“‘Noble gases,'” says Vernon, “man, you’d never get away with that now.”
“Yeah, too poetic.” Sarasota grins up at a neon LOTTO. “You’d have to call them ‘centigrade-stable gaseous nonreactive elements’ or something…”
“You don’t think that’s poetic?”
“And they’d think up the names for new ones with those big new-drug-name computers.”
“Vartifex,” Vernon announces grandly. “Glookinor!”
“There should be common gases,” she says. “No, that’s boring. There should–there should be whimsical gases.”
“Oxygen,” says Vernon.
“What, because of fire?”
“Because most of what it does, apparently,” he says as he squints at a penny, “is turn things different colors.”
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Warwick actually did start a scab collection once, in fifth grade, inspired by a moment of vengeful hatred for his sister (he was going to put them in her soup). He waited carefully for them to fall off in the bath, then he saved them in a Russell Stover box. After a week he forgot the whole thing.
It isn’t until sixth grade that he finds the collection, and at first he doesn’t realize what they are–they’ve mostly disappeared, leaving behind little black fragments. Even these puff apart at his touch; they in turn leave behind the smell of rust.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Lorraine’s been in the jury box so long she’s worried she’ll forget how to talk. You don’t get to talk, in the jury box, and she’ll have to soon.
It started when they couldn’t agree over the stenographer’s accounts, so they put her hand on a Talmud and made her a witness. Then they wanted the bailiff to corroborate, so they stuck him on the stand. Then the judge.
The foreman’s finishing his cross; Lorraine’s getting nervous. It’s inevitable. And after the jury, then who? The audience? The news crews? The
Hold on. Hello? I’m sorry, I–
Is this a subpoena?
Monday, December 13, 2004
How do you get to be a writer? Cheat. Lie, rape, steal and backstab.
There is nothing new in existence, which is justification enough. Consider the books you read fresh meat. Find the devices everybody seems to like and replicate them as exactly as laziness permits (remember, effort spent writing is effort largely wasted). Take fanfic to its logical conclusion: copy sentences or, if possible, paragraphs in bulk.
Sleep with anyone who can get you out of the slush pile. I mean anyone.
They’ll tell you there’s no money in writing, of course, but of course they would. Think about that.
Thursday, December 9, 2004
The Ad Hoc catches the bullet, of course, but doesn’t seem prepared when the catch fails to stop it. The bullet careens off a thick conduit and then the concrete floor, trailing Ad Hoc, until they bury themselves in a stack of foam insulation.
Rita lowers the gun and walks up to it. She doesn’t smile, but her mouth quirks. “Hi,” she says. “Go ahead and tell your friends their pet isn’t unique anymore.”
She pries open one of the Ad Hoc’s eyes. Its pupil is clicking and fluttering, an inhuman twitch, like the wing of a beetle in a web.
Wednesday, December 8, 2004
The little room is humid, and much warmer than the air outside: moisture condenses where it touches the plexiglass. Water drops find other water drops and bunch up together, until they collect enough weight to start their arrhythmic slides down to the baseboard. There’s some bamboo in the room. It’s not healthy bamboo.
The little pool in the center is lined with black garbage bags, and the filtration unit at its side wheezes and shudders. It’s choking on deposits of minerals and ammonia. The ammonia is from dissolved koi waste. There are seventy-eight koi in the pool, and Marguerite’s cold hand.
Tuesday, December 7, 2004
Ellery waits a day for the varnish to dry before he takes the axe to the chair. After a while he switches to a sledgehammer, because it’s easier, and accomplishes the same thing.
“No record,” he pants to Kidra between swings. “No embarrassing beginnings. No evolution.”
“You’re not doing a very complete job,” says Kidra. It’s in crude, uneven pieces.
“Don’t care.” Ellery pauses to wipe his nose. “No snide commentary on my amateur days. Not ever. I want to burst into carpentry like Minerva, fully grown.”
But he buries the pieces instead of burning them. Kidra thinks she understands why.
He’s lighting up under a streetlight. Keira’s never smoked before, but she read about this trick in a magazine. “Oh, man,” she says as she approaches, “I just ran out and I’m gonna have a fit in a minute. Can I buy one off you for a quarter?”
“You read about that in a magazine?” he chuckles, but he gives her a cigarette, and doesn’t take the quarter.
Keira surprises herself by not coughing. “So what’s your name?” she manages; he just smiles.
“Come on,” she says. The ember tips of their cigarettes touch, and they jerk away as if burnt.
“You hear about down in Turquoise Park?” says the bus driver.
“I’m surprised they didn’t get electrocuted,” says the lady near the front.
“Hacked up all those Christmas lights. Ruined them.” The driver shakes her head. “Who would do that?”
“Electrocuted,” insists the other lady.
The bus driver finally processes this. “Yeah, you’re right!”
Tony can’t help himself. “They’d be fine if they used scissors with plastic handles, and it wasn’t–”
He flushes under the sudden suspicion of their glares. “–raining,” he mutters. Stupid, he thinks. He ought to remember by now that being sixteen is a punishable offense.
Thursday, December 2, 2004