The Slyburn Girl and Leonard

By Williams M John

The Slyburn Girl, Nedra, finds a kindred spirit in a depraved world. Reuel arrives in the city of Slyburn looking for a Lunakolb Girl. He once saw her as a youth in a home for rejected clones, and he never forgot her. He follows his only lead to her through the parched and creepy passages of that world. Once he finds Nedra the malevolent will of Estes (Nedra’s one-time handler) insinuates itself into their lives. Feeling cornered, they decide to undertake a dangerous journey with a coyote to the fabled city of Brazeal. Barely escaping an ambush, Reuel finds himself separated from Nedra and sets off in pursuit. He catches up with the group, kills the coyote and takes his money, and rescues Nedra. They continue to Brazeal and arrive with their pocket of funds, the unfamiliar breath of hope, and each other.

Leonard is the story of an ordinary young man, Hugo, and an extraordinary man from another place, Leonard. Leonard gives Hugo the gift of stopping and re-starting time in exchange for eliminating a mysterious character he calls Traveler. Then Leonard disappears. Hugo falls under the addictive spell of his strange new power, which he wields like a film director, while drifting into an uneasy malaise. In the process he angers a co-worker, Eric, who tries to penetrate the strange goings-on. Circumstances draw Hugo to a fantastical house where he finds a changed Leonard, then Traveler. Finally, knowing he will soon lose his gift, he has a final showdown with Eric.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Williams M John
• Release date: Jun 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310920738

Williams M John

John M. WilliamsI have learned by teaching that I know nothing, but THEY know less than me. I have been writing for a long time and my hand aches. My novel Lake Moon was published by Mercer UP in 2002, and I was Georgia Author of the Year! I have published a smattering of stories, essays, reviews, and the like through the years. Now, to some fanfare, I’m e-publishing my fiction! Much of it is obsessed, like myself, with time. In theme it runs the gamut from icky to tricky with occasional grace notes of squalor and squeam. Songwriter Ken Clark and I have written five musical plays. See http://woofwoofband.com/fr_kenclarkandjohnmwilliamsrocknrollcomedies.cfm for details. Please have a look also at http://likethedew.com/author/jwilliams/ for some of my recent blog posts. When you purchase my work you are making a small contribution toward restoring the moral order of the universe.

Book preview

The Slyburn Girl and Leonard

John M. Williams

the Smashwords Edition of

two novellas from

StoneThread Publishing

To give the reader more of a sample, the front matter appears at the end.

Full Contents

The Slyburn Girl

The train rattled through the dingy corridor in a jerky, soothing rhythm—the compartment maybe three-quarters full, about half the passengers vaguely restive, the others lethargic and resigned. Through a cataract-glazed window a man indifferently watched the outside scene, some padding spewing from his gut-wounded seat, himself and his clothes in need of some laundering. He seemed neither young nor old, but a bath and shave would have gained him a good ten years, an unlikely prospect in these arid environs. Reuel (the man’s name, and the man) took in that dim no-man’s-land of dust only a little relieved by the oily spray applied weekly, its tarry odor now as always infiltrating the air. He licked his parched lips and tried not to think of water.

Some cracks were beginning to show in the landscape—or rather, missing panels in the high corrugated buffer walls, which flickered by in sporadic flashes, each an unreal rift into scenes the eye mercifully didn’t have time to process—like subliminal ad messages in a film, or hallucinogenic squiggles in a sweat: lush visions of greenery, water, people (whoever they were) in white clothes, like spirits, by lagoons and pools, in mid-drink, mid-laugh.

But neither did he feel any kinship with the souls around him. The Slyburn-bound. The nearest, a sallow kid across the aisle, bestirred himself, tugged off his hard-ridden helmet, and just sat holding it momentarily, quietly and privately breathing. Toxic afterglow. He looked too young for the blue shadow smearing his face and throat—well, all but his eyes. He lolled his head toward Reuel, proffered the helmet like a flask, but Reuel shook him curtly off and turned back to his frosted window. Gag. Anyway, they had to be getting close; the train had lately been telegraphing subliminal fluctuations in its velocity and progress, the way it did when it began to nose its way into the outskirts of something.

Desire burned like fever and he tried to push it away. Thirst. Hunger. The old ache in the fork of the man. The need to be somebody somewhere. No, all that matters is, you have to have a plan, get in motion. And don’t pull that having no plan is a plan shit. That’s just another way of saying you have no plan. Desperation itself is a plan.

Reuel had a plan. He touched his jacket pocket, felt the folded page (for the thousandth time), almost took it out (enough time having passed for him to affect seeing it anew), but checked himself. Not here, of course. Not to be shared.

Besides, the train seemed to be navigating the arc of some last great curve. Reuel watched alertly. So did half the other passengers—looking up in anticipation—the others down in dread. And then finally the grimy tiled walls of a platform did appear, with the legend: SLYBURN.

