Literary Work

Contents	Welcome to Nicholas Dollak's Web-Site!	AboutMe	Artwork
Literary Work	Teaching	Furniture Assembly	Miscellaneous Stuff
Music	Holiday Letter

I started writing when I was three. At first, I had more stories in me than patience to write them down (It was more fun to illustrate them, anyway, so most of my earliest “writings” became picture books). When I was in fourth grade, I was inspired to write a science-fiction novel. This “novel,” called Island of the Mysterious, was about twenty pages of typed text crowded by large, ball-point pen illustrations. It starred me as an astronaut, who along with two fellow astronauts crash-lands on an alien world populated by mythical monsters (I recall a griffin being there, as well as every alien stereotype one might encounter on Star Trek or Space:1999). We essentially battle monsters while the (very peripheral) rest of the crew fixes the ship. We return to Earth with a large amœba we found, which wreaks havoc until we destroy it with electricity (shades of Angry Red Planet).

Well, I was only ten years old at the time. It probably would have gotten an “A” in a creative writing class; but the first such class I had wasn’t until sixth grade. I made a little book called Greetings From Xenox (also sci-fi), this time with more carefully-rendered illustrations on separate pages. I don’t remember what grade it received, but I was invited to read my little opus to the kiddies in a nearby elementary school, which was an honor! After I’d fulfilled the course requirement, I made several copies of my book, with additional drawings. (Sort of the “director’s cut.” I wasn’t happy with the page-limits imposed by the teacher, which I felt detracted from my vision.) Oh, yes – Greetings From Xenox concerns a lad named Neil, who dreams of an alien being asking him for help and awakens to find lots & lots of UFOs hovering in the sky. Nobody can communicate with the ships, let alone determine what they’re for, but their pilots seem to like the children of Earth. Neil has the dreams again, and strange things happen to him. Then one of the ships flies down and takes him to meet Grota of the planet Xenox, who looks nothing like the alien of his dream. Grota explains to him that the dream aliens are from Vorkhann, sworn enemy of Xenox, and recruits Neil to be a space pilot in their battle with the Vorkhannians. That’s okay with Neil (after all, what boy doesn’t want to be a space ranger?). Space battle; Xenox beats Vorkhann; Xenoxians return to Earth to become citizens of our world, since the Vorkhannians destroyed theirs. After a bit of trepidation, we welcome them. (NOTE: This story, a mere 20 pages or so, is more involved than the similarly-plotted movie The Last Starfighter, and preceded it by about three or four years.)

Later that year: I see an In Search Of… episode about ice ages, and I get this really cool idea: what if my friends, siblings and I found ourselves in the middle of an ice age? Especially one with animals from the Pleistocene Era. And we drove around in snowmobiles… I come up with this great scene in which my buddies and I, while riding our snowmobiles, get caught in a stampede of woolly mammoths. I start writing The Third Ice Age.

That summer: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back comes to theaters near me. I start wondering if it’s possible to sue George Lucas for stealing ideas out of my head.

False start. The book’s not working the way I want it to. A year later, I decide that the best way to do this would be to first write a plot summary – an outline of the entire book. So I spend a month of eighth grade writing this 200-page manuscript in longhand, and another month typing it (This was in the days before word processors, mind you.) The mammoth scene is in there because it’s a key scene. I accept the fact that Empire references are inevitable. When I’m done, I illustrate the book in color and black-and-white.

I wrote several other stories and novels before finishing high school, including a rewrite of The Third Ice Age. However, the only one of those efforts I consider to have any real potential is L’Isle Joyeuse (The Isle of Joy), which I started writing in my senior year and finished in college. It still needs a lot o’ work, but I think it would still make a good “ripping yarn” (as my Mom calls a good story, from the hilarious British TV series of that name).

In college, I wrote The Altitherm (a sequel to The Third Ice Age) and re-wrote The Third Ice Age yet again – this time saving it on disks via my brand-new Smith-Corona PWP-6! Word processors make this work ever so much easier! I also came up with an idea for a sword & sorcery fantasy novel, which in 2001 would finally get written as Jenna of Erdovon. At the end of my last year, I made a series of color illustrations for The Third Ice Age for a painting class.

After graduating, I finished the illustrations, re-edited that darn Ice Age book, and sent it around to publishers and agents. Nobody was willing to take the risk. Hmph. I set about figuring out a way to manufacture the book on my own – a technique I would later perfect while working with Preston McClear on his children’s books. I sold a few copies, but knew nothing of distributors and so was unable to get the book into bookstore chains.

