by E. Archer
As soon as he had arrived, a dull roar rose from the Soon-to-be-Dead city. All the undead howling at once: terrible.
“I have won,” Annabelle said from her perch. To punctuate her words, her metal horse dropped a line of steaming crystal drool.
“By three meters,” Gideon said, walking the length to the table. “And I got turned around and wound up doing the crystal canyon bridge twice. Not that I’m asking you to bend the rules for me, but I wanted to point that out.”
“Yes, Giddy, you’ve always found ways to make even my most minor victories hollow.”
“Come on, this is about more than us, no?” Gideon said, gesturing at the distant cities.
“Yes,” said Annabelle, turning translucent and then returning to a blaze, which Ralph thought a very effective way to emphasize a point. “But it is no coincidence that we are the riders, no?”
“I’m quite sure I don’t follow,” Gideon said.
“Your daughter might,” Annabelle said.
They turned to Beatrice, who until now had been focusing on the conversation with a rapt loss of self-consciousness, the way one might read a love letter in solitude.
“Beatrice?” Gideon said. He dropped his crop and went to her side. “Honey?”
“Hullo, Father,” Beatrice said quietly.
“Why are you here?” he asked, suddenly choking. “Are you …?” Beatrice nodded. “And you are … ?” Gideon nodded.
They held each other for a moment. Then Gideon heaved a sigh of irritation. “That was really brainless of you, Beatrice. You needn’t have died for a long time.”
“I thought I might belong here,” Beatrice said.
“Yes, yes, I get it,” Gideon snapped.
“She does belong here,” Annabelle said.
“No,” Gideon said. “I’m rather certain she doesn’t.”
“She can stay with me and her half sister,” Annabelle said.
“Annabel’s undead, too?”
Annabelle nodded.
A hollowed ram’s horn trumpeted in the distance. The treetops in the direction of the Soon-to-be-Dead city began to shake. “What is that about?” Gideon asked.
“My countrymen have a right to come celebrate,” Annabelle sniffed. “You’ve gained three meters! Okay, Beatrice, we can’t let the undead find me or Ralph here. You have to decide quickly: Do you prefer being closer to dead or closer to alive?”
“Don’t make me choose between you and my mother. It’s not fair.”
“Oh, it’s not like that, honey,” Annabelle said.
“I want my real mother back,” Beatrice said.
“You never even knew her. Gert is your mother,” Gideon said.
“It doesn’t feel that way,” Beatrice said.
“How dare you!” Annabelle shrieked at Gideon. Her voice sounded like multiple voices … and, Ralph realized, it was. For the younger Annabel had appeared behind her mother and was echoing her words. And her rage was directed, not at Gideon, but at her mother. “I’ve been a perfect daughter. And here you go, mooning over this lame girl. She’s not even pretty.”
At which point Beatrice — sad, poetic Beatrice — tackled her ghostly sister. The two went down in a shimmering tumble.
Now, this may seem unexpected. Beatrice! you exclaim, Beatrice in a fistfight? But Beatrice had always known that the dead Annabel occupied a special early place in her father’s heart, and was jealous. Annabel was the original A who left Beatrice and her siblings B, C, and D. Being named Beatrice was like living on the fourteenth floor of a building without a thirteenth. She surprised herself with the depth of the rage that bubbled out onto Annabel. As for how Beatrice could tackle a formless ghost — well, when you’re angry enough, you can tackle anything.
Ralph watched the two young women roll in the mud, and although the bulk of his thoughts were on Beatrice’s well-being, a fair number of them were on the scene’s similarity to one he had seen weeks before on late-night cable.
“Ooh! Giddy, make them stop!” screeched Annabelle. When she tried to pull them apart, she was only able to pull back Annabel, which gave Beatrice ample opportunity to slug her ghostly sister in the gut.
For his part, Gideon was only able to restrain Beatrice. And so Ralph found himself the central figure of quite a scene: angry Beatrice restrained by Gideon, angry Annabel restrained by Annabelle, and swarms of ghouls emerging at the edge of the clearing.
And that was, of course, before the zombie pheasants descended.
