Mass Medea

One of the last shows I ever remember watching regularly (or as regularly as I can manage) in prime time was the late great "Sports Night" (1998-2000), created and almost entirely written by Aaron Sorkin, who later created "The West Wing" and, decidedly less successfully, "Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip." Anyway, I think he's a great screenwriter and at some point (after watching the "Sports Night" DVDs about 80 times) I started developing a low-rent version of his dialogue style, which isn't necessarily realistic, but I like it a lot.

At any rate, one of my experiments in this vein was a comedy-drama feature-length screenplay called Mass Medea, a tale of the rise and fall of a technology magazine during the Internet boom. Since it's 130 pages, I'll only post bits of it at a time so as to not give Blogger a nervous breakdown.

"Mass Medea"
An Original Screenplay

FADE IN:

EXT. SAN FRANCISCO - DAY

As TITLES run, various shots of the skyline of San Francisco. As TITLES end,

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. JANICE’S APARTMENT BUILDING - DAY
ESTABLISHING SHOT

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. JANICE’S LIVING ROOM - DAY

JANICE FRANKEN, 22, lives in a small, two-bedroom apartment. It has that certain appealingly disheveled just-graduated-from-college look to it. It is about 6 a.m. The TELEVISION is on, tuned to CNBC.

NEWSCASTER

(on TV)

...Could the Dow hit 20,000--or even higher—sometime during 1999? That’s the contention of a new book, Dow 36,000, co-written by James Glassman, economics columnist for the Washington Post.

Janice pads out of the bedroom wearing a ratty bathrobe and a pair of slippers. She has obviously not slept much of the night.

NEWSCASTER (CONT’D)
(on TV)

The basic argument of the book is that in this new economy, stocks are no riskier than bonds in the long term and should be priced accordingly...

As she passes the front door on her way to the kitchen, it opens and her roommate, CAROL, 22, enters. She is just getting home from work.

CAROL

Why is there half a mouse on the doormat?

JANICE

Another love offering from Chuck and Bob’s cat is my guess.

CAROL

Jesus, it’s nature red in tooth and claw in here.

JANICE

Are you just getting in?

CAROL

Whatever gave you that idea?

Carol shuts the door.

JANICE

Give me a break. I got exactly one hour of sleep last night.

CAROL

Why? Did Wild Kingdom out there keep you up?

JANICE

I’m starting a new job today.

CAROL

Really? I could never have guessed, especially given how you’ve been obsessing about it all week.

JANICE

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It took forever for me to get this job. I’m nervous about it.

CAROL

What magazine is it again? Dork Monthly?

JANICE

Bite me.

CAROL

We’re in the middle of the biggest economic boom in the history of this country, we’re living right in the epicenter of it, and leave it to you to be the only person in San Francisco who takes six months to find a job.

JANICE

Hey, that guy on Market Street last night didn’t have a job.

CAROL

Well, that’s because he couldn’t go five minutes without yelling at the top of his lungs about impending Armageddon. You didn’t do that on any of your job interviews, did you?

JANICE

Damn! That’s why the job hunt took so long.

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. BAY BRIDGE - DAY
ESTABLISHING SHOT

Traffic is backed up and unmoving on the Bay Bridge. Among the traffic is a silver Lexus.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. NEAL’S CAR - DAY

The driver of the silver Lexus is NEAL MOSLEY, 38. He is talking on a cellphone.

NEAL
(on phone)

Yes, I know I shouldn’t be talking while driving but I’m not driving. I’m sitting. A truck filled with garlic overturned. The Bay Bridge is blocked by five tons of garlic bulbs. It’s like an Emeril fantasy out here...I told you, I have to go to Oakland to pick up some scans. We have to get the issue to the printer today...if I ever get off this goddamn bridge!...No, honey, sorry. You know how I get when I’m stuck in traffic....No, that road rage incident was a complete fluke. Who knew that guy could read lips?....No, I won’t be home for dinner. I’ll probably be in the office until late. You know the drill.

(He cranes his neck to see up the road.)

Actually, it’s entirely possible I’ll be stuck on this bridge until late...

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. GEORGE’S APARTMENT HOUSE - DAY
ESTABLISHING SHOT

George lives in a Tales of the City-like apartment house. Lots of stairs, lots of vegetation.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. GEORGE’S BEDROOM - DAY

The apartment is only slightly more upscale than Janice’s. The bedroom is that of a 20-something single male. GEORGE STEIN, 25, is sound asleep in bed, despite the fact that a boombox next to the bed is blaring LOUD MUSIC (Spock’s Beard’s “Day for Night.”) There is a THUD on the ceiling above him that is just barely audible above the music, but it wakes George nonetheless.

GEORGE

Not again...

He gets up and walks out to the kitchen.

INT. GEORGE’S KITCHEN - CONTINUOUS

There is a full pot of coffee already brewed on he counter. George pours himself a mug and stands at the kitchen sink staring into space blankly. He catches a glimpse of the clock, which says “8:27.” He starts and does a spit-take.

GEORGE

Shit!

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. CALTRAIN - DAY

CARL HOGARTH, 42, is sitting on a moderately crowded Caltrain train as it RUMBLES down the track. Next to him is a very-early-20-something man on a cellphone. Carl tries to read a book, but ANNOYING CELLPHONE MAN’s conversation keeps distracting him.

ANNOYING CELLPHONE MAN
(on phone)

What does Victor think? Can we get Pullman to kick in the VC money we need?...But that’s crazy...No, look, I want to IPO by...I don’t care how unreasonable you think that is, I think it makes perfect sense. The infrastructure is nearly in place, the servers are humming, and aside from that one software glitch, which Rohit fixed, we have no problems. The spinning logo looks great, the animation is dynamic, and the site design is top-notch. I think we’re cooking with Crisco here....

Carl, trying to read his book, has been growing ever more visibly frustrated. The “Crisco” comment elicits a bemused/confused expression.

ANNOYING CELLPHONE MAN (CONT’D)
(on phone)

What’s the latest on the UPS question?...Well, where is she? Why isn’t...This should have been resolved last week...I mean, if we’re going to get sofas-and-sleepers.com off the ground, I need to know how much UPS will charge us to ship a couch....

Carl is unable to stifle a laugh, which attracts the attention of Annoying Cellphone Man. Carl pretends it was something he read, despite the fact that the book he’s reading is “The Complete Techie’s Guide to Red Hat Linux.”

The train stops, and accepts and discharges a complement of passengers. One of the boarding passengers is a HOMELESS GUY, with long greasy grayish black hair and a thick beard. Annoying Cellphone Man dials a new number.

ANNOYING CELLPHONE MAN
(on phone—and loudly)

Carol! It’s Martin! Look I need the UPS question answered now!

Carl stands and offers Homeless Guy his seat. Homeless Man sits down. Annoying Cellphone Man wrinkles his nose, and looks over at Homeless Guy. Carl smiles mischievously as he walks to the other end of the train.

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. COOL GADGETS OFFICE BUILDING - DAY
ESTABLISHING SHOT

The Cool Gadgets building is a not especially new building in San Francisco’s SOMA district.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. BRIAN’S OFFICE - DAY

BRIAN MORSE, 44, is sitting at his desk. He is talking to ED over a speakerphone.

BRIAN

Ed, Brian.

ED
(O.C., on speakerphone)

Good morning, Brian. What’s new on the Left Coast?

BRIAN

Not much...yet. We’re shipping the issue to the printer tonight, so it’ll be a long day.

ED
(O.C., on speakerphone)

Thanks for reminding me. I’ll make it a point not to call Neal today.

BRIAN

That would be advisable. Ed, I just wanted to let you know that Katz Software is having a press event at the Hilton in Midtown. Once again, they forgot to put you on the list, but I cleared your credentials with Jackie. So if you just show up you’ll be fine.

ED
(O.C., on speakerphone)

Well, I’ve only been your East Coast editor for a year, and Katz’s PR guy is dumber than a bag full of hammers. What time?

BRIAN

2:00 your time.

ED
(O.C., on speakerphone)

I’ll be there. Katz always hires the best caterers.

BRIAN

Gracias.

ED
(O.C., on speakerphone)

By the way, I’m having e-mail problems this morning, so if you need me, the phone is the best option.

BRIAN

Gotcha.

(suddenly remembers something)

Oh, shit!

ED
(O.C., on speakerphone)

It’s not my fault. Blame Bell Atlantic.

BRIAN

No, I forgot to fix the server before Neal gets in. Gotta go.

ED
(O.C., on speakerphone)

I hear you. Ciao.

Brian clicks off the speakerphone and dashes out of his office.

INT. RECEPTION AREA - DAY

The Cool Gadgets reception area is opposite the elevator, which opens, and Janice exits. She is dressed formally. She walks through a set of glass doors to the reception area, which looks clean, sterile, and corporate. Behind the reception desk on the wall is a large framed poster of the debut issue of the magazine, and elsewhere on the walls are various framed magazine covers, interior pages, and so forth. On the reception desk are several loose copies of the latest issue. As Janice approaches the tall reception desk, she can’t see anyone behind it.
The phone rings and the as-yet-unseen Terri answers it. She is very polite, and her voice sounds like that of a professional receptionist.

TERRI
(O.C., on phone)

Good morning, Cool Gadgets....Circulation? One moment, please.

TERRI, 19, stands up. She has fluorescent pink hair, a variety of piercings (ear, nose, lip, and tongue), and wears a white tank top that shows off her many tattoos, the most prominent of which reads “Michelle” in a large heart. She startles Janice—in a variety of ways.

TERRI
(yelling off to her left)

Dave, dog! Line 1!

Terri looks at Janice.

TERRI

May I help you?

JANICE

Um, yes. I’m Janice Franken. I’m looking for Neal Mosley. I’m his new...

TERRI

Right...you’re the new meat.

JANICE

Sorry?

From the left comes DAVE, who looks to be the male counterpart of Terri—he is also in his late teens, but has vibrant blue hair. He has no piercings, but his cutoff shorts display an array of tattoos on his legs.

DAVE

That guy was pissed because his issue was a day late. Like I can control the fucking Post Office.

TERRI

Dave, this is Janice, Neal’s new victim. Janice, this is Dave, the circulation director.

DAVE

You’re working for Neal? Man, you have my sympathy.

TERRI

I’m Terri, by the way.

JANICE

Hi. Um, what happened to Neal’s previous assistant?

DAVE

Just cracked up. The guys in white coats had to come get him. Last I heard he’s in some nuthouse down the coast.

Janice begins to catch on that he’s joking and smiles nervously.

DAVE

Seriously, though, good luck.

JANICE

Thanks. Where is...

TERRI

(pointing to the left)

The newsroom? Head that way, take your first left and then the next left. You can’t miss it.

JANICE

Thanks.

Janice heads right.

INT. NEWSROOM - DAY

Cool Gadgets magazine’s main editorial and production newsroom is a large open room, the back of which is lined with three adjacent offices. There is a large round table in the center of the room, which at the moment, is piled high with papers, magazines, random pieces of computer hardware, and boxes of software. Off the left side of the newsroom is Brian’s office. On the far right is one of those Staples-like pre-fab computer desks atop which sits a computer—the company’s server. The newsroom is a bit shabby and run-down—“lived in” might be a better term—in contrast to the slick cleanliness of the reception area.

Brian’s legs protrude from under the server desk. His head and torso cannot be seen. He is noodling with cables.

Janice enters from the right and walks past Brian. No one else is around, and she looks around confusedly. She walks over to Brian’s office, pokes her head inside, sees no one, and walks back through the room. She spies Brian’s legs and stops.

JANICE

Excuse me…

Brian starts and loudly bumps his head on the underside of the computer table.

BRIAN

Shit! Ow!

Brian emerges and struggles to his feet, rubbing his head.

JANICE
(horrified)

Oh, Mr. Morse, I’m so sorry. This isn’t a very auspicious way to begin my first day.

BRIAN

The first thing I’m going to do is put a bell around your neck.

He goes straight to the computer and begins clicking the mouse.

