Volume I

Of the

Annual December Collection

by

Paul A. Brmmer
of

The Viking Hats

in

Albany, NY
during

2007
Twenty one copies were printed on demand of the author at his expense for private distribution. All contents are copyright of Paul A. Brmmer, 2007

Contents
Page 3, A Short History of Christmas Page 8, The Beatification of Saint Christopher Page 18, Whatever Happened to Jimmy Swyft Page 19, A Surrender Artist Page 25, Predicting the Future Page 27, A Man Lost in Winter Page 31, Note on Type Page 32, Winter

A Short History of Christmas

Christmas is an exceedingly well-regarded time of every year, especially among retailers and children; the former perform for parents a service that medieval doctors and their leeches could be proud of and the latter are showered in abundance so great that they will forget most of it by May. Good cheer and tidings are spread so thickly around that the air becomes nearly too sweet to breathe and some diabetics inhale themselves into comas. Some irritating cynics crassly inquire as to why we cannot all be this merry for the whole year. The philosophical answer to this is that when were are always merry, we are never merry. The fitting seasonal answer to this is to give those people large lumps of coal. As a proud Pennsylvanian, I believe that those lumps should be as large and liberally distributed as possible. Few know well the true origins of Christmas, which is older than the Earth. Christmas began, you see, as a celebration among the primordial spirits of many parallel universes. The Earth was a gift from Universe-42 to Universe-47, but Universe-47 thought it was awfully tacky, so it returned Earth for store credit at the transcendent equivalent of Macys and it was eventually shoplifted from the bargain bin there by Universe-37, which otherwise had in its heavens only cardboard boxes and things like Chinese lanterns, although they couldnt really have been Chinese lanterns, because China did not yet exist. The Christmas season was revered by the Dinosaurs as well, at least the carnivorous ones. The primeval pine trees of their time were rather different plants than they are today. They werent evergreens then, rather they were usually-greens-but-sometimes-pointies. Every winter, or rather the equivalent season of the epoch, the needles of the pines would harden into sharp, piercing little daggers that would the pines would in wrath rain down upon errant herbivores who nibbled on the brush beneath the pines. Predators were, of course, safe from this as they never bothered the plants, thus they were free to feast on the dead and dying plant-devourers beneath the pines. The meat-eaters were very jolly during this time, or at least as jolly as something called, terrible lizard, could be and they instinctually revered the pines. Sadly, this was all ended by the gigantic asteroid that crashed to Earth and ruined Christmas for the dinosaurs. Also: they all died. The pine trees survived, but they got into a fight with the brush and the two

things stopped talking, so in spite the pines have never made their needles into daggers again. The third pillar of Christmas, Santa Clause, is of a younger vintage than the ancient customs of gift giving and revering pines. He begins in ancient Sumer, but altogether removed from other traditions. The first Santa Clause was a man named Sana-Kaludu. Sana-Kaludu was a violent sociopath who would at the end of each Sumerian year go on a rampage. He would smear himself with blood and murder many people upon whose organs he would gorge and whose scalps he would fasten to this chin. After he had swelled his stomach as he could, he would offer the organs that were left to the people of the city-state, who always accepted the gifts, although they were mostly being polite. In time the blood-stained skin would become a red suit, the scalps would become a beard, and his engorged fatness would become a belly that shook like a bowlful of jelly. The spare organs became more conventional gifts, although the recipients still mostly only appreciated the thought. These three streams would at last be crossed during the Trojan War. The story of the Trojan horse is well known, but the whole truth of the matter is seldom spoken. Before the gigantic wooden horse was sent into Troy, an entirely different plan was tried. A Greek soldier named Thucydides, but not that Thucydides, who was conveniently familiar with certain facts about Sumer recalled the practices of Sana-Kaludu and proposed that the Greeks send a dozen or so agents dressed in his manner into the city to really scare the Trojans into surrender. Very few people thought that this was a good idea, but they were desperate, so they dressed a few of their men in red cloth and fake beards, then sent them to infiltrate Troy. The plan did not really further the Greek objective, but one of the Sana-Kaludus, a man named Herodotus, but not that Herodotus, took a fancy to some of the Trojan children, thus instead of carrying his mission out, he gave them gifts. He, as the others were, was recalled before he could begin the second, both very creepy and very Greek phase of his plan, so he was known only as the gift giver. The story was by and by forgotten, but a few kept knowledge of the other Herodotus, who gave gifts. The other SanaKaludus, who mostly raped and murdered whatever Trojans they happened upon, were totally forgotten; an omission that falls directly to the feet of Homer, yes that Homer, who thought that it was all too silly and implausible to be part of his Iliad.

In the north, where the Germans were, they had no knowledge of Sumer and Sana-Kaludu, but they did know the awesomeness of pines. The German tribes all revered pines for their resemblance to spears, which were among their favorite pointy objects for stabbing people. One tribe in particular, the Kringii, worshipped a fearsome pine tree god. After every battle they would honor their god by sticking the corpse of the enemy general atop a pine tree and hanging the severed heads of his soldiers from its branches, then lighting the corpse on fire. This too was transformed into a more benign form by time, although the modern tradition of decorating evergreens requires chopping them down, an act that the Kringii would have thought intolerably cruel and blasphemous. These disparate traditions and other of celebrating Christmas continued on for many centuries. It was, of course, not called, Christmas, of course, but the spirit and timing were all more or less in common. In time the prominent holiday became of interest to the emerging Christian church. They rather misliked that the holiday was so broadly celebrated without their ever being invited, so they elected to copt it. Many diocese and parishes adopted different associations for the holiday to make sure that they had to be invited to parties. The most unusual of these was probably that of the church of the Crimean Peninsula, which held that it was the day when all twelve disciples had been born simultaneously from a woman named Bertha who had been so pained by the massive birthing that she threw the twelve babes to the wind, scattering them all over the ancient world. This gave a short-lived rise to the epithet, crimean, as a reference to someone who was stupid and absurd. Ultimately Pope Hilarius intervened to unify the practice so that he would be invited to all of the best parties. Initially he wished to devote the holiday to himself, but just before he declared the celebration of Hilariusmas, several cardinals intervened to point out just how much of ruddy prat that such a proclamation would make him seem to be. Though he was disappointed, the Pope agreed and forsook the only chance he ever would have had to make his name be remembered for something other than being rather silly. After considering many possibilities, which oddly enough included Judasmas, the Pope simply threw a dart at a board with the names of all the prior Popes, saints, and important holy figures. He missed on his first throw, which struck an unfortunate cardinal in the eye. As Eyeballmass would be sillier than even Hilariusmas, the Pope threw again and, by happenstance, hit Jesus. Thus was the official Christmas proclaimed.

