The Magic Word
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Discover other titles by Christian Blake at https://www.ChristianBlake.com
Banana Man
excerpt copyright 2012 Christian Blake
The second edition of Danny Zuco’s favorite comic book, Banana Man, was freshly delivered and waiting for him at Cleary’s Market on the corner of Elm and Brook. Danny’s mom bought him the first issue as a birthday gift. And now, nearly eight weeks later, the second coming of Banana Man had arrived. Danny couldn’t wait to get out of school and buy it.
The big delivery of comics came in on the first of every month, and today’s shipment arrived in the early afternoon, right about the same time Danny and his buddies worked their math problems on Ms. Jacobson’s blackboard. Normally Danny was an ace at math, but today his arithmetic was foggy at best. He made a number of errors. Ms. Jacobson was kind and forgiving, like always, politely showing him where he made mistakes. Lately she’d been extra patient with Danny, and she knew his mind just wasn’t there today. She could sense it. He kept gazing through the window at the incessant rain, watching the heavy downpour, thinking about his comic book. He didn’t know how he knew, but the moment Mr. Cleary sliced open that delivery box and pulled out the latest edition of Banana Man, Danny could feel in his heart the comic had finally arrived at Cleary’s Market. And he was right.
The first edition of the bi-monthly comic had been an instant hit with Danny and his friends for a variety of reasons (and none of them related one bit to his mother’s method of picking out the comic). The boys immediately recognized the quality printing, the high grade paper, and of course the cover artist; Chuck Felzner – a genius sketch man who would later become a comic book god. Although it was still early in Chuck’s career at the time, and the cover art was a shadow of what Chuck’s talent would become, the boys saw an early glimpse of the Felzner magic in that artwork, and they all wanted a copy. Much later in Danny’s life when he was old and alone, and his childhood comic books were in a box tucked under his bed, those early issues of Banana Man would be worth several thousand dollars each. Not once during his long life did he ever consider selling them. Not even for a moment. They meant much more to him than money. They always did.
Danny’s mom bought him a brand new bike and the first issue of Banana Man for his eighth birthday. He’d been asking his parents for a while to buy him a bike, but the comic was more of an afterthought than a planned present. You could say it was dumb luck that she even found the comic at all.
She stopped at Cleary’s Market one humid afternoon and bought a cherry cola to cool down. That’s when she spotted the inaugural issue on the rack. She didn’t know much about comics, but she knew her son collected them and cared for them dearly. He’d been collecting them for some time. For Danny, comics were serious business. She’d help him strap each issue to cardboard backing and slide them inside protective sleeves. He stored them inside moving boxes, always standing them upright, and kept the boxes sealed shut. Sunlight was bad for the artwork. It faded the colors. And the cardboard backing kept the pages unbent. Danny explained the process of caring for his comics to his mother many times. She always listened with a patient ear.
Danny would have freaked out if he knew how his mother selected Banana Man out of all those on the rack that day when she stopped at the neighborhood market. She had no concern for publishing companies, print quality, contributing artists, or whether or not the issue was a special edition (she didn’t even notice it was issue #1). All she saw on the cover was wavy blond hair and muscles. She thought he was cute. So she took a chance her son would like the comic and bought it. She guessed right, of course, although Danny’s eventual love for the series would transcend even what his friends appreciated. He cared for the comic for very different reasons.
The latest edition of Banana Man would be on that spinning carousel squeezed between the arcade games. Like every comic for sale at the store, there would be limited copies. The store owner Mr. Cleary never ordered more than three of anything. The retired farmer barely kept the shelves stocked. The only reason he bought comics was because he knew Danny and the other neighborhood kids bought up every edition once the big shipment arrived on the first of the month. To keep them sold-out, Mr. Cleary bought exactly three prints; no more, no less. The short supply always left one kid crying because the comics ran out before he got to the store. Mr. Cleary was fine with that. He would rather have an empty magazine rack than unsold goods.
If the first of the month landed on any other day of the week, the odds of Danny getting the latest issue of the comic would have been stacked against him. The first among his friends to get to the store always got his choice between the newest comics. That was the way of things. It was basically a race to Cleary’s whenever the big shipment came in. And lately, Danny had to ride his bike home from school while his comic-book collecting friends got rides. That meant they beat him to Cleary’s. But today was different. He was free to go home that afternoon while his buddies were stuck in detention, and that almost guaranteed he would soon be the proud owner of the second issue of Banana Man.
On a bleak Thursday afternoon, school let out the same time as always: 2:45pm.
Christian Blake’s novella, Banana Man, is now available at https://www.ChristianBlake.com
Fat Beaver and the Crucifix
excerpt Copyright 2012 Christian Blake
At thirteen Gregor aced thirty I.Q. tests, including Government exams designed to stress the military elite. At sixteen he received his Bachelors in Biology at UCLA. He impressed the college board with his achievements at such a young age they awarded him a full ride scholarship to medical school, dreams of rewriting the medical book on his agenda. At nineteen, the college board of directors brought him up on charges: Unwarranted Mutilation of Cadavers. The chief resident caught him snipping body parts and reattaching them to foreign hosts. They might have let it slide but it was the fifth time a surgeon busted him for violating the deceased in ways they had not applied for. Before the board could expel him, the government intervened and contracted him. Now Gregor was one of the top scientists in G.S.E. – Government Science Extreme.
When I walked into the main chamber of the north wing, Gregor snapped shut the last of several restraint buckles onto the arm of an unconscious man slumped in a chair. Gregor didn’t notice I’d entered the room; he was intently focused on his work. I stood silent and watched.
A second man in a second chair, started to wake from the sedation, groggy and delirious. Gregor had bound him too; his legs and arms securely fastened down. Minutes from now, when the man finally woke and could think clearly, he would freak out. I’d seen it a thousand times before. He would have no idea where he was or how he got there. Sometimes the last thing a subject remembered was crawling into their own bed at night, in the safety of their own home. Then they would wakeup in our lab, tied up and drugged. They would always transition through several emotional stages before we ended their lives. Those stages were a key element of our research and we always kept good notes.
Gregor strapped a bulky helmet onto each man’s head, and then screwed a pressure gauge directly into the top of each helmet. Whatever he was doing, it looked interesting, but I had my own problem at the moment, and I needed to ask a favor. But I also knew it was poor etiquette to interrupt someone deep in thought. I decided not to bother him. Before I left the room, Gregor picked up a tire iron from a nearby table and approached one of the men.
I walked through a maze of fluorescent-lit tunnels toward Style’s office. I didn’t think he was working on anything pressing at the moment. I figured he could spare a few minutes to help with my problem.
I always enjoyed those tunnels. Sometimes I’d take a break from work and walk for a good thirty minutes. It felt therapeutic; the overhead electrical hum of the intermittent fluorescent fixtures, the classical music playing over the speaker system, the sound of my steps echoing off the concrete walls.
Style sat at his desk mulling over piles of pa
perwork, calculating our billing for the previous month. I’d completely forgotten that I assigned last month’s accounting to him.
A few weeks back we had freelanced for a group of Scandinavian scientists. The project involved sharks and the human nervous system. We tried to find a common breaking point for sanity based on increased levels of pain and fear. We fed ten people, very slowly, to sharks; feet first. You’d think that ten feedings would have produced enough data to shed some light on nervous breakdowns but our results had been inconclusive.
Although I didn’t like the idea of interrupting Gregor’s thought process, it would be a sin to interrupt Style. The longer we waited to invoice the Swedes, the longer it would take to get paid.
Christian Blake’s short story collection, Fat Beaver and the Crucifix, is now available at https://www.ChristianBlake.com