Archive for the ‘Series’ 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.
A Winter’s Fantasy II
Monday, December 15th, 2008
A follow-up to last year’s A Winter’s Fantasy.
It was a good thing we looked in urn before using it as a wicket for roller-croquet in the west ballroom. Otherwise, we would never have found the governess.
Great-grandfather’s governess, who all the family stories had eloping with a traveling salesman after a fancy dress ball, still in her frog mask and lily-pad green gown.
The next morning, Edmund and I found we’d had the same dream: the governess, ethereal, wander-drifting the hallways, muttering a word over and over. Best we could figure, the word was, “Nog.”
It was late December, and that had been when she’d died; we knew what she wanted.
We swiped a cupful from the countesses’ own icebox, sprinkled on nutmeg thick as dust in the library. A cup and saucer, governess-neat, right in front of her urn.
It wasn’t enough: we did long division in our dreams all night, squeaking chalk on blackboards while she chanted, “Nog nog,” in our ears — which really didn’t help the math.
Our winter break wouldn’t amount to much if that kept up, so we raised clouds of dust in the library trying to figure out what she was after. A whole bookcase of cookbooks, but nothing on “ghost nog,” “ghoul nog,” or “spectral nog.” Eventually, we found something called the Gastronomicon propping up a broken-legged table, and among its burnt-oil-smelling pages we found a recipe for ectoplasmic nog.
I won’t bore you with what we went through to gather the ingredients, what Aunt Fiona said when she discovered who’d swiped her favorite perfume, what the vicar did upon finding the ox liver in his boot, or with what smoldering hatred our older sister’s fiance looked at us when he found out what we’d been skinning with his razor; I’ll only say that, after all that, it didn’t work.
Bleary-eyed after a night of copying Caesar’s Gallic Wars onto an infinite chalkboard, it came to me: Norton Osgood Guernsey, the tutor back in Great-Grampa’s day. The murderer.
In spite of the blizzard, we bundled up, rousted his coffin from the servants’ crypt, chopped a hole in the end of the pond that’d be froggiest come spring, and sank him.
That was enough: in our dreams that night, she smiled in the winter garden, not a stick of chalk in sight, just snow, behind her, out the window, falling faintly and generally, upon all the living and the undead.