FSF, March-April 2010 (23 page)

The vulture rose into the air, wheeled, paused at the apex of its ascent, and then came streaking down again.

"My Lord!” cried Victor.

The king stood agape, looking at the bloody patch of grass that bore, still, the imprint of his ocelot. “Kitty,” he whispered. He looked at the approaching vulture, and its cargo of goblins, and said: “Kitty.” The lead goblin raised its sword, and bellowed, and the king screamed, “
KITTY!
” and ducked under the sweep of the sword, and grabbed the vulture's long neck, and swung it around, and smashed it onto the ground, dislodging the goblins. One of them tried to struggle to its feet, but the king tore off its head, and bludgeoned the other goblin to death with it. Then he jumped onto the dazed vulture's back, and pulled up on its reigns. “Fly, Filthy Creature! Turn your Blighted and Evil life, at last, to the service of Good!"

The vulture flapped its wings, and rose off the ground—a little uncertainly, perhaps.

"
Victor!
” boomed the king. “Gather my armies! The Griffin Warriors! The Amazon Archers! The Mastodon Skirmishers! The Fire Hurlers! The battle is joined, Victor!
We go to war, Victor!
” And then he rose into the sky, with his sword held high, and sped toward the onrushing army.

Presently, it began to rain blood, and feathers, and bits of goblin.

The queen smiled. “That's more like it,” she said.

"You can stop cowering now, old man,” said Door. “It's over."

Epidapheles bristled. “I'm not
cowering
, servant,” he said. “I'm tying my shoelaces."

"Really? You've been tying them for a while."

"They are Difficult shoelaces."

"And you're not wearing shoes."

"
Exactly
.” Epidapheles poked his head out of the shrubbery. The ground around them was thick with the mutilated remains of goblins and vultures. The sky was clear, though, and the sounds of celebration wafted over from behind the walls of the capital.

Epidapheles stood, and brushed himself off. “It seems that Victory has been attained."

"Apparently."

"Then we can continue with our Quest,” he said. “Lady Ocelot may live yet."

Door sighed, and then started. A woman with long raven tresses, dressed in velvet finery, and a crown, stood not far away, surrounded by a retinue of guards. He nudged Epidapheles. “Queen at eight o'clock,” he said.

Epidapheles looked dyspeptically over his shoulder, then drew himself up, and stuck out his chest, and dropped to one knee. “Lady Ocelot!” he said. “I have come to deliver you from your vile oppressor. Your salvation is nigh!"

The queen frowned. “Are you the son of a bitch that brought a goblin army to my doorstep?” she said.

Door stiffened. “Deny it,” he whispered.

"Indeed I did!” said Epidapheles. “Conjured out of nothing, no less, in a matter of seconds! And that is the
least
of my Powers."

The soldiers around her drew their swords.

"Idiot,” said Door. “Sit down. We need to flee again."

"Give me one reason,” said the queen, “why my men shouldn't slaughter you."

The old man hesitated, and the first inklings of disquiet appeared on his face. “Because,” he said, and faltered. You could see, for a brief instant, in the wizard's expression, a moment of existential confusion, the mind questioning its own worth, reaching out into the void for some semblance of Purpose. “Because you might stain your gown?"

The queen grimaced. “You're a deeply stupid man, aren't you?” she said. “But you're also the answer to my prayers.” She gestured, and a guard brought forward a mule, laden with heavy saddlebags. She reached into one of them, and brought forth a handful of golden coins. “So, a token of my appreciation, which you almost certainly don't deserve."

Epidapheles's eyes widened. “Lady Ocelot,” he breathed.

"Okay, first of all, stop calling me that,” said the queen. “Second, take your mule and get the hell out of here, before I change my mind."

"Yes, M'Lady.” Epidapheles took the reins, and turned, and hurried down the road, toward the capital.

The queen watched him go. “Does he know he's going the wrong way?"

It was a few moments before Door realized that she was talking to him. He said: “You can see me?"

"No,” she said. “But I saw the idiot talking to you. You're his familiar?"

"Yes,” said Door.

"Magically bound?"

"Yes."

"But desperately don't want to be."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry to hear that.” She turned toward his voice. “We have wizards in the palace. The non-halfwit kind. They can probably break your bond."

Door hesitated. “The thing is,” he said, “I'm a chair. If they did that, I'd go back to being nothing but a chair, just sort of waiting around for people to sit on me.” Door paused. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to seem ungrateful."

"No, I understand,” said the queen. “Being chained to that moron is better than being free and powerless."

"Yes, just barely,” said Door. “And who knows? He might change."

The queen watched the old man totter down the road. “But probably not."

"Definitely not, actually."

She laughed, though there was a hint of sadness in it. “We have a lot in common, I think."

Door hesitated. He said: “Would you like to sit for a while?"

The queen smiled, and nodded. “That would be nice."

Door maneuvered himself behind her, and she eased herself down, slowly, and rearranged her skirts.

"You're not incredibly comfortable,” she said.

"Bits of me were on fire not too long ago."

"I was on fire last year,” said the queen. “My idiot husband likes to play with his flamethrowers in bed."

And so they sat and talked, well into the night. At some point in their conversation, long after the moon had risen over the trees, Door realized that the perpetual crush of anxiety to which he'd become accustomed was gone. In its place he discovered something very much like contentment.

He smiled. It wasn't quite the best evening he'd ever had. But it was close.

[Back to Table of Contents]

A federal judge yesterday sentenced Bodnar to write the story of how he came to give false information to the feds about Bristol's 2006 efforts to delay generic competition for its blood thinner Plavix.

