Ask Me "No" Questions

By Kordel Lentine

A mysterious artifact. Power at his fingertips. But will his foresight be a blessing or a curse?

Robert "Dusty" Duval can't believe this is how it ends. Hurtling through a chasm on a runaway mule, the sixteen-year-old fears he's about to be another Grand Canyon statistic without realizing his dreams of finding wealth and love. But when a swift tumble knocks him out, he wakes up next to a strange mask and a creepy presence that speaks once before vanishing.

Followed home by the omniscient spirit, Dusty learns it can give a single "yes" or "no" response each night to any inquiry about the past, present, or future. And when his insight saves him from a horrific fire, he's eager to claim all he's ever wanted… until too much knowing sends his life into a tailspin.

Can he discover the right answers before everything goes wrong?

Ask Me "No" Questions is a fascinating coming-of-age story with magical realism and supernatural elements. If you like underdog characters, humorous twists and turns, and cautionary tales, then you'll enjoy Kordel Lentine's peek into destiny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kordel Lentine
• Release date: Feb 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781953812117

Kordel Lentine

Kordel Lentine was the kind of high school freshman who once wrote a how-to paper about how to write a how-to paper. No kidding. It was the most boring paper ever written. Even worse, when the teacher offered bonus points for students to read their papers in front of the class, he volunteered, as though his A+ in the class needed a boost. As far as horrible public readings go, it was not quite on par with Vogon poetry (since no one had to gnaw a leg off in order to survive), but it was nonetheless quite dismal, both for him and for everyone else in the room who happened to have ears. Kordel still bemoans that he simply could not think of anything more interesting to write about that fit the assigned criteria. It was the first time that he shared something he wrote, but thankfully not the last. Now that Kordel gets to choose his own topics, he likes to write science fiction novels with time travel and digital dinosaurs and no sign of how-to papers as far as the mind can see.Kordel was born and raised in South Bend, IN where screaming at the top of your lungs at the TV during Notre Dame football games was a regular family event. He now lives in Kansas City and has five awesome children. Four of his children have flown the coop while Kordel’s brilliant wife still homeschools the remaining two. (No, that wasn’t a typo or bad math—sorry unnamed not-awesome child!). Kordel is a CPA, his best time solving the Rubik's Cube is 47 seconds, he has a black belt in Taekwondo, and he enjoys activities that can be shared with his family such as scuba diving, board games, riddles, digital scrapbooking, and amateur astronomy.

Book preview

Ask Me 'No' Questions title page

Ask Me No Questions

Copyright © 2023 by Kordel Lentine, Aspilos Books, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews, but only insofar as the reviewers promise to painstakingly read the book all the way through before writing their reviews.

Cover designed by Brandi Doane McCann at eBook Cover Designs.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents in this timeline, or any nearby parallel dimension, are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-953812-10-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-953812-11-7 (ePub)

ISBN 978-1-953812-12-4 (Kindle)

Ordering information: Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, educators, and others. For details, contact the author at www.kordellentine.com.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022923148

First Edition, 2023

Visit www.kordellentine.com

For Arlin:

A tremendous blessing to our entire family.

Contents

Chapter 1 - Not So Grand

Chapter 2 - Bump in the Night

Chapter 3 - The Wonder Wallet

Chapter 4 - The Yes-or-No Game

Chapter 5 - The Voice Returns

Chapter 6 - Friend or Foe?

Chapter 7 - Unsung Hero

Chapter 8 - The Lottery

Chapter 9 - Buried Treasure

Chapter 10 - The Ultimate Advice

Chapter 11 - The Woman of His Dreams

Chapter 12 - A Wonderful Horrible Dive

Chapter 13 - New Money

Chapter 14 - Unsolved Mysteries

Chapter 15 - Family

Chapter 16 - Death Wish

Chapter 17 - The Crisis

Chapter 18 - Dead Man Walking

Chapter 19 - Weary Wanderer

Chapter 20 - Ignorance Is Bliss

Chapter 21 - The Confrontation

Chapter 22 - Déjà Vu

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Hat Tips & Easter Eggs

Other Books by Kordel Lentine

Inside From Under the Sun…

Prologue

Chapter 1

About the Author

Chapter 1

Smiling double-sided mask

Not So Grand

Dusty clung to the neck of the runaway mule as though his life depended on it—because it did. The crazed animal had chosen to get spooked on one of the steepest parts of the canyon trail, bolting past the rest of the caravan. Not even the guide could coax his own mule to pursue at such a breakneck speed, so Dusty was soon alone, holding on for dear life and praying that mules were as surefooted as everyone claimed.

