Alan Foster - Exceptions to Reality

“What are you going to do about it?” Carol was missing work, but she didn’t care. Her friend came first. “Me, I’d forget about him. Starting right now.”

“I can’t.” Marjorie’s reply was barely audible. She looked miserable.

“What is this guy, the only man in the world? Is he rich?”

“No.”

Carol persisted. “Movie-star handsome? Gigolo-great in bed? Nobel Prize material?”

“No.”

“Then what? What makes him so special?”

Marjorie looked up at her friend. “I know it sounds corny, Carol, but he was alive. More than alive. He knew, like nobody else I ever met, maybe like nobody else who ever was, what being alive means. It was something special, and he shared it with me, every time, every day, every minute we were together. He showed me what life is really about.”

Her friend pondered, then sipped from her cup. “I’m alive. You’re alive. So what. It’s nothing special.”

Marjorie’s reply was unintentionally condescending. “I told you you wouldn’t understand. Don’t feel bad. Neither would anyone else. Not without knowing Joel.”

“Okay, okay.” Carol put her cup down on the burl-wood coffee table, careful to set it on a coaster. “What are you going to do now? Any idea where he’s gone to?”

Marjorie shook her head. “He wouldn’t leave hints or clues. If he wants to lose himself, he knows how to do it. I thought about hiring a detective agency to look for him, or reporting him as missing to the police, or telling the Red Cross that I had to contact him because of an emergency, but it would just be a waste of time. I know Joel. If he wants to be gone, then he’s gone.”

Carol’s tone was thick with concern for her friend. “I hate seeing you like this, Marjorie.”

She shrugged. “I hate being like this. It’s kind of like—like dying a little.”

Now her friend was more than concerned; she was alarmed. “You’re not thinking of doing anything crazy, are you? Because if you are, I’m not leaving this apartment. Work can go take a flying—”

“No, Carol.” Marjorie mustered a forced smile. “I’d never do that. No matter what. That’s something else Joel taught me.” She inhaled deeply. “Doesn’t it smell wonderful?”

Carol frowned. “What, the coffee? It’s okay, but…”

“No, not the coffee. Life.”

The other woman sighed tiredly. “Life doesn’t ‘smell.’”

Her friend looked her straight in the eye. “You didn’t know Joel Farrell.”

Five months went by, and then he was there. Just like that. At her door one Thursday evening, when he was sure she would be home. They didn’t say anything for a very long time. Then she threw herself at him hard, with deliberate force, so that he would have to either put his arms around her or be knocked to the ground. Eventually they went inside.

“You rotten bastard,” she muttered lovingly. “Why’d you come back?”

He shrugged, his expression half-irresistible boyish grin, half barely contained inner torment. “I needed a place to die.”

“Funny man. Oh, what a funny, funny man you are.” She didn’t know whether to smile or slap him.

He saved her the trouble of deciding. Putting his arm around her, he walked her toward the tiny kitchen where once he had methodically washed cheap dishes. “When I died, it was thinking of you. Since that happens every night, I finally decided I had no choice but to come back.” His tone was serious. Dead serious. “If you still want me back, after what I did.”

She tried to make light of it. That was her nature. Inside she was joy and jelly. “So you went away for a while, to think things over. You took a vacation. I can handle that. I guess if I want you back, I have to.” Her fingers played on his chest as he opened the door to the tiny porch and they walked outside. The autumn night was cold and brittle, invigorating and full of new life. “I mean, it’s not like you died or something.” She put her hand on his face, caressing the stubbly skin. “I guess nothing—has changed?”

He shook his head slowly. “Nothing has changed. I didn’t tell you—one of the reasons I left was because I was afraid, after that night when you found me in the street, that I might start dying sooner. Earlier. That it might become a regular thing or even become worse. That I might start dying at six o’clock or five or three in the afternoon. I needed to check that out before I could even think of doing anything about—us.”

Her heart was pounding. “And did you? Do you?”

His smile was a recurrent miracle that she had never thought to see again. “No. I had a couple more seven o’clock episodes, but other than that I’m still usually good until after ten. Nine thirty at the worst.”

She nodded. “I can live with that, too. If you can.” Tears were streaming down her face, completely soaking her good blue blouse. She didn’t care. About that or anything else.

“Then you’ll take me back?” The sense of hope rising in his voice pierced her heart like a long needle. “You still want me? If you do, if you will—Marjorie, I swear to God I’ll never leave you again, ever. I’ll do anything for you. Anything and everything. Please, let me do everything for you. Money, travel, cooking, laundry, I’ll give you everything if you’ll just take me back. I’ll do anything. Just name it.” He put a hand on either side of her face, cupping her cheeks, framing her smile and her tears. They were glorious, phenomenal, astonishing. As was everything about her, and the world they found themselves in. “I’ll even die for you.”

She was crying uncontrollably as she threw her arms around his neck and drew him close. Crying and laughing at the same time.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” she sobbed.

A Fatal Exception Has Occurred at…

As I have mentioned previously, the first story I ever sold (though not the first one to appear in print) was “Some Notes Concerning a Green Box.” This was a Lovecraftian pastiche done in the style of a letter to Arkham House’s founder and editor, August Derleth. I never expected it to see print as a story, yet that’s what happened. Its purchase by Derleth taught me a valuable lesson. Write for yourself, write what pleases you, and do not write simply to appeal to a perceived market.

I never stopped loving Lovecraft. When I was young, his leavening of gothic horror with a soupçon of science was the only fiction that caused me to cast furtive glances at night in the direction of darkened windows. I even taught at UCLA a graduate literature seminar in Lovecraft’s works. Many years went by, and many words, during which time I wrote only one other very early tale set in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.

Then editor John Pelan came calling with an invitation to compose a new Mythos story for an anthology of same that he was putting together for Del Rey Books. The Children of Cthulhu, it was called. Aside from the obvious opportunity to write about unnamable cephalopodian offspring (the title “Cthulhu’s Nursery” sprang to mind—and was as swiftly discarded), I wondered how to bring the Mythos out of the dark alleys of towns like Dunwich and Innsmouth and into the present day. Besides, I’ve never been to either malevolent community (does the new eminent domain–urban renewal law apply to Innsmouth?) and would not be able to describe them (or even Boston) with proper justice.

I was becoming more and more familiar with another aspect of contemporary culture, however, and thought its own arcane argot and evolving mythology might make a nice fit with the Mythos, if only I could figure out a way to make it work as a story.

The answer lay in the mutual mouthing of horrific curses. Both Lovecraft’s Mythos and that of Microsoft possess, and are possessed by, their own singular liturgy of eldritch moans and eerie execrations. Believe me, if I thought lifting my bloodstained arms to the skies and thrice chanting “Ia, Ia, Shub-Niggurath, ftaghn!” would keep MS Word from crashing before automatic save engaged to protect heartfelt work otherwise lost, I would readily do so…