* * *

An officer patrolled the turnstile. Reuel glanced over his shoulder, then, approaching the exit, cut his eyes back to that slick patent leather metallic figure—hands behind his back, whistling, for God’s sake—then took the far queue. Then he was on the street.

A reddish hue saturated the Slyburn air, but he’d heard that. He started walking with that general depression one feels when a place is, after all, only another place. Goddam, dry. Shabby, dirty feel to it all. Spindly trees in iron cages along the sidewalk were only arguably alive. In a little corner park, pigeons worked the lunch crowd like Bombay beggars. Rearing above the buildings, competing with tanks and wires, billboards occasionally announced YOU’RE STILL YOU! or IT’S ALREADY BEEN! Or scenes where you’d want to be: TRY OUR REALITY—Doig and Shiflet.

Yeah, maybe I will, thought Reuel—see if I can hustle something. Or find a shelter, get my bearings. Which first? Still plenty of day left. Follow your feet.

He passed a street vendor selling some kind of concoction in a paper cone. The smell triggered hunger, technically, but couldn’t really get by his fist-squeezed gut. He kept going.

He found himself moving inevitably toward an agitated din, punctuated by the firecracker pops of gunfire and muted detonations, up ahead: a two or three deep press of spectators against a railing, he saw. He worked his way forward, saw that the railing was a multicolored betting board, attended by roving bow-tied croupiers, and money was changing hands. Below, about the size of the nerve if the city block were a tooth, and circumscribed by that frenetic throng of gamers, a miniature valley and facing slope—miniature trees, creek, roads, farm, everything—was the scene of a maybe nineteenth century battle—the soldiers about three inches tall, the numbers on their backs easy to read, the expressions on their diminutive, very human faces—the tiny fear, courage, hatred, panic—less so. One army was dug in, defending the slope, the other assaulting. Cavalry. Infantry. Artillery. Over here, on a little rise on the near flank, a bayonet charge. Reuel watched, absorbed. Bayonet to the chest! The little scream, the miniature spurt. Then a bigger scream. Guy just lost a hundred bucks. Followed by a startling explosion just below. Reuel cut his eyes—cannon shot to the barricade—direct hit! Three little bodies did flips. Group of young men in business suits did high-fives.

Place your bet, a croupier said tiredly. Or, he implied, move along.

Reuel moved along.

The noise fell behind him as he continued down the avenue, turning here or there, by whim. Rounding one corner he found himself confronted with an extraordinary mural covering the vast flank of a building. He froze, staring. A LUNAKOLB scene—lush urban oasis calling, whispering—and maybe real. Real? He looked hard, watching for the betrayal of movement. Some tremble to the leaves? A drift to the clouds? Hard to tell. Photographic? Or photographically real? Or something so real it was beyond real? Come on, what could be beyond real? Then that would be real, and what would become of the less-real things then?

Stop it.

Maybe some high-res virtual trigger—meaning that the real wasn’t there, but in here. Maybe manufactured by one’s own thirst, lust. He passed a string of live-sex clubs and looked in the open doors—no one noticed or cared—and it was a little sickening. Then the food clubs where the performers luridly ate for a silent, transfixed audience. Or the water clubs where people laved themselves and slaked their bored thirst for hire. This has to be funny or I’m done, thought Reuel.

Cop on his beat—caught Reuel’s eye. What, asshole? Another whistler. Ol’ Officer Johnson. Reuel dropped his eyes, passed by. That slick flash. WHATEVER IS STRONGEST, WAS claimed a poster in a shop window. Just as he heard another commotion up the street.

A white limo was sliding into the space in front of an unpromising brickfront office building, an excited crowd surging around it. The driver came around and opened the passenger door—stems holding little silver cameras speared the crowd like antennae, flashing—and a man got out. He looked bored and annoyed. Reuel stared at him—a maybe middle-aged man—modest paunch, salt and peppery hair, goatee, and world-weary steely eyes. He started for the building, ignoring everyone, like someone starting for a building, ignoring everyone, while behind him a dithery, wraithlike assistant with thick glasses, a big nose, and almost outmanned by the two over-sized notebooks he was attempting to balance, scurried in his wake.

Blubbering, Bu bu bu bu bu bu bu—

Shut up, said the man, not even turning or breaking stride, and disappeared inside the building.

The wraith reached the door. Locked. Almost whacked his schnozola. He stood there doing something with the notebooks that might have been an eccentric juggling act. The crowd, with nothing to do, watched him, it seemed, without noticing him.

Reuel too—because just beside his head was a brass plate in the bricks. Oh, he thought, so here we are. So understated. No hoopla. No pizzazz. In itself a sort of statement.

