November 14, 2012

From “Leaves of the Book of Life” by Charles S. Myrick

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“I am…a leaf collector. Of sorts.” Ingram straightened a bit to encompass the room with a sweeping gesture before returning with a grunt to his usual stooped-over posture.

Ross was nearly speechless. “They…they’re beautiful.” Leaves of every shape and size danced on the walls and froms strings in the air. Most were pressed flat, with a slight acrylic sheen, and all had either a letter or a simple picture cut out of them.

“Wherever I go, I cannot help but collect a handful of leaves here and there,” Ingram said, a note of pride detectable in his voice. “Then I return home to my flower press, and once they are flattened I craft the leaves into art or a message that most associates itself with where they were collected.”

“May I take a look?”

“Please.”

Faded by age and lit into translucency by the late afternoon sun, the most conspicuously displayed leaves each bore one letter of the word LOVE.

“I proposed to my wife on a fall day, in a park,” said Ingram, following Ross’s gaze. “I took two handfuls that day; the second is with her, in the Alzheimer’s home.”

“What about that one?” Ross pointed at a phrase arced across the wall: WEALTH.

“From my first business trip to Japan. The businessmen over there thought it terribly unlucky and inauspicious.”

Suspended in the far corner of the room, the shadow hiding the monofilament wire: LOSS.

Ross examined it, brow knitted.”Your wife?”

“No, she’ll get her own when I finally…lose…her,” Ingram sighed. “That’s something else entirely. Something much darker. Perhaps when I know you a little better you can hear the story.”

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November 12, 2012

From “The Jack-of-Cards” by Bridget-Alicia Elba

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The Jack-of-Cards will, if you win a game of high-draw against it, grant a simple request. Many, to their peril, have asked for something as they would a genie, only to have themselves dealt a two of spades for their insolence. Wiser folks have used the boon to ask the Jack-of-Cards something about itself, and their reports form all that is know about the figure’s nature. Asked where it came from, the Jack-of-Cards will answer that it has always been.

Asked whether it is God, the Jack-of-Cards will laugh and allow that there are powers greater than it to which it owes no fealty. Asked why it uses a deck of cards, or what it used before cards were invented, the Jack-of-Cards will only say that it is the latest in a long line of ‘tricks.’

Those who do not wish to be bothered will have their wishes respected. But should someone, of their own free will, approach or accost the Jack-of-Cards, they will be dealt a card that has irrevocable effects on the fabric of the universe. The Jack-of-Cards will often play a simple card game with those that are willing, with a card as the penalty for losing and a request as the prize. But just as often it will fling a card at the interloper without so much as a sound.

Witnesses and researchers have attempted to catalog the effect that the various cards have, but have reached few conclusions. One report holds that the suicide king, the King of Hearts, bestows imbecility. Another holds that it besots the bearer with an impossible love, while a third has it giving immidiate and most painful heartbreak. Cardholders have vanished, had their personalities or forms subtly or grossly altered, and more.

The one thing all agree on is that the two of clubs, when dealt, brings instant and total annihilation.

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November 11, 2012

From “Lost to the Depths of War” Sue I. Sideking

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“In the frenzy over Nazi submarines laden with gold and uranium oxide, the fate of Germany’s cargo submarines from the first world war is often overlooked. Yet German merchant submersibles were calling at American ports as late as November 1916, just four months before the United States entered the war.”

“Desperate to break or at leas circumvent the British blockade, the merchant submarines, seven in all, were built by the private Lloyd shipping company. Filled with advanced German chemical dyes and synthetic medicines, they returned laden with rubber, nickel, and tin. Each voyage paid for the cost of the boats many times over.”

“The historical record tells us that of the Imperial German cargo subs, only one was successful in making two voyages before America entered the war. It and the five subs that never made a voyage were armed and sent to war. The seventh sub left for America but mysteriously disappeared, and no trace of it–nor any record of its cargo manifest–were ever found.”

“But I have uncovered evidence of a visit by the post sub, the Bremen, to Portland, Maine in late December 1916, months after its scheduled arrival in Newport, Virginia. The documents not only point to the ship’s condition and ultimate destination, but offer a glimpse of its heretofore unknown cargo.”