I also wrote a book called Last Summer at the City of Iron, something of a horror novel. I also illustrated it and sent it to agents. Nary a nibble. However, it’s probably the most mainstream book I’ve written, and even my fiancée agrees it’s got a definite appeal. (It’s a bit gory in spots, though, what with the Satanic rituals and dead body and all…)

Around that time, I got caught up in Preston McClear’s projects. I did manage to transcribe L’Isle Joyeuse and The Altitherm to disk, though.

In the late 1990s, we got a real computer. I found myself using my old Smith-Corona less and less as I discovered the improvements made in PC word processing programs. (In college, I had taken a computer literacy course, in which I wrestled with a primitive version of WordPerfect that my Smith-Corona could run circles around.) In 1996 I joined the Garden State Horror Writers (GSHW), a multi-genre writing group. (I served as its secretary from 2000 to 2004) It’s been very helpful over the years! For more information on the GSHW and a link to their Website, please scroll down to the bottom of this page. In 1997 I began writing What Did You Do During the Apocalypse, Daddy?, a scathing satire on the End Of The World Experience, which I finished a year later. Any publishers out there? Anyone? Anyone?

In 2000, an e-zine called Ibn Qirtaiba accepted a grim sci-fi story I wrote called “And When Nor Moon Nor Stars Do Shine,” and published it in two installments. Before you pounce on me regarding the poor grammar of the title, allow me to duck behind Walter de la Mare. It’s all his fault, you see, for the title is stolen from a very, very sad poem of his called “An Epitaph.”

I told you it was very sad. Hope you had Kleenices (plural of Kleenex – think “indices”) close at hand. Anyway, the story (which I would not recommend to young children or the easily depressed) can be found on-line at the Ibn Qirtaiba Website: http://sf.sig.au.mensa.org/. If that link fails, just use a search engine to find Ibn Qirtaiba. My story is in issues 58 and 59, or May and June 2000. This is an e-zine published by the Australian chapter of Mensa. I guess it takes loads of extra brains to understand my short story, since every other magazine editor who read it claimed they “didn’t get it.” If you’re wondering what the words “Ibn Qirtaiba” mean, it’s from Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune, and it’s Fremen for “Thus go the holy words.” Please don’t ask me how it’s pronounced. I might sprain my tongue trying.

In 2001 I wrote Jenna of Erdovon, a fantasy novel of which I’m quite proud. Malibu Books is publishing it; hopefully it will be on the shelves by September 2005.

In October of 2001 I wrote a Hallowe'en story called "Mischief," which, although a little frightening, is suitable for general audiences, so to speak. It won Honorable Mention in Morbid Musings' Hallowe'en contest, and was selected for the GSHW CD-ROM anthology (more on the GSHW below). It's currently archived on the Morbid Musings website http://www.meghansmusings.com/dollak.html.

Below, I’ve posted excerpts from a few of my books. I’m willing to sell manuscripts, complete with illustrations where applicable, in the cases of The Third Ice Age, The Altitherm and Last Summer at the City of Iron. Keep in mind, though, that when these books finally get published, they might be different from these manuscripts. I also have a couple of my hand-made editions of The Third Ice Age lying around, fully illustrated and bound, for $20 each. Remember, I’ve made some changes to the text since then. These are, until they are officially published, works in progress.

If you’re wondering why there’s no excerpt from L’Isle Joyeuse, it’s due to a technical problem. The only typed copy I have of that book was done on an old typewriter. I never bothered to print out the version I transcribed to Smith-Corona disk. About a year ago, it occurred to me that I’d better put L’Isle Joyeuse onto a “real” computer, so I went to print it out from the old disks. It was then that I made the grim discovery that the Smith-Corona PWP-6 had perished from neglect. Its disk drive failed to complete its disk-recognition cycle, preventing it from opening files. What to do? Fortunately I had the ancient typed copy (on erasable bond paper, no less! Oh, the horror, the horror…) on hand, so I scanned that into the computer. The results were as I’d feared: the OCR subroutine could barely read the smudgy, irregularly-impressed characters, resulting in thousands of typos and hundreds of paragraphs of unintelligible gibberish. I expect a large number of misreads from OCR; but this was just ridiculous. Someday, when I have a free week or something (HA!), I’ll have to sit down with the old manuscript and make all those corrections on the computer. Oh, well, it needed a rewrite anyway.