BRIAN

Aha! The network is back. Neal will be so happy.

Janice watches him, unsure of what to do or say next.

BRIAN
(turning to her)

Janice, right?

JANICE

Yes, I-

BRIAN

You’re the new editorial assistant Neal just hired.

JANICE
(sheepishly)

Well, I don’t know for how much longer…

BRIAN
(rubbing his head)

Ah, don’t worry about that.

(He extends his hand.)

Brian Morse, publisher of Cool Gadgets magazine.

JANICE
(shaking his hand)

Janice Franken, editorial assistant.

BRIAN

Yes, I know.

(He turns back to the computer and starts clicking the mouse again. They speak as he works.)

Sorry for being so distracted, but if the network isn’t working by the time Neal gets in he’ll kill me.

(He clicks some more.)

So…are you new to San Francisco?

JANICE

Pretty new. I’m from Perth.

BRIAN

Perth? Australia?

JANICE

New York. It’s a very small town in upstate New York. Near Albany. I went to school in Albany.

BRIAN

I don’t know if I’ve ever been to Albany. I’ve been to—what’s that city that’s the capital of New York?

JANICE

That would be Albany.

BRIAN
(stops)

Really?

JANICE

Yes.

BRIAN

You’re sure about that?

JANICE

Extremely sure, yes.

BRIAN

Syracuse! I thought it was Syracuse.

JANICE

It’s not.

BRIAN

Really?

JANICE

The signs in Albany that say “Capital Buildings Next Exit” are a pretty good clue.

(Brian turns to face her and gives a faint smile.)

BRIAN

Sassing the publisher already, are you? And after you make him smack his head on a computer desk, too.

JANICE
(mortified)

I’m sorry, I didn’t…

BRIAN

Relax. You’ve got attitude—-you’ll need that around here. I don’t know that we’ve found you a desk yet. Here--

(He motions to the round table)

I guess we could put you here for the time being. I’ll just clear away some of this crap.

He begins stacking things under the table.

George enters. He trudges slowly and is not quite awake.

GEORGE

Today is not going to be a good day.

BRIAN
(mock-perkily)

Good morning, George.

GEORGE

Bite me hard.

BRIAN

Rough night?

GEORGE

I got exactly two hours of sleep, thanks to my horrible upstairs neighbors.

BRIAN

Ah, the Dutch couple.

JANICE

You have a Dutch couple living above you?

GEORGE

I assume they’re Dutch.

JANICE

You heard them speaking Dutch?

BRIAN

Oh, boy….

GEORGE

Wooden shoes!

BRIAN
(laughs)

What a great set up!

GEORGE

(not laughing)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JANICE

(a bit embarrassed, but amused nonetheless)

I take it they’re loud?

GEORGE

Not only are they, by the sound of it, world-champion clog dancers, but last night—all night—they were practicing for what I can only assume to be the finals in the large metallic orb dropping competition.

JANICE
(laughs)

Orb dropping?

GEORGE

It would have to be! I laid there for hours trying to think of what in the world they could possibly be doing, and that was all I could come up with.

BRIAN

Orb dropping.

GEORGE

Metallic orb dropping.

BRIAN

I see.

GEORGE

So today’s going to be a complete blow-off.

BRIAN

We do have to get the issue done by midnight. If I remember correctly, you still have that interview with Camilla Dane from Webcorp to get into Neal.

GEORGE

Shit, you’re right. Can I punt?

BRIAN

Hey, I’m happy to sell another ad and put it there, but Neal might have something to say about it. Unless I’m mistaken, he’s playing up the interview on the cover.

GEORGE

Yeah, it’s big juju. She never talks to anyone, preferring to live some kind of Howard Hughes-like existence. He might want me to finish it.

BRIAN

By the way, this is Janice. Neal’s new assistant.

GEORGE

Oh, right, glad to meet you. Welcome to the jungle.

(He shakes her hand, then turns and shambles over to his office.)

Is there coffee?

BRIAN

Is the Pope Catholic?

GEORGE

(dropping his backpack on his desk and returning to the center of the room)

That’s always been my assumption but I can’t say anything for certain at the moment.

George exits. Neal enters hurriedly.

NEAL

Sorry I’m late.

BRIAN

Neal, you were here until 1:30 last night. I’m going to complain because you come in at 9:20?

Neal darts into his office, drops his briefcase on his chair, and straightens his tie. He returns to the center of the room.

NEAL

I had to pick up a CD-ROM with some scans from a service bureau in Oakland and naturally traffic was backed up on the Bay Bridge.

(to Janice)

You must be Janice.

JANICE

Yes, um, good morning.

NEAL

Right. As soon as I get settled I’ll show you what I need you to do this morning. Brian, what’s the network situation? Do we have our DSL back up?

BRIAN

All systems go.

NEAL
Fine, thank you.

Neal disappears back into his office.

BRIAN

(to Janice)

I’ll leave you to it, then. Good luck.

JANICE
(somewhat nervously)

Thanks.

Brian retires to his office. Janice finishes clearing off the table that is to be her desk. George ambles back in holding a large mug of coffee.

GEORGE

Is this where Neal is putting you?

JANICE

I guess so. That’s what Brian said.

GEORGE

We’ll get you a real desk before long. This is a hectic time of month.

JANICE

That must explain why Neal seems so…

GEORGE

Psycho? Nah, he’s always like that.

JANICE
(now even more nervous)

That’s reassuring.

GEORGE

Don’t be nervous. Neal’s a good a guy. He just takes some getting used to.

Neal emerges from his office.

NEAL

We have got to get a new messenger service. I called them at 8:30 to pick this up and they said they couldn’t get out to Oakland until noon. That’s completely unacceptable.

HELEN RUTHERFORD, 57, enters.

HELEN

Oh, dear, has there been another problem with Quicksilver Messengers?

GEORGE

They’ve got mercury poisoning, apparently.

HELEN

Aren’t we the wit this morning?

NEAL

You’ve been complaining about the messenger service?

HELEN

If Jesus Christ were alive, he would complain about the messenger service. Now, I’m going to get final text for the Tech Update department by 10 o’clock, right?

NEAL

Yes.

HELEN

And are the scans for the PDA feature on the production server?

NEAL

I put them there last night. And you’ll also get first-pass pages back in 15 minutes.

HELEN

That’s what I like to hear.

Helen continues on to her office.

GEORGE

I like that. Quick, decisive action.

NEAL

Where’s my Webcorp story?

GEORGE
(spins toward his office)

On the editorial server in 20 minutes.

George heads to his desk.

NEAL
(points to Janice)

Now, Janice, what I’m going to have you do is proofread pages.

JANICE

OK.

Neal looks at the table that Janice had been clearing.

NEAL

Where did they go?

JANICE

Um—

NEAL
(starting to freak out)

They were on this table. Helen had printed them out last night. They were right here. Where did everything that was on this table go?

JANICE

Brian was clearing a place for me to sit.

NEAL
(sighs heavily)

Jesus fucking Christ, this place—Could people leave things where I put them. The more I try to keep things organized, the more chaotic it gets.

Janice is now completely terrified, and looks down at one of the piles that Brian had put on the floor. She picks them up.

JANICE

These look like page proofs.

NEAL
(grabbing them)

Ah, yes. Great.

(He puts them on the table in front of her.)

Now, these are pages from the issue were working on. Read through them and mark any typos, misspellings, punctuation errors, things like that When you’re done, please give them to Helen.

JANICE

Right.

NEAL

Oh, and they need to be done—

JANICE

In 15 minutes?

NEAL

Right. Thanks.

He heads to his office and sits at his computer, his back to the door. Janice sits down and looks at the pages in front of her. She seems confident and starts making marks.

INT. NEAL’S OFFICE - CONTINUOUS

JEAN ROSSI, 41, enters hurriedly. She is holding a sheet of paper. She KNOCKS on Neal’s door. Their exchange is mock-combative—with Neal a tad less mock than Jean.

JEAN

Neal...

NEAL

(spinning around)

Jean...Shit, don’t tell me...

JEAN

Don’t freak out...

NEAL

Don’t fucking tell me...

JEAN

I have a change to the run-up. Page 38--

NEAL

Not again.

JEAN

Page 38--

NEAL

Jean, the point of giving me a run-up a week before production begins is so that I know how many ad pages there are and how many editorial pages I can have.

JEAN

Yes, having been a managing editor for almost 10 years, I’m vaguely aware of how the magazine publishing process works.

NEAL

If you’re going to change the run-up less than 12 hours before we go to press, why do we bother with it in the first place?

JEAN

And why do people drive yellow cars?

NEAL
(shakes his head, bewildered)

What?

JEAN

There are many questions that defy easy answers. Anyway, page 38 now has a half-page horizontal ad.

NEAL

So I lose 500 words of Mark’s feature.

JEAN

Apparently, yes.

NEAL

And that page was done, too. I love doing the same thing 50 times.

JEAN

Just think how good you’ll be at it.

NEAL

You’re going to be no help at all today, are you?

JEAN
(smiles)

When am I ever?

NEAL

Good point. Let me go repair the damage you’ve inflicted.

Neal dashes out of his office and into George’s.

INT. GEORGE’S OFFICE - CONTINUOUS

NEAL

George, I need you to go into the Edited Text folder and cut 500 words from Mark’s feature. Let Helen know when you’re done.

GEORGE

Gotcha.

Neal dashes into Helen’s office. Jean follows him.

INT. HELEN’S OFFICE - CONTINUOUS

NEAL

Helen, page 38 is now a half page.

JEAN

FPO image is on the ad server. File is called “New Horizon.”

HELEN

Thanks.

NEAL

We’re going to be 500 words long on Mark’s feature. George is cutting it. Please add our “Web Extra” box at the end of the article. You can pick it up from page 56 of last month’s issue.

HELEN

No problem.

NEAL

Thanks.

(to JEAN)

See? You think you can screw up my magazine? Hah!

Jean sticks her tongue out at him.

HELEN

Can you people go away now?

They all disperse to their respective offices.

INT. NEWSROOM - CONTINIOUS

Carl enters and walks into Brian’s office.

INT. BRIAN’S OFFICE - CONTINUOUS

Carl sits own on a chair in front of Brian’s desk and watches Brian have a phone conversation. Carl is holding a camera. As Brian talks, Carl is playing with the camera, examining its features, etc.

BRIAN
(on phone)

What does the rate card say?... Well, then why are you…Did you point out that we have a circ of--?...I know exactly what Modern Electronics has, and we’re ahead of them…Yes, again, look at your rate card! That little pie chart that Helen spent two hours making? That tells you exactly who our readership is…. Tom! If you’re not going to bother looking at the sales materials we give you, I don’t know what else I can do.... We’ve had a very good relationship with MediaBus, and when I met Miriam at the HP party two months ago she said they would definitely sign in July. This is July…. Look, Tom, I’ve got Carl in my office right now. Just get MediaBus in the next issue, all right? One more full-page ad and we can go up to 104 pages in September…. Bye.

He SLAMS down the phone.

BRIAN
(to Carl)

This is getting ridiculous.

CARL

Tom Braxton?

BRIAN

You know what his biggest problem as a salesman is?

CARL

He can’t sell?

BRIAN

He can’t sell! The man couldn’t sell space heaters to Eskimos.

CARL

Well, that would be hard sell.

BRIAN

The man can’t sell!

CARL

You can’t put a space heater in an igloo.

BRIAN

Huh?

CARL

You can’t put a space heater in an igloo.

BRIAN

Why not?

CARL

You’d melt the igloo. And then you’d just have a bunch of homeless Eskimos. And no one wants that.

BRIAN

I don’t care about homeless Eskimos.

CARL

You heartless bastard.

BRIAN

What did you come in here for, anyway?

CARL
(holds up the camera)

The latest in digital photography.

Brian takes the camera and examines it.

BRIAN

We’re reviewing this?

CARL

Indeed we are. Six megapixels, SLR design, built-in histogram, uncompressed TIFF file format, 128 megabyte PC card, Carl Zeiss lens. I’m quite impressed.

