The Care and Feeding of Nightmares

By Randall Schanze

In his sixth book, "The Care And Feeding Of Nightmares" finds Randall Schanze at a new peak in his game. Merging genres he explores the darker corners of faith and disbelief, fear and humor, mortality and immortality. This time out, he's learned a new trick: He tackles sacred cows by chopping away the bovine part to rescue the sacred. It's original, occasionally appalling and occasionally funny as hell. His style is conversational, relaxed and intimate yet increasingly compelling as the reader becomes more and more invested in the tales he tells. His plotting continues to head off in unpredictable directions and his occasional twist endings are always surprise. He's not a slave to the twist, however, and doesn't pull the rug out from under the reader unless there's a reason to do so. In fact, he is refreshingly free from attempting to manipulate the reader. He simply sets up questions or implications, and trusts his audience take it from there. If you're not the kind of person to get stressed over someone taking a jab or two at the occasional religious belief, this is definitely a book worth reading. If you *are* the kind of person to take offense, then this collection provides some wonderful material to get really, really angry about.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randall Schanze
• Release date: Aug 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310970733

Randall Schanze

Randall Schanze is a Science Fiction author and blogger from Florida. He's the child of a NASA engineer and an immigrant, and has had a life-long fascination with space and exotic cultures. He's wild-eyed, engaging, chatty, smart, interested in nearly everything, and hence almost instantly annoying in person. Just the same, his writing has been praised by several well-respected professional SF authors. His first love is Science Fiction, and he's been writing for 30 years, though much of that time was spent writing under various pseudonyms. The most noteworthy of these was "Kevin Long," a name he used to publish four books. For half a decade he was the head writer and editor on the Republibot website but he has since retired. During that period, he went by the nom de web "Republibot 3.0" in a paranoid bid to protect his identity from his stalkers, though obvious since he's using his real name now, he's gotten more laid back about the whole thing. He's middle aged, happily married, and has a family. He also sings.

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The Care and Feeding of Nightmares

by Randall Schanze

Copyright © 2015 by Randall Schanze

Smashwords Edition, ISBN: 9781310970733

Smashwords License Statement This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover photograph by: Virgil Finlay

Quote from Weird Science, copyright 1985, Little Maestro Music

Quote from Sunset Grill, copyright 1984, Don Henley

Both quotes used under the terms of Fair Use.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Negative Side of Positive Proof

Cassadaga

Tahiti Is Still Beautiful

The Penultimate Solution

An Unguarded Moment

Memories in Future Tense

Endless Like the Sky

Bob and the Monastery of Blood

Afterword

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my sixth full-length book of short stories. This is my first book of completely new material to be published under my own name, rather than one of my various pseudonyms. I'll save all my ruminations about my stories for the afterword rather than bore you here. I will say, however, that I am very solidly pleased with this material, and I hope you will be as well. Thank you very much for your purchase, and your interest.

Sincerely,

Randall Schanze

Monday, August 24th, 2015

The Negative Side of Positive Proof

The church building was originally someone's house, which had been purchased and re-purposed about thirty years ago by the current owners. A steeple had gone up, and new rooms had been tacked on haphazardly, as money and building codes permitted. Eventually they started a little school. It was a small church, but the members took their tithing seriously, and the elders and deacons were, on the whole, level-headed and good with finances. As time passed and the neighbors moved away, they purchased the surrounding houses. Two were used as classrooms, a third as office space for the pastor and school administration. It looked neat and tidy from outside, but the origins were immediately obvious the first moment I'd gone in.

The chapel was long and low, with a ceiling only about ten or eleven feet up, and a small stage on one end, clearly a long-ish house with the interior walls removed. The narthex had been attached and stuccoed over so you couldn't tell from the outside, but inside it was impossible to miss that it had started life as one half of a mobile home. There were no pews, just rows of those kinds of gray office chairs that you can lock together at the ends. The windows didn't quite line up on either side, and the stained glass was just colored sticky plastic film bought in bulk from the Sam's Club down the road. They had a kind of abstract flowers-and-leaves-and-sunshine pattern on 'em.