EXCERPT FROM THE THIRD ICE AGE – from Chapter V: Dark Day of the Mammoth

“They seem peaceful enough,” Stefan observed as they passed near it, small colored bubbles floating leisurely by a forest of hairy trees.

“That’s funny,” Nick said aloud. “These are all adult males; I don’t see any females or babies in this entire herd — ”

Suddenly one of the huffing behemoths curled its serpentine snout and gave a trumpeting wail. Its huge, heavy feet beat and pawed at the snow, and it pivoted its massive, tusken head in a maddened frenzy. This wild action was repeated throughout the herd; within seconds, the air rang with bellows and filled with flying snow, and the youths were trapped, swerving their snowmobiles through the jungle of stamping, stumpy legs. The mammoths began to thunder in circles around the scattered group, rendering escape almost impossible.

“I thought you said they were harmless!” Luke shouted, swearing loudly as he nearly toppled in the act of avoiding a thrashing from the heavy flog of a trunk.

“They were; we probably spooked ’em!” Nick responded, pulling aside from an alphorn-sized tusk as it swung upward from the trampled snow.

“This doesn’t make sense!” Thor yelled. “If they were frightened, they should just clear out of here; but these things are surrounding us!”

“How?” his brother shouted, accidentally tearing a clump of furry flesh from a giant leg with his snowmobile’s left ski.

“Fly!” He spread out the Albatros’ wings, and the whirling wind carried him roughly over the flailing trunk of one of the beasts. With a sharp jolt, he bounced to the ground and raced a safe distance away. He pulled out his Pocket .41 from his coat, loaded it, and fired at the head of a mammoth before his brother could tell him to put away the weapon.

The awesome monster released a deafening roar as blood shot from its tray-sized ear; it collapsed ponderously, head jutting forward, in a puddle of red that turned orange as it froze.

Nicholas glided over the fallen mammoth and joined his younger brother in helping Luke and Thor escape. After he loaded his Walther (which he was loathe to use but deemed to be a rather necessary evil in these circumstances) the two charged back into the mad herd. As soon as they reached the mean perimeter, they spread their wings and soared over the heads of the smaller mammoths.

The Cobra II was pinned by a ski beneath the injured foot of a powerful mammoth. Despite repeated shooting with his gun, Luke was unable to force the fatally wounded beast down; its sluggish reflexes and tight muscles kept it upright. Nicholas glided his vehicle straight into the creature’s gory head and knocked it over so that Luke could escape.

Thor was evading a large mammoth with a shoulder height of over three meters when his steering locked. Stefan flapped the wings of the Albatros to keep aloft and fired a blast between the behemoth’s tiny eyes. An explosion of blood, hair and quivering sinew bloomed as its forehead cracked open. Stefan was spattered with gore and bits of bone... and a computer chip with wires and brain tissue dangling from it.

A computer chip? Fortunately, this odd item landed, with a heavy thump, in the seat beside Stefan, who with one hand picked it up and pocketed it.

Crack! At that instant a curling tusk, tossed upward by the falling mammoth, met the undercarriage of the airborne Albatros. Stefan leaped out into the air as his vehicle spun like a pinwheel to crash in the snow. He landed unhurt and ran out to see if it was still operable.

The herd was still fairly large, and it was now thundering in a northeasterly direction, leaving the weary boys and its three dead members behind in the trampled dish of snow.

The other three boys parked beside Stefan’s wreck. His snowmobile was in several pieces; but thanks to the depth of the snow, it wasn’t too badly damaged. It was repairable, but they hadn’t the tools for that on hand.

“I suppose we can, but we’ll have to load it aboard our snowmobiles. You ride with Thor; we’ve got to stop that herd!”

“Wait — ” he said, producing the surgically implanted computer chip, which was about the size of a wallet. “This was in the head of the one that sent me down.”

Nick took the chip and inspected it; Luke and Thor both leaned in for a closer look, eyes widening as they ran their gloved fingers over its shiny surface. A programmable animal, stampeding! “All the more reason to pursue ’em!” Thor said.

Nick handed back the chip. “I think I can fit some of this stuff in the back compartment,” he said as he pulled a few sections of the Albatros from the hard-packed snow and deposited them in the Ice Pirate.

Luke took the rest of the parts and put them into the Cobra II. With that, the four boys all checked their handguns and raced out of the dish to overtake the vanishing herd. The three dead mammoths were left to the heavily-feathered snow-vultures which began to circle overhead in the sinister, overcast sky.