“And that, gentlemen, is where we need to put on our English tea dresses, for we’re all going down the rabbit hole a bit on this one.”

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November 10, 2012

From “To the Slaughter” by Colton Danncy

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Author Cecile Blanche Lamb (real name Sallie-Nikki Logan) shot to national prominence with her 2005 bestseller Between the Tweens. A tale of 6th and 7th grade girls that was alternately flighty and weightily dramatic, it landed Lamb on both the bestseller lists and the ALA’s Most Challenged Book registry. For the 24-year-old author, a struggling teacher with crippling student loans and a part-time career as a substitute, the book and ensuing controversy was manna from heaven.

Even as parents across the nation demonstrated to have Lamb’s book removed from libraries and reading lists, the author wrote a sequel, Tween Choice Awards. It may not have impressed the critics who lauded the first title, but Lamb soon turned the book into a series with a new entry every year. By 2010 the fifth book spent ten weeks on the bestseller lists even as the controversy faded and critics (as well as readers) began to complain that the later titles were stale and derivative. Even so, Lamb amassed thousands of followers on her blog and Twitter accounts.

In November 2010, Lamb’s husband Michel Logan returned home to find his wife’s study in tatters, with broken windows, other signs of forced entry and struggle, and no sign of Lamb other than her cell phone under a desk. The computer was destroyed and the draft of Lamb’s latest book was missing. After he called the police, Michel was approached by his wife’s fans, who shared the last message poster to her Twitter:

“i thnk theres soemone in teh house.”

A nationwide manhunt was soon touched off, and Lamb became an instant cause celebré in social media, even among those who had disparaged her writing. #helpcecilelamb was the number one tag the week after the author vanished, and major news organizations covered the case with obsessive detail. Friends and publishing industry figures organized a fundraiser to help cover the cost of the ongoing investigation, and there was talk of renaming a major young adult industry award after Lamb.

But just as quickly as the narrative was established, it began to unravel. Investigators learned that Lamb had been carrying on an open affair with a coworker, and letters surfaced in which Lamb claimed that her side of the issue wasn’t “sympathetic” enough if it came to a messy public divorce. Forensic investigators found that the shattered glass was consistent with an inside breakage, and recovered text files on the computer showed that the novel on which Lamb had supposedly been working was all lorem ipsum filler.

Indeed, a careful analysis of the scene revealed that Lamb had taken a taxi and that, far from being abducted, she had been seen with an unknown male companion at her favorite health spa in New Mexico. As public opinion turned against her, the sightings ceased. Though the police were loath to devote additional resources to a hoax, the case officially remained open.

Lamb’s whereabouts remain unknown to this day.

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November 9, 2012

From “The Bottom of the Night IM” by Eric Cummings Jr.

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For the NaNo Excerpt Blog Chain.

Instead I took a look at my IM screen. Time was I’d used it more often than I talked to people in the flesh, but the proliferation of fancy new smartphones I couldn’t afford coupled with a lot of my old high school and Osborn University friends having lives and jobs and spouses and kids…

Well, let’s just say that Harriet Portman was one of only two people (Jim being the other) in my list that had been online in the last month and leave it at that. I hovered over Jim’s icon long enough to read his away message (monthly frag-off ho!) and then double-clicked Natalie’s icon. It said she was online but without activity for a few hours.

smallworld82: Hey Nat! Greetings from the Well of Great Hope, Hopewell! What’s the haps over in Cascadia?

I’d carried a bit of a torch for Natalie for years, but she’d said more than once that I was more like a big brother than anything else (the last thing you ever want to hear from the fairer sex). Whenever I had a spare moment for reflection I’d kick myself for missed opportunities, real or imagined, when we were in school together.

smallworld82: It’s been a crazy couple of weeks on my end. Papers to grade, papers to give, classes to slack off in, and a new group of campus crazies that seem to have taken a personal interest in me.

The Snowcoming Ball junior year, for example. Natalie had actually asked me, over IM, if I wanted to go. I’d had my eye on asking another somebody who, in retrospect, was about as likely to go with me as she was to be elected Pope. I’d turned her down, gently.

smallworld82: I am fighting the good fight for cynicism, bad puns, and terrible teaching using the only weapons at my disposal: the opinion page, press cards, and Jim (you remember Jim), the Omni-Sage of Computoria.