The formal date and the advance of Christianity slowly began to draw the various traditions together. The harsher element remained a part of many celebrations for some centuries after the proclamation, but subsided as time went on and the festival spread. They did not disappear quickly; there are accounts of Germans cutting peoples heads off and hanging them on trees as late as the fourteenth century, although these might simply have been cases of German boys being German boys. The true end of the violent and destructive Christmas was merchandising. It came from the mind of a twelfth century Jewish moneylender from Prague named Zalman Yeshev. Zalman realized that if Christians were preoccupied by buying gifts to give and celebrating, they wouldnt be able to persecute and harass the Jews, which Christians considered a great way to kill time back then. Zalman spent many months reading about various festive traditions for the end of the year and knitted them together into a single grand holiday. The blood-soaked and scalp-wearing engorged Sumerian psychopath Sana-Kaludu became a jolly, fat, bearded old elf in red who gave gifts to every good girl and boy and might only spanked or scolded the naughty ones, rather than murdering them and eating their organs. The flaming corpses and severed heads of the enemies of the Kringii became stars and ornaments. Zalman wrote hymns and songs celebrating the newly ancient traditions that he had crafted, sold Santa Claus costumes, which consisted of a baggy red coat and breeches with a miter and staff covered in bells, Christmas trees, Christmas tree ornaments, and many fine, expensive gifts. This made him not merely a rich man, but one who could celebrate Chanukah in peace. These very lucrative traditions grew into cultural edifices that were in time propagated across the whole world. This expansion did create some eccentricities, such as the Wallachian Santa Claus, who was really the incarnation of the wrath all feudal lords who would go from village to village to burn the homes of those who had not paid their rents. The Wallachians were also the first to have the idea of Santas helpers, but the original helpers were not Elves, but rather serfs who had been conscripted, had their legs chopped off, and been forced to toil in workshops to make torches, arrows, and other things needed to conscript more serfs and burn their houses down. Other new traditions were added over time, such as the sleigh and things that pulled it. Zalmans Santa Claus merely walked from house to house to deliver his toys, but later traditions held that he traveled in anything from an oxcart that was miraculously pulled by a single small dog to an enormous

armored wagon pulled by a hundred hounds of Hell. This latter variation was another Wallachian innovation. The contemporary American vision of Santa Claus was not firmly established until the fourth decade of the twentieth century when the Coca-Cola Corporation, in a triumphant case of ironic timing, produced a series of advertisements depicting what we would now commonly expect Santa Claus to look like. What is seldom known is that this image of Santa Claus first introduced by the Coca-Cola Corporation in the preceding decade to great success, but had been replaced by, the New Santa, just short of becoming etched into the overarching cultural firmament. The New Santa Claus was, for reasons that to this day remain unexplained, a stodgily dressed Amish man who drove a team of cows and mercilessly beat naughty children with a hickory switch. The people responded by flocking to the Pepsi-Cola corporations Santa Claus, who was a ten-foot tall behemoth clad in a red robe, wearing a Phrygian cap, and wielding a massive iron rod that he used with a canvas sling to hurl gifts at children and who drove a sleigh pulled by a team of bears. Pepsis Santa Claus was never so well liked as CocaColas original one was, but a present-hurling giant and his bears were better than a surprisingly violent old-order Mennonite who was pulled around by heifers. Mercifully, Coca-Cola came to its senses and restored the classic Santa Claus, who has reigned over an ever growing territory ever since.

An Astrologers Tale
Like pearls they are, Streaking through the stars. Marked as omens in days of old, Heralds of coming death. Tonight one soars across the sky, And by its will comes my last breath.

The Beatification of St. Christopher

A man who was wracked with fear dashed haphazardly down a side street as mud and slush from the old, wasted snow that was nigh indiscriminately swept to the streets sides smeared his short, brown coat. Another man followed him at a an arrogantly modest dash, with a calm, sure smirk creasing his face and a long, consciously ominous black overcoat fluttering around him in the zephyr that was made nearly a wind as it was funneled through the thin street. As the man in his brown coat sharply rounded the nearest corner, his left hand leapt up to hold down the worn black bowler on his head, ignorant of the fear that pervaded the more engaged parts of his body. As the object of the chase he gave went around the corner the pursuer was for the moment liberated from the need for apparent confidence and gave more earnest and swifter chase so as not to loose for too long the sight of what he was keen to kill. The pursuer came around the corner in time enough to see the brown-coated man hurl himself into the open doors of a small Catholic Church. The pursuer, for the moment still without the need to intimidate, ran hurriedly to the church on his long, spindly legs, then slowed to meet the shadows of the empty rectory that greeted him past the door that the other man had left ajar. The sight of the pursuer, a long, sleek, black-coated figure wearing wide-brimmed fedora hat silhouetted by uneven light that flowed into the dark room from the street abruptly breached the brown-coated mans delusional sanctuary and provoked him to a defeated whimper that would have been illadvised had be been in any condition to be advised at all. He put great effort toward saying to say something, toward crying out for mercy, but fear locked the coherent part of his mind and his power to speak away from him, so he only whimpered. The pursuer turned so that the horrified quarry could see only a side profile of him, paused and slowly drew a deep breath in before restoring the faade that he wore for intimidation and strolling smoothly forward toward the miserable, illfated man who now clenched his bowler hat to his chest and flapped his shuttering lips in sequence with his desperately blinking eyes, failing to pray; failing to be brave.

The pursuer was very close to the quarry now. He thrust his hand into his coat and then withdrew clutching an ancient LaMat revolver. He lowered the old, brutish gun past the now quaking little mans ears, cocking it as the gun descended to mans eyes, and then turned the barrel toward his head. The man with the gun looked upward to the small stained glass windows of the church and traced the faint rays of light with his eyes, at last seeing the icon of the Virgin Mary, half in shadow; half in pale dusk light. He held the gun to the mans head for a long time and thought to himself, there was something that I used to say in a place like this, something that the boss and the others still went to churches and said, pretending that it was precious to their immortal souls, even though they had long since forsaken them. The man in the brown coat had ceased to shake and quiver while the pursuer was trammeled up in reminiscence and lowered his hat to the ground. He was silent and still now, his eyes were closed and his lips were pressed tightly together. The black coated man looked down at him again and whispered, Hail Hail Mary He was couldnt quite recall the words, but he felt as though he should say them, he suspected that the deep calm that appeared in his quarry might be summoned for him as well if he were to say them. He had a cool, steady expression on his face, but it was forged and held by arrogance and will, not by any contentedness. The brown coated mans breathing began to quicken again and he pulled his bowler to the top of his thigh. Just as his quiescence wore away, so did the gunmans irritated jealousy of it. He tensed his finger on the trigger, but did not pull it. He looked toward the Virgin Mary again and moved so that its carved eyes glared only at his back. The revolved was threatened to project its killing blast toward the back of his quarrys head now. He pressed the gun into the back of the brown coated mans head, but the brown coated man held his silence. The man with the gun looked sharply upwards at the darkness of the ceiling and jerked his finger backwards on the trigger. The furiously hot slug that was fired by LaMat revolver raced close past the poor fellows head with a terrible whistle and then tore deeply into the wood of a pew. You should go home to your family and work very hard so that youll have the money that you owe some time soon, growled the weary pursuer, go away from here and remember that deserving mercy is nothing to brag about. Oh, bless you, Mister Duonnolo, more than you can know, whimpered the man who by all expectations should have been killed before he scurried away like a fat old mouse. His nominal

