Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions

by Neil Gaiman

A few of them were written to amuse myself or, more precisely, to get an idea or an image out of my head and pinned safely down on paper; which is as good a reason for writing as I know: releasing demons, letting them fly.

It happened that I had just finished co-writing a screen adaptation of Beowulf, the old English narrative poem, and was mildly surprised by the number of people who, mishearing me, seemed to think I had just written an episode of “Baywatch.” So I began retelling Beowulf as a futuristic episode of “Baywatch” for an anthology of detective stories. It seemed to be the only sensible thing to do.

I was only seven, but it was daylight, and I do not remember being scared. It is good for children to find themselves facing the elements of a fairy tale—they are well equipped to deal with these.

Some days before, I’d asked Pious Dundas whether anyone was with Belushi in the chalet, on the night that he died. If anyone would know, I figured, he would. “He died alone,” said Pious Dundas, old as Methuselah, unblinking. “It don’t matter a rat’s ass whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone.”

Shock makes clichés happen for real: I felt the blood drain from my face; I caught my breath.

I wanted him to stop talking: I needed the magic.

He got so old after that night as if the years took him all in a rush.

The beer had the kind of flavor which, he suspected, advertisers would describe as full-bodied, although if pressed they would have to admit that the body in question had been that of a goat.

the music was so loud you could hear it with your bones,

If it’s true that every seven years each cell in your body dies and is replaced, then I have truly inherited my life from a dead man; and the misdeeds of those times have been forgiven, and are buried with his bones.