BRIAN

How many stars?

CARL

Now, you know—

BRIAN

Carl...

CARL

You know I hate star ratings.

BRIAN

I know you do, but Neal loves them, the manufacturers love them, and the readers love them, so guess what? We use them. How many stars?

CARL

I find whole-star increments far too limiting. Even half-star increments I find very hard to work with.

BRIAN

I know you do. But I remember when you gave something 3 and 13/68ths of a star. I remember how Neal reacted, and none of us wants that again.

CARL

It’s impossible to sum up all the pluses and minuses of a product in a single rating. I mean, not all pluses are pluses for everyone, and—

BRIAN

Yes, yes, I get it. We’ve had this conversation more than a few times. Take it up with Neal.

CARL

You seem to be giving more and more of the decisions to Neal.

BRIAN
(shrugs)

Neal’s the editor. When he does things I disagree with, I let him know it, but Neal’s damn good at what he does. Unlike some other employees we’ve got.

CARL

Like Tom Braxton.

BRIAN

Like Tom Braxton.

CARL

Maybe you should fire him.

BRIAN

Why?

CARL

To coin a phrase, “he can’t sell.”

BRIAN

I can’t fire Tom.

CARL

I know you can’t.

BRIAN

Tom and I go way back, to Antares Systems days. I introduced him to his wife, for crying out loud. When Xerox let him go, I was the only one willing to hire him.

CARL

And now you know why.

BRIAN

I guess I just keep hoping he’ll turn around. I mean, MediaBus should be cake.

CARL

Oh, like Miriam is going to do anything to make your life easy after—

BRIAN

We did not end bitterly!

CARL

Any relationship that lasts in its entirety over the course of a week-long trade show can’t possibly not end bitterly.

BRIAN

Look, that was a long time ago…

CARL

What about asking Marv to go out on sales calls with Tom? Marv is a great sales guy; half the book are Marv’s accounts. Maybe he can teach Tom a thing or two.

BRIAN

It’s worth thinking about. Unfortunately, Marv is in New York and Tom is in L.A.

CARL

As an expert on modern technology, I should point out that they have airplanes now.

BRIAN

Shouldn’t you be working?

CARL

All my stuff is filed. I’m just waiting for either Helen or Neal to need me to help with production.

NEAL

(O.C., bellowing)

Carl!

BRIAN

His master’s voice.

Carl rises.

CARL

Think about the Marv and Tom thing. You can’t fire Tom.

BRIAN

I know. I will. Thanks.

INT. NEWSROOM - CONTINUOUS

Neal stands in the doorway to his office.

CARL

You bellowed?

NEAL

Yes. I put two technology reports in your folder on the editorial server. I need you to do a quick technical edit, and then put them in Helen’s production folder ASAP.

CARL

You got it.

Carl exits.

HELEN
(bellowing)

Neal!

Neal runs into Helen’s office.

INT. HELEN’S OFFICE - CONTINUOUS

NEAL

What is it?

HELEN
(holding up the pages Janice gave her)

What the hell is this?

NEAL

I don’t know, what the hell is that?

HELEN

Your new assistant decided to rewrite the page one stories rather than just proofread them. Please inform her that rewriting is not done at this stage, unless she thinks she has too much blood in her body.

NEAL

Sorry, she’s new.

HELEN

I know. That’s why I’m yelling at you.

NEAL

I’ll talk to her.

INT. NEWSROOM - CONTINUOUS

NEAL walks over to Janice’s table.

NEAL

Janice, about the pages...

JANICE

I know. I heard.

NEAL

You heard?

JANICE

This isn’t a very big office.

NEAL

Ah. Please go back through these pages and mark “stet” next to everything that isn’t a typo.

JANICE

Sure. Sorry.

George comes out of his office.

NEAL

George, Webcorp story?

GEORGE

Ready and waiting for you.

NEAL

Excellent. Thank you.

Neal dashes back into his office.

JANICE
(to George, pointing to the page proof with her pen)

I have a question. Should there be a capital letter right in the middle of a word?

GEORGE

Sadly, yes. It’s called “intercapping.” Computer companies like to strew capital letters randomly throughout company and product names. I think they do it to drive proofreaders nuts.

JANICE

That’s pretty weird.

GEORGE

They’re computer companies. They’re run by people who got beat up a lot in high school and this is part of their vengeance on the world.

JANICE
(laughs)

That would explain any computer program I’ve ever used.

They exchange warm smiles.

NEAL
(bellowing from his office)

George! Leave Janice alone!

GEORGE

Well, I’ll leave you to it, then.

JANICE

If you must.

George walks back to his office, Janice stares after him, pauses, lost in thought for a moment, then returns to rereading her pages.

DISSOLVE TO:

To be continued...

The Stories So Far

For my own reference as much as anyone's, here is a directory of the stuff I have posted in the past two weeks:

"Bossy," a stream-of-consciously-written short story about a talking cow.
"Don Boing: Beneath the Music," an anachronistic comic essay about one of the "legends" of modern music. or something.
Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of a comic, pseudo-Tolkeinesque novel tentatively titled Jewel Box.
Part 1 and Part 2 (of three parts) of a serialized short story about death (a comedy) called "The Life of Death."
Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of a science-fiction novel tentatively titled Living Ghost.

Tomorrow: a screenplay!

More Ghost

Here is Chapter 2 of the Philip K. Dick/insomnia-inspired/perspired novel tentatively titled Living Ghost. Chapter 1 is here.

2.

“Was that Graves?” asked Marv after Cliff had hung up the phone.

“Yeah,” said Cliff, still not quite sure what to make of the conversation he just had.

Marv dropped a spiral-bound set of printouts on Cliff’s desk.

“Did he get the revised Section 6 tables I e-mailed him?”

Cliff was still a bit distracted. “The what? No, I don’t think so. He’s been having some…problems. Computer problems. He thinks the earthquake did some damage.”

“That earthquake? What, does he live in a house made out of tissue paper?”
Marv sat down on an old torn faux leather chair in front of Cliff’s desk. He was breathing heavily.

Cliff looked at him. “If you’re going to have a heart attack, could it wait until this project is done?”

“We need an elevator. I’m getting too old for those stairs.”

“Think of how bad a shape you’d be in if you haven’t had to go up and down those stairs for the past 12 years.” Marv had been the primary data processor for the company for 15 years. They’ve only been in their current location for 12 years.

“Carol is going to want to see at least a preliminary draft of Section 3 by this afternoon,” said Marv.

“That’s what Carol said?”

“Cliff, come on. You know only Sally passes in or out of The Cocoon. It’s what Sally said.”

Carol Hendricks was the president and owner of Data Pros Inc. Most of the people who started working for the company were at first puzzled, then increasingly bemused by the fact that she had absolutely no contact with anyone but her administrative assistant. Even the oldest veterans of the company—like Marv—had really only met her once. Cliff, who had been with the company only a scant four years, had never met her at all. Some 10 years earlier, Marv had coined the term “The Cocoon” to refer to Carol’s impenetrable office—a term which stuck. No one knows if Carol had ever heard and/or was amused by it. Of course, in less charitable moments, Marv has been known to refer to Carol herself as “The Larva.” “Someday, she’s going to emerge from her chrysalis as a beautiful butterfly,” he once said, to which Cliff immediately added, “Or Mothra, the giant mutant moth creature that destroyed Tokyo.” Then again, most of the staff was quick to admit that it was the generally hands- and eyes-off approach of Carol that made Data Pros such a satisfying place to work. No meetings, no micromanagement, no B.S. Just an environment where work can get done and get done well. It was not lost on the staff that the fact that The Larva was taking such an involved role in the current project (well, involved for her) meant that the project was of no small consequence.

“Well, Section 3 is not going to be done today,” said Cliff. “I can’t fix Tom’s computer problems. Tell Sally we’re keeping to the schedule we had agreed on six months ago when this whole thing began.”

“You tell me,” came a voice from the doorway.

“How do you do that” asked Cliff.

“Do what?” asked Sally, adjusting the massive sheaf of papers she was carrying.

“Just appear like that. I never hear or see you coming. I just look up and you’re there.”

“I’m stealthy,” she said with a smile.

“Is that what they teach at those Ivy League schools, how to slink around offices wraithlike?” asked Marv.

“Is that what they teach at two-year junior colleges, how to incorporate words like ‘wraithlike’ into normal conversation?”

“You bet your ass.”

“Anyway, getting back to the original point,” Sally said, “I completely agree that we should keep to the original schedule, but you know The Lar— Carol is not going to be happy.”

Marv and Cliff laughed. “Whoo! We got you doing it!” said Cliff, high-fiving Marv.

Sally smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, I’ll deal with Carol, but that means there can be absolutely no slippage whatsoever from the schedule. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this is a big project. It can make or break us, and the clients are getting antsy. And when the clients get antsy, we get antsy.”

“We understand,” said Cliff.

“I’m surprised this is even an issue. Tom is always early with stuff. I’m shocked he’s not now.”

“He’s having…computer problems,” said Cliff.

Sally shrugged. “I remember when his entire hard drive got corrupted at the same time he had to replace the logic board in his computer and he still delivered a 200-page report a day early.”

“Sometimes even the mighty fall,” said Marv.

“So we should go easy on him right now,” said Cliff. “He’s always come through, and I have no doubt he will this time.”

Sally looked at him quizzically. “I never said he wouldn’t come through. I just said I was surprised, is all. Is everything all right with Tom?”

“Everything’s fine. The earthquake just freaked him out.”

“He’s from the East Coast—you know how they are,” added Marv. “He still hasn’t gotten his ‘earthquake legs’ yet.”

“I wouldn’t worry about Tom,” said Cliff.

***

“I’m worried about Tom,” said Cliff.

Cliff carefully lifted a ring of onion with his fork and shifted it to the perimeter of his salad bowl, adding it to the collection of other onion slices he had been building.

“Why?” asked Ally, watching her husband's careful dissection of his salad.

Given both of their wacky work schedules, they very rarely got to have lunch in real restaurants—let alone with each other—and she was hoping they wouldn’t spend the whole time talking about Tom Graves.

“He called me this morning. He said he was in Syracuse.” He added a cherry tomato to the ring of onions.

“That’s a bit strange,” said Ally, “but nothing to worry about. Tom is a strange guy. We’ve known him for eight years and I still don’t know anything about him. Now, you: After we had been dating a week I felt like I knew everything there was to know about you.”

“Well, you kind of did.”

“That’s true. There’s not much to you. There’s the penis and the schoolboy insouciance, and that’s about it.”

“Hey!” He said, mock-insulted. “‘Insouciance.” I like that.”

“You have no idea what it means, do you?”

“Nope. And I like that I don’t. I can have it mean whatever I want it to mean and I don’t have to care if it was meant as an insult or not.”

She watched as he moved an olive to the outer edge of the salad bowl.

“Why don’t you just tell the waiter that you don’t like onions, tomatoes, or olives?” said Ally.

“I don’t like to seem picky.”

Cliff and Ally had been married for six-and-a-half years and his pickiness about food never ceased to amuse her. Ally would eat just about anything that was put in front of her, while Cliff was very particular, and every meal that he didn’t cook (which was damn nearly every meal he ate) involved the near-surgical removal of any or all of the following: mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, peppers, olives, chives, celery, and carrots. To him, the perfect salad was lettuce and chickpeas. “Even dressing is optional,” he once told Ally. “In fact, I’d prefer it if you didn’t dress for dinner, either,” he once said with a leer.

So for his 40th birthday, she had the owner of the local bakery (and a friend of hers) bake him a cake in the shape of a mushroom, covered with bits of colored frosting shaped into tomatoes, onions, peppers, etc. He laughed hysterically, but out of habit had picked them all off anyway.

“Getting back to Tom…”

“Do we have to?” she asked.

“You should hear the story he told me. Do you know how he said he got to Syracuse?”

“Stagecoach? Mule barge? Strapped to the wing of a Cessna?”