Natalie’d started dating some other guy not long afterwards; they’d met at the selfsame dance, I think. That was several boyfriends and at least one girlfriend ago. I still liked to bounce things off her, like I did with Jim, but I often had to hold back lest I let things get out of hand and type something embarrassingly creepily gushy.

smallworld82: I feel a bit like the blind man talking to the deaf guy. I can’t tell if you’re nodding.

I’d heard, from Jim as well as my parents, that I needed to spend more time out and about, to meet new people. But in addition to the roller-coaster dropoff in my stomach that thought unleashed…I was in this degree for the long haul. I’d seen it at Osborn: people graduate and move on, and I make friends at a pace so slow that glaciers pass me in the carpool lane. By the time I’m comfortable enough to just hang out, they’re gone: just another Facebook and IM friend keeping me in the house while construction crews dance upstairs and sound-based weaponry is tested next door.

smallworld82: Silent treatment because I was a little late in getting you that World of Warcraft gold for your birthday? I swear, it just took longer to earn it than I thought it would.
poorgnat22 is offline

Impossible to tell if that was the computer automatically declaring her so or Natalie setting it manually. I sighed, and snapped the program closed.

Another long night of nothing ahead.

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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 6, 2012

From “Marble Madness” by Curt Nuñez

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“What’s that you’re doing?” George groused, irritated by the constant splashing. The boy by the fountain didn’t respond, and the splashing and his youthful cries of disappointment continued.

It was quite impossible for George to continue to enjoy the nice weather from the bench or even think of feeding the birds when he was thus irked. Groping for his worn fedora, he stood up–carefully, as his back had a tendency to go out with too much sudden movement. He walked over to the fountain, waving the cane that he kept more for the purpose of swatting things than any real need for support.

“I said, what’s that you’re doing, boy?” George said. In the old days when someone’s elder addressed them they wouldn’t have had to repeat themselves. He was sure to keep a decent distance, though; the rise of perverts on every conceivable area of society made people weird about their kids and George wasn’t about to be caught up in a shouting match with some overprotective helicopter parent.

“I’m throwing pennies into the fountain,” the boy said. “For wishes.” He couldn’t have been more than six or seven; George bristled at the idea of a kid that young being left by himself, but that was the way it was with career moms and latchkey kids these days.

“Why are you doing that? Save your money. It’s annoying and you could drop hundred dollar bills in there all day without getting what you want.”

The boy tossed another dark penny into the water. “Nuh-uh. The kids at school say if you throw the penny just right the lady will catch it and you’ll get your wish.”

“The lady? Her?” George thrust his stick at the statue in the middle of the fountain, some 1930s conception of Columbia with flowing robes or other nonsense. “She’s made of marble, kid, and hasn’t moved since the day they hoisted her into place. Save your money; that’s the real way to get what you want. And for chrissakes stop all that noise.”

“I think a wish is worth a few pennies,” said the boy. “I have lots and Jimmy Feldman says he got his wish for a new bike.”

“For the love of all that is good and edible, kid,” George cried. “Listen to yourself! There’s no such things as wishes or spirits or anything besides what you see with your own two eyes! Your friend probably got that bicycle because his parents bought it for him, not by dumping perfectly good money into the drink.”

“You’re just saying that,” the boy said, flipping another coin into the water, “because you’re too cheap to try it.”

“Too cheap?” George reddened. “I’m just saying that because of a lifetime of being stone disappointed whenever I trusted in anything but myself to get what I wanted!” He fished a penny out of a coat pocket. “You think I’m too cheap to waste a penny on a goddamn fraud? Look at this!”

George flipped the penny–a 1947–using a variation of his old marble-shooting grip. The coin arced smoothly toward toward the water with the old man and the boy looking on.

A marble hand shot out and snatched the coin from midair. “What do you wish of me?”

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November 5, 2012

From “The Review Page” by Phil “Stonewall” Pixa

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This post is part of the October 2012 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “NaMoReMo (National Mock Review Month)”.