They came in vast numbers — seventeen hundred, in fact. Emerged from perches within the trees, from the gray skies, from the ground itself, ripping wet holes in the soil and themselves, dropping plumage and carnage in equal amounts. Their wing-beats alone would have been deafening, but the squawking! The quaking of each gun-shot rib cage!
Gideon, who had once spent a birthday weekend hunting these very same seventeen hundred pheasants, didn’t stand much of a chance. Pheasant beaks are feeble — but at seventeen hundred strong! Pheasant scratches are minor — but at seventeen hundred strong! Pheasant carrying power is limited — but at sixteen-hundred-ninety-eight strong! (Gideon had by now managed to crush two beneath his boots.) In no time, Gideon was pecked, gashed, and lifted into the sky. The last any of them saw of him was a pheasant-covered silhouette diminishing into the distant corners of Purgatory Main Isle.
By the time Gideon was gone, by the time Ralph had taken Beatrice into his arms, the clearing was quite clogged with ravenous ghouls.
“Get back!” Ralph cried, making a sloppy sign of the cross as the foul creatures shuffled over the pheasant-churned soil.
“You’re not, like, a priest,” Annabel said, giggling. “That’s not going to work.”
“Mum!” Beatrice said. “Make them stay away from us.”
Annabelle spoke magical words, but only a few of the monsters stopped their advance. The rest were only a few feet away, and shambling ever nearer.
“They can’t cross the new boundary, right?” Ralph asked as Beatrice bent over, retching at their stench. “All we have to do is get back over to the side of the Recently-Living.”
But even as he spoke, the circle of undead closed tight around them. Beatrice and Ralph didn’t have much distance to go to escape, but they would nonetheless need to battle their way across scores of ghouls and ghasts, vampires and banshees. The tight halo of Annabelle’s light kept the monsters at bay, but even so they were inching forward into the glow.
“Mother!” Beatrice cried. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know, my child,” she said. “I’ve clearly made a big mistake.”
“A mistake?” Beatrice asked, dodging the ragged paw of a zombie wolf.
“I called in the pheasants,” Annabelle said. “But I didn’t think this many other undead would follow.”
“You …” Beatrice said. “You killed my father.”
“Now, be reasonable — you know I didn’t. This is a wish. Everything here’s part of your mental state. You killed your father.”
“I did not! You did.”
“You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to.”
Ralph grabbed a fairy skull and swung the still-attached spinal column like a whip, keeping a trio of lusty banshees at bay.
Annabelle spoke again. “Fine, yes, Beatrice, I had a bone to pick with Gideon. So to speak. My daughter would have had better medical attention after her tetanus incident if I wasn’t a working mum abandoned in a dingy flat by her wealthy lover. And the sadness I felt after Annabel’s death led me to wish my own. His —”
“So what are these undead after?” Ralph asked urgently.
“Well, you, of course,” Annabelle said, blinking at Ralph as a skeletal flying snake passed through her glimmering rib cage and streaked toward his throat. “You’re still in color,” she explained as Beatrice ripped the winged serpent from the air. “That makes them very upset. The undead are adamant about enforcing their traditions. And you’re a massive break from the norm.”
“That should be impossible, right? That’s Ralph’s alive in Purgatory?” Beatrice panted.
“Well, yes,” Annabelle conceded. “I suppose so.”
The snake’s vertebrae popped as Beatrice crushed it. The sound was unexpected, a kitchen sound, and it disoriented Ralph. He wondered: Could it be that he hadn’t died, that the whale had gotten him there by some means other than his death? Or that the narrator’s giving him a special accommodation to come here could have rendered him somehow immortal? It made him think of how the others had arrived — if dying above brought you here, could it be that being killed here … resulted in life?
“I can see in your eyes that you understand it,” young Annabel whispered, her face suddenly at his elbow. “Severe trauma in the realm of the dead leads to life!
Ralph thought about Annabel’s words. The first chill hands of the ghouls had locked onto his thighs, and he could feel his flesh beginning to pull beneath their nails: it was definitely worth a shot.
“I have the power to un-kill?” he asked.
“Yes!” screeched Annabel. “Yes, you do!”