“Even stranger. He says he ‘appeared’ there.”

“Appeared there?”

“Yeah. He says he fell asleep in Redondo and woke up in some girl’s dorm room at SU.”

“Wow. That’s bizarre.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” said Cliff.

“I mean, to think that Tom would be in any girl’s room at all is pretty weird.”

“Ally, now cut that out. I’m sure he dates...or something.”

“Are you sure it’s women, though?”

“I am 99.999 percent sure that Tom is not gay. I even had my brother check him out and he insists he not, too.”

“Oh, like your brother could tell. His ‘gaydar’ is always picking up interference from weather balloons.”

Cliff scowled. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, about Tom’s ‘teleportation’ story…”

“I think he’s pulling your leg. Besides, he was in town yesterday. Why would he fly to Syracuse overnight—and then turn right around and come back? It’s not exactly a short hop. Even if it is some kind of romantic dalliance, he’d probably be too jetlagged to actually do anything.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised what the male body is capable of.”

“Yes, I frequently am. And often horrified, too. But are you sure he’s not just having a midlife crisis or a nervous breakdown or something?”

“I hadn’t thought about that, but it’s entirely possible. But I would have thought you’d have to have a life to have a mid-life crisis.”

“Jeez, Cliff. And you say I rag on Tom. He’s your best friend.

“He is, but he doesn’t always make it easy. It’s like Pink Floyd The Wall with him sometimes.”

“He doesn’t have copulating flowers in his garden, I hope.”

“I would seriously doubt that. I mean, he’s smart, he’s fun to hang out with, he’s always there when I need anything…like when my wife is driving me up the wall—”

“Bite me.”

“But you try to get close to him and you get to this point where it’s like he’s barricaded himself in his own head and there’s some kind of standoff with the FBI, who are about to start lobbing in tear gas.”

“That’s a pretty creative analogy for you,” she said.

“Actually, I stole it from Marv.”

He finished the last of what he had intended to eat of his salad.

“Maybe it’s just this camera project,” said Ally. “Wait till it’s over and you all can relax. Then sit down with Tom and make sure everything is OK.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Ally looked down at his still mostly-full salad bowl. “You done with that?”

He handed it to her. “All yours.”

She started eating what he left behind. “What did you order for lunch?”

“Chicken cacciatore,” he said.

“That should take a while.”

More Death

Here is Part 2 of "The Life of Death" short story. Part 1 is here.

The Life of Death (Part 2 of 3)

I was sitting on the couch, thumbing through a magazine. The 11:00 news was on in the background, and I was half listening to it. Until one report caught my ear.

“Hospitals around the country are reporting what seems like the best news one could ever hear: there have been no recorded deaths in the last four days. For the story, we go live to Mary Feldstone at Mt. Sinai.”

“Here at Mt. Sinai,” said who I presume was Mary Feldstone, “doctors and patients alike are baffled yet cautiously elated by the sheer dearth of deaths. This hospital, which reports an average of 27 deaths a day, has literally had none in four days.”

The report went on to say that at every hospital polled, no one has died. Morgues and mortuaries have, for four days, been devoid of new business.

I didn’t quite know what to make of that. My first inclination was that it was a coincidence. Surely…no, it couldn’t be. These things just don’t happen.

The following day, things got even more surreal. I found a roach in my bathtub that morning and squished it with a magazine. Completely flattened, its guts strewn across the enamel, it nonetheless moved. In fact, it dashed down the drain of its own accord. This was not only odd, but defied all the known laws of biology. I may not be an expert in the life sciences, but I at least know that when an organism has the guts squashed out of it, it tends to slow down a bit.

That evening on the news, the lack-of-death count was expanded to report on the increasing roach, rat, and other vermin problems that were plaguing the city. It wasn’t just the humans; nothing was dying. Call it stubbornness on my part, but I still refused to believe that Dave’s “encounter” with “Death” had anything to do with it.

Until…


I was sitting on the couch watching Live at Five when my apartment door opened. In walked Dave, dressed in a black cloak and carrying a scythe. He threw the scythe noisily to the floor.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t kill things. Myself, yes. Other things, no.”

“Say what?” I asked, knowing I was going to regret it.

“Before Death vanished, he said that I was now ‘in charge.’”

“In charge of what?”

“Dying. The whole not living business.”

My head hurt.

“Haven’t you noticed that nothing is dying? That hospitals are reporting record numbers of non-deaths and that the city is overcome with vermin?”

“Yes, but I just assumed it was one of those freakish things…”

“Yes! Yes, it is one of those freakish things—only it’s far more freakish than you could have imagined! I just can’t kill things. It’s all my fault.…”

This is perhaps the first time I had ever heard of someone who was sorry that he couldn’t kill anything.

“Okay,” I said. “Assuming for the moment that I believe you, that Death bailed on his job and left you in charge of visiting final perdition on everyone and everything…but the roaches, Dave? Surely you could bring yourself to kill them.”

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But still, they’re living things.” He stared at me.

“You have to do it.”

“Say what?”

“You have to kill things.”

“Me? Are you high? I didn’t kill Death—”

“Or whatever.”

“Or whatever. I mean, this isn’t really my problem.”

“Oh, spoken like a true New Yorker.”

“You’re forgetting the essential point here, which is that I am not Death!”

“Fine, be that way.”

“What way?”

“Stubborn.”

I growled. “Well, where did Death go, anyway? Can we find him? He can’t have much money. I mean, would a preternatural entity have a nest egg of some kind? Surely he hasn’t gotten far.”

“Leave it to you to reduce the basic points of existence to money.”

“That’s because I live in the real world rather than exist in some metaphysical half-life. And call me a Philistine if you must, but at least I haven’t upset the basic laws of existence.”

“Fine, fine, fine,” said Dave, getting increasingly flustered. “What am I going to do?”

“Well, how specifically are you supposed to, um, kill? Just wave your scythe over them, or is it more ‘hands on’?”

“As Death explained it to me, when the signal comes in on the Mortaloscope— Oh, go ahead and say it…”

“‘Mortalosocope’?”

“There’s a more technical name for it, but Death actually does have a sense of humor. Essentially it’s a large crystal.”

He reached into the pocket of the cloak and withdrew a large green glowing rock. It was pulsating quite rapidly.

“And it’s pulsating so rapidly because I’m very behind.”

“Oh,” I said, “so it’s like an answering machine. The speed of the flashing indicates how many messages there are.”

“Exactly. What’s really annoying is that it also has a vibrate mode, which is getting quite painful.”

He rubbed his thigh.

“OK, so when someone or something dies, your rock starts flashing.”

“Yes, and then the scythe allows me to- what are you laughing at?”

“Nothing. Go on. Please.”

“And the scythe allows me to triangulate on the exact location of the deceased and
then, using the scythe, I am supposed to remove the life force from the deceadent.”

“‘Deceadent’?”

“That’s what they’re called, yes.”

“It all sounds amazingly organized.”

“What, do you think death just happens?” he asked me.

“Yes, I kind of thought it did.”

“Well, it doesn’t.”

I really didn’t know quite how much to believe him, but I swear I’ve never seen Dave this earnest—or this worked up about anything. So I decided: I’d do as he asked. After all, since I didn’t even know if it was true—and it likely wasn’t (I mean, who kills Death and then has to cover for him?)—what did I have to lose? So I put on the black cloak, grabbed the scythe, and felt like I was on my way to a Halloween party. I took his pulsating green rock.

“All right. How does this purportedly work?” I asked, feeling like a complete dork.

“Now, you’re probably going to be very busy for a while.”

“So I gathered.”

“Hold the Mortaloscope in your left hand,” he said, and I did. “Extend your left hand, and extend your right hand, which is holding the scythe.” Now I really felt like a complete snickerdoodle. “Now, slowly—slowly—bring the blade of the scythe into contact with the Mortaloscope.”

I did, and as the blade of the scythe touched the rock, the room went dark. I was suddenly not in my apartment anymore. I was—I wasn’t quite sure....

To be continued...

The Road Worrier

Sorry, other things have kept me distracted for the past couple of days, so I kind of got off my posting schedule, but I hope to get back into the swing of things.

At any rate, herewith Chapter 2 of what is currently called Jewel Box (I'm not wild about that title). Chapter 1 is here, for your reference.

Chapter 2: The Road Worrier

The rain stopped at precisely 8:47 am. Carol Munch knew that because she had been perched in front of the window, staring out at the pouring rain, a clock on the window sill next to her. She would be extremely late for work, but she absolutely refused to drive when it was raining. For some reason, was her thinking, Southern California drivers were incapable of comprehending the concept of water falling from the sky and the freeways became free-for-alls and were even more nightmarish than they normally were.

So for the past three hours, Carol had sat in front of the window, silently cursing singer/songwriter Albert Hammond, whose 1973 top five smash “It Never Rains in Southern California” was one of the things that had drawn Carol and her husband to the South Bay town of Mall Beach nine years earlier. After the first year, when much of the month of December made a liar out of Hammond, Carol’s then-husband Edward simply shrugged and said “I guess songs can be wrong. Who knew?”

But by then Edward had been completely absorbed in his work. A comparative zoologist by training, he had accepted a professorship at Mall State, a small Southern California college located in downtown Mall Beach.

As the rain ended, Carol quickly began getting ready for work. As she bustled about her bedroom, she grabbed a locket from her dressing table. A gift from her sister back east, it had come in the mail only a day earlier and had been sent to celebrate what would have been Carol and Edward’s 15th anniversary. Within the locket was a picture of Edward. It wasn’t actually a photograph; Edward actually hated to have his picture taken, so all anyone in the family had to remember him by was a caricature that had been drawn one Friday night on the Santa Monica pier. In the picture, a big-headed Edward wore a bib, had a knife in one raised hand, a fork in the other, and, with a huge goofy smile, was about to dig into a large supine lizard reclining on a bed of salad greens.

The caricature was a playful reference to Edward’s chosen field of study.

Dr. Edward Munch (no relation to the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch) had been a pioneer of—and, in fact, the inventor of and, well, sole researcher in—the field of gustatory taxonomy. Dissatisfied with the system of classifying animals and plants that had been devised by Carolus Linnaeus in the 18th century (grouping animals and plants with similar physiological characteristics into phyla, classes, orders, families, genera, and species), Dr. Munch sought instead to classify animals and plants according to how they tasted. Ultimately, he desired to answer a question that had been eating him (as it were) his entire scientific career: how many animals actually do taste like chicken?

Needless to say, such a system required a not insubstantial amount of empirical evidence—which is to say, eating. So, for several years, Dr. Munch traveled the globe, sampling as many creatures as he could, and his life’s work—the immense A Concordance of World Organisms: Encyclopedia and Cookbook—was coming together nicely. His monograph, “Functional Morphology of H. hydrochaeris With and Without Pork Gravy,” was a smash hit at that year’s National Zoological Conference and had even led to his helping found a new cable channel, a joint venture between the Discovery Channel and the Food Network.

But, alas, it was all to end too soon. While in the Amazon rain forest, he had no sooner taken a bite out of a large, brightly colored—and, unbeknownst to Dr. Munch, poisonous—tree frog, than he uttered what were to be his last words (“needs paprika”) and, according to one witness at the scene, did a remarkable imitation of his Norwegian namesake’s most famous painting. He then fell face first onto the frog, and a brilliant scientific career ended just as it had begun: with Dr. Munch wearing a lobster bib.

As Carol continued to be haunted by the loss of the one great love of her life (especially after she had finally forced him to accept that she would pick the romantic dinners) she smiled forlornly. She clasped the locket around her neck and reflected on what was the great irony: at the same time that Edward was digging into his fatal frog, back in Mall Beach, his research assistant Claude Linguette had just perfected the LickMaster 3000 Electronic Tongue which could analyze the taste of any object placed in it and correlate that taste with a database of more than 180,000 individual flavors.