assailant pulled a bible from a rack on the back of one of the pews, and then strode away from the church, still trying to remember a prayer. He walked many miles with half-formed words of God dancing like gypsies on the tip of his tongue. He walked past his car and his favorite restaurants, each of which he would peer into as he passed, looking for something to smile at. Sometimes he saw two young lovers smirking coyly at each other across the table and sometimes he saw old men and women who held their hands with a natural comfort that long superseded the warmth that years had taken from them as they had passed by. He indeed smiled at every such thing, and when he saw nothing to smile at, he would simply walk on, trying to pray. He had not had these sorts of feelings to savor in many years; they were contrary to his profession. He never really thought that he might have made a mistake to let the little man escape with merely a scare, only the crudest thugs were so impatient. It was very late at night when he finally stopped walking and by then he was so tired and his legs were so sore from having served faithfully for many more miles than they would have before been asked to bear him for that to lie down on a soft bed would be especially pleasant. He worried about the car that he had left so far away in, but was at least pleasantly surprised to find that his empty stomach knew better than to complain now that he had wandered home. He ascended the old stairs of the tenement, which were distressingly weather-beaten given that they were ostensibly inside of the building, and opened the creaking old door to his few small rooms, the best of a bad lot, and with pauses only to toss his hat and overcoat on the couch he shuffled to his bed and before he could even bother to take his shoes off or give the bible a place for the night, he was upon his bed and asleep. He did not usually dream, for that too was contrary to his profession, but it was not quite the same man is it usually was that slept tonight. He dreamt of a kingdom among the clouds that he had not dared contemplate in many years and breathed the air that was as fresh and clean as the summit of the holy mount. He flitted around without reason through the sun-bathed paradise until he came upon a hill with a top that was obfuscated by fog. He climbed slowly up it, hopeful that he would soon behold some joyous wonder; that expectation that had as a consequence his profound disappointment. What he came to see was the ruin of his dream; a sight that turned the skies red as blood, the clouds the color of old rust, and the sun to a single staring red eye that cast a burning beam of light upon the singular awful spot that he now beheld.

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The hilltop held a dozen men, all secured with nails through their flesh to ghastly, twisted frames that served as though crucifixes, but none had the proper shape; each was instead a bizarre arrangement of thick boards that required grotesque twisting and stretching of the mens bodies to fit them. They were all alive enough to groan, but not enough that they could wail or cry out for mercy. In the middle of this hideous thicket was a gnarled old gnome in an old cocked hat with a bucket of nails, hammer, and pile of boards whose worked this all seemed to be. He hummed and danced as he did his work, all the while reciting a cruel verse: I work all day with a hammer and a nail I hammer on the boards until they hold without fail, Then I hammer on the flesh until its pale. And when I have a thirst, I slake that with the blood that drips into my pail I work all night with a hammer and a nail I make them strong enough to hold up in a gale Then I make the others hurt until they have no strength to wail And if I ever want a drink I brew their bile for my ale. This caused him to awaken, not suddenly in a cold sweat, but slowly with eyes that crept slowly open in fear of what they might see, but hopeful that it would be something that was at least benign. He sat awake for a time, quietly and uneasily pondering the queer horrors that something in him had conceived of, but eventually he returned to sleep. The dream had wounded his new sanguinity, but he could survive without that for the rest of the night as he had for many foregoing years. He dreamt no more that night. When he awoke again, it was at a sensible time and old sol had taken his throne in the sky. He hastily cooked two eggs breakfast and read a few passages from a morning edition of the citys choicest paper before donning fresh clothes and leaving the tenement. His car was still many blocks away in the lonely back alley with long shadows where he had left it, so he had to be content to walk. The place whither he needed to go was nearer than his car, so he could save no time and would at least better enjoy the brisk winter morning air than he might while driving. He took the time to think about the prayer again. It was so silly that he could not remember it and it was even sillier that he was so fixated upon it.

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He came in sight of the curiously well arranged vines of The Ivy Cap after an hour and a half of a slow, idle stroll that he admitted to himself had been powerfully dull by its end. He stopped at the front desk to give the smiling girl who was well paid for the plunging neckline of her blouse, and related services, his hat and coat, noticing that his employers tall brown homburg was resting upon one of the shelves. He caught the sound of Dixieland fighting its way out of the back room, so he appropriately sauntered in that direction. He relished the well-tuned creaks of the old pine door as he opened it to clear a way into the dark and pulsing heart of The Ivy Cap. The back room was a long, crooked place with high ceilings, walls covered in red paper with a subtle fern pattern on it, three fine chandeliers, of which different, spaced evenly along the ceiling, a small stage where the band played, and a long bar with shelves that held all sorts of bottles with no labels, but suspicious looking contents. There were a few girls there at the behests of their men, but otherwise, only the interested partners of the business were present. As he walked down the short stairs and picked the pipe that was always ready for him from the bar, a tall, broad man in the middle of the throng shouted, hey, Christopher! Christopher Duonnolo shouted in reply, hey, boss. How are you? The exchange never went further on its own merits than that and were there not business immediately at hand, it would have ended there this morning too. Im not yet drunk, but I am ready for you to intoxicate me with happy tidings of either cash or wrath, called back the big man, who had in wise recognition of certain misunderstandings that could arise due to his position a habit of punctuating most sentences involving the word money with an earnest chuckle. Did you put an instructive end to tiny little Mister Belichick? No boss, I didnt have to. Duonnolo walked jauntily to where his boss stood and pulled from his own pocket, twenty five hundred dollars in cash. The dear fellow experienced a very timely bout of good fortune, which he was magnanimous enough to allow me, his dear friend, to partake of You have done splendidly Christopher! His boss then paused and peered inquisitively at Christophers left pocket, then asked, what spectacular literature has made a reader out of my favorite shark? Christopher froze in an uncomfortable pose as he felt the hard, unexpected bulge and protruding edge of the bible he had taken last night in his left jacket pocket. No memory existed in his mind of tucking it into his pocket and he certainly would have preferred that it not be there. As he felt the bible, he noticed, quite suddenly, that there