Architecturally speaking, it was a dog's dinner. In truth, though, I found it charming. It was short on aesthetics and high on passion. In my life I've been in a thousand cathedrals and chapels and shrines that were far more glorious than this—heck, your average bus station was better looking—but many may as well have been whitewashed tombs for all the life in 'em. This place, well, when you've been around and seen as much as I have, you learn to take pleasure in the little things. They didn't come much littler than this place, let me tell you.

I had been traveling to and fro over the world, ranging up and down through it—my job requires a lot of travel—when I got a note asking me if I had considered the preacher in this school. That may sound like a question, but it was actually a command. From whom? Half the time I don't know, and it doesn't really matter much. I'm outside the normal chain of command. I report straight to The Top, but my orders can come from any number of individuals who are in a position to spot potential problems before I notice them on my own.

So here I sat, in the back of the charmingly cheap chapel, on a Wednesday, as the kids filed in and the teachers and preacher milled about. His actual titles were Youth Pastor, in addition to vice principal and the coach of the golf team. Like most of the junior clergy in these rinky-dink little schools, he had no particular training or education, just a three-day-seminar required by the Educational Christian Alliance, and a feeling that he was called to serve. The church considered him competent to preach to kids, but not adults. Prior to this he'd been in the medical supply biz. The real preacher here was a kindly old man with terminal cancer that I had only met once, but instantly liked.

This guy, though... oy.

As the students and staff milled about, a sandy-haired boy about thirteen or fourteen tugged on his sleeve.

Mister Don, he said, I know you've only got a minute, but I've got a question.

Sure, ok, what is it?

Well, you've talked about the War of the Angels, and how Lucifer led an uprising against God, right?

Yeah, that's all true.

Well, the kid said, I wanted to read more about that, so I've been looking for it in my Bible, but I can't find it. Could you tell me what book it's in?

Uhm, yeah, I think it's in Corinthians, Don said vaguely, and headed for the stage.

I snorked so loud, three people turned around and looked at me! Barely able to hold in my laughter, I bolted down the side hall (added to the main structure in 1983), out the glass doors, and just busted a gut. It was five minutes before I could contain myself. I'd spotted that kid the day I got here. He was smart and an unusually non-rigid thinker for this kind of place. I'm not a mind-reader, but just looking at him, you could tell he was testing the youth preacher. The kid may not have known the whole War of the Angels thing was invented out of whole cloth by a foppy English poet in 1667, but he clearly knew darn well it wasn't in the Bible. He wanted to know if Don knew it.

Evidently Don didn't.

This was why they didn't let him preach to the grownups. Well, one of the reasons anyway. The other was his obvious and uncontrollable twin obsessions, which he just. Would. Not. Shut. Up. About. I'd been here six weeks, though I'd fuzzed the minds of the people around me so that they'd think It'd been closer to a year. As far as anyone knew, my kid was a chronically ill student, which necessitated me being on campus at all times to attend to the child's frequent needs. Everyone accepted this without question, but no one could ever quite remember which one of the kids was mine, or whether my kid was a boy or a girl, or what was wrong with him/her specifically, or when they'd seen him/her last. Ah, humans. God bless their muddy thinking and fuzzy memories. I'd never get anything done without 'em.

I quietly returned and picked out a seat in the back, against the wall. The kids were all up front, with several empty rows of not-pews between us. Some of the teachers tended to sit back there so they could unobtrusively text or check their email during the sermon. As I sat down, one of them said, What's the sermon about today?

Does it matter? I asked before I could really stop myself—I was still a little giddy from the laughter—Whatever his topic is supposed to be, he'd going to get distracted five minutes in, ramble about Revelations for a while, and then end up talking about playing golf in heaven with his dad.

The teachers all stared at me with varying degrees of shock in their eyes. Oh, crap, I thought, now I've blown it. Suddenly the new art instructor broke into a huge smile and grabbed my arm. Oh, you are a treasure, she said, I never noticed that before, but you're right! He does do that a lot! She kept patting my hand, I don't know what we did before you got here, she said, and then held my hand for the first few minutes of the sermon.

It wasn't, you know, gay or anything. Women are just more touchie-feelie than men. I always forget that, and I'm always a little disconcerted by it. I didn't have this problem when I was male, but being a guy would have been more conspicuous than I really wanted for this mission, so I went female. Presently the art teacher got a text and let go of my hand.