The rain gone and the sun finally muscling its way through the cloud cover, Carol turned the light off in her bedroom, padded out to the kitchen, and grabbed her car keys from the counter. Distracted as she was by the terror of the thought of having to drive for 90 minutes on the 405 Freeway, she didn’t get a good grip on keys and they fell to the floor. She looked down and stared at the keyring on the floor. She had five keys, her car key was in the middle and it was so much larger than the other keys that it looked to her like her keyring was giving her the finger. Figures, she thought. And that pretty much summed up the way she perceived the act of driving in L.A.

She picked up her obscene keys, took her umbrella from a coatrack by the front door, opened the door, and stared outside at her car in the driveway. She took a deep breath, and out she went.

It should be noted, in the event it hasn’t been made apparent, that Carol hated driving. Well, not so much driving per se, but rather other drivers.


The town of Mall Beach, California, had been founded in 1773 by a Jesuit priest by the name of Father Carmelo Jello (pronounced “Hay-yo,” it should be noted). One of the original Spanish missionaries to settle in the area, the town, like so many in California, was originally centered around Father Jello’s mission, named San Serrif, notable for a peculiar unadorned style of architecture. The mission was distinguished from others of the period by Father Jello’s policy of not exterminating the indigenous peoples if they failed to wholeheartedly accept Church dogma. In fact, Father Jello was known as quite the humanitarian, and even after his passing and the mission was abandoned, he remained quite the hero and the remains of the mission had remained intact for over 200 years. In the 1960s, it was converted into a shrine to a period in pre-colonial history that people weren’t actually ashamed of. Unfortunately, in the early 1990s, the mission was torn down to make room for a shopping mall—indeed, the mall that gave Mall Beach half its name.

The other half wasn’t really a beach per se; the town fought with the county and neighboring towns to give San Serrif at least some oceanfront. It was Southern California, after all. The others relented, and it was agreed to redraw San Serrif’s borders so that a one-inch-wide strip of land was allowed to stretch from landlocked San Serrif through five miles of coastal Flako del Mar, and reach the Pacific Ocean. And thus it was that San Serrif changed its name to Mall Beach, hoping to lure tourists as well as local Southern Californians to take advantage of its immense mall as well as its “exclusive” oceanfront property, although taking advantage of Mall Beach’s beach was only possible if you were no larger than a small tree frog.

Carol pulled out of her driveway onto Beech Street and made an immediate left onto Beech Road, which merged onto Beach Drive and intersected Beach Boulevard two lights down. She had just missed the green left turn arrow and sat back and waited the 20 minutes it would take for the seemingly endless series of light permutations to cycle back to her lane. In a way, she was glad. She was in no hurry to hit the freeway. Her boss would probably be mad that she was so late, but tough. It was the company’s own damn fault for moving. When the company had been located two blocks from Carol’s house, she walked to work and was early or at the latest on time every day. When they decided to move the company 90 miles south to Rancho Bastardo, she was upset—for reasons you can pretty much fathom by now.

The left-turn arrow finally turning green, she turned left into Beach Boulevard and headed north toward the 405 Freeway. Traffic was still heavy, even at this relatively late hour, and she inched her way toward the freeway on ramp. She pulled up to the metering light and, as it turned green, she closed her eyes and gunned the engine. Pulling onto the freeway always reminded her of a airplane taking off. The surge of the engine, the g-forces pushing her back in her seat, her heart in her throat, he knuckles white with terror. She successfully merged into the freeway without much incident. Now, she had to get over a lane or two as the rightmost lane would abruptly vanish one exit later—a phenomenon that took her completely by surprise the first time she had ever driven this route, since there was no warning that the lane was going to do any such thing.

Traffic remained heavy, yet everyone was cruising at about 75 or 80. Naturally, everyone tailgated. She clutched wheel tightly in her hands, and went with the flow. In her rearview mirror, she saw a pair of SUVs pinballing from lane to lane on opposite sides of the highway. Exploiting the slightest opening between cars—be it two car lengths or one Ǻngstrom—they shot forward like it was the Indy 500. As they both simultaneously loomed up quickly in the rearview mirror, Carol knew for sure they were going to hit her. She couldn’t imagine how they could not—but, miraculously, they shot by. (Unbeknownst to Carol, 10 miles up the road they would miscalculate their trajectories and collide with each other, eliciting an inappropriate yet satisfying round of applause from many of the other drivers who had been terrified by them.)

As she espied more hellbent drivers approaching at multiwarp speeds behind her, Carol could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Oddly, it was accompanied by the sensation of some other object—hopefully not an internal organ—pounding on her chest. Whatever it was, it was radiating some kind of heat—not a searing, painful heat, but rather a calm, soothing heat. She was too busy being terrified of the traffic to pay much attention to this strange sensation, and as she saw a sports car shoot over four lanes and attach itself, leechlike, to her tail, a very strange thing happened. Her car started to rise.

“What the hell?!” she exclaimed, as, indeed, her car moved vertically, until she was moving at the same forward speed, but only 100 feet above the freeway.

Now her heart was really going, but the other pounding sensation, and the accompanying heat, had abated. Now she had to deal with the fact that she was also terrified of heights. There was what sounded like a sigh that came from her chest, and the heat and external pounding started again. Her car descended and she landed in a clear spot of freeway. At the same time, every other car on the freeway rose 100 feet above the road surface. They all stayed in their lanes, and they all followed the curve of the highway and it wended its way southeast. In fact, all the cars behaved exactly the way they would if they had been on the ground—the only difference being that they weren’t. Carol was surprised—to say the least—but she was happy. There were now no cars around her to terrify the life out of her and for the first time in her life, she enjoyed the drive to work.

When she pulled off the freeway 65 miles later, all the other cars were restored to the road surface.

True, her boss berated her for being late, but she didn’t mind—and soon, no one else minded her lateness. Given how happy her mood was, they all felt that whatever the reason for her lateness, it was worth it.

Carol didn’t ask questions, like how it happened, but she was inordinately happy to discover, when she started her trek homeward at 5:00, the same thing happened.
When she read the L.A. Times the following morning, she discovered that Steve Harvey’s “Only in LA” column was entirely devoted to the incident.

Insomnia

A couple years ago, a consequence perhaps of a combination of reading too many Philip K. Dick novels back to back and insomnia, I sat down at the computer at 3 a.m. and in one marathon session, turned out 50 pages of the beginning of a science-fiction novel about a normal guy suddenly finding himself in the midst of odd, supernatural forces. Every now and then I come back to it and add a few things, but was never able to recapture the original momentum, although I think I'm finally getting a handle on where it's going. It doesn't really have a title, but the Word file is called "Living Ghost" so I guess that's what I originally wanted to call it.

So anyway, here is the first chapter of Living Ghost.

1.

As was his usual habit when he worked late into the night, Tom Graves fell asleep in medias res. He always fell asleep at the computer and would invariably awake several hours later with an impression of the keyboard stamped into his face and 200 Microsoft Word pages containing the letter “g.” He feared that some morning, the impression of the keys wouldn’t rub out and he would end up walking around looking like the Human Keyboard Face. Or even worse, that he’d drool into the keyboard and electrocute himself in his sleep. True, to solve the problem, he could buy a new computer, one that used voice-recognition input technology. After all, keyboards were pretty quaint anachronisms these days. But as a professional writer, Tom Graves found it easier to work through the tactile act of typing rather than speaking.

He awoke with a start. He groggily lifted his head and his hand went automatically to his cheek to begin de-keying his flesh. He was mildly surprised to find that his cheek was perfectly smooth. He felt the other cheek, then his chin, then his forehead. None of the usual bumps. He shrugged, assuming he had somehow broke with tradition.

He looked down at the desk. That was the reason why he didn’t have keyboard marks on his face: there was no keyboard there. Where was his keyboard? There was a small, 10x10x4-inch silver box in the corner of the desk. He recognized the prominently-located holes of the sound input mike on the front of the unit. The flexible roll-up display mounted on the wall above the desk used the wireless monitor connection that Cliff was always going on about. This was a new computer—certainly not his old ungainly tower unit that, at eight years old, was certainly showing its age.

He looked down and realized that this wasn’t even his desk—rather than the old falling-apart balsa-wood desk he had been using for the past decade, this was a gleaming new Hi-Strength Polymer desk—one of those desks that is incredibly light and portable yet can support up to 500 pounds. Even the chair he found himself in was of the latest design he had seen touted in office furniture catalogs, but certainly didn’t own. What the hell was going on?

He cast his gaze around the room. It was later than he thought: the digital alarm clock next to the bed read “10:13.”

Wait: why was there a bed in his office?

He looked around some more: this was not his home office. In fact, it wasn’t his house. It wasn’t even his work office. Where was he? And how did he get there? Tom didn’t drink and he never had any history of somnambulism, so he couldn’t think of any reason why he would mysteriously wake up someplace other than where he remembered falling sleep.

As he took in the décor, he could only conclude that he was in a college dormitory room. A girl’s dormitory room. Why he would be in a girl’s—or really any—college dorm room was a damn good question.

Whatever the explanation, he knew it would have to wait. His first order of business should be to get the hell out of there, and quick.

The scream that came from the door was what gave him the impression that it was too late.

“Who are you?” said the girl, obviously terrified. She stood in the doorway, dressed in an orange sweatshirt and matching sweatpants, carrying a bookbag slung over her shoulder. “What are you doing in my room? Get the hell out of my room!”

“Look, I’m sorry, I don’t—”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Tom Graves—where am I?”

“How did you get in here? What do you want? I’m calling Security.” She removed her cell unit from the holder clipped to the front of her sweatshirt.

“No, wait. Look, I’m not going to hurt you. I just…woke up here. I have no idea how or why. Just tell me where I am and I’ll leave.”

“Mel, is everything all right?” asked a male voice that was approaching from the corridor.

“There’s some weird guy in my room.”

A young male came into view behind her. He looked into the room. He also wore an orange sweatshirt, as well as a pair of baggy jeans.

“Dude, what’s your problem?” he asked.

“My problem is that I have no idea where I am or how I got here.”

“I locked that door when I went to my 8:30,” said the girl, holding up and staring at her keycard. “Unless Kyoko didn’t lock it when she left. If she didn’t, I’ll kill her.”

“Didn’t you just unlock the door?” asked the boy.

“Yeah, but he could have locked it after he got in.”

“I didn’t get in through the door, that I know of,” said Tom, realizing too late that that was probably wasn’t the best thing to say.

“We’re on the fifth floor, man. What—did you just crawl up the outside of the building like Spider Man?”

“That’s a damn good question. Another damn good question, which I’d really like to answer is, Where am I?”

“Room 503,” said the girl impatiently.

“Of what?”

“Brewster Hall,” said the boy.

“Keep going…”

The boy and girl looked at each other. “Uh…Syracuse University?” said the boy.

Tom sat back in the chair, even more confused.

“Syracuse University? As in Syracuse, New York?”

They looked at each other again. “Uh, yeah. You have to have heard of it. We won the NCAA basketball championship two—”

“Mark, could you please not talk sports with creepy guys who turn up in my dorm room?”

“I know where Syracuse University is,” said Tom. “I spent four years there. Here. Whatever. Anyway, that was more than 20 years ago. As of 1:30 this morning, I was in Redondo Beach, California, which is where, by all rights, I should be right now.” He looked out the window. That was Downtown Syracuse all right. Even after 20 years he could still identify the MONY towers—if they were even called that anymore. “I know it was 1:30 because I made a call to a colleague’s voicemail.” His cellphone was still clipped to his belt. He flipped it open and checked the Dialed Calls log. “Yes. Here it is. ‘Cliff at Work, 1:28 a.m., 10/2.’ It is October 2, right?”

Both Mark and Mel nodded, gradually getting more confused.

“Where’d you get that phone—an antique store?” asked Mark.

He snapped the phone shut. “So if it was 1:28 a.m. California time, it would have been 4:28 a.m. Eastern time. If it’s 10:13 now, even if I had somehow gotten on a plane, it’s at least a six-hour flight from L.A. and I’m assuming there are no flights directly to Syracuse anyway. So how would I even have had time to get here?”