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were five men in long black trench coats and wide-brimmed fedoras standing in the shadows at the right end of the room whose presence had somehow eluded him just minutes prior. He also felt an odd reluctance to reveal that he had a bible in his pocket, even though all the men there routinely made their pro forma obeisance to the Holy Father and Virgin Mary and surely would not object to one of their close fellows indulging in some casual piety. Christopher looked coolly at his boss and said, its only my ledger, boss. Youve made a busy man of me. This was a harder lie than when he had given the boss his own money while claiming that it was a long demanded payment from poor Vatroslav Belichick. You must be busier than I know to have so grand a ledger, the boss replied, with his practiced chuckle, You shall have to show it to me some time, so that I might know the true magnitude of your diligence! This was worrying, as the boss never used imperatives, even in jest, without meaning that his will would be done. Perhaps I have made you too busy that you have not had time to do things that you should, like buying a new car to replace the one that must have broken down. None of my boys should have to walk the streets of my city! Christopher let a look of surprise creep onto his face; he had never considered that anyone could know that he had walked home from the church last night and to the club today. No, boss, its not broken down, I just felt like walking. How did you know? The boss chuckled loudly and patted Christophers shoulder as he said, Vincent said that he saw you walking along the street as he drove here this morning. Nobody would dare steal a car that belonged to one of my boys, so I guessed that your old Auburn might have betrayed you! Christopher suppressed a sigh of relief and declared, boss, I just felt like walking! The boss grin faded slightly as he nodded his head at Christopher and turned back to the bar. Christopher plucked a bottle of some rich brown liquid from the bar and walked over to a table on the darker left side of the room, sat down, then gave his suppressed sigh the gift of liberty. From across the small table, where he had noticed no one when he had sat down, a voice that sounded like it had been marinated in a brine of gin, lye and too-old wine inquired, Did you have a tough night? Christophers neck whipped around violently to put the voices origin, a thin-faced man with a pale grey goatee wearing a worn old stingy-brim porkpie hat that looked like it had been hung on a rack next a bed in the eye of a hurricane every night for a hundred years and a concurring lounge suit, before his eyes. Christopher couldnt decide if

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the man had been sitting at the table all along, but somehow escaped his notice or if he had sat down some time after had, but he seemed like he should be answered. Oh, it was a fairly ordinary evening for a man in my line of work. What pray tell, asked the strange man, is your line of work? Well, if youve hung around here long enough to be told, then you should already know, but if you really dont know, then you shouldnt be told, replied Christopher in an effort to seemly cool and cryptic. Oh, I know well enough; I wouldnt be interested otherwise, replied the man, genuinely achieving the demeanor that Christopher had tried to assume, we share a certain common business interest. He poured a shot glass of whatever golden liquid was in the bottle by his right hand down his throat and said, you were too nice to that man in the black bowler hat. It wouldnt have done anyone any harm if youd killed him the way you had planned to. The man paused to pour another glass and then laughed a long, wheezing laugh, well, it wouldve harmed him, but it hes barely anyone at all. Christopher could not restrain his eyes from widening or his mouth from quavering as he replied, how do you know that I didnt kill him? I keep a ledger as thick as yours, the man said, although mines a little more honest. Let us simply say that I turn a profit from your business without ever seeing a cent from it. Christopher held his eyes and breathed deeply, have you told the boss? No, my good Christopher, I prefer to conduct my business with a gentlemans discretion. My own boys on the other side of the room arent so genteel and they are a little impulsive. The man gestured to the daunting silhouettes of the men that Christopher had noted before. He tried to summon some bravado, but instead could barely feign a lesser fearfulness as he replied, they wont do anything to me here. The boss never likes it when bottles might be broken or the carpet might be stained. The man grinned evilly, my boys are very talented; they do their work very fast and clean. I think that theyre growing intolerably anxious as we speak. For your own sake, you ought to come along with me on a ride. The man stood up and began walking toward the door at the end of the room. Christopher looked apprehensively toward the angry penumbras whom the man had referred to and saw that they were moving with slow menace toward him. Christopher felt the cold weight of dread in his gut and clumsily rushed after the man. They passed through the door into the alley where an old Model T sat. I know what

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you were thinking after you spared that little guy," said the man as he mounted the running board, and I know what youve been thinking since. I know about all the grand plans that you have for doing good and redeeming yourself. Im really disappointed in you because of them. I always thought that you were one of the cold, hard best. Youve done your job well and thats been good for my business. Christopher stood silent as the man slung himself into the drivers seat. Get in; he commanded Christopher, youre not the man that I thought you were. The man I thought that you were wouldntve turned himself holy just because he couldnt kill in a church, but youre still a man, so that means that I might have use for you yet. Christopher wanted to speak, but the thick shadows of the alley seemed to flow down his throat to choke him, so he obeyed the man and took the seat at his side. The man started the engine with a snap of his fingers and laughed a big, rasping laugh as he drove the car out into the street at an alarming and improbable speed. Hang on Saint Christopher, on the passenger side. Open it up, tonight the devil can ride. You might well realize by now what my interest is, said the man as he looked casually at Christopher without much regard for the blistering speed of the car, which should have been impossible for it to attain. Even though it should have been late morning, the sky was a dark, filthy grey field devoid of stars and the clouds were as dark of charcoal. Not a single man, woman, or child walked the streets and it was very cold. Im in the business of bad things; of evil men and lost souls; of misery and depravity. The man cackled hoarsely, I suppose the simplest way to put it is that I am in the business of evil. The man grinned and turned so sharply onto a main drag that Christopher nearly brained himself on a strut. You were good for my business; you were very good for it indeed. I dont know that I can name another who so diligently dealt out death and terror. You were stone-cold brilliant. When you burned an orphanage down because they didnt pay their dues, it was stupendous. When you bludgeoned a man to death with his wifes skull, it was spectacular. You were a virtuoso of cruelty! A loud and searing howl peeled out from behind them to punctuate the mans sentence. Christopher looked back to see two coupes with no tops and filled by the menacing shadows from the club chasing them. Gouts of flame flowed out of the eyes and mouths of the shadows and the ones that werent driving wielded Thompson Submachine Guns. Dont mind my boys. They wont start shooting for a few more minutes yet. Theyll try to kills us both, of course, I cant die, he