"I would like to see you write a book [so other people] don't find themselves in a similar situation,” the judge told Bodnar,
Bloomberg News
reports. “Who knows, it may even be inspirational."

—"Judge's Sentence for Former Bristol-Myers Exec: Write a Book,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 9, 2009.

The massive steel door to the Big House slammed behind me, and I knew my days as a free man were over—at least for the length of my prison stretch, which measured one novel and an essay for
McSweeney's
.

I was a writer now, and had to live like one. More an animal fighting for survival than a human being.

I knew I was entering a circumscribed, constrained, harsh subculture, with its own peculiar rules and customs. From the rumors I'd heard, the writer's life was lonely, frustrating, insulting, and physically demanding, leading in most cases straight to a broken-hearted pauper's early grave. Of course, sometimes, with luck and talent, the outcome involved the bestseller list, Hollywood options and talk-show adulation. Still, even with that potential good fortune, nobody I personally knew ever chose to be a writer these days, so being one must suck. Fate, or bad genes, or desperation, or folly, or an accident of birth, or local Unemployment Offices forced the job description upon you.

Or, like me, you could become a writer just for wising off to a touchy judge.

How I wished I could relive differently that moment when I stood before the bench on the charge of tattooing an underaged client. Facing old Judge Titcomb, I was confident of walking away with no more than a fine. So when he asked me if there were any mitigating circumstances to my offense, I said, “Yeah, it was the same flash I used on your wife, so I thought it'd be okay for your daughter."

Amidst the laughter of the courtroom spectators, Judge Titcomb turned nine shades of red and purple, and then uttered his sentence in a voice of doom.

"You are hereby remanded to the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, for such time as is necessary for you to produce one contemporary, naturalistic novel whose theme reflects the moral squalor of the tattooing industry and the unfortunate plight of those it preys upon, along with an essay of no less than three thousand words detailing the process of creation of said novel, in a manner both autobiographically illuminating and pedagogically sound. Pursuant to last year's Penal Authors Enforcement Act, there is no appeal to this sentence. Bailiff, take the prisoner away!"

Now, as the warden of FCI Otisville stepped forward to greet me, I shook my head at my folly. Too late for a do-over, though. I'd just have to tough it out.

The warden, a gentle-looking professor-type with thick eyeglasses, introduced himself. “Hello there, Johnny, I'm Warden Kinoff Dubbledade. I understand you're with us here until we get a novel and an essay out of you. Well, your time here can go fast, or it can really pile up. It all depends on how many salable words you crank out per day. We've got experts on the staff who determine that. They're tough but fair. Heck, they'll even offer you good advice if you get stuck, or can't see how to fix a passage. Most of them are straight out of Ivy League grad-level creative writing programs. You play straight with them, and they'll do likewise. Email them your output no later than five p.m. each day, and make sure it's been spell-checked. Now, let's get you processed."

The guards carried mean-looking truncheons. (Later I learned they were shaped like National Book Award, Hugo, and Orange Prize statuettes.) They brought me to a dispensary where I surrendered all my outside possessions and received my bedding, my prison outfit, and my laptop. Then the guards and I headed for my cell, through a seemingly endless succession of locked portals.

Who would I be bunking with? So much rested on the answer to that question. Some hard-nosed vet, and I figured I'd become his servant, amanuensis and “muse.” Some new fish like myself, and I'd have no protection, no one to show me the ropes.

But my luck, bad till now, took a turn for the better. I ended up with Harold Flournoy, midlister, a burly guy in his forties, I guessed. He sported a tat on one forearm—good work. It was a red wheelbarrow with the legend make it new below it.

Sharing a cell with Harry proved to be the best thing that could have happened to me. He was savvy enough to know the ropes, and not too jaded or burnt-out to share his experience with me.

Harry rolled my name over in his mouth for publicity resonance. “Johnny Bittiker, not bad. Fits your subject matter pretty well. Wouldn't work for a romance novel, say, but just fine for what you're up for. No need for you to use a pen name. Now, let's run through your laptop's software. I assume you know Word. You probably won't need Final Draft, unless you want to do a screenplay on spec. You'll have to pick your browser—"

"We get web access?"

"Sure, we've got to do research, don't we, and email our first drafts? The only WiFi deadspot in the whole prison is the warden's office, of all places! Now, let's get some formatting templates in place for you...."

Pretty soon the call to lunch came. I was a little nervous at mixing with the general population, and looked to Harry for comfort.

"Are there any real bad guys here, Harry? Murderers and drug dealers, say?"

"Murderers! Kid, you should've been assigned to write a comic novel! Why, there aren't more than a hundred murderers in the whole U.S. prison system. Not since they perfected Aggressonil and Reflectival. As for drug dealers, legalization did away with prison sentences for all of them. Users too, of course. Where you been living, Johnny, under a rock?"

"Well, I get all my news from the TMZ redaction of Twitter...."

"Jeez, you iBabies are too much! Anyhow, no one but us writers here in Otisville. In fact, ninety percent of the penal population these days is writers. We're the only thing keeping the system solvent. Lots of us show up for voluntary commitment, and pay to play. It's just like Georges Simenon hiding himself away in a hotel room until he pumped out another Maigret. Or when the studio bosses locked up Dylan Thomas with a bottle of whiskey so he could finish a script."

I didn't recognize either of those names, but I kept my face blank and didn't let on. I could see I had a lot to learn.

"Anyway,” Harry continued, “we've got the perfect environment for writing here. No petty distractions, no duties, no family!"

All of a sudden I noticed something. “Hey, there's women here too!"