“Wow—that’d be like a great question to put on the SATs,” offered Mark.

Mel slapped his arm. “Could you be serious even for one second?”

“You have to admit that this is pretty fucked up,” said Mark.

“Well, yeah,” said Mel. “But I’d feel a lot better about it if he had turned up in someone else’s room.” She checked her watch. “Look, I have class in 20 minutes, so get out.”

“With pleasure,” said Tom. “Now I just have to figure out how to get back to L.A.”

“Need a ride to the airport?” asked Mark.

Mel slapped his arm again. “What’s the matter with you?”

***
“See? I was right. The quickest flight from Syracuse to L.A. is nine hours and 45 minutes, with two stops.” They had logged onto InstaRez from the computer in Mark’s dorm room just down the hall. He felt self-conscious speaking all the commands, but he had to admit pointing and scrolling on screen using his index finger was a lot more convenient than using a mouse. He could probably get used to this…

“And most flights take more than 10 hours,” he continued. “I would imagine the same would be the case for flights to Syracuse. Wow—it’s cheaper to buy a round trip ticket and just not use the return than to buy one way.”

He made reservations for the 1:45 p.m. flight. A frisson of terror shot down his spine. “Damn!” he instinctively yelled.

“What?” asked Mark.

Tom’s hand went to his back pocket. The fear abated. He sighed contentedly.

“I’ve still got my wallet. I’m glad I fell asleep with it still in my pocket. That’s a relief. I don’t know how I’d get home without it—no money, credit cards, I.D….”

“Credit cards? Why don’t you just get a Flash ID chip for your cell.” He unclipped his cell unit from his shirt and flipped open the top. “See? Picture ID displays on the screen, or I can beam credit account info to the checkout kiosks they have at most stores now. And they finally fixed the interface problem with the Flash ID chip and the USB 4.0 ports on most computers so you can actually use it to buy shit online.”

“Yes, I am aware of Flash IDs,” he said with a touch of irritation. “I’ve just always used credit cards and photo IDs and I haven’t gotten around to upgrading yet.”

Tom finished up his online transaction and logged off.

“You know, Mark, I can’t thank you enough, for your help. I mean, a strange guy turns up in your girlfriend’s dorm room going on about how he doesn’t know how he got there. That’s pretty unusual—and, as she put it, ‘creepy.’ If it was my girlfriend, I’d probably be pissed as hell.”

“Nah, Melinda’s not my girlfriend. My girlfriend lives up in Flint. Mel’s just a friend. You know, completely platonic.”

“I know very well.”

“Come on, I’ll give you a ride to the airport. I just remembered I’ve got a Psych test at noon.”

As they headed down the hallway toward the elevator, Tom looked around. “You know, I think I lived in this dorm my freshman year.”

“Twenty years ago you said, right?” said Mark.

“Yeah.” He paused thoughtfully. “Tempus fugit.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Tom smiles. “Or, as they say in Brooklyn, tempus fuggeddaboutit.”

“Yeah,” said Mark.

“No one ever laughs at that.”

“And for good reason.”

***
“What’s that smell?” asked Tom as he and Mark hurtled up I-81 toward the airport in what appeared to be an ancient sedan. It was still entirely terrestrial and seemed to even date from a time before magnetic lane adjusters were standard auto features. It even had an old gas-hybrid engine. Mark didn’t appear to have the latest and greatest of everything.

“That’s a good question. Cindy asked me the same thing last night. I think it’s under the back seat but I’m not sure. It could be leftover pizza mixed with gym socks.” He shrugged. “Could be anything really.”

Tom grimaced. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“I get that a lot.”

“So you live in L.A., huh? Are you like in the movie or streaming business? I’m thinking of transferring into Newhouse next year and maybe taking streaming video production or something.”

“It may surprise you to learn that not everyone who lives in Los Angeles is in The Industry. No, I’m market researcher. I work for a company that conducts surveys on a variety of consumer technologies. We analyze past and present usage, determine current trends, and project where the market is headed five, seven, sometimes 10 years down the road.”

“Huh.”

Well, Tom had to admit, it doesn’t sound very exciting—certainly not to an 18-year-old who dreams of being in show business.

“It’s really not as dull as it sounds," he lied. "For example, I’m currently working on a big market survey report on the future of holographic cameras. We’ve surveyed several thousand consumers and we don’t see a great future market for them.”

“Dude, I could have told you that. Everyone I know uses the holo chip built into the new cell units.”

“Well, the companies that commissioned the study like to see a tad more quantitative data to back that up.”

“So basically you have to provide evidence to show what everyone already knows.”

“That’s my entire career in a nutshell, but yes.”

They drove in silence for a while.

“So you just woke up in Mel’s room?”

Tom thought for a moment. “Yeah.”

Mark shook his head and smiled. “That is like so totally whacked. It’s like the Twilight Zone or something. What do you think happened?”

“I have absolutely no idea. It defies basic logic.”

“Maybe someone’s playing a joke on you. Trying to freak you out.”

“Playing a joke on me?”

“Yeah, like a few weekends ago, this guy on our floor—Jeff—scored an invite to a Delta Tau Delta party. While he was out, me and his roommate turned everything on his side of the room upside down. He was pretty fucked up when he got back and he freaked. So maybe someone’s doing that to you.”

“How would someone even do this? I mean, we’re talking basic violations of the space-time continuum here.”

“Don’t know, man, but there’s got to be an explanation. Unless you’re just making all this shit up.”

Tom did have to concede that point.

***
Mark dropped him off at the terminal. Tom again thanked him effusively, and watched as Mark sped off. Tom wasn’t entirely certain if Mark was just a kind-hearted kid by nature or if the circumstances surrounding his abrupt appearance in Syracuse appealed to some innate sense of adventure. Tom had to admit, if he were Mark, the most likely conclusion he would draw was that he was in fact “making all this shit up.” But he got the sense that Mark took everything at face value and got wrapped up in the mystery of it all.

Suddenly realizing that, temperature-wise, October was very different in Syracuse than Los Angeles (and he was dressed for the latter), he dashed into the terminal.
After he checked in at the ticket counter, he unclasped his cellphone and called Cliff.

“You’ll never guess where I am,” he said.

“The beach?”

“No, I’m—” he paused a moment. “Why would you immediately say ‘the beach’?”

“Well, the way you asked the question, I assumed it would be the last place I’d expect you to be.”

“And that would be the beach?”

“Well…yeah.”

“Okay…”

“Tom, you’ve lived in Southern California for eight years, and at least as long as I’ve known you—which is, oh, about eight years—you’ve never been to the beach.”

“I see.”

“You’re the only guy I know who can live in L.A. and still keep a fishbelly-white complexion.”

“Cliff…”

“I mean, even I get to the beach once in a while, and I tend to burn like a son-of-a-bitch.”

“Cliff…”

“Even Ally—”

“Cliff! Stop talking now!”

“Right. Sorry. Your original question. Where are you?”

“I’m in Syracuse.”

“Where?”

“Syracuse.”

“As in New York?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you in Syracuse, New York? When I last spoke to you—at 5:30 yesterday—you were at home in Redondo and were planning to get Section 3 of the camera study done by this morning. You said nothing about going to Syracuse. Is it Homecoming Weekend or something?”

“No, it’s not… Well, I don’t know. I don’t think it is. Wait, it’s Tuesday. So, no, it’s not Homecoming Weekend.”

“Which brings me back to my original question.”

Tom paused for a moment. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“I don’t believe half the things you tell me, but go ahead.”

“I appeared here.”

“You what?”

“I appeared here. Mysteriously. I fell asleep at my computer in Redondo last night sometime after 1:30 and when I woke up this morning I was in a college dorm room in Syracuse.”

“Coed dorm?”

It would figure that would be the first thing on Cliff’s mind.

“As it happens, yes. It was.”

Cliff erupted in a kind of fratboy whooping. “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy. Whatever did you get yourself involved in? This is so unlike you. I’m glad to see you’re finally coming out of your shell—and at age 41. But better late than never, I suppose. Who is she?”

“Stop that. It wasn’t anything like that at all. I have no idea who she was, and she seemed quite horrified by my abrupt presence in her dorm room. And I can’t say that I blame her.”

Tom spent some time carefully describing the situation to Cliff. It took some effort, but eventually Cliff came to accept the mystery of it all.

“Wow, it’s like an adventure,” said Cliff. “It’s kind of cool when you think about it objectively. Don’t these kinds of things happen to other people?”

“Cliff, these kinds of things don’t happen to anybody.”

“That’s a fair point.”

“I mean, I’d like to be caught up in the adventure of it all, but it’s really more of an irritation. Not only is this little brush with the supernatural wasting an entire day, but it’s costing me $700 in airfare!”

“$700 from Syracuse to L.A? Round trip? That’s a pretty good rate.”

“Cliff!”

“Sorry. Anyway, when are you going to be back?”

“The flight gets in at 8:56 p.m.”

“I suppose you’re going to ask…”

“If it’s no trouble.”

“It’s no trouble. I’ll pick you up. And remember we have that meeting with Tony’s people first thing tomorrow morning. Where do we stand with Section 3?”

“I had most of the charts and tables done. When I get back tonight I’ll whip up some commentary so it should be in decent shape by morning.”

“Assuming your flight’s on time, you probably won’t get home til 10, and you’ll probably be jetlagged as hell. That’s cutting it pretty close.”

“Well, that’s the best I can do. Whatever supernatural force hurled me 3,000 miles neglected to transport my computer with me.”

“Well, don’t let The Larva hear about that. Sally says she’s going to want to see a final section, if not at least a preliminary run-through of Section 4. Tell Sally you had computer problems, or a family crisis—or, hey, Duh. Blame it on the earthquake.”

“Earthquake?”

“Yeah. Last night, about quarter of two. Nothing major, but it woke me and Ally up. Didn’t you feel it?”

“No, I—” He paused for a long while.

“Tom? You still there?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you cell lost reception.”

“No, I was just wondering if the earthquake had something to do with my…experience.”

“Tom, I’ve heard of earthquakes moving furniture maybe a few inches or even a few feet, but never moving people 3,000 miles.”

“True.”

“Anyway, I have to go. Marv just walked into my office and he doesn’t look pretty. Not that he ever does, of course.”

“I’ll see you at 8:56 tonight.”

“Thanks, Cliff.”

He clicked the End button slowly and headed toward the gate.

The Life of Death

This short story is an old one. I had the idea for this at least 15 years ago, probably after watching The Seventh Seal, and after having a conversation with someone (Steven H., probably) where we one of us posed the question: "what if someone killed Death?" The trouble is, how do you get an actual story out of what is essentially a one-liner? Well, part of the challenge is you have to invent your own theology (or necrology, I guess would be the better term).

A couple years ago, after having completely forgotten about the couple of paragraphs I had written, I decided to dig into it and see what I could do with it, because I still liked the idea. And, in a flash of inspiration (if that's what you want to call it) I chugged onward in one go until...I couldn't think of the ending (reminding me of the Groucho/Chico routine from Animal Crackers: "Chico (after a long, monotonous piano routine): I can't think of the ending. Groucho: I can't think of anything else.)" Anyway, as I was re-reading it last weekend, I a decent ending came to me, so now I just have to write it. So, I am going to serialize this in three parts and hopefully it will be done by the time I have to post Part 3.

So, without further ago, I give you:

The Life of Death (Part 1 of 3)

I got the call at three that morning. I have no need for Caller ID—I pretty much know who it is, especially when the phone rings at three in the morning. What I was unprepared for was the content of the call.

“Watson, come here, I need you.” He never tired of that one, although there was much less of a playful tone in his voice than there usually is.

“Dave, it’s three in the morning,” I murmured, not quite used to the idea of consciousness just yet.

“Look, it’s really important.”

“Just squish the spider.”

“It’s not a spider this time. It’s…a bit bigger.”

That jolted me awake.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Just get over here.”

“Can you at least give me a hint.”

A shortish pause. “I killed Death.”