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grinned, I cant live either. Christopher closed his eyes and in a tormented voice, asked, what do you want from me? There were many wiser things that he should have said and argued, but his beleaguered mind could muster nothing more than a pathetic, simple question that his dying voice could barely utter. The man laughed again and said, Oh Saint Christopher, I want you to be who you were. I want you to toss that damned book to my hounds and take up the sword again. I want you to murder, maim, and destroy everyone and anyone that you might like to. Why, sputtered Christopher, must I be such an awful man? Youd be a lousy good man. Youve been an evil one for too long a time. Its too late for you to purify yourself with deeds and piety now, youll never wash the accumulated sins of all those malignant years away. Youd never impress who youre trying to impress and only disappoint me, the man who so adored you. You can never be a King on high, but you can still be a prince of down below! The mans sentence was punctuated this time by a storm of fiery bullets that looked like comets as they roared through the air. They tore burning holes in the car and one tore through the mans head and left a burner passage from the back of it to a flaming chasm where his left eye had been, but he didnt seem to mind. The scent of brimstone filled the air and it become intolerably hot. What will it be, Saint Christopher? Do you want the agony or the ecstasy? Do you want to forsake or be forsaken? The man laughed louder and crueler than he had any time before. The bullets mutilated his face and clothes and the heat seemed ready to consume them. Christopher was nearly in tears and his thoughts were reduced to nearly instinct alone. He pulled the bible that he had stolen from his coat pocket and tossed it into the air. He saw a single fiery bullet strike it and cause a grand conflagration that was as bright as the sun and sent whistling bolts of fire blazing in ever direction and then he found himself in his bed, nestled cozily under its blankets. The hope that his ride with the monstrous man in the porkpie hat had been a dream died swiftly in his mind. Although he was unharmed, his clothes stank of sulphur and the bible was indeed gone, save for a think coat of ash on his hat. He leapt to his feet and charged out of his rooms, down the worn old stairway, and out onto the street. I have not abandoned my redemption, he declared to no one who could possibly be there, I only feigned it to fool you! He leapt to his feet and knew that he must prove his righteousness. I must purge the world of a great evil!

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Christopher Duonnolo marched a long way to the car that he had abandoned on the night when he had resolved to save himself. He drove it many miles under the pale moons light to a secluded garage on the other side of the tracks where an old chemist sold volatile substances to unscrupulous men who needed to destroy things. He bought a vast quantity of those substances and filled his car with them. A few hours later, when a fresh morning had prevailed over the old night, he was seen barreling down the street that lead to The Ivy Cap, which he blasted into nothing more than ash and a scar upon the Earth. The people who watched recalled that he had roared, HAIL MARY as he had charged down the street, but nothing more. The man in the porkpie hat only laughed.

Counfoundingly Unimpressive Reality

I am frightened and I am cold, The world is not as I wish it. The world is not as it should be. I cast a white shadow, And have a coal colored face, As if I have been mining a vein in the pit. Crows flying in serpentine loops above, The sky is thick with scowling clouds. The sky is grim and grey. I smile when I am sad, And quiver when I am sure, As if an actor lost in all the characters he has played.

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Whatever Happened to Jimmy Swyft

It was one very fine December morning that Jimmy Swyft was swaggering down Saint Martins Le Grand in old London town when Tom Swallow asked him, Jimmy Swyft, how do you swagger so well? Jimmy just laughed and shouted out loud, because I have a tall top hat, long cane with a copper snake for a head, and one hundred and one songs in my heart at once! Young Tom Swallow grinned back and tipped his old bowler to one side. Go tell Harry Black, hell want to know too! Hell want to swagger and stoop just like you do! So Jimmy Swyft went down to Pudding Lane, with one hand twirling his cane. When he found old Harry Black, who was lying low, the tall, strong man was thrilled to know. Jimmy and Harry talked through lunch; they ate ham and peas with two pints of stout and grapes by the bunch. Harry started thinking and realized that It was a great thing that Jimmy knew, so he told swaggering Jimmy Swyft, go down to the corner where the crier croons and tell him the news; if you give him a shilling, hell know just what to do! Jimmy Swyft walked down to the corner with his hat, and cane, and hundred and one songs. He gave the crier two shillings and half a slice of toast, the told him the good news. The crier did his duty; he shouted the words of Jimmy Swyft far and wide, then bought himself another half slice of toast, so it was a whole one that he could boast. It was about a week before Christmas and Jimmy Swyfts style was all the rage. Hatters were going mad and cane-makers were loosing their screws, even songwriters were turned into madmen by the craze of Jimmys news. The crowds became crazy as they fought for eat tall top hat, for each cane with a copper-snake for a head, and every single book with one hundred and then one more song. Jimmy swift didnt think that this was good at all, so he swaggered down to the market square before long. If you want to swagger, you have to be mellow, he said and the crowd saw what he was wearing, so they stole it all and pummeled Jimmy Swyft dead.

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A Surrender Artist
Simon Paisley has given up, taken an axe halfheartedly to his dreams, and thrown himself to the wolves, which, presumably, are found in the frozen meats aisle at the conveniently large grocery store where he is employed. There he works, or as he might have said before the embers of his mind had been at last doused, he drudges fruitlessly through toil, daily in the company of a menagerie of surly housewives, limp-minded old hags, and the wall-eyed simpleton who is the only other employee whom he reliable has the company of. It is life in the strictest sense of not being death. The rare exceptions to the regular mixture of unexciting patrons and mentally lacking are improvements only if one accepts that increases in variety are for their own sake good things. When some manager appears before him, transmogrifying the aisle of the frozen meats into an audience chamber, it is to begrudgingly emit payments of salaries, to awkwardly berate him for some almost existential slight against the stores ever vaguer ethos of customer service, or, most dreadfully, to attempt some appearance of cordiality through idle chatter more banal than monkey-written Shakespeare. This malicious friendliness is sometimes a stupefyingly superfluous pretense for a statement of some change in policy or rate of pay. The most recent instance of this was a declaration that either he or the simpleton might soon be elevated to the title of supervisor, much as a schizophrenic child with no friends might be made Lord Emperor of the Back Yard and its Dominions by his sadly doting mother. Simon Paisley was not given any further explanation of the matter, but has gleaned from an easily overheard whisper from the manager to the simpleton that he is favored for the position, presumably because the simpleton doesnt know well enough not to smile all of the time. The occasional appearance of students from the local university in the soon to be Hundred of the Lord High Bailiff of Meats seriously contest the title of The Dreadfullest. Their pockets bulge with laminated plastic and their carts are invariably laden with frozen objects that are meant to be heated with radiation and ingested as food might be, but with the severe caveat that ones stomach will not then feel satisfied and full, but rather as though a sphere of cast iron has been installed in it. It stings Simon Paisley the worst when they discuss their major fields of