This time out Don's sermon was ostensibly about the need to be polite. For a moment there, I thought he might actually stay on task and get through it for once, but, nope. Eight minutes in he noticed a couple of the kids weren't sitting up straight enough for him, so he told them to stop slouching. Then he told everyone to stop slouching. Then he said, Young people, you need to show some more respect. This is God's house, and this stuff is important. You may not think it is, but you know what? Jesus is going to come back someday, and all the signs are there if you know how to look for 'em. The world is going to end very soon. How many of you watched the news last night? How many of you heard the story about healthcare reform? Do you know what that means? The Book of Revelation says...

Annnnnnd we're off... I whispered. The art instructor stifled a laugh, while an older woman on my left kind of glared at me.

* * *

At 3:33 PM there was a great disturbance in the force. The Others get annoyed when I talk like that, so, of course, I insist on doing it just to be annoying. It's not a sin to pull lines from movies, and sometimes they're a useful shorthand for getting across a complex idea in the most efficient way possible. The others feel it's déclassé to use pop culture references—and of course they're right, it is—but I'm really good at it.

In any event, a great disturbance it was: Everyone and everything with more than four dimensions felt it when The Proof entered the world. It was the thing my superiors had known was coming, the thing I was sent here to look out for. It was... unnerving. Something I've always envied about humans is their ability to take sedatives in one form or another, a pill, alcohol, marijuana, whatever. My inherent nature denies me that: the way I feel is the way I feel, whether I like it or not. If it would have done me any good, though, I definitely would have popped a Xanax or two right about then.

I tried to stay calm. Relax, I told myself, The Proof is here, but as of right now it only exists as an idea in the mind of an easily-distracted middle-aged Hoosier with a bad back with a dead dad and a golf obsession. It's entirely possible he'll just get caught up listening to Rush Limbaugh in traffic, and he'll forget about it, and then everything will be fine. A half hour passed, and things still weren't fine. I could feel it in my higher axes. Or, I said to no one in particular, we could get lucky and he could get killed in a car accident." Another hour passed, and it was obvious that hadn't happened. No rest for the wicked, I was going to have to do it the hard way.

It was 7:06 when I knocked at his door. It had taken me a while to get my nerves together. I knocked again. Then again. Finally the door opened. It was Allison, Don's wife.

Oh, she said, there is someone at the door! I thought I heard someone knocking, but then I thought 'there can't be anyone there, they'd use the bell,' but then I thought, 'well then what can that sound be?' So I was checking the washing machine and the dryer, and I thought, 'could I be hearing things?' But then I thought, 'why wouldn't they use the bell?' so I decided to check...

I looked at the button on the wall. Why hadn't I used it? That was weird. I suppose it was some deep-seated sense of propriety: when fate comes knocking, it should actually be knocking, with all the import and gravity that entails. The end of the world shouldn't be heralded with a happy little ding-dong, like an Avon commercial.

I hope I didn't interrupt your dinner, Mrs. Finn, I said, but it's important. I'm Satan and I need to talk to your husband.

You can never tell how people will react to something like that. Sometimes they freak out, sometimes they laugh assuming I'm joking, sometimes they give you the old, 'I'm sorry, you can't possibly have said what I just thought I heard' expression. Allison—fortunately—was the kind of person who mentally censors anything unusual one might say, and just focuses on the stuff she understood.

We haven't actually eaten dinner yet. Don said he had something important he had to take care of right away, and he's been at his desk in the garage ever since.

May I come in? I didn't need to ask. I was well within my authority to smash the house apart. I could smash the whole state of Indiana if I thought it would help, provided no one got hurt, but I like to play things quiet if at all possible.

Yes, of course. Would you like something to eat? We're having turkey. I took Don a plate, but I looked in a little bit ago, and he hasn't even touched it.

No, thank you.

Are you sure? It's no problem.

I'm sure, thanks.

How about a drink, then?

I'm really not thirsty, but thanks for offer. What I really need is to see Don, if he's available.

I don't think that's such a good idea, she said, He told me to send the kids to a movie and not bother him, he's really hard at work on something important.