For a copy of the complete manuscript, please e-mail me at mailto:ndollak@juno.com. Bound, “book-style” copies are $20.00 plus shipping; copies bound in a loose-leaf binder are $10.00 plus shipping. This book is fully illustrated. Some violence, of a “PG” or “PG-13” nature.

A cacophony like a giant snare drum roll rent the air above them, and the ground around the parked Chrysalis went into spasms of erupted dust. The crowd of students screamed and scattered in terror. A few young people fell wounded or dead upon the ground. The atmosphere shrieked as a pair of small fighter jets ripped across the sky from the west and shrank away in the east.

“Those airplanes were red!” Nick exclaimed. “C’mon! To the Chrysalis!” He grabbed Laura’s arm and started running.

“Laura pulled free of his grip. “I’m not riding in that ridiculous contrivance,” she snapped.

Cedric was already in a distant parking-lot, commandeering Laura’s car. He hurriedly drove away — away from the action.

“I hate to admit it, but I do, too. Wait — it looks like your pals are leaving without you, too.”

Nick stared at the Chrysalis, which was lifting off from the ground and opening its sails. “They wouldn’t do that. They must be coming to pick us up.” The Chrysalis turned and started to soar away into the east, toward the fighter planes, which were swooping back for another pass. “What on earth are they doing? Who’s steering my machine?!?” Nick yelled, running after it; then he stopped and pulled Laura against the wall of a building for protection against strafing when the airplanes cut overhead again. “What can they do against those planes?”

Aboard the Chrysalis, the Hippie tilted the forward sails so the craft veered upward. The approaching fighters fired at her for an instant; then she was above their field of assault. Preparing to make another pass, the two wedge-shaped crimson planes swept beneath the Chrysalis.

Luke, braced against a guardrail, let go a heavy backpack of hard-bound textbooks he’d thoughtfully snatched from the ground before lifting off. The bulky weight plummeted straight down into the canopy of one of the jets, striking the Plexiglas® with the force of a sledgehammer and shattering it.

The essentially decapitated aircraft swung sharply to the side, smashing off the tail fins of its partner. It then rocketed, smoke and flames gushing from its broken nose, into the abandoned field below, while the other one spun like a pinwheel and crashed on the ground near where Nick and Laura stood pressed to the wall. In a matter of seconds nothing remained of the danger but a pair of bonfires and smoldering scrap metal bouncing over the dusty earth. The Chrysalis triumphantly touched down again nearby. Nick and Laura ran to meet it.

“That was incredible!” Nick hollered. “I think we have another driver now! And Luke — was that a book-bag you dropped on that plane?”

“Well,” Nick said, hopping aboard and extending a hand to Laura, “we’d better be off.”

“With that rat? Maybe I oughta leave you here, let you get shot like a sitting duck. Meanwhile, we’ll be on the move and be better able to defend ourselves. You coming with us?”

For a copy of the manuscript, please e-mail me at mailto:ndollak@juno.com. Copies are bound in loose-leaf folders. $10.00 plus shipping. Not illustrated yet. Some violence of a “PG” or “PG-13” nature.

EXCERPT FROM LAST SUMMER AT THE CITY OF IRON – from Chapter VI: Shadows

They left the command center and explored the high-ceilinged corridors that coursed ponderously throughout the building. The darkness was such that Jameel’s flashlight seemed little more than the glow of a firefly in a coal-scuttle. This was probably because the dirty walls were painted a very military olive drab that reflected little light, and because the batteries were beginning to run low. Jameel suddenly realized that he had no spare batteries, so he told the others that they’d all have to quicken their tour so they’d be outside before the flashlight went out altogether.

Here the halls were thickly strewn with garbage, and the unmistakable odor of dead rat hung heavy in the musty air.

“Watch out for the bottomless pit,” Jameel cautioned, indicating a neat square hole in the floor. It was about a meter across and dropped straight down for some distance. A square constellation of broken glass glittered at the distant bottom.

As they made their way past the pit and over the debris, a sound of running echoed before them. Ariadne froze.

“It couldn’t be a person,” Ariadne pointed out. “A person couldn’t run over that trash in the dark without a light and not trip, no matter how many carrots he ate.”

They moved onward. Dark portals glowered at them from either side of the narrowing corridor. Jameel swung the thinning flashlight beam into each one, but saw only darkness and uninteresting debris in each chamber.

Something fell in a room just ahead on the right. Jameel gestured to the others to wait while he stole forward to investigate.

