his mortal lover, Nana Pulaar of Burkina Faso?”

It was technically against the rules, but the man examined the letter anyway since he’d been asked so politely. “It looks more like a bill, but honestly I think it’s just snail mail spam. Thanks again.”

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November 2, 2012

From “The Paper Reel” by Eric Cummings Jr.

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For the NaNo Excerpt Blog Chain.

Have you ever seen a movie with an audition montage? The kind where it quickly cuts from one awful aspiring actor to another, and throwing in the director’s horrified reactions for good measure, despite his best efforts to maintain his composure?

My first student-teacher conferences were like that.

It’s something I carried over from teaching at Osborn College—over there, we were expected to be the kinder, gentler “good cop” teachers to the “bad cops” that did unpleasant things like fail students and give tests. Composition was about growing your students’ writing abilities, not fascist grades.

I assigned the fascist grades anyway, and just took care to document each step thoroughly, but the idea of a face-to-face conference with each student before each paper was due stuck with me, since freshmen who might otherwise hand in a piece of shit can sometimes be cajoled into improving their work if the instructor is right there. Or at the very least I’ll be able to tell if the shit they hand me has changed appreciably from the shit they had in conference.

To get things rolling, and eager not to repeat the disaster of my short story analysis assignment the previous year at SMU I assigned the kids a movie analysis paper. We didn’t have time to read a novel, and they all would have watched the movie version anyway, so I drew up a list of critically acclaimed movies that met the most crucial criteria of all: I liked them.

The first thing students would do was claim they didn’t have any idea what to write.

“I just don’t know what to write about,” said Ted, who had chosen Braveheart.

“Well, consider the character of William,” I said. “What was his motivation? Why did he do what he did?”

Ted shrugged. “Because he hated the English. That’s all I’ve got right now.”

“Well,” I asked, “Why did William hate the English?”

“Because they were the bad guys,” Ted said.

“Did you even watch the movie, or just read the back of the DVD case?” I wanted to ask. The fact that the conference was being conducted in a coffee shop on campus stayed my tongue.

“Think harder,” I said. Of course, I invariably did all the thinking, using guided language to get the student to realize, seemingly of their own free will, that William Wallace hated the English because they robbed him of the opportunity to live a simple life and raise a family.

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October 30, 2012

From “The Horror of Leaf Lung” by Katheleen Cainglit

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To save on the cost of raking and bagging the leaves that fell every autumn, Southern Michigan University policy was to have the groundskeepers mow over the leaves in place, mulching them into a fine dust that would naturally fertilize the grounds. It was touted as a cheap and green solution to the problem, the hydrocarbon-spewing leafblowers and mulchers aside.

Then, ten years after the policy was enacted, SMU found itself in the crosshairs of a class-action suit.

Attorneys representing the groundskeepers claimed that the fine particulate generated during the annual fall leaf mulch had given their clients “leaf lung.” Characterized by shortness of breath, chlorophyll poisoning, halitosis, winter lethargy, and PTSD, “leaf lung” was said to have cost the groundskeepers any chance of earning a livelihood in the future. Their attorneys asked for a million-dollar settlement for each victim.

Horrified at the prospect of bad PR, SMU paid immediately and resumed the old practice of bagging leaves to be hauled away and become someone else’s problem. The doctor’s reports came in one week after the settlement checks cleared: there had been no sign of anything harmful in the groundskeepers’ lungs, and the physicians at the University Hospital cheekily prescribed facemasks and goggles for the condition, including a pair (total cost: $2) with the report.

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October 26, 2012

From “The Crystal Cloud” by Karrie M. Bukowski

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It sounds like something out of a George Romero movie, but it happened: in late 2009, the small rural Michigan town of Stanley was the epicenter of an outbreak of mania. Residents reported periods of intense euphoria, nervousness, and increased energy.

One group worked a spontaneous double shift at a tool and die factory. A mechanic reported employees breaking and bending tools during highly energized repair sessions. And, perhaps most tellingly, the community outreach center bathroom (long a source of cheap and discrete contraceptives) ran out, and then was vandalized by assailants wielding pipe wrenches.

The police and city government, while suffering from the effects themselves (patrol car rotations were briefly increased to 24 hours), nevertheless sought out a cause. Older residents were complaining of heart problems, after all, and the local hospital was overwhelmed with cases of exhaustion. Stanley authorities put out an appeal to the state government for assistance, but investigative teams were as clueless as anyone else.

An answer came, oddly enough, from the Michigan Bureau of Atmospheric Pollution Research. They had been measuring pollution levels in Detroit and elsewhere with equipment sensitive to the parts-per-billion level, and a mobile lab quickly noted that an unknown substance was present in the Stanley air in concentrations high enough to affect long-term residents through accumulation. It took another round of tests before the identity of the agent could be determined.

It was methyl alpha-methyl phenyl ethyl amine, better known as methamphetamine.

A former resident had once described the countryside around Stanley as “lit by the glow of exploding meth labs.” It turns out the claims were not hyperbole; the MBAPR, tracing the airborne particulate to its source, found a number of sites neat the city limits where destroyed or poorly constructed meth labs were smouldering. Each was putting out smoke laced with the drug; the incidents had gone unnoticed by a fire department obsessed with cleaning its engines three times a day.

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