Richard Dansky's Blog, page 21
November 12, 2011
On the Bottom Step
I flattened myself against the rail and let them pass. I wasn't in a hurry to catch that train. No hurry to catch any particular train, to be honest. Just tired and sniffly and wanting to eventually get back to the hotel, with a book in my hand that might be cracked open once I got on the train.
And behind the crowd, a little ways, one woman. Middle aged, silent. Wearing a brown coat of no particular style, and a scarf around her head. On the bottom step, the very last one, a red poppy, one of the ones sold for Remembrance Day on streetcorners and in train stations. Fake cloth flower, fake wire stem. This one hand been worn today, had been dropped, had been stepped on. The flower had come loose from the stem, and the pieces were just there, on the step. Maybe one of the people in the cluster had dropped it. More likely someone from a previous train had, and it had sat there, and been walked over and stepped on and generally ignored.
The woman stopped. Let the crowd move away from her. She knelt down, and, with infinite care, picked up the pieces of the poppy. They went into her pocket, reverently. She straightened, and stood, and walked away.
November 11, 2011
A Small Thought On Family
The next day, we didn't stay too long at the cemetery, especially considering the length of the drive to get up there. It was a long drive back, too, and they were going to have to make it without me. I had a plane to catch in Newark, a flight up to Toronto for work, and that set another limit on us. And of course, the Giants were playing an early game at home, and that meant endless traffic agonies if they didn't get well south of the Meadowlands before four, which would have meant not making it home until God knows when. But we stayed a while, and it was all right.
Unveilings aren't religious law, of course. They're custom, relatively recent custom at that, maybe two or three centuries old. But I like them. They're a reason to get the deceased's loved ones back together a few months or a year down the road, to make sure everyone's doing all right and to remember the good in the person who's now gone.
The family straggled in - not hard to do, considering the labyrinth-like nature of the place Grandma's laid to rest. We got lost. Cousins got lost. You get the idea. But we got there and others got there, and as we waited my nephew and I took a walk among the stones, to have the sort of very serious talk you have with eight year olds about matters of life and death. He's a smart kid, Jake is, and he wanted to know why people thought cemeteries were scary. So we talked about that as we walked, and we talked about how everyone who passes on continues in the people who knew them, because knowing and loving people means they helped make you who you are. Heavy stuff, I know, but like I said, he's a sharp kid.
Eventually we all got there, and my uncle led the unveiling, and a few people said a few heartfelt things, and I learned a bit more about my family and my grandparents in a good way. Grandma and Grandpa are buried at the very outer edge of the cemetery, and across the thin strip of road that rings the place is a small field, backing up on a fence and some houses. There are some trees in the field, and some lush grass, and nothing really of note. Except as we did the unveiling, some of her great-grandchildren were there, in that field. A handful of cousins, running around and playing and having a great time, getting along just fine.
And I thought, as I watched them play, that this was really the best way possible to remember my grandmother, and my grandfather with her, and the best tribute we could give them.
October 31, 2011
Unhaunted House
Enjoy the holiday, folks. Eat candy. Be afraid.
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“Unhaunted House”
They huddled in the bathroom on the second floor, a family of three, afraid.
Tap. Tap tap. Tap.The sounds came from all over the house. Everywhere glass faced the outside, they could hear the delicate impact of small branches tap tap tapping, trying to find their way in. That was why they had chosen the bathroom to flee to. It, of all the rooms, had no windows.
Tap. Thump. Tap tap.The Millers had bought the house two months previously, twenty percent down and the rest financed at five and a quarter percent. Their
daughter, wide-eyed and fey at six years old, hadn’t liked it much, but she hadn’t liked any of the thirty-odd houses they’d seen, and this one
had much to recommend it. High ceilings, a spacious kitchen, a master bath suite with a garden tub – and all for a pleasantly low price. The yard was unkempt, but the Millers figured that the previous owner simply hadn’t had time to keep it up. Mrs. Miller asked the real estate agent, who talked about the benefits of the gas fireplace in the rumpus room instead.
“I don’t like this house,” the little girl had said, and tugged on the real estate agent’s sleeve. “Is it haunted?”