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study, which they seldom do without also overtly defining study as the loathsome impediment to becoming inebriated, which they deem to be the embodiment of the nebulous concept of, the college experience, that their parents have so happily subsidized. Their subjects of focus oscillate frequently through the whole carousel of subjects which presently comprise the large category of liberal arts, or artes liberals, as Simon Paisley once delighted in calling them. Simon Paisley had a degree of that kind once, although he has long since misplaced it, quite probably into the waste can of their napkin-starved break room. Long ago, that is to say March of the preceding year, he had happily revealed the degree, which he had habitually kept on his person, to an man of intermediate age who had inquired in the course of the pointless small talk which some feel is appropriate behavior whilst patronizing merchants, as to whether or not Simon Paisley was enrolled in a university. This was of course disastrous as the degree rather brazenly declared that he was a, Bachelor of Liberal Arts, an incitement to aggressive whining, the honester substitute for the word, ranting, on the part of the old man. The underlying ratiocination of the old mans arguments were difficult to comprehend, so intricate and sophisticated must they have been, but Simon Paisley grasped that he was a worthless hippy who had been shiftlessly given a degree in killing babes, taking his money, and making everyone infantilized wards of the state. The old man concluded his speech by terming Simon Paisley, an inbred bastard, and then stomped off. As it happens, Simon Paisley rather misliked abortion, taxes, and the welfare state, but he had never been mean enough to feel as if he had a right to enunciate these beliefs. The rather dreary origin of the foregoing miseries is simply that Simon Paisley, regardless of whatever intellect or wit he possessed, is a dilettante of obscura, a man who had delighted infinitely in things that even scholars who wrote papers having titles such as The Relict Herbs of the Early Rome and What They Probably Would Have Tasted Like if When Used as Garnish or Seasoning for Goatfish would have found tedious and impossibly esoteric. He had done well in his studies, but problematically they were really studies of nothing in particular. His major field of study had been, ostensibly, philosophy, but he was so able to convince the ancient and mentally ailing dean with smiles that oozed gratitude and roasted laurices that generally oozed, to waive or alter so many requirements that his degree would have more honestly entitled him, Bachelor of This, That, and The Other, but not Math. This is not

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perfectly accurate as he had in fact learned computus, a skill he had felt that he might need if he were to forget to buy a calendar, but still need to know when Easter was. Engaging in reflections upon the dreary path of his life is as near as he can move toward what he imagines that fat women must experience when looking at a mirror. Such gazing in and back upon himself is an ineluctable temptation for Simon, but it at least gives him a good reason to work. Self-reflection is too still and meditative for someone who busily stocks freezers with frozen foodstuffs. This was especially true when the one of the awesomely massive shipments from China comes, particularly because of the curiously named and almost paradoxical, Went Digested microwavable sushi that bares on the back of each box before a gratuitously long and incoherent description of the contents the sentence, Butt weight, theirs more! The directions were also remarkable for noting that, in a way that less scrupulously honest foods seldom do, falls for buxom salad shooter. Whatever the disappointments and faults of his own life, Simon Paisley can always find someone whose existence is somehow inferior and put that flaw under a magnifying glass as the proverbial cruel child might an ant. The frozen foods aisle afford an abundant crop of what a saner, but crueler world would treat as mere ambulatory detritus that would not survive long otherwise. The massively fat are the most overt of these sad creatures; their unavoidable girth and the various unpleasant sensations that sometimes portend their coming made them easy marks for muttered derision; they are perfect companions for rainy days when Simon feels his dullest and worst. Although he is by and by a dismal physical specimen, Simon cannot watch any man who has to dance like a bumblebee with the freezer door to open it so that he can pluck two or three boxes of Tico McWarbys Microwaveable Octuple Porterhouse Quadruple-Cheese Bacon, Sour Cream n Ranch Burgers with Melting Butter or perhaps four or five boxes of Marty Don Bacon Wrapped Chocolate Chip Pancake Wrapped Sausage n Egg Yolk Fryers from the shelves without for a shimmering moment under the sun feeling that he is the better man. Sadly, even this usually bore even less fruit than its objects regularly ate, for Simon Paisley can in a burst of self-destructive ingenuity counter his own schadenfreude with some trivial realization such as concluding that massive oaf probably has far thicker and harder calluses on his feet than him. Somehow these cavils can best him, even when he is invigorated by illusionary and ill-gotten superiority.

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He expends less adolescent temperament on the titanically fat than one might expect, just as most hunters who are neither helplessly aged nor elected to high office find that easily killed quarry are not very satisfying to shoot, the rotundly gargantuan were not very satisfying to elevate oneself above, although they might very well be entertaining to shoot. Choicer targets are both the rather poor and reasonably well-off, especially if they were dragging a pack of yapping little dogs behind them, although in some instances what he thought were dogs might have been children, Simon is not especially interested in distinguishing the two things. It is not his material superiority over the poor that he enjoys, but a that he feels luckier then they; Simon tends to have poor luck, whenever he buys lottery tickets they invariably lose and give him paper cuts. The well-off provide a more nebulous pleasure; somehow the fact they exist in suburbs rather than live in cities, as he did, is elevating. Much as he abhors sunshine, rainbows, happiness, and puppies, Simon similarly abhors safety, large yards, wiggers, and houses that are architecturally devoid, but so very awfully big. The occasional gaggles of adolescent girls or very young women are another favorite prey of his, although their clamorous giggling and screeching that Simon assumes to be either some elaborate code or insipid nonsense makes them easy to hunt down. These irritating collectives of noisy banality allow Simon to recognize his supremacy over them as a distinct individual to whom laughter is still meaningful. Simon Paisley is not some Earthly incarnation of the ethereal spirit of schadenfreude, but his aversion to introspection tends to exclude him from any more emotionally sincere and fulfilling activities. He had enjoyed a richer life for a few months of his studies through success in forensics competitions. He has since suppressed his oratorical skills into atrophy, but at his height, he was a fine rhetorician. The ancient professor who oversaw the forensics team had been infected with a preposterous fondness for him, such that when professor became very ill his wife had extracted a promise from Simon that he would speak at the professors funeral if he should die. This thrilled Simon and he had dashed to the professors hospital room to declare enthusiastically, Im going to give a speech at your funeral! The professor had not died, but he did not speak to Simon for many months thereafter. Simon was badly shaken by this, and foreswore speaking before more than three people at one time and using any eloquent phrasing. He later learned that the professor merely had lost his power of speech because of the illness and not recovered it until many months

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afterward, but he had resolved to be miserable and nothing could rouse him to reconsideration of that. Misery was the answer for Simon. The question for Simon, although he had never dared to fully formulate it, was, how can I live without succeeding or failing and never really trying? By being miserable he could never fail because anything that went wrongly or disappointed him would be perfectly in line with the way that he wished to live his life, yet he could never succeed because in order to be miserable, he could achieve that which would make him happy. The logic of this is never quite comprehensible to anyone else, but for Simon it is perfect, for it made him feel quite safe in his doldrums where he was free from the specter of accomplishment. Simon is so unhappy and unimpressive that he is everything that he wants to be; he is a ship that set sail, but never bothered to find its port because the navigator was tired and rather bored with finding his way around the world. As should be obvious, as little as Simon ever dares look within himself, he scarcely looks very far without himself either. To deride Simon as self-absorbed would seem inappropriate as it would imply that he reaches some emotional state akin to being swollen with liquid, a fullness that he has never attained. Perhaps the best metaphorical compromise between his emptiness and excessive disinterest in anyone that isnt him would be to consider him a sponge that is submerged in water, but always squeezed so that he never kept most what it sucked in, so he only ends up twisted up and slightly damp. Coincidentally, this state is the usual result of a game that the wall-eyed simpleton sometimes plays during breaks while the janitor is away from his cart and bucket; his goal is to keep the sponge from becoming wet while it is submerged. This is absurd, but sometimes it seemed as though the simpleton had enough simple earnestness of thought that he might be able to will such a paradox into existence. The simpleton also usually ate their complimentary boxes of Went Digested for lunch; prepared strictly according to the instructions no less. In the final analysis, Simon Paisley is terrified of the simpleton and really of all of his kind. Surely a connoisseur of schadenfreude who has developed as his sole real skill the preposterous balancing of apathy and contempt for humanity that allows him to shirk being a person would find the mentally retarded to be the finest of playthings; they could be exaggerated avatars for the vague social degeneracy that is the overt cause clbre of hipsters and cynics or simply laughable on their own, but Simon never indulges in this. He is not deterred from it