“Huh?”

At that point the line went dead--so to speak.

I’m not sure what to make of a line like that. “I killed Death.” What the heck is that supposed to mean? I hoped it wasn’t just another one of his silly existential crises. Dave was my best friend, but he was far too bookish for his own good, and tended toward moroseness, which wasn’t helped by his tendency to read philosophy. I recall once in college he read Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music and was near suicide for weeks. I have no idea why. And Kierkegaard! I had to forcibly wrest The Sickness Unto Death out of his hands and hide it. Unfortunately, he had taken it out of the library, and the overdue fines—when it was finally returned—depressed him even more.

So, at any rate, my assumption when he said “I killed Death,” was that he had read something he shouldn’t have. But, dutiful friend that I am, I immediately threw on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, ran outside and grabbed a cab downtown.

Despite his moroseness, Dave had made some wise economic decisions in his life, despite his having been an ardent socialist in college. Ten years later, he lived in a beautiful brownstone on West 11th Street. He owned no furniture to speak of, save for a futon and walls and walls of bookshelves.

He buzzed me in; well, at least he hadn’t tried to kill himself again.

He was waiting on the second floor and quickly ushered me into the living room. He was white as a sheet and pointed to a black cloak on the floor. A scythe lay next to it. Strangely, a completed game of Scrabble sat nearby.

“What the hell have you been up to?”

“I killed Death.” He seemed completely terrified.

“You wanna take this from the top?”

He lit a cigarette and paced as he struggled to coherently describe the events of the recent past.

“I was reading Nietzsche again, and you know how I get. Anyway, I was consumed with the thought of killing myself, and had actually plotted out my demise.”

“David…”

“No, it gets weirder, believe me. Anyway, as I was doing so, it appeared.”

“‘It.’”

“Death.”

“I see.”

He could tell I wasn’t buying it, but decided to press on anyway. “He materialized in that far corner over there by the window, exactly as you’ve always seen him described. You know, the black hooded cloak, the scythe. Although, he was much shorter than I would have thought. Well under five-foot-five. Anyway, he said he was tired of my playing games with him, that I should either kill myself or not. But that I should do one or the other, because he was getting sick of coming all the way out here only to have to turn around and go home again.”

He paused to light another cigarette. I decided to save any comments until the end.

“I said I can’t do that, I’m plagued with indecision, and sometimes life is bliss, sometimes it’s a vale of tears. You know. So, he said, ‘You want to play games with Death. Okay, let’s play a game.’ I suggested the more traditional chess, but he was keen on Scrabble. Go figure. So the deal was, if Death wins, I die, but if I win, I live. I said that it sounds like I can’t possibly win either way, so I made a suggestion that if I win, Death has to join the living. And, to make a long story only slightly longer, I won. See, he goes for the long, showy words, but the secret is in the smaller words that add up in multiple directions simultaneously.”

“Dave!”

“Oh, right. Anyway, there was a puff of smoke, and his cloak fluttered to the ground, the scythe clanged rather noisily to the floor, and he was gone. In sum, then, I killed Death.”


“But if he’s Death, how can you kill him. It sounds like you made him alive.”

“Well, whatever, whatever! Whatever the opposite of whatever he is, he’s now that.”

I had reduced him to babbling inanity. I’ve never done that to him before. Of course, I don’t know if what he said had happened truly happened, or not, but he certainly was agitated.

“What am I going to do?”

“Look, you’re just having an existential crisis.”

“Well, duh. I’ve killed Death—or whatever—and you tell me it’s just an existential crisis? This goes beyond mere moping.” He looked at me forlornly. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Well, you have to admit, it’s more than a tad preternatural. Look, just get a good night’s rest and I’m sure things will be better in the morning.”

I don't know what kind of advice that was supposed to be; it sounded more than a little insipid. Then again, what advice does one give to a friend who insists that he has killed Death—or whatever?

I gave him a tranquilizer and put him to bed. After he dozed off, I let myself out and grabbed a cab back uptown. It was by now four in the morning, and I had a tennis lesson at nine.


For whatever reason, I didn’t hear from Dave the following day, which made me more than a little nervous. I tried calling him before I left for my lesson, but he either wasn’t in or wasn’t answering. I was kept busy most of the day, but ran into his next door neighbor on Broadway. Apparently, Dave had been seen alive and well, rushing about earlier that day. So at least he was okay.

That evening I had to go up to Albany for a business conference the next morning. It wasn’t until I got back three days later that I noticed things getting a little strange.

To be continued....

A Tolkein of My Esteem

A couple years ago, after having read The Lord of the Rings (and then watched the movies) I
started thinking about enchanted jewelry (and don't we all, really) conferring special powers on its wearers. And thus I began my own mock fantasy epic (though there is greater comic potential in more prosaic settings than Middle Earth) which is yet untitled, but the file is called Jewel Box, so I guess that's what it's called. For now. It was originally conceived as a sequel of sorts to Virus! and was to feature Zev Zyzzyx and Eep as a kind of extraterrestrial Nick and Nora Charles (if only so as to give them a pet named Astra), but that idea was fortunately abandoned pretty early on.

So, here is Chapter One, for your Tolkein-esque pleasure.

Book I: A Change in the Weather

Chapter 1: Heavy Petting

It was just after midnight when the snow started. By three a.m., six inches had already piled up in the upstate New York town of Schuyler Falls. More to the point, however, six inches had piled up on Harry Merton’s pickup truck. By six a.m., two more inches had fallen, and Harry’s Toyota Tundra could very well be confused with its namesake. Harry, still being asleep, was blissfully unaware of the digging out he was going to have to do in approximately 25 minutes. When the time came to clear the snow off the truck, he would be far too aggrieved to savor the irony that the reason his truck wouldn’t fit in the garage was that the snowblower was in the way.

In Harry’s bedroom, the clock radio clicked on, and a blast of Van Halen jolted Harry awake.

“Dah!” he shouted, startled. “Did war break out?”

His wife—who actually had once slept through a loud explosion—barely stirred next to him.

Happily for Harry, the song ended almost as abruptly as it had sprang on. Well, Harry at first thought it was a good thing.

“Hey!” said an overly exuberant disk jockey, “This is the X98 Rock Bottom Morning Zoo, and I’m Sleazy!”

“And I’m Cheesy!” chimed in his partner who, Harry thought, had the exact same voice.

“And this morning we’re your Blizzard Buddies, we’ve got eight inches—”

“And you better believe it, ladies!”

“Yes, eight inches of unexpected, fresh, virgin snow out there this morning, and you know what that means!”

“Well, Sleazy, it means we get to say ‘virgin snow’ as often as possible!”

Harry grunted.

“And, Cheesy, it also means it’s ‘Let’s write our names in the snow time’!”

Over the radio came the sound of what sounded to Harry like a herd of asthmatic water bison choking to death in a vat of Jell-O. Actually, as it turned out, it was just the guffawing of the DJs.

“Don’t radio stations play music anymore?” grumbled Harry. His wife stirred.

“Right you are, Sleazy, and we’ll be going outside to violate the virgin snow right after we find out today’s Painful Extraction.”

Sleazy took it from there. “As you know, this is the part of the show where we call local emergency rooms to find out the strangest objects people have had to have removed from their—”

Harry leapt up and slammed down the Snooze button on the clock radio. He pulled the cord from the wall and tossed the clock-radio across the room. His wife, more or less awake, looked over at him.

“You know, you do this every morning. And that’s the fourth clock-radio you’ve destroyed in as many months. Why do you set it to that station if you hate it so much?”

He smiled at her. “Because if I set it to something that didn’t absolutely appall me I’d never get out of bed.”

She laughed. “Oh, Harry.”

Suddenly, something hit him.

“Damn! Did those zoo animals say there were eight inches of snow?”

He dashed to the window and pulled open the blinds. “Ahh!! They were right. And we open at eight today.”

“Harry, if there are eight inches of snow on the ground, I don’t think anyone is opening at eight.”

“You want to make a bet? Last year when we had that blizzard I was 15 minutes late and Roger docked me an hour. This job only lasts six weeks out of the year; I have to make every hour count. It’s our winter getaway money.”

Harry Merton had been a chemical engineer for more than 40 years until he retired two years ago. Although he built up quite a little nest egg for himself and Martha, and Martha still worked as a real estate agent, every Christmas season, Harry played Santa Claus at a local retail store. The mere pittance he made as Santa was what he claimed finances his and Martha’s January-long trips to Fort Lauderdale. In point of fact, it wasn’t.

Harry was built for the part of Santa—a tad on the stout side, gray hair, long, white beard, and the unnerving tendency to smoke a corncob pipe. Despite his physically fitting the part, the only Santa role he could get this year was for the local Pets, Etc., which was starting a holiday gimmick, “Have Your Pet’s Picture Taken With Santa.”

“Even if you open on time,” Martha was continuing, “how many customers are you likely to have?”

“I’m hoping none,” said Harry, still gawking out the window at the snow. “The whole ‘Have Your Pet’s Picture Taken with Santa’ sounded like a cute idea. I like animals. But I’ve been scratched, bitten, and peed on more times in the last three weeks than…well, I can’t remember when.”

“How many chemical engineers are ever scratched, bitten, or peed on?”

“Oh, there have been some meetings…. Anyway, it’s bad enough when the customers bring in dogs and cats, but the loonies are starting to some out of the woodwork. Let me tell you something—the sensation of having a gerbil stuck in your beard is not one I would recommend.”

“I’m happy to say I can’t imagine ever experiencing that—for a whole host of reasons.”

“I wanted to draw the line at the boa constrictor, but, no-o-o. Roger insisted, ‘You pose with the snake and you’d better be jolly about it.’ I’d like to know who in their right mind can be jolly with a ten-foot snake coiling around their torso.”

“I’ll bet that crocodile hunter guy could.”

“Well, let him play Santa.”

“That would certainly be interesting,” said Martha.


Within 15 minutes, Harry had got the snowblower fired up and was clearing the driveway. By seven a.m., the truck was clean and it even looked like the snow had stopped. He went back in the house, showered, and changed into his Santa suit. By that time, Martha was up and preparing breakfast.

“Are the roads clear, did you notice?” Martha asked.

“Looks it. One thing you have to say about a town like Schuyler Falls, the Department of Public Works is run with an almost military precision.” He crunched into a slice of toast. “You’re not thinking of going anywhere today, are you?”

“We need food. I wasn’t expecting a storm, and there’s nothing in the house to eat. You’d never believe what I had to scrape off that bread to make toast.”

He froze, the slice of toast midway into his open mouth. He dropped it to the plate.
“Martha…” he groaned.

“Well, look at it this way. Think of all the bacterial infections you’ll stave off.”

“I think I’ll grab a doughnut on my way in,” he said. “Make a list of what we need. I’ll stop by FoodTrough on the way home.” He put on his trademark red fur-lined coat and fastened the enormous black belt.

“Ho, ho, ho,” he boomed, and strode out of the kitchen into the living room.

“Arf! Arf!” barked Martha, following him.

“Yeah, I hope all I hear is ‘arf arf.’ One more psychotic parrot and Santa’s gonna have two hands full of bloody stumps where his fingers used to be.”

“Oh, before you go, why don’t you wear this?” There was a glass tschotschke bowl on the coffee table. She reached into it and pulled out a small, red object. She handed it to him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s a Santa Claus pin.” He examined it. Yes, it was indeed a Santa Claus pin. A big, ruddy Santa face, mouth erupted in a disturbingly jolly smile.

“This is pure nightmare fuel,” he said.

“Oh, it’s festive. And look, see? If you press the beard the nose lights up.”

He did and, sure enough, it did.

“Where on earth did you get this?”

“I found it at that antiques show in Bouckville last summer.”

“Figures. Did you settle for this? I mean, was the eight-foot-tall Betty Boop statue sold already?”

“Oh, cut that out.” She slapped his lapel playfully.

“Okay, okay.” He clipped the pin to his coat. “Happy?”

“Now you look Christmasy.”