Ralph looked at Beatrice, who was locking with a rotting harpy, pushing against her beating wings. He couldn’t bring himself to try it out on her. “Annabel,” he said. “I’m sorry for this. Maybe.”
He grabbed a cutlass from a skeletal buccaneer and ran her through.
She turned a more ghostly gray and fell back, clutching her belly and staring at Ralph in shock.
CHAPTER LX
Now, Ralph’s reasoning wasn’t all that loopy. Or, let’s be honest; it absolutely was. But admit it: You thought it was going to work. You’re used to rewards coming to those who act spur-of-the-moment on an irrational conclusion based on patchy evidence in a high-stakes climax. That this suggestion was supplied by a ghostly young woman who had already revealed herself to be an enemy of Beatrice should have factored into Ralph’s thinking, yes, but that’s just another in a long list of demerits for our sorry hero.
After he stabbed her, Ralph thought he was watching Annabel disappear. In truth, the pretty young ghostess was only astonished. Ghosts turn ghostlier grays when shocked, seeming to vanish before quickly returning to their normal color, like a cigar struck by a gust of wind. Therefore, to Ralph’s delight, his theory appeared to have worked. The older Annabelle, astonished to see her daughter so coldly run through, grayed as well. But did Ralph notice that, and realize the disheartening implication? Nope.
“Beatrice!” he cried. “I can undo all of this! I can send you back home.”
Beatrice seemed about to shake her head, until an undead chorus teacher yanked her hair back, exposing her long, pale neck. The nurse’s horrid mouth opened wide, her slack lips revealing row upon row of eggshell teeth.
“Yes, please do,” Beatrice croaked.
Ralph raised the cutlass above her throat. She gazed at him pleadingly. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.
The nurse’s yellow teeth puckered her fair skin. “Hurry!” Beatrice pleaded.
Ralph brought the blade down and traced a deep red line along Beatrice’s neck. The undead screeched in rage when, after a few shattering seconds, Beatrice’s lifeblood had bled itself out onto the ground. Ralph held the cutlass blade out to Annabelle, who was screeching in fury over the assault of her daughters. She was more than happy to do her part.
Soon Ralph was dead next to Beatrice. The ravenous undead, with Beatrice’s enraged mother at their head, consumed their united flesh.
Except for the toes. The undead don’t like the taste of toes.
BOOK V:
THE PRIVATE LIVES
OF NARRATORS
CHAPTER LXI
It seems a fitting end for our presumptuous hero.
Can I muck about in other people’s stories because I happened to have been present while a royal spell was being cast? Can I worship computers and binary code above all other things, yet lumber into a tale made of wonder? Can I dupe the loveliest poetess ever to exist? Can I disrupt an otherwise structurally perfect triad of parallel negotiating-parental-boundaries tales?
We know Ralph’s answer to all of these questions, and we spit on him for it. That middling domestic shorthair of a boy.
And, to make it all worse, a tinny voice protests from somewhere that “I demand a new narrator!”
Where from, you might ask? Cease such wonderings. Reader, unite with me, and take no more interest in Ralph.
“New narrator, please!”
Reader, you’re not doing your work.
“Hello? Anybody there?”
Let’s sing a song, shall we? I’ll try to take care of this in the meantime.
“Ouch, hey!”
Frère Jacques, frère Jacques, dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
“How about a light in here? Please!”
Blast.
CHAPTER LXII
While you were turning these pages, I took a moment to clear my head, as I hope you did as well. Before we continue, let it be noted for the record: When I tried to stop Ralph’s tale, it was for his own good.
In summary: When we last saw them, Ralph and Beatrice were dead. You’ll remember that Ralph had been slain by Annabelle, who was grieving over her daughter, who wasn’t dead-dead at all, and popped up shortly after, hungry for pork chops.
Now, Annabel’s theory that you can un-kill was false, a jealous ploy to do away with her sister. But she and Ralph both were unaware of an equally persistent theory, one that actually turns out to be true. Narrative discontinuity is the most powerful tool at a rebellious character’s disposal — in sheer point of fact, it’s the only tool at a rebellious character’s disposal. And since Ralph killed Beatrice, which was unforeseeable by anyone (including me), he’s right in the middle of it.