The Accountant and the Assassin
Altos Wexan
421 pages, hardcover
First Edition (August 21, 20XX)
ISBN-10: 223405857-X
ISBN-13: 942-449758221-X
Retrograde Triton Press (domestic printing)
Kyoto Processed Ricepaper Concerns Press (international printings)

There’s definitely no false advertising in this yarn, out earlier this year from Retrograde Triton. Wexan’s book dutifully serves up the collision between a staid accountant and a high-stakes assassin in an Manhattan-in-all-but-name metropolis. One might feel from such a title that the broad outlines of such a tale are obvious, but Wexan is able to lob a few inventive curveballs.

His accountant, for example, is a sunshiny eternal optimist to the point that his oily, more accountant-like cohorts call him “Pollyanna” to his face and heap their worst clients (like a young Paris Hilton soundalike) on his desk. The collision between this bumbling, upbeat character and the dour world of professional contract killing provides the majority of the book’s humor (which is frequent enough, especially near the beginning, that the book could almost be called a comedy).

The comedic pratfalls, including a daft inversion of the usual action movie car chase, are where the book is at its best. Attempts to wring tension out of the basic setup, as in an apartment standoff involving multiple identities and double-crosses, fall flat and are enough of a tonal mismatch that the book at times seems schizophrenic. The titular assassin, a few mild twists aside, is a stock character and despite some teases she and the accountant never seem to click. The villain, a psychotic assassin “competitor,” is written with gusto but seems to lack any real motivation.

Wexan has succeeded in writing a yarn that satisfies some of the old action cliches and inverts or plays with others. But his inability to reconcile the disparate characters and tones keeps the book from being anything more than a well-executed, enjoyable beach read. Recommended, but with reservations.

-Phil “Stonewall” Pixa, The Hopewell Review.

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Ralph Pines
bmadsen
dolores haze
SRHowen
Angyl78
writingismypassion
meowzbark
pyrosama
randi.lee
wonderactivist

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November 4, 2012

From “The Tetragrammaton Pit” by Hollis Contreras

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One of the strangest customs in Aegia is the so-called “Tetragrammaton Pit.” It apparently originated at the height of the monastic movement in early Orthodox Christianity and repurposed a sprawling set of subterranean ruins from Mycenaean times (or earlier) which the first monastics on the site excavated as a form of meditation.

The resulting structure was reportedly a labyrinth in the truest sense, rivaled only by the palace of Knossos on Crete in neighboring Greece. Codices contained in the adjoining monastery record that, after one of the monks became lost in the labyrinth, the order realized that the structure could be used to aid in an ascetic lifestyle. They began deliberately sealing themselves in to wander in the darkness without light, food or water.

Eventually, pilgrims came to the site as well, and the monks allowed them into the labyrinth. The holy name of God, the Tetragrammaton, was carved on a rock in the middle of the Pit by that first monk; to be released, a penitent had to find their way to that stone and feel its shape well enough to utter the name to the monks at the entrance. The Tetragrammaton contained within the Pit reportedly differed from the classical version; those that came to the trial knowing the latter were often surprised that the monks refused to accept their answer.

The only other option was collapse from hunger and thirst. The monks would attempt a rescue if someone was reduced to such a state, as indicated by a lack of echoing noise from the labyrinth for a period of two days, but often they were too late and the penitents would perish. Those who survived were lauded by their peers and the local Byzantine officials would often use the Tetragrammaton Pit as a rough civil service test, appointing those who had mastered it to high civil and military positions. The conquering Ottomans, repulsed by the practice, attempted to stomp it out.

But the trials continued, in secret, until they were officially acknowledge again after Aegia regained its independence following the Balkan Wars. Kjrnic Psuculos, the major postwar leader of Aegia, had completed the Tetragrammaton Pit, as had the first King, both in secret under the Ottomans. In time, the Pit resumed its former function as a brutal civil service exam and persisted as such through the coups, military rule, and ephemeral civilian governments that characterized the next century.

It was certainly possible to advance oneself without the Pit, and many did so. But within a country as conservative and close-knit as Aegia, completion of the Pit almost always guaranteed advancement and perks, even if only when all other things were equal. Of the last 20 leaders of Aegia, whether prime minister or president, colonel or king, 16 completed the Pit. This even after the Pit became so popular that the monks began requiring the completion of other trials, and a full physical exam, before allowing a supplicant to enter.

One to five people die in the attempt every year.

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