The frantic beast continued to flee as though it were being pursued by a pack of wolves, no matter how hard Dusty pulled at the reins or pleaded with it to stop. The reckless ride would have been terrifying in the middle of a flat field, but the 300-foot cliff mere feet away overwhelmed Dusty with palpable fear. He tried not to think of the sheer drop, but his head wouldn’t obey his mental pleas to look away. He tried closing his eyes, but that was worse. Way worse.

When he opened his eyes, the sight of a hairpin turn rushing toward him literally took his breath away. Dusty didn’t know much about mules, but he knew there was no way it could make the turn at its current speed. Dusty was only sixteen years old, and he was going to die in this canyon. There was nothing he could do but watch.

It wasn’t any old canyon that would kill him. It was the Grand Canyon. Even through his fear-induced paralysis, Dusty was able to let out a snort of derision at the thought. Grand was the last word he would use to describe the experience so far. He had never wanted to be there in the first place. But the previous winter when his parents announced their plans to visit the Grand Canyon, he had not been given much say in the matter.

The trip had been on his mom’s bucket list since she was a child, but he didn’t see anything to get excited about. Sure, the views were breathtaking—at least everyone kept saying so—but it wasn’t his idea of a nice vacation.

First of all, it was too hot. And there were too many bugs. And his phone didn’t have service at their cabin. And on top of all this, an average of twelve people died each year at the Grand Canyon. So if Dusty were one of the first dozen to die, it would be no big deal. It would be just another average year at the Grand Canyon. That had bothered him from the comfort of his home. But it really bothered him from the back of Hotay, the psychotic mule.

The vacation had started to unravel early when an unusual storm had rained out the overnight mule ride to the bottom of the canyon. Their only option was to reschedule the excursion on the last two days of their vacation, but that meant their final day would require a six-hour trek out of the canyon, a five-hour drive to the airport, and a late-night flight home.

No matter how hard they tried, neither Dusty nor his little sister could dissuade their parents. Their mom said she had spent months planning the details of the trip and was determined the family would enjoy the full experience even if it killed them.

Dusty was too terrified to appreciate the irony of that memory. He clung to the mule, transfixed on the sharp turn and the cliff beyond it as he willed the beast to come to its senses and stop before it killed them both. The mule showed no signs that it could read Dusty’s mind and did exactly what Dusty had feared.

It reached the hairpin turn at full speed and tried to follow the trail but couldn’t. Instead, all four of its legs slid out from under it as the mule landed on its side and slid toward the edge of the cliff. But to Dusty’s amazement, neither he nor the mule died. Aside from crushing Dusty’s leg, that side flop acted as an abrupt braking maneuver. The buckles on the saddle and saddle bag dug into the rocky ground, slowing them down.

When the mule’s flailing hooves finally stopped slipping, the inertia shoved it onto its feet, but the speed was slow enough that the momentum did not carry it over the edge. Instead, it kept running along the path at full throttle, mere inches from the menacing cliff.

Despite the continued danger, Dusty breathed a momentary sigh of relief. Not only was he still alive, but his leg wasn’t nearly as crushed as he expected. The bulk of the mule’s weight came down on the saddle bag, which created a weight-bearing buffer for Dusty’s leg.

All things considered, it was a very impressive maneuver. Dusty had never been to a rodeo, but he doubted if a professional horse rider could have done any better. Why can’t girls be around to see me do things like that? thought Dusty, as though anything like that had ever happened to him before, or as though he could take any credit for surviving the first near-death experience of his life.

His mental celebration ended abruptly when the mule stumbled, almost throwing Dusty out of the saddle toward the edge of the cliff. Dusty renewed his vise grip on the animal’s neck and resumed fearing for his life.

A short eternity later, when the landscape started to level off and there was no longer a steep cliff adjacent to the trail, Dusty decided to take his chances and leap from the saddle, but it took him a while to work up the nerve. He had seen many old black-and-white movies where people had died from falling off horses, but he always thought it was silly for a three-foot drop to kill anyone. However, now that he saw the ground beneath the mule whizzing by, he was less inclined to dismiss the danger as cheesy, outdated theatrics.

Taking a deep breath, he threw one leg over the neck of the mule and tried to slide feet-first onto the ground while pushing off slightly to avoid the hooves. Unfortunately, his left foot got caught in the