“Shh-h!” he cautioned, inching toward the edge of the chamber’s doorway. He flattened himself against the wall and listened. Something heavy was walking around in there, on what sounded like broken sheetrock or wallboard. It seemed very unlikely that a human being would be walking around in total darkness here... but still...

At last his curiosity prevailed. Jameel swung into the doorway and leveled the flashlight toward the sound.

Several pairs of coin-like eyes stared at him for a second. Then their owners turned tail and waddled off into a hole in the wall on their little human-like feet.

“Raccoons,” Jameel breathed, a relieved grin breaking out on his face. “Got me scared for — Aah!”

The others joined him, and he showed them a formidable-looking furnace or air-conditioner motor which stood like a killer robot in the otherwise deserted room.

“That part over there looked like a face or skull or something.” He pointed out a metal plate with several dark perforations in it. It did resemble a ghostly screaming skull.

Jameel jiggled the flashlight so it looked like lightning on the anthropomorphic plate, and let out a spooky laugh. Ariadne quickly told him to quit it. He fell silent, and the gang studied the machine by the weakening beam.

Creased sheet metal and oiled pistons. Massive iron clamps painted red and blue. A giant turbine with rusty fan blades still turning slowly in the oddly chill breeze issuing from the raccoons’ hole. More than the ruined halls themselves, this sleeping machine stood taller as an eerie reminder that people once lived here, worked here — and probably died here. The growing silence began to reveal hidden sounds... the breath of the wind in the trees outside... the faint rumble of the sheet metal flanks as they vibrated... the snore of the fan blades turning slowly...

“At the risk of sounding like a B-movie,” David whispered, “I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This, This Place is Giving Me the Creeps, and Let’s Get Out of Here.”

Jameel led the way down the corridor without. It turned sharply to the left. Outside wind breathed through dark cracks on their right. On the left there were several doors, all sealed and labeled with single white stars. A nameplate stood prominently on one.

“‘Captain Lawrence E. Gephardt,’” Jameel read aloud. “I wonder if he’s still alive. Maybe he could tell us some of the history of this place, and what happened here.”

“Yeah. Lemme write it down,” David said. He fished out his pocket sketchbook, opened it to the back (where he knew the pages were blank) and copied the inscription with his pencil.

The corridor bent to the left again, becoming a hall so wide the dimming flashlight beam could barely span the distance between its two dark walls. Enormous garage doors stood resolutely shut at regular intervals on the outside wall; this area must have been a loading station for pickup trucks, where equipment was dropped off for inspection or maintenance. Since there was little garbage on the floor in this area, the kids broke into a jog, hoping to beat the dying batteries to the exit that they hoped lay ahead. The dwindling beam swayed across the mottled concrete floor a few meters ahead as their heavy footsteps pounded in the darkness behind it. Beyond its scope, a rat scurried away, squealing like a small pig. A terrible stench suddenly made its presence known.

“Pe-yoo!” Jameel laughed. “Okay, who cut the cheese? That one was deadly!”

“That’s the worst smell I’ve ever encountered,” Ariadne choked. “The only other thing that smelled nearly as foul as this was that dead bird in the tower.”

When her echo died away, a humming sound became audible, as well as a writhing, scratching noise. Jameel covered his nose and mouth and pointed the flashlight in the sound’s direction. A swarm of flies buzzed in the waning shaft of light.

“Great — another dead animal,” he muttered. Then his voice trailed off as he saw how big the swarm of flies was. Feeling a strange and unnatural mixture of curiosity and paralyzing fear, he slowly lowered the flashlight to draw the shroud of darkness from whatever it was that was drawing the flies’ interest... and the rats’...

For a copy of the manuscript, please e-mail me at mailto:ndollak@juno.com. Copies are bound in loose-leaf folders. $10.00 plus shipping. This book is fully illustrated. Some violence, of a much darker hue than that in The Third Ice Age or The Altitherm; would probably get a “PG-13” or “R” rating.

EXCERPT FROM WHAT DID YOU DO DURING THE APOCALYPSE, DADDY? – from Chapter XX: “Curiouser and Curiouser.”

In the center of this tremendous space was an indescribably complicated-looking machine that hummed like a hive of twenty million human-sized bees. An almost visible aura of electricity crackled around its massive frame, making the hairs all over our bodies stand on end. Above it, in the ceiling, there was a large portal. Small glowing dots could be seen moving in the space beyond this portal, but from our vantage it was difficult to tell exactly what we were looking at.

