“Knew you wouldn’t miss tonight,” he says, as mustachioed men circle and sweat. “You’ve got a thing for Black Jack Sullivan.”
“I came to tell you I won’t be attending these fights anymore.”
“Oh, I see,” says Elijah, “now you have your own league in there to keep you entertained.”
“In fact, it’s because you made clear the risks–”
“Which risks in particular?” he says crookedly.
Proserpina’s pulse pounds in her healing eye. “Don’t try to be coy.”
“The risk of getting chased around by some squint-eyed cinema boy?”
“The risk of getting caught and–” she hesitates. “By some what?”
Thursday, September 11, 2008
“Well, we did it!” chuckles Jupe. “We solved the Case of the Pickled Papers!”
“With a little help from Nugget,” grins Frank. “Isn’t that right, boy?”
“Woof!” says Nugget, and licks his hand.
“But one thing still puzzles me,” says Jupe. “Why did Chet Norris leave his car keys on the other end table?”
“Why, you’re right–he’s ambidextrous!”
“Sounds like we might have the Case of the Clockwise Keyring on our hands!”
“Can I change out of the suit first?” Nugget pants. “The tail is really wedg–”
“You can damn well stay in character!” says Frank, with a friendly kick.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
At one point the Nazis track him down and inquire, via wine and jacked blonde ladies, where his spear is.
“What?” says Longinus, more interested in the wine. “I lost it.”
They attempt, via methods similar to those of the Inquitision, to jog his memory.
“The wine was more effective,” says Longinus.
“‘S in Masada!” he slurs later. “Defnitly Masada, less take a field trip down there.”
The covert mission into Palestine gets messed up pretty bad by the British spit-and-leather boys.
“Actually,” he muses to a blood-gasping SS kommandant, “I think it was in Libya! Man! Sorry!”
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
You don’t need tongs when you’ve got chitin.
Cadmilus can thrust his hand hot in the forge-heart for minutes, waiting for the steel to flare white, and all his skin will do is redden. The hard part is remembering not to scratch his nose afterward. That’s what got his father, in the end: or so old Heph said, when they buried him.
He keeps promising (on his shuffling rants around the caldera, always avoiding the real work) to introduce Cadmilus to some women like him, too. Cadmilus doesn’t really want that. Who wants to be caressed by a fiddler’s claw?
Monday, September 8, 2008
It is at night, during those weeks when the moon starves or gorges, that Howard finds himself drawn to read it. The URL is unpronounceable, full of strange and squamous diacritics; but it crawls from his fingers even when his browser refuses to autocomplete.
The story is grotesque beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer. His attention is captured by a vast description: a page in a book which, the story says, cannot convey in mere words its own unutterable hideousness.
Howard imagines going mad, reading it.
“The window!” he gasps, scrambling to click its corner X. “The window!”
Friday, September 5, 2008
Gheorghe’s been trying to flag a ride for hours and the sun is trembling on the swamp horizon: the dark chases his feet down the dirt of the road. He’s friendless, and the woman he loved is lost to him. His panflute pipes a lonely cockeye’s song.
A cold wind tosses the kerchief bindle over his shoulder, and the few coins in his possession spill onto the ground. He drops to his knees to scrape them up.
Six silver dollars stare at him, all on edge.
Midnight. Gheorghe Zamfir stands at the crossroads, shivering, knowing the devil will be there soon.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
The Born Breathing are too many, too relentless. See Me swings his sword helplessly, but as he blocks one blow, another bamboo staff cracks his shoulders, his knees, his abdomen. Blood in his eyes: the wound of his missing hand is reopened. He sobs.
“You are beaten,” purrs the Speaker. “It is useless to resist. Don’t let yourself be destroyed as Ratio Tile did.”
“Don’t make me destroy you!” See Me roars.
“You do not yet realize your importance,” sniffs the Speaker. The Wish Power is like a breaking wave, and See Me a twig: he tumbles down into the freezing fountain.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Philemon is in his Riddling Hall; and therefore he is riddling.
“Consider this: may any touch Our Imperial Majesty without permission?” he asks.
The assembled philosophers rumble, no.
“Yet does a man’s shadow not cling to his feet?”
“Not when he skips,” chirps a little girl, as the crowd gapes around her.
“You again!” sniffs Philemon. “Well, consider this: in my Riddling Hall I am lit with a thousand lanterns, my shadow trapped under my feet! Can I not be said to have conquered darkness?”
“Well, if you trap your shadow in a box,” asks Corbin, “what does that make you?”
Monday, September 1, 2008
“Give it!” says Boko, and, grabbing the TransfoJet 5000, he shoves little Lucia down the stairs. She tumbles into a heap at the bottom and wails.
Now Boko has Maser Man and the TransfoJet 5000. He glances slyly toward Jamon, playing with the Glop Fortress.
He stomps and yanks hair. He bites and shoves. He becomes a terror, and the other children flee before him.
At last Boko finds himself alone in the playhouse. He has all the newest, shiniest toys, but nobody else to play with them.
It’s completely awesome and he lives for a hundred years and dies happy.