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because it would be so supremely craven that even he cannot countenance it, but because he knows that they are the perfect mirrors for him. One look at some fish-faced lackwit or mongoloid thinknothing would send icy daggers straight to Simons heart, but not his soul as that has been rented out to Mister Nathan MacBeth of Ypsilanti, Michigan since 1998 and thus beyond the reach of personal revelation. Those daggers would breach the pretentious membrane around him and make intolerably clear that what cruel happenstance had wrought upon those poor souls who for no other reason than fate, or God, or foolishness were limited to a lesser range of life, Simon has inflicted upon himself. The vital difference, of course, is that those whose minds had been vandalized by ill luck in the womb were by and by living as happily as they could; Simon wasnt even really living. He is merely the sad-faced nothing of the frozen foods isle of a triumph of American capitalism that had reached its zenith when it impressed Mikhail Gorbachev. Simon Paisley never confronts the daggers, although in a rather too-literal misunderstanding of that metaphor he had bought books on medieval sword fighting so that he could meet them on their own terms when they came for him. This book had proven a waste of money as it was too tall to fit on his bookshelf were it could have sat while looking impressive, thus serving Simons purposes without really contributing anything to him. This problem inspired his misguidedly prudent practice of measuring any book that he is considering for purchase to make sure that it conforms to the dimensions of one of the open places for display on his bookshelf. He has yet to make a habit of thoroughly reviewing books for their humanity and depth, having not yet encountered anything with excesses of those undesirable traits. Nothing besides the developmentally disabled frightens as badly anything that could be the thesis statement for an undergraduate English essay. He occasionally worries about that problem, but is unconcerned with acting upon a solution until something goes awry. He has, however, shown some remarkable foresight and in the case that he reads something that is too insightful or wise he plans upon being run-over by a train that has improbably enough been commandeered by mentally handicapped Muslim terrorists who cannot pronounce, Allah, correctly, but are tremendously enthusiastic.

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Predicting the Future

At the end of 2007 a strange person who is desperate to fill space in a replacement for will in desperation at 2:00am dredge something that he abandoned up for precisely that purpose. In 2008 Georgina M. Bush will narrowly defeat Barack Obama for the presidency, largely because of damage suffered to Obama's campaign by speculation from Bill O'Reilly that Barack Obama was in truth a clone made from the DNA of Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and some anonymous, genial black man. Georgina Bush will later be revealed to be George W. Bush wearing the skin of women he'd killed in order to become the first female President of the United States of America. Republicans will remain unwilling to impeach him. Ronald Reagan's zombie serves as Vice President. In 2009 the twenty eighth amendment will be ratified, providing for the biennial rather than sexennial election of all Senators who are deemed lame. As a result, it will be deemed unnecessary to execute Ted Stevens for the future of democracy. Genetic testing will reveals that Bill O'Reilly was right about Barack Obama. O'Reilly will take credit for Bush's election and becomes so insufferable that he will be, at long last, stoned to death. John Gibson will be hurled into a vat of acid, but for unrelated reasons. In the 2010, with the House of Representatives and entire Senate up for election, the Republican and Democratic Party chairs will get really drunk together and promise each other that neither major party will contest the elections this year. This pact will be made binding by a pudgy libertarian notary who had been following them for the foregoing five years hoping for such a thing. The election will thus lead to a congress consisting of a bewildering array of libertarians, nationalists, socialists, greens, libertarian national socialist greens, and, curiously, five falangists. This congress also will also refuse to impeach President Bush.

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In 2011 all congressional business will be brought to a halt when Hamas representative Mahmoud Shabneh introduces a resolution to detonate the explosives strapped to his body. Congress will be deadlocked for two weeks on the issue until, in a compromise brokered in a joint session by Connecticut Senator (still, somehow) Joseph Lieberman, that also will provide for two million dollars for the New London clown museum, the entire congress is killed in the subsequent explosion. It is now certain that executing Ted Stevens would have been unnecessary, but fun. In the 2012 presidential election college students will mysteriously mobilize en mass to elect a Stewart-Colbert ticket. The two will be well liked, but ineffectual due to lack of experience and frequent demands for moments of Zen. The most important achievements of this administration are the What Are You People, Idiots? Act, which will ban former entertainers from running for president, and the Shoot Tucker Carlson in the Face with a 12-Gauge Act, which, oddly enough, will provide both for shooting Tucker Carlson in the face and national health care based on the French model. In 2014 a distraught United States, still unable to elect Democrats and Republicans due to fine print on the original agreement providing that the agreement would endure until the Rapture, a clause originally inserted at the insistence of the Republican chairman, will become a part of Canada, except for Texas, which will suicide in despair. In 2015 Tom Waits will be asked to write a new national anthem for the newly joined countries. It will be awesome. Unrelatedly, cigarette smoking will increase dramatically. This is the last straw for Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage (Weiner), Laura Ingram, and Ann Coulter, who all flee to Brussels, which will have been bought by the NRA using funds obtained from selling the magical energy crystals that they found in Carleton Hestons corpse. In 2017 Belgium will disappear. No one will know why, but everyone will decide that it's probably for the best and go on with their lives.