“I think this is where the wormholes originate,” I theorized. My voice sounded artificially muffled, as if the atmosphere of this room wouldn’t allow sound to travel normally. My ears started to pop. I noticed that the air was a little hard to breathe.

“Come on,” Little John suggested nervously, pushing the car toward “our” wormhole.

“Wait — it’ll just swallow us again, unless it changes course. I’ll run through and see if it’s still moving forward. Then I’ll come back.” Before Little John could stop me from making such a foolhardy maneuver, I ran through.

I emerged on the road where we’d been. Behind me, the wormhole swirled. I looked back and saw that the swath it had cut in the woods was arc-shaped. In fact, it looked like it was moving in a large circle, facing the same direction the whole time. A look from another angle revealed that it was actually cutting an ongoing spiral into the land, like the looping pattern of a Spirograph™. Good! In about half an hour, I projected, it would be moving sideways and ultimately backward, permitting easy escape with our disabled vehicle. I walked back in.

“Nick!” Little John shouted at me as I re-entered. “You scared me, man.”

“Sorry. Well, assuming no-one changes the course of this thing or shuts it down, we should be able to leave in maybe half an hour.”

I was a little too fascinated at this point to be scared. “I dunno. Explore?”

A scruffy-looking man darted in from another wormhole, dripping wet, with a VCR under his arm. He looked around in wonderment, then saw Little John. “Oh, no — not you again!” he moaned.

“Hey,” Little John grinned. “Speak of the devil...” He moved closer for a better look at the car-jacker to whom he’d taught a lesson while in college.

“Don’t hit me!” The burglar dropped the VCR with a heart-rending clatter and ran out through a different wormhole.

“Wait — that’s the wrong one —” I hollered, but it was too late. I cautiously poked my head through the wormhole through which he’d exited, and was treated to the sight of him running in a panic across a yellow African veldt in the bright equatorial moonlight. Two tawny lionesses pounced on him from two directions and started shaking him to death. A third lioness sauntered over and started disarticulating his legs.

“Eew,” I winced, returning to the wormhole-generator room. “I believe he’s the main course at a lions’ feast,” I said to Little John. “Rule of thumb: never run in front of a hungry lioness; it only encourages them.”

“Oh, well,” Little John sighed, shrugging his shoulders, “at least he left a beautiful VCR.” He picked it up. “Hope it still works.”

“I don’t think we can, seeing as we have to leave in half an hour; but we should at least try. Which way to New York?”

Together, with Little John carrying the VCR, we headed for the wormhole to the Big Apple. Suddenly four tough-looking guys, soaking wet and mostly leather-clad, barged in from the other end. They frantically looked around. “Youse guys see a guy with a VCR come runnin’ through here?” one of them inquired, a murderous edge to his voice.

Little John gestured with his head to the African wormhole. The toughs ignored the VCR in his hands and ran headlong into the veldt.

We walked through, emerging in a junkyard of sorts near the Brooklyn Bridge. Sheets of cold early November rain added to the grayness of the atmosphere. Most of the golden spheres, we noticed, hovered around the tenth floors of the skyscrapers; but of course there were many at lower and higher levels.

Two hoboes, sitting on a concrete piling nearby, were hotly engaged in some sort of transaction. “I’ll bet you these rare bottle caps it stands,” said one. “I’ll bet you this old carburetor it falls,” said the other.

“Hey,” I hailed, walking up to them. “You folks know whose VCR this is?”

“This’ll make the wager really interesting,” said the other. “If it falls, I get the VCR.”

Little John and I didn’t believe them for a second. But what were we gonna do?

“Excuse me,” I inquired as Little John put the VCR down, “what’s going on?”

“We’re betting on whether or not the Statue of Liberty gets it,” one said, pointing.

In the gray distance, we could see the familiar shape of Liberty Illuminating the World. Several golden spheres were using it for target practice.

“I say it’ll stand. Liberty always prevails!” This hobo leaped dramatically to his feet, tossing his moth-eaten scarf around as if to prove his point.

The other hobo waved him off dismissively. “Prevail, schmevail. It’ll fall. There’s no way the lady can withstand firepower of that magnitude.” He shook a finger for emphasis.

“Actually,” I admitted, “I’m afraid the odds of the Statue of Liberty surviving are probably pretty slim. You’ve all seen the movies. Planet of the Apes, Independence Day, Escape From New York. You just know, if Earth gets invaded by aliens or something, the Statue’s just not gonna make it.”