DOIG AND SHIFLET

REALITY

A few minutes later someone opened the door and a radiant blonde woman came out. The crowd emitted a communal moan and pressed toward her. She stopped, smiling, and let herself be photographed. Quite a specimen. Reuel, no less than the others, gaped at her—by no means a small woman and so splendid she looked hyper-real. The disgruntled gentleman who had apparently come to fetch her, emerged and stood frowning a few yards behind her, waiting. The crowd just drank her, and suddenly a leaflet appeared in Reuel’s hand: same woman, nude, cavorting under a waterfall. Small silver legend at the bottom: LUNAKOLB.

Bu bu bu bu bu bu bu, the assistant was saying into a bank of microphones where a makeshift podium had been arranged.

The look on the waiting man’s face seemed less disgust that what he thought disgust should be, Reuel found himself thinking just as the man, as though catching him, turned and looked right at him. Skin tight on his face, making shrewd slits of his eyes, his hands an old man’s. Eyes locked on Reuel, he put his hands in his pockets. Ooh.

The woman had slipped into the background.

—re-re-re-re-re-re-re-cipient of the Schill Foundation Prize, the T-T-T-T-T-T-Took Institute Lifetime Achievement Award, and th-th-th-th-th-thirty-seven Platinum Citations, and a G-G-G-G-G-G-Golden Lamppost Presidential Medal—

All right, that’s enough, you can shut up, growled the man and gave him a shove on the bony point of his sternum, sending him into a notebook-dropping, balance-seeking dance that brought a roar or laughter from the crowd.

The man stepped unhurriedly to the lectern. The wraith, distractingly gathering his scattered papers, froze at a glance from him.

One hears the word ‘obvious’ more these days, he began, his jaded eyes stopping here, there. His voice, the assured lubricated baritone of the natural orator, resonated as he paused. A thing to hear that, once heard, becomes a heard thing, as though things heard can, and in many instances perhaps even do, succeed in their ploy to suggest the non-things they aren’t. And you vacillate. But what does that sound like? Vaseline. Slippery, lubricated, sliding in and out, in and out. But does it, can it, mirror itself? He looked around, at last gave his Zeus-like head a shake. Perhaps. But listen carefully to that. He challenged his listeners with his eyes. Per. Haps. The blonde woman shifted her stance; all eyes turned to her in unison, then back to the man. His eyes, registering it, glinted hard. A dilemma. Sweet and sour. Leaving you where? A crux. And when is a crux a crutch? When the precipice, unbridgeable, returning upon itself in an imitation, a mirroring of itself that, upon its realization, self negates. And I think you know that. He surveyed the crowd sternly. The Obvious is all there is. That’s why it’s called the Obvious. Good day.

On their way to the limo, the man ignored Reuel. The driver held the door, LUNAKOLB in tasteful silver letters a few degrees to the left of center on the upper panel; the woman waved and got in, the man behind her. The wraith, fumbling the notebooks again, barely made it. The cool clunk of the door removed them to another dimension, and the car whispered away.

Things that suggest the non-things they aren’t? Reuel said to the man beside him.

And he would be Exhibit A, replied the man.

Who?

Estes.

That’s his name?

The man gave Reuel a surprised glance, and nodded. Then he returned to his thoughts. God, did you see her?

She was pretty hard to miss.

The crowd dispersed, and Reuel found himself suddenly alone on the street. Of the recent commotion so little remained it seemed it wasn’t over, but hadn’t been. Couldn’t remember too clearly what either of them had looked like—only the name, Estes, hung in the air—and an even shabbier weariness in their absence. Reuel stepped over to the door—

DOIG AND SHIFLET

REALITY

—tried it, and to his surprise it opened.

He found himself in a large, dim, crescent-shaped anteroom. Ante to something—or so it felt. The curved and craggy back wall shone wetly, and he stared at it trying to decide if the effect was intentional. Some kind of water sculpture? Or just a leaking piece of tubercular Slyburn crap? The room, curving away to matching dark corridors on either side, felt empty. Reuel turned back to gaze out the door window at the barren street. Like the ruins of something. The stage set of a bad dream. A man in an oxygen mask pulling a tank on wheels, accompanied by a woman walking a large nervous dog, went past.

Would you like to see an agent?

Reuel, accustomed to hiding everything, turned and would have looked startled. Goddam, he came out of nowhere! Sunken-eyed young man in Doig and Shiflet livery sporting a simpering suggestion of repressed snideness. Or was a full-blown idiot—it was hard to tell.

Okay, said Reuel.

The young man didn’t quite look at him, except in sniping glances, as he led him toward the left wing.

Who were those people? Reuel asked him.

People?

That man—that woman.

He’s an Importantist.

What the hell was that look on his face?

A few yards down the dim corridor the young man stopped at a door and knocked.

Yes? from within.

He opened the door to a