He laughed, nervously. “The house? Absolutely not. I can promise you this house is not haunted.”Mr. Miller took his daughter’s hand. “See, honey? No ghosts here.”
“No ghosts in the house,” the agent echoed.The little girl looked at him. “Not yet,” she said, and stared until he looked away.
“Kids,” Mrs. Miller said with a laugh. “Such imaginations.”Thump. Crash tinkle tap tappity rustle.
The move had been swift and pleasant, and the installation of the Millers – father, mother, and recalcitrant daughter, too – had gone off without a hitch. Utilities were connected, services arranged, and neighbors nodded to, all in short order. All that remained was the lawn, which Mr. Miller found himself curiously disinterested in working on.Thump. Thump crash rustle tap. A different tap now, wood on wood, right outside the bathroom door.
“Dear, when are you going to mow the lawn?” Mrs. Miller had asked herhusband on a cloudy and grim Sunday morning. “It’s not going to take care of itself.”“Later,” he had answered, and even meant it.
Later came. Later went. And that night, the little girl complained of branches tapping on her window.
Tap. Tap tap. Crash rustle crash thump.Days passed. The tapping got louder, and more frequent. Mrs. Miller heard it now, too, though Mr. Miller swore he never did, or blamed it on the wind. The lawn stayed unmowed. Walking to the mailbox became a trick. Weeds stretched themselves across the sidewalk to trip the unwary. Branches seemed to swing low in the breeze to take accidental pokes at eyes.
Tap. Tap creak creak.Neighbors tsk-tsked at the state of the property. Weeds grew up,thick and tall. Mrs. Miller stopped waving to the neighbors, and started nagging Mr. Miller about how unpleasant the house had become, even with new carpet and fresh paint in the upstairs bedrooms. Her husband pooh-poohed her. It was all coincidence, or something seasonal, or something to that effect. Of this, he was sure. The little girl listened to them debate over dinner, and shook her head.
“The house isn’t haunted,” she said thoughtfully. “The rest of theplace is. That’s why the lawn is acting funny. We should leave.”“We’re not going to leave, honey,” Mr. Miller said. “That would be silly. It’s just the lawn. I’ll mow it tomorrow. Or I’ll hire someone to do it, and it will all be fine. You’ll see.
”“You do that, dear,” Mrs. Miller said. “That would be very nice.”
That had been yesterday.
Tap. Rustle rustle. Scratch, scratch, scratch, just outside in the hall.
Then, silence.“How strong is the lock, honey?” Mrs. Miller asked, her arms around her daughter, her voice ever so slightly strained.
“I don’t think it matters, dear,” he replied, and held her as the first tendrils of green crept underneath the door.October 29, 2011
For The Autumn Queen, Where She Rests Among The Fallen
A little fiction, in honor of the season - this one was originally published over at Storytellers Unplugged.
Enjoy.
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For The Autumn Queen, Where She Rests Among The Fallen
To Tommy, it was a leaf.
Oh, it was a beautiful leaf, to be certain, five-tined, like a maple, and blood-red at the edges with lines like yellow and orange flames in the center. And when he saw it on the sidewalk on his way home from school, resting among the dead and withered brown husks, he knew he had to take it home. He’d press it in wax paper, he thought. He’d preserve it.
He’d save it.
Behind him, the dead dry leaves rattled and rustled and made sounds like bony hands shaking a pair of dice as they skittered across the sidewalk. There was no breeze to move them, not on that sunny fall day, but that was not Tommy’s concern, not when in his hands he held the most beautiful leaf in the world.
Tommy, you must understand, was six at the time. What he knew of magic was what all six year olds know, if they are allowed to. He knew that there was magic in the world, though he couldn’t tell you where it was. He knew that strange and wonderful and special things could happen, and that Dracula and Bigfoot went out for cheeseburgers together when the moon was right, and that there really were dragons off the edge of the map and monsters under the bed.
What he did not know, what he could not know, was that in his hand he held the Autumn Queen, born best beloved every spring and adored through the dying time in the fall, most royal and exalted of the leaf-spirits whose existence is a secret even to six year old boys who know something about the way the world really works.