From the Seminar in Advanced Topics in Storytelling syllabus:
Week 11. Dealing with the Unruly Character.
In the Monday and Wednesday sessions we will examine the strategies characters have historically employed to circumvent what they varyingly consider narrator despotism, loopholes, or deus ex machina. Readings (*=required):
From Literary Hypotheticals, a Workbook:
pp. I02-II0, “The Playwright’s Roar: The Bear Blocking the Capulet Crypt.”*
p. 181 inset, “Scheherazade’s 89th Night: Laryngitis.” *
pp. 210—212, “Fellowship Only?: Frodo and Sam and the Small-Press Tolkien.”
pp. 190–204, “What Hansel’s Shrink Said”*
From the Story Troubleshooting workbook:
Appendix C: Rips in Narrative Integrity*
Appendix D: Subduing a Freed Character
So, yes, Ralph’s unwitting deployment of Advanced Narrative Discontinuity Theory generated difficulties for your already beleaguered narrator. Nothing too grave, mind you, but a story’s rails must be set before the train takes off, so to speak, and Ralph’s unexpected killing of Beatrice was a significant derailment. I’ll need another moment to sort things through and make all of this tie back into a coherent story, that’s all. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll think things through out loud until I can come up with a plan.
Our petulant young hero — an immature little boy, really — came awake at the very moment the Underworld fragmented. Even in the night sky there are stray filaments of starlight; even behind your closed eyelids penetrate a few hardy rays, but when Ralph opened his eyes, he found true nothingness. The loss of the Underworld was, like all true calamities, soon begun and finished, living much longer in memory. In the replay, Ralph felt the ground fall away, not down but away, so the emptiness was sudden and narrow, closing on his chest like lips on a finger.
What was on his mind? Was he terrified to have ripped the fabric of the universe? Was he overawed to have burst the careful majesty of Beatrice’s story, a rupture produced by the slash of a cutlass?
Of course not. He stood suspended in the emptiness and waited for something to happen. So very book-character of him. He was disoriented, naturally,
but he scanned about as if there were rays of light to fill his eyes, called out as if there were anyone to hear him.
In the meantime, I’m sitting at my desk in the catwalks, scribbling as I flip pages beneath my reading light, and trying to figure out how to salvage my story, now that Beatrice’s wish has unexpectedly terminated, and I’ve no more spare employees or a single pence left in the discretionary budget.
Ralph’s first clue that he hadn’t perished entirely was that he was standing in the absolute nothingness. For surely one cannot stand without something to stand on?
As a light clicked on far above — a reading lamp bulb — he could make out more and more of his surroundings.
He found that he was in a storytelling attic of sorts. The floor was made of clear, hard nothing. There were also clear hard nothing tables, barrels, and benches, all of them cluttered with sets and figurines. Many of his favorite characters from childhood were there, along with others that he didn’t recognize. Swordsmen, pregnant doctors, ancient infants, monks and bards and bookshop clerks. And then there were settings — magnificent dioramas of mountain slopes, laboratories, spaceships, living rooms (God, how very many living rooms). When he peered at them, he saw that the attention to detail was astounding; except for their small size, there was no telling the sets from reality. Within them were miniature pianos that emitted sweeping scores of their own accord, tennis rackets that volleyed fluorescent pinheads, miniature suns hot to the touch, and able to be shrouded in any number of different clouds — some rainy and dark, some puffy and white — that were kept hanging on a nearby rack when not in use.
Ralph picked up a figurine — an elderly woman carrying a cigarette holder and a shiny black pocketbook — and dropped it into what appeared to be a South American cantina. She sprang to life as soon as she entered, finding a tenable reason to be there (she clumsily commented aloud that her twelve-stop flight to surprise her philandering businessman husband in New Zealand had a layover in Bogotá). He watched as she sat at the bar to order a drink and made breezy comments to the blinking bartender. When Ralph put his head close to the miniature set, the little diorama looked like all the universe. At full swing, this area could have thousands of quests going on at one time.