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A Man Lost in Winter

Cornelius Orville Lennox awoke upon an elegant blanket of snow in particularly odd state of affairs that had befallen anyone of Bodwin town in recent memory since a very charismatic owl had been elected mayor some fourteen decade before. He had fallen asleep on the stoop of Miranda Ouweleens house, or perhaps in the steeple of the church, or perhaps upon an oaken throne that was attended by a score of statuesque handmaidens with blood-red hair. He could not surely remember as he had been profoundly inebriated at the time; the last possibility seemed very improbable, but it was clearly the most exciting. He was reasonably sure of where he had retuned to wakingness; it was a field that was distantly bounded by hemlock pines in the north and east, by the feet of great mountains in the west, and by a small river in the south. His bowler hat, frock coat, loosely-fitting pants, and rough leather boots were no longer on him, instead he was clad in a swallowtail coat, tightly-fitted black pants, and fine calf leather shoes with a fine silk top hat lying on the ground beside him. He slowly stood up, his joints aching in the stinging cold of midwinter, and as he did he felt the sudden chill of a silver chain against his cheek as it brushed down it. At the chains end was a monocle, now resting on his breast, suspended by the chain from a buttonhole on his shirts collar. He languidly surveyed the ground where he had lain and with some worry noticed that an old pepperbox pistol resting where his left hand had been. With a weak hearts worth of trepidation and not even a dram of single-malt courage, he plucked the gun from the ground and shuddered as he found that four of the five barrels no longer held rounds and were stained with powder burns. He swiftly thrust the pepperbox into the left pocket of his pants, expecting that he could safely go on without confronting the implications of its condition if it were out of sight, but instead was induced to shiver and cry out, conflagratory bother! as the chilled metal of the barrel slid down against his skin, out of the bottom of the pants, then back onto the snow. He stuck his hand into his pocket, but felt bare skin rather than cloth. The same held for the other pockets on his pants, coat, and waistcoat; all were narrow slits to his flesh with no cloth to hold things. He contrived another exclamation, nimrodic

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buffoonery! as a response to this bothersome fact, then set the pepperbox on his head, then took the top hat from the ground to cover it. He judged that the river was quite probably the Nishaseka, which was north of Bodwin town, so toward it seemed the wisest direction to travel in. He shook the snow off of his coast and began to stomp toward the river, emitting unremittingly cantankerous utterances that ill-befit his not very advanced age at every dreary footfall. He might have as much as murdered at least four people, been accosted by some madman who had stripped him to nakedness, then made very absurd alterations to his wardrobe before knocking him unconscious and abandoning him in a forlorn field of snow, and, if his memory served faithfully, been cruelly removed from the company of many attractive, willing women, but presently he was cold, tired, hungry, and marching unhappily across unfriendly terrain, so a bad mood took precedence over all else. The high, imperious position of the sun in the sky gave it leave to throw the fullest force of its rays down upon him at the severest possible angle and the shimmering snow dutifully reflected whatever rays had missed at him, having the unified effect of rendering Cornelius sightless. For all if its vicious abundance, the sunlight gave no comforting heat, so the bitter cold ever prevailed. No matter how far he trudged, the river seemed perpetually as distant from him as a moose standing on a hilltop might to an Eskimo in Hell. His long, cold march was a long and tormenting one. It might have been only hours of thought, not of time that he spent sojourning toward the river, but imagined hours were as good as real ones in the eyes of the true standard of human endeavor: misery. When he at least came to the bank of the river, the sun had left its overly hostile stance in favor of waging a guerilla war of terror and shock against his eyes; seeming to sneak along the horizon, loosing barrages against his eyes when he least expected it. He certainly would have preferred not to cross the rivers water that was as cold as Beelzebubs heart with his legs that were as cold as those of a corpse, but thrice as dead. He probed the river for a ford in the calms between the suns assaults, but there were none. He yelled, Indefeasible confoundment! then charged the river, madly expecting the he could leap across its breadth. This expectation was wholly unrealistic, instead he slipped five feet from the bank; the force of the fall pounded his head into the evil, white snow. Lunacy, which to his surprise was always never reliable, had failed him, as it usually would when he was sober, and that was nearly all that he had a

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talent for. So he was left to consider his two other aptitudes: self-pity and hatred. He brought his feet back under him, but he did not stand, he only stooped down in defeat. Cornelius stayed there, hunched over and growled at the river, you are a worthless stream of nothing more than a mountains piss! A river as spiteful and cruel as a schoolmarm, but neither as lovely nor as wise! No river ever taught any man sums! This made his waning heart stouter; it seemed that hatred would be his salvation. Despising the river would hearten him, but insults would not suffice, for true hatred comes to naught without physical abuse. He could not lynch a river, not the least reason for this being that he had no rope, so he would have to stone it. He brushed a layer of snow off from part of the river bank to reveal some fine, flat stones there. He diligently gathered a dozen and a half of the best of the stones into a pile, staring evilly at the river as he labored. He took a stone into his hand and hurled it at the river, shouting, take that, you RIVER! He paused and quickly decided that the word, river, would not suffice, no matter how loudly he might shout it, for his present purpose. His success in this would require a proper slur that he could sling with full force and bile from his lungs. He meditated upon this question for quite some time, considering, wetter, wash, and splashy, and rejected each in turn before settling on a word that an old man from some dead age of Bodwin town had once said, flu. With a choice unkind word in hand, Cornelius resumed his pelting of the river with stones and berating it. Sluggish flu! Dumb, lazy flu! Pinchpenny flu! Now that his blood was hot with anger and spirit enlivened by his holy belief that he was in all important ways superior to a river, he know that he could transcend the damnable thing. With triumph, he wrenched a long, think branch from a gnarled, barren tree on the riverbank, then shuffled a few feet back, before charging the river again at the best speed that he was capable of. His feet kept sure as he leapt from the riverbank. As he flew over the cold flow of the river, he thrust the stick downward so as to vault fully across the water and it promptly cracked in half upon striking the riverbed, so Cornelius Orville Lennox crashed fatefully to the rivers thalweg. The horrible, biting coldness of the rushing water made it seem as though the world that he knew, which was from time to time pleasantly warm, had been supplanted by some awful, freezing abyss. The mass exodus of color from his skin gave him so pale a pallor that if

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he had been a sheet, he could have appropriately been draped over a man who hated blacks. He flailed wantonly and hopelessly in the frigid void as cold water and errant floes of razor-edged ice flowed past him, biting and cutting at his skin. His mind began to fade under the assault and all that he could countenance as the various merciless sensations of his peril beleaguered him was a vision of himself awakening in a field dressed as a member of Louis XIVs court with a howitzer and half gone pile of shells beside him. It is peculiar that he thought nothing of his body under a mount of dirt and a chap tombstone whereupon his name was misspelled above dates that attributed to him four more years of life than he had really lived. This was a consequence of his having duplicitously adopted an earlier date for his birth so that without developing any patient he could drink and vote, two activities of unequal pleasantness that Mister Erastus Wycliffe reliably insured were intimately coupled. However, Cornelius Orville Lennox did not think of this as went down the murderous river and one would expect that soon enough he would never think of anything else ever again.

Death, of course, is not always just when it seems to be; Mister Lennoxs tale shall be continued twelve months hence!

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A Note on the Type The body of this volume is set in Palatino, a typeface designed by Hermann Zapf in nineteen forty eight at the German branch of the Linotype factory. It was inspired by the Humanist style of the Renaissance, but with larger proportions and shorter ascenders and descenders, which make it more legible.

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I in awe watch that honored season pass, And revel in its bright, white light. Life might be hard and cold, Enduring one hardship to see the next one. But if all but beauty goes away Then the bitter chill must follow In the coldest time it all vanishes, Descending under winter snow. The world will be brought round again, And all might be freshly wrought

Winter
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