And so even as he hurried home, the better to preserve his find before any of her glory faded, word spread from leaf to leaf and branch to branch, limb to limb and tree to tree. Winds picked up leaves in ranks and blew them down the street after one small boy. Thousands upon thousands of leaves let go their last, painful grip on the branches that had given them life, and let themselves be carried away after the kidnapper, the defiler, the one who even now held the Autumn Queen between two fat and indelicate fingers.
He reached home ahead of the swirling winds, slamming the door behind him the face of a cloud of pursuers. They slammed themselves against the door and walls of his house, dashing themselves against it again and again until they battered themselves to pieces, and a thin smoke born of their passing filled the air. And even as one fell, another arrived on the breeze, or skittered along the sidewalk when it thought no one was looking, or dropped out of the clear blue sky to continue the assault.
Tommy, for his part, did not notice this, or if he did he ignored it, for he had better things to do. There was a leaf to preserve, after all, Fall’s finest colors to save so that they might be cherished all through the winter. Carefully he made his preparations, studious and careful in the way of small boys intent on a task that they know in their bones to be the most important thing in the world.
At least, it’s the most important thing in the world, until another thing comes along, such as your mother telling you to play outside. It was, she told him, a beautiful day, and he ought not to be inside.
“Just a minute,” he told her. “I just have one more thing to take care of.”
#
They found Tommy in the back yard, his mouth stuffed impossibly full of leaves and his face blue. On his hands and arms and round little-boy face were a thousand tiny cuts, the sort that might have been paper cuts, or scrapes from falling down on too-rough concrete, or a thousand other things, but weren’t. His mother cried and his father stood stoically while the ambulance took him away, at least until the nice policeman suggested that they go inside and get out of the wind that was whipping the unraked leaves in their backyard every which way. And so they went inside, and poured out their grief, and told the policeman what they knew, which, in the grand scheme of things, was nothing at all.
Outside, the leaves still beat at the windows and at the doors, at the walls and at the roof, for while they had achieved vengeance, that was all that they had done, and it was not enough.
And inside, the Autumn Queen sobbed unheard where she lay, alone and imprisoned, in the silence and desolation between pages 234 and 235.
October 7, 2011
News Now, Vienna Later
Driver: San Francisco is still out. It's still getting great reviews. It's still the game where I drive around and my wife says things like "That car looks expensive. You should crash it."
The Game Narrative Summit at GDC Online in Austin is next week. I will be there, doing double duty as a member of the advisory board for the conference and running my annual game writing workshop. The speaker list this year is one of the most impressive I can remember - Neal Stephenson (yes, THAT Neal Stephenson), Nolan Bushnell, Steve Jaros, Mary De Marle, folks from Valve and BioWare, and many more. I'm very much looking forward to it - both to the conference sessions themselves and to the opportunity to hang out with so many professional peers. To the Ginger Man! (but only after all the programming is over with)
The folks at Green Man Review have asked me to let you know about this - the release of audio versions of Neil Gaiman's "Snow Glass Apples" and "Murder Mysteries". Click the link, read more. And mind the apples.
Speaking of Green Man and its sister publication, Sleeping Hedgehog, I've got a few new reviews up. There's Michael Swanwick's Dancing With Bears and the Christopher Golden-edited The Monster's Corner . Prefer a mystery (with added Tarzan)? There's The Peerless Peer , Philip Jose Farmer's mashup of Holmes and the Lord of the Jungle.
Congratulations to local specfic stalwart Bull Spec on kicking(starter) ass on their Kickstarter Project. For those of you unfamiliar with the magazine, I highly recommend checking it out. For those of you who are familiar with it, I highly recommend giving away dozens of subscriptions as holiday presents. Or birthday presents. Or combination birthday/holiday presents, for those unlucky enough to be born on Saturnalia. You get the idea.
And last but not least, because I'm dreadfully shy about this sort of thing, there's an interview with me up over at fellow Yard Dog Tracy S. Morris' blog. The gory details, including the heretofore rarely revealed details of how I missed my first book signing, are here.
And for the moment, that's all I've got.
September 19, 2011
Another Review
I'll just let that sink in for a bit.