“Beautiful.”

They kissed, and he ventured out into the snow.


The roads were plowed, but still slippery so Harry inched his truck along Route 6Z, barely able to stop for the red light at the intersection of Route 6X. In Schuyler Falls, every state highway was numbered “6”; back in the 1940s, the public works commissioner in charge of the regional state highway numbering system was terribly innumerate, having graduated from the local community college with a degree in English and having failed—and quite spectacularly at that—every math class he ever took. Thus, every highway he had to specify used the same number—6—followed by a different letter. The locals were used to it, but out-of-towners were naturally confused, and the question “Where is Route 6?” would inevitably yield the response “Which one?” which just led to even more confusion.

The light changed, and Harry hit the gas. A car ran the light and cut Harry off. Harry had to hit the brakes and the truck miraculously stopped short, although Harry’s head smashed against the steering wheel. Oddly, he didn’t feel any pain; he examined himself in the rearview mirror and didn’t notice the slightest mark on his forehead, even though he had struck with a not insignificant amount of force.

“There’ll probably be quite a bruise later,” he groused.

He shook it off and proceeded into the heart of town, passing the spot that gave the town of Schuyler Falls its name. No, not a waterfall, but rather a spot on the sidewalk where Revolutionary War General Philip Schuyler took a tumble one winter day after slipping on a patch of ice. Every February, there’s a weekend of special events to commemorate the event, with many of the locals taking their own spills on the ice—not all of them deliberate, it should be pointed out. Tourists came from miles around to attend the festivities, and the Broken Coccyx Inn on Route 6V has its one big weekend of the year.

Harry pulled into a strip mall and parked some distance away from the entrance to Pets, Etc. The store owner, Roger Spaniel (yes, his real name), had very strict prohibitions about employees parking in spots that customers would find convenient, and he used his connections in town to have this policy enforced by having his employees’ cars ticketed and or towed (depending on the extent of the foulness of his mood) if they violated it.

Harry entered the store and was greeted by the blast of both warmth and pet urine, combined with cedar chips and some kind of heavy, industrial strength room deodorizer that Harry could have swore could be used as a chemical weapon, if not first banned by the Geneva Conventions.

“You’re late,” said Roger, as Harry clomped the snow from his boots. Roger emerged from the back room with a Chihuahua tucked under each arm and an iguana perched on his shoulder. On his head was either a Scotch terrier or an even more ludicrous toupee than Roger was normally given to wearing.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but we had eight inches of snow last night,” said Harry.

“No, I hadn’t noticed.”

Roger actually did live in the store, although Harry never knew exactly where. He was suspicious after, one morning, he noticed that the cage next to the St. Bernard was filled with empty potato chip bags.

“Well, I can’t imagine we’re going to get very many customers today. Everyone’s going to be too busy digging out or resolutely refusing to dig out until April.”

“UPS is going to be delivering several boxes of gerbils later on,” said Roger. “I’ll need your help stocking them.”

Roger didn’t buy his gerbils from a very reputable pet supplier. The boxes were always labeled “Tennis Balls.”

“Hey, I’m just here to be your pet Santa. I’m not the stockboy. Where’s Josh?”

“He called in sick, although I had trouble hearing him over what I can only assume was the snowmobile he was riding at the time.”

Harry grumbled.

“Look, I’ll even pay you, if it’s that important to you,” said Roger. The iguana stared intensely at Harry, who quickly relented.


There wasn’t much to do for the first few hours, except watch Roger obsessively straightening things: the bags of pet food all had to be facing the same way, the containers of fish food on the shelf all had to have their labels out, all the pet toys had to be arranged, first alphabetically by type of animal and then alphabetically by type of toy. Roger even spent an inordinate amount of time in the aquarium aisle trying to get all the fish to swim in the same direction. Whether it was from sheer force of will, or some Aquaman-like ability to communicate with them, they inexplicably obliged, and Harry was mesmerized by the sight of 20 aquaria filled with fish all swimming in sync with each other. Roger then glared at the snakes; they all looked at each other and coiled in the same direction on the small treelets that occupied their cages. Harry just shook his head. It was Dr. Doolittle meets Monk.

At around eleven, the UPS truck pulled up outside, and the driver carried in two boxed marked “Tennis Balls.” Roger was in the back, so Harry signed for them. As the UPS guy left, Roger emerged from the back, a brace of ferrets draped over his shoulders.

“Ah, good, they’re here,” he said. “Harry, please unload these boxes and place the gerbils in those eight empty cages in aisle seven. There should be 24 gerbils, so that will work out to exactly three per cage. Please try to make sure all the gerbils in each cage are roughly the same color.”

“Aren’t gerbils all generally the same color? I mean, there aren’t any hot pink or fluorescent green gerbils in the world, are there?” Actually, Harry had to admit that he wasn’t entirely certain.

“Just humor me.” He handed Harry a box cutter. “You’ll need this. Be careful slitting open the boxes. We don’t want to end up with a number of gerbils that isn’t a multiple of eight.” He adjusted his ferrets and walked off.

Harry shrugged and looked at the boxes. As he was running the box cutter slowly along the top of the box, there was a loud crash from the back of the store as a lemur that Roger was trying to feed escaped from his cage and swung himself across the store and knocked over the stack of Math Puzzles for Dogs books. Startled by the noise, Harry lost control of the box cutter and it slipped, the blade plunging straight into his thigh. Except that instead of piercing first his red flannel Santa pants and then his flesh, the blade snapped clean off and clanged to the tile floor. Harry looked at it curiously.

“What a cheap box cutter,” he said, although he had to admit that he was a little relieved.

He instead used his keys to open the boxes and successfully stocked the gerbils in their mathematically appropriate cages.

There still being no customers, he wandered to the back of the store, where his Santa throne was set up. He sat down and reached under the chair, pulling out a paperback book he kept secreted there to read during the inevitable downtime.

Which didn’t last long.

As he was absorbed in his book, he didn’t notice a figure approaching.

“Oh, Harry Potter, you Satanic little scamp,” he said, turning the page. Then he looked up and started. “Hi…I mean, uh, ho, ho, ho.”

“Mr. Claus, I’d like to have my pet Alistair’s picture taken with Santa.”

It was difficult to argue with the man, as he was easily seven-and-a-half feet tall. His head was completely clean shaven—which has that odd effect of making people look even more menacing. His face was heavily scarred, as if he had been in a knife fight, or had at one time been the goalie for a darts team. He was dressed completely in black leather. In a word, he scared the crap out of Harry.

“Alistair,” Harry could barely say. There didn’t appear to be anything accompanying him. “Um, Mr….”

“Mennis. Dénis Mennis. Yes, Alistair.”

He opened his black leather trenchcoat and a large, dark brown shape flew out directly at Harry.

Harry screamed.

“That’s Alistair. He’s what’s known as a False Vampire Bat, or Spectral Bat—Vampyrum spectrum. Native to South America, the False Vampire Bat is able to reach a wingspan of three feet. Just like Alistair here.” He beamed with pride.
Alistair had attached himself to Harry’s beard and stared at him—presumably not discerning a great deal. He squeaked.

“What does this thing eat?” Harry didn’t really want to know but asked anyway.

“Birds, small mammals, things like that. They kill their prey by biting its head and crushing its skull.”

“Charming. And it’s just the thing to have flying around a pet store.”

This aggrieved Mr. Mennis. “He’s not a thing. He’s my Alistair. And your precious birds and hamsters are perfectly safe. Alistair is a perfect gentleman.”

“I see.”

“So, please keep your bat-phobia to yourself and just snap his picture.”

“Fine.” Harry reached down and picked up the remote control for the digital camera, which was mounted on a tripod a few feet in front of the Santa throne.
Mr. Mennis walked over and adjusted Alistair so that he was hanging upside down from Harry’s beard and facing the camera, his claws grasping tightly the thick gray hair. Despite Alistair’s weight, about seven ounces, Harry could feel no pain—though it could not be said that he was even remotely comfortable.

“Ready?” asked Harry, aiming the remote control. He pressed the exposure button and a blinking red light on the front of the camera counted down 10 seconds. “Say ‘freakish.’”

“Spread your wings, Alistair!” exhorted Mr. Mennis.

The immense bat obliged, and the flash went off.

“All done,” said Harry.

“See?” said Mr. Mennis. “Didn’t he behave perfectly?”

Harry had to grudgingly agree.

Mr. Mennis held open his coat. “Here, Alistair!” Alistair detached himself from Harry’s beard and flew into Mr. Mennis’s coat. He closed it over him.

Harry rubbed his beard. “God, I hope this picture came out,” he said to himself.

He walked around to the back of the camera and brought the picture up on the LCD—happily, it was perfectly exposed. He showed it to Mr. Mennis, who was pleased. He printed the image to the attached photoprinter and handed the print to Mr. Mennis.

“You can pay up at the front register,” said Harry.

“Thank you very much. And Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas to you…and to Alistair.”

Mr. Mennis smiled approvingly and departed. Harry collapsed on his Santa throne and closed his eyes for a good long time.


What began to concern Harry was the complete lack of pain he had been able to feel all day. First the blow to the head in the truck—which didn’t even leave a mark—then the box cutter, then having a half-pound bat hang from his beard—normally, these things would hurt or at the very least leave some kind of mark. And yet as he examined his forehead in the men’s room mirror—and then checked the thigh he had hit with the cheap box cutter—he could detect not even the slight bump, bruise, nick, or soreness. Not that he was complaining, but it sure was peculiar.

Later that afternoon, as the roads got better and people began to venture out, business started to pick up and get back to something akin to normal. Roger’s staff actually showed up, so Harry didn’t have to handle every customer himself.

“Are you Santa?” came a voice from behind him. He looked around the back of his Santa throne and beheld a small, well-past-middle-aged woman. Her face was pulled taut, obviously the result of a facelift, but it looked more like her face had been caught in some kind of industrial accident. Her hair, which should by all rights have been gray, was dyed some weird shade of red that made it look like a Bozo the Clown wig. She had the rough, gravel-strewn voice of someone who had smoked for at least 500 years.

“Yes, yes, I am,” said Harry, resisting the urge to make a sarcastic comment.

“Take Pookie’s picture.” She presented him with something that looked like a giant, white, furry millipede but was apparently a dog of some kind. It even had a little red bow in its hair.

“Pookie,” said Harry. “Is she a dog?”

“Yes, she’s— Of course she’s a dog, you idiot. What else would my precious be?” She kissed the dog’s head for emphasis.

“I don’t know. I missed that Empire of the Insects special on PBS last night.”

Suddenly Harry missed Mr. Mennis and Alistair.

“Sure, let’s get to it,” he said.

He sat down on his throne and the woman placed Pookie on his lap. The dog kept squirming and yipping. He tied to pet her and make soothing sounds to calm her down, but Pookie would not stop moving.

“I need you to keep her still, otherwise the picture’s not going to come out,” said Harry, as the dog’s yipping got more insistent.

“If you’re going to run this business, the least you could do is know how to handle pets.”

“Lady, for the past three weeks I have been handling pets that would literally make your skin crawl. Come on, Pookie, there’s a good doggie. Sit still.” He cooed softly and stroked the dog behind the ears. This did not please Pookie and she whipped her head around and sank her teeth into Harry’s wrist. Except that the teeth did not sink into Harry’s flesh, as Harry and Pookie were clearly expecting them to. In fact, not only wasn’t there a mark on Harry, but several of Pookie’s teeth broke off and fell into Harry’s lap. Pookie began yipping and yelping until her owner picked her up.

“What did you do to her?” asked the woman, distraught. “What did you do to my Pookie?”

“I didn’t do anything—she tried to bite me, and it didn’t quite…work.” Harry was just as bewildered as anyone.

“I’m going to report you to your manager, and then to the Humane Society.” She and Pookie stalked off.

Harry stared at his wrist. There wasn’t even a mark where the dog tried to bite him.

Harry was so focused on his wrist that he never even noticed the Santa pin on his lapel. The nose was glowing bright red.