Archive for the ‘Luc Reid’ Category
Tales of the Exiled Letters: B is for Bureaucracy
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
After a long delay, here is the second story in the Tales of the Exiled Letters series. The first piece in this series, A is for Authority, appeared in April, 2007.
“But to business,” B said, bending over her bright blue blotter. “Please, be seated.”
X sat on the bare black bench across the desk from B, nervously crossing and uncrossing his legs.
“Now, X,” B said. “How long have you been a letter?”
“Well, I don’t remember exactly. About two thousand years? Maybe twenty-five hundred?”
“And you’ve served as, my goodness, quite a lot of things, haven’t you? I see that in addition to your literary duties, you’ve worked in algebra, codes, Roman numerals, corrections … this list just goes on and on. And haven’t I seen you in multiplication?”
“Excuse me, that’s times,” said X. “He only looks like me. We’re not related.”
“And what sound, exactly, do you make?”
X felt extremely uncomfortable. He did not, of course, want to be expelled from the alphabet, and he’d heard rumors that the alphabet was considered to be running a little “fat” at the moment.
B smiled. “Well, I’ll tell you, shall I? It seems to be ‘ks,’ doesn’t it? Except sometimes it’s ‘kz’ or that sort of ‘kh’ sound, or ‘z,’ or ‘sh’ … really, X, don’t you have a sound of your own you could make? And you haven’t been beginning very many words, now, have you?”
“There’s xylophone!” X exclaimed.
“Be serious,” said B.
“Xanthic,” X extemporized. “Xenophobe. X-ray …”
“Stop, please,” B said. “Don’t belittle yourself. It’s not becoming. I think we both know what will become of you.”
“Except –”
“But me no buts,” said B. She held up a list. “This is the Alphabet, also known as the A-list.” She put it down and picked up another. “This is my list, the B-list. Do you know what happens to letters on the B-list?” She beamed balefully. “They become ex-letters. Get it?” She bore down on a button. “Bring backspace,” she bid.
“This is excessive,” X said in exasperation, “examine–”
“Those words don’t even begin with X,” B broke in. The door opened a bit. X leaped upon B and held her down, muffling her with his vertex.
Backspace entered the room, massive, and eraser-like, but his boss was effectively crossed out. Backspace surveyed the room blankly, found nothing to read, and silently backed out, closing the door behind him.
X muttered an expletive and crossed to the window before B could budge. Glass exploded as X leapt through it, exiting to the extensive grounds.
“You’ll be sorry you dared to cross me!” B blustered. But X was gone as though he had never existed.
Brat
Thursday, December 4th, 2008
After the bolts of green fire from the sky had finally ceased to fall, after the screaming across the world had been drowned out in a deadly roar of heat and force, after the last remnants of unprotected buildings aboveground had collapsed in twisted, melting, ashy heaps, after the gasworms had been released to tunnel mindlessly, automatically, mechanically into the rock and seek out the hidden shelters, after the last of the live radio signals, but before Dr. Vanfrancus made it back into his carefully-protected family preserve from the liquor store, where he had bought two cases of absinthe (officially to extract thujone from them, as his wife generally made it very hard on him when he attempted to bring liquor into the compound for personal consumption), and before Mrs. Vanfrancus made it back from her daily power walk, and especially before anyone knew that yet another nanny had quit and left the compound in a huff, 7-year-old Melina Vanfrancus came back out of her father’s study, where she was expressly forbidden to be and especially where she was expressly forbidden to play with the controls to the machines her father had told her at many a bedtime he would soon use to become ruler of the world through threatening the destruction of all life on Earth, and sat back down across from her favorite doll, whom she had named Princess Sarah Palin.
“I’m very sorry to have made you wait, Princess Sarah Palin,” Melina said, “but now we won’t have to worry about any more interruptions to our tea for anything so silly as baths. Could I tempt you with more fairy cake?”
Princess Sarah Palin accepted just one more piece of fairy cake, as she was watching her figure.
“And really, calling me a brat,” said Melina, and she delicately set to eating her fairy cake.