The Ballad of Transporting The Angry Cat
Set up cat carrier vertically, the better to drop large, anxiety-ridden, 13 year old cat who does not speak English and thus cannot be told to calm down because it's just a routine trip to get her nails trimmed and whatnot into it at the appropriate moment. Discover said cat is outside. Realize that said cat has roughly four thousand escape routes, and moves much faster than I do. Realize that said cat also has a brain the size of a walnut, and is likely to use precisely one (1) of those routes. Get between cat and escape route. Attempt to pick cat up. Attempt to pick cat up again. Attempt to pick cat up a third time. Actually pick cat up. Nearly drop cat. Adjust grip on cat, who is clearly not having any of this. Walk angry, upset, squirming, large cat whose claws are approaching velociraptor territory into the house and over to upright cat carrier. Attempt to put cat into carrier. Cat does reverse frog leg splay thing with claws (I think that's the technical term for it) and blocks kitty insertion. Cat carrier falls over. I use profanity. Cat, shocked at my language, twists around and accidentally tags my face with some of those pocket scimitars of hers. Other cat watches with mild interest from across the room. I put cat down. Cat immediately bolts for the dining room. Other cat is directly in her escape route. Other cat, it must be noted, is large, and ornery, and has taken out a german shepherd, a plumber, several vet techs, skunks, racoons and at least one burglar. He watches first cat's approach with a lot more interest. First cat hits second cat like Ray Lewis going after the kicker on a busted fake field goal. There is a sound like two table saws having a bad first date. And then big mean boy cat is looking up at me with an expression like, "DID YOU SEE WHAT SHE JUST DID? NOT COOL, MAN, NOT COOL!" I shoo wounded pride cat out the door, then shut the door and the cat door. Cat who needs to go to vet is locked in with me. Or am I locked in with her? I find her in the dining room. I move furniture to get to her. She runs to the den. I find her in the den. I move furniture to get to her. She runs upstairs. Aha, I think. Upstairs. Smaller quarters. This is getting easier. I set the cat carrier back up and brace it, then go upstairs to follow her. Cat has gone to ground in the bedroom. I shut the bedroom door. This, as it turns out, is not one of my smarter moves. There is a noise coming from underneath the bed. It is a noise like this: WRRRRARRRROORRRAARRRROORRRAARRRR *HISS* I look under the bed. Angry cat is on one side. Elderly calico is sitting on the other side, one full bed-length away from her, minding her own damn business. This, of course, is the signal for angry cat to go all DeNiro "ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME?" and launch herself at the other kitty, who is roughly as prepared for this as Sweden would be for a full-scale invasion by the Narn Empire. I reach under and separate the two. Calico kitty sensibly gets the hell out of dodge. Angry cat goes back under bed. I get angry cat out from under bed and walk over to door, so as to place angry cat in carrier. At this point, I realize that cat carrier is downstairs, which is to say on the other side of the door, which is to say on the other side of the door which is latched shut so angry kitty wouldn't get away. Unfortunately, I now have two hands full of angry kitty, which leaves none for opening the door. I attempt to open door anyway. This goes about as well as you'd expect. Kitty dives back under bed. I crack the door, grab a blanket, and go after angry kitty. It quickly becomes clear that I am not getting angry kitty out from under the bed. I realize I am a tool-using mammal with thumbs, and systematically dismantle the bed. Blanket, off. Sheets, off. Mattress, off. Boxspring, off. What I am left with is a frame and a cat who has dug in all four claws like she's going to take the whole damn carpet with her if she goes. This does not quite happen, though it's a near thing. I wrap angry kitty in blanket, to the point where I am now carrying a large ball of Bugs Bunny cartoon special effect downstairs to the sound of a continuous MWARRARAROOOORORROAORAOROAROOROAR. I put the cat in the carrier. I close the carrier. I take the carrier to the car, and the car to the vet. At the vet, she is astonishingly well-behaved. And the look in her tiny, angry feline eyes says "Gotcha."
September 15, 2011
Oh Look! Another Book Review!
Incidentally, I've been asked where/when I write all of these reviews. The answer, almost without fail, is "in hotel rooms." I may polish them once I get home, but odds are the bulk of the content comes in the form of notes taken while I'm reading a book on the road.
Punctuated
Spoiler alert: He liked it. W00t!