Even as I spoke, a distant sphere blasted another chunk from the Statue’s base. With a groan audible even at this distance, Lady Liberty slouched forward, twisted slightly and toppled completely over, crashing down the steps and coming to rest half-submerged in the water.

“You blew it up!” the hobo who’d thought it wouldn’t happen screamed, falling to his knees and pounding the mud with his fist. “You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to Hell!”

“Looks like I get the VCR,” the other one smirked, claiming his prize. “You may keep your bottle caps.”

“Crap,” Little John gasped, at the senseless destruction and the ghoulish parasitism being displayed here.

A barely intelligible cry went up from a nearby pillar of the Brooklyn Bridge. I looked up and saw a teenaged girl standing on a parapet high, high above the icy, frothing water.

“The angels are coming!” she yelled. “The angels are here! They’re coming in their UFOs to get me!” Then, without further warning, she jumped.

We all flinched, startled, as she plummeted, arms and legs flailing as if trying to run on air. The hovering spheres ignored her completely. Then her head struck a metal drainpipe and she went limp as a rag doll. She hit the water too far from shore for anyone to risk swimming after her.

“C’mon,” I said, turning back to the wormhole, “let’s get out of here.”

One of the toughs emerged from the Africa wormhole, his clothes tattered and his arm bloody. He staggered, running as fast as he could, a lioness in hot pursuit. They ran past us and vanished into another portal.

In my mind, I imagined how this poor thief’s misadventures might become immortalized via our cultural mythos:

One can still read, in collections of anecdotes about paranormal phenomena, an account of an American man who spoke very bad English suddenly appearing in Moscow’s Red Square. An African lioness appeared behind him and killed him. Local police soon killed the lioness, but the incident was so bizarre that people spoke of it for years — often omitting the wormhole to make it seem even more mysterious. In some versions it became a male lion, a tiger, an elephant or even a dinosaur! A bit of disrepair on St. Basil’s Cathedral was popularly attributed to the beast as it searched for dessert in this cold, unfamiliar land and mistook it for gingerbread.

Akil the centaur pushed his way through the Ollog escort and loomed over the long table of machinery. He eyed Armagan and Jenna with unvarnished contempt, but seemed not to recognize either of them. Noticing the look of hatred on Armagan’s face, he shot him a fierce glare and snorted: “Wait your turn, runt.” Then he sniffed the air. “I smell young woman,” he mumbled, his puzzled gaze resting momentarily on Jenna, then dismissed the idea of an armored girl as preposterous. (With the helmet on her head, Jenna’s girlish face was obscured.) He sniffed again. “I smell centipede.” He noticed Armagan’s mount, which had been curled up quietly in a segmented ball during the transaction. “They’re good eating. Aren’t they, men?”

“You’d better guard your centipede well, little boys,” he tauntingly cautioned Jenna and Armagan. “My men and I are getting hungry.”

“We’ll have food in the cafeteria – ” the Ollog who’d been carrying out the transaction began, shuffling his feet nervously.

“Later!” Akil bellowed at the Ollog, cutting him off. “First, the machine. If I don’t get it now, I might get drunk on Ollog ale and forget why I came to your stinking cesspool of a factory in the first place.”

“We – we’ve put the ale away, Akil, sir, so there wouldn’t be a brawl like last time – ”

“Ah, last time!” Akil clapped a heavy gauntleted hand onto the Ollog’s shoulder, knocking him straight down to the floor. “Yes, we’ll never forget that. I burned your granary down, didn’t I?”

“The machine, little man. Now. I have little patience, and Dranak has less.”

The Ollog picked up the first gadget, the one he’d tried to foist off onto Armagan and Jenna. “Here it is, just as you ordered. Thirty... twenty gold pieces.”

Akil picked up the machine and studied it with his beady eyes. “Where’s the Fairy metal?”

Akil flung the machine to the floor, smashing it to bits. The centipede, startled, uncoiled and raced to Armagan’s side. Akil drew his sword, siezed the Ollog by a metal chain on his neck and pulled him in close.

“Dranak said it would be made of Fairy metal, which doesn’t rust, little pig,” Akil growled through his fangs, picking the Ollog’s nose with his sword tip. “The machine. Bring it now.”

“You what?” Akil roared, flinging the Ollog back and plunging his sword into the wooden tabletop with a heavy clank.

“Th – th – they offered a better price…” the Ollog tried to explain, pointing toward Armagan and Jenna.