Yes, it's about that, actually. I need to talk to him about what he's working on. It's sort of urgent.

Well, I don't know. When I stuck my head in half an hour ago... wait a minute, did you say you were Satan?

I quickly kissed the index and middle fingers of my left hand and waved it in front of her face. Sleepy-bye time, I said, and instantly she was out cold. I levitated her to the couch, and then found the door to the garage.

Doggone it, Allison, I told you I didn't want to be dist... Oh. Mrs. Gegner. I didn't realize you... uhm... what are you doing here?

My job. I'm Satan. Three hours ago, you suddenly came up with irrefutable proof of—

What kind of nonsense is this, he interrupted, getting up from his workbench. I don't know what kind of joke you're trying to pull calling yourself the Devil, but I'm very busy and...

I'm Satan, not some stupid devil, I said with more defensiveness than I'd intended. I heard my voice in a far off kind of way, and realized that I probably sounded more scared than arrogant.

He looked at me like a dog trying to figure out a coo coo clock. Susan, what's going on?

My name's not 'Susan,' I explained, It's just got several of the same letters and the same number of letters as 'Satan.' I use it as a cover name whenever I'm a chick around English-speaking people.

His face began to show either concern for my well-being or fear for his own, I couldn't tell which. Where's Allison? he asked.

Asleep on the couch, I said, She's fine. And, yes, I'm really Satan.

No you're not.

How do you know I'm not?

Well, for one, Satan isn't a woman.

Satan isn't a man, either, I said, Satan is a hyper-dimensional supernatural entity. We don't have genders. We don't need your silly little genitals. We're—

So this is some kind of gay thing? You're telling me you're a lesbian?

Oh for crying out loud, I don't have time for this, I said, and instantly transformed my appearance from woman to man.

You're a hermaphrodite? he shrieked, his eyes wide. Good gosh, this guy is dumb, I thought, then changed my appearance to a seven-foot-tall red-skinned, goat-legged, horned creature with a pitchfork and a serpentine tail, both of which had snazzy little arrowheads on their points. He blacked out in fear. People always do. I don't know why we have to go through this every time. They insist—in one way or another—that I prove I am who I say I am, and the knowledge instantly knocks them out. Human brains have basically two operating modes: Stupid and Unconscious. It's irritating.

* * *

For the record, I don't look like the traditional medieval images of me. In fact, I don't look like anything. Not anything humans can perceive, anyway. I exist on way more than three dimensions, X, Y, Z, then wrap around the alphabet to start over again at A, B, C, and just keep on counting. What that means is... well, I'll leave you to read a book on topology and hyper-math if you're really interested, but the short form is I'm a magical being who can look however I want.

I changed my appearance back to Susan Gegner, sat on the stool, and leafed through the papers on his desk. Nuts, I realized, he really does have indisputable proof of God's existence here. I'd been hoping that maybe he wouldn't be able to articulate it adequately, so people would just ignore it. But, no, he'd remembered to carry the six over to the other column and everything. Well, so much for my penultimate hope. My last one, God help me—quite literally—was to try to reason with him.

I kissed the same two fingers on my left hand—oh, come on, you just knew I had to be a southpaw, didn't you?—and waved them in his direction. Wakey wakey, I said. He awakened, and looked terrified. I picked up his untouched dinner plate, and proffered it. Turkey? I asked.

Get thee behind me, Satan, he said, but he didn't get up off the floor.

It doesn't work that way, Don, I said with more condescension in my voice than I'd really intended.

Get thee behind me, Satan! he said, louder and with more emphasis.

I'm here because of something you figured out a few hours ago.

GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN! I stared at him blankly, then got up, skooched my way around the inside perimeter of the garage, until I'd made it to the space between the two cars. He'd just started clambering to his hands and knees. I walked towards him.

Fine, I'm behind you, I said, startling him. He shrieked. Now will you please listen, or are you going to keep on being a jerk?

I will not listen to the father of lies.

That probably gave me a quizzical expression. When have I ever lied? I asked.

Lots of times.

Such as?

You are a liar and a deceiver and the author of all evil, and thou shalt get thyself hence!

Oh boy. He was working himself into hysteria. I needed to rein this in before he blacked