Armagan furrowed his brow in concentration and pointed back at the Ollog, who suddenly found himself unable to lower his arm. The purse, which he clutched in his trembling hand, suddenly leaped back into Armagan’s satchel, which sealed itself. Then, as if under the power of an invisible force, he reluctantly pointed away from Armagan and Jenna and toward the stone doors. Then, with a click, the button on his wristband moved, and the massive doors began to slide shut. “Hey!” the Ollog feebly protested. Now freed of Armagan’s power, he tried to stop the doors by pressing the button again; but their mechanism was designed so it could not reverse direction until its cycle had completed. The doors could not re-open until they’d shut completely.

“Come on!” Armagan yelled, drawing his sword, leaping onto the centipede and steering it toward the doors. Jenna joined him, and he gave the beast the order to charge. With a hissing screech, the centipede rose up on its back fifty legs and flailed its front limbs, knocking Ollogs and bandits aside. Then it dropped to the ground and sped forward with a lurch. Armagan’s sword slipped through his fingers and clattered to the floor, making him feel like a careless fool. Jenna had no idea these creatures could move so fast, and found herself hanging onto one of its segments for dear life. She threaded one arm through a handle on the precious machine to free up her hands.

One of the bandits drew his sword and ran at the fleeing centipede. Jenna drew her sword and blocked his blade. They clashed weapons a few times; then Jenna knocked his sword out of his hand. The weapon landed heavily (flat side down, fortunately) across the centipede’s neck, missing Armagan’s nose by a hair’s breadth.

“Hey, thanks!” Armagan replied, picking up the new sword with a free hand before it could slide off.

“Don’t mention it.” Jenna swung her sword again and fought off another bandit. Akil and his men were starting to pursue them as a group.

Ahead, the doors continued to slide toward each other. Armagan urged the centipede to move faster, to take them through before the doors closed. A bandit jumped at him, and Armagan cast a field of energy that deflected the thug away to the side. The bandit, thrown off-balance, stumbled backward onto a pile of cloth. A mechanical arm that had been picking and sorting the cloth descended, seized the bandit and hoisted him up into the air. It swung to one side and dropped him into a wicked-looking machine with heavy moving parts that proceeded to fold and mangle him. His screams were drowned out by the “machine jammed” alarm that sounded. “Sorry,” Armagan half-apologized. He glanced back and saw the bandits closing in, Akil towering over them and brandishing his sword.

Suddenly the centipede stumbled and began to squeal in distress. A bandit had grabbed one of its hindmost legs and was hanging on. Armagan spurred the beast onward, and the bandit was dragged along the stone floor. Sparks flew wherever his armor scraped over the rock, and he howled in some sort of mad delight.

And then they were through. With the doors so close that Armagan could have touched them, the centipede slipped through and into the tunnel beyond. Realizing that the bandit would not let go, it dropped off the captured leg, sending the hitchhiker rolling in the dust. The doors slammed shut right before his very nose, squashing the twitching, sloughed-off leg he held in his hands.

“Open the doors!” Akil commanded, raising himself up on his hind legs. “Open them! Get those thieves!”

The GSHW is a multi-genre writers’ group. That is, although it was founded by writers who specialize in horror, its members include writers of science-fiction, fantasy, mystery and even romance. It’s open to anyone over age 16, and membership costs $35.00 per year. Benefits of membership include: automatic subscription to The Graveline (newsletter), admission to all the meetings, the right to vote in matters that require the group’s vote, the privilege of getting your stories critiqued by the critique group (on condition that you take time to critique the works of others) and the ability to receive and post announcements on the GSHW Webgroup.

If you’re interested in joining, but live much too far away or are too busy to attend the meetings, you may subscribe to the newsletter for $24.00 a year.

The group’s members include professional and amateur writers alike. Some get paid regularly for stories; others have yet to get a story accepted even in a non-paying market. Most work at jobs unrelated to writing. Some also belong to other writers’ groups, such as Sisters in Crime, which specializes in the mystery genre. (Despite the name, they accept male members. They’re dedicated to their craft and to ending discrimination against women writers.)

The GSHW meets on the second Saturday of each month in a meeting-room at the Monmouth County Library Headquarters, on Symmes Drive in Manalapan, just west of Route 9. That’s in Monmouth County, New Jersey, USA. The business meeting starts at 11:00 AM; guest speakers appear at High Noon. Bring a friend! Guest speakers can be almost anyone, from agents to published authors to just ordinary members showing us how to make a presentation package.