My long-lost uncle turned up in the middle of the night. His name was Garabond and he was a notorious swindler and cad, thought to have been killed when his plane went down over the Alps.
He wanted to talk.
"I need to talk," he said as I opened the door.
Okay, he needed to talk. I'm sorry for misleading you a few sentences ago.
"What about?" I hoped it would either be about buried treasure or where he had been for the last 8 years. Mostly the former, but I was going through a pirate phase at the time. But I was mildly curious about his whereabouts during his period of disappearance.
"I'm in love." Not what I'd been expecting. "He's a Nepalese biker I met last year, and we're thinking of getting married, and would you mind making a casserole for the reception?" He paused for a moment, then snapped his fingers. "Oh, also, would you mind telling your father? I lost his phone number and I'd love for him to be at the wedding."
At times like this, it's important to keep your cool. "I can tell him, or you can tell him yourself because he's in the living room." I was 14. This was my parents' house. And I was trying to distract from the fact that I had no idea how to make a casserole.
"Who's at the door?" yelled my mother from the living room.
"Uncle Garabond," I almost said, but my uncle looked terrified.
"They're here? I was really hoping they wouldn't be here." He was rummaging around in his coat.
"Where else would they be?"
"Tell her it's the mailman," Uncle Garabond hissed at me, pulling a large fake mustache from an inner pocket and sticking it to his upper lip, where it hung precariously.
"Um... the mailman?" I said, more to my uncle than my mother. Uncle Garabond nodded as he tried desperately to keep the mustache in place with both hands.
"At this time of night?" my father asked, and I heard him getting up from the couch.
"Special delivery," said my uncle in a muffled voice. Well, the voice was both muffled and in a terrible Cockney accent.
My father came into view, took one look at Uncle Garabond, and said, "No. Son, go in the house. Garabond, go away."
I later learned that my uncle and his Nepalese biker husband had moved to Fresno and opened a tapas restaurant. I sent them a casserole when I learned how to make them. It involved cream of mushroom soup.
It's Already Too Late
You wouldn't think it to look at Sophia, but she was just a coconut in a top hat. Everyone claimed it was eldritch magic, but she knew better. She was a spy, an international woman of mystery, and eldritch magic was just part of the cover story.
This story isn't about Sophia. Let her sit there in Prague, being fêted by financiers who longed to woo her but from whom she was stealing secrets and in return offering only vague promises of wild Caribbean nights. She may be the most interesting person in this story, for all that she is just a coconut in a top hat. But leave her there. We can't interrupt her.
This story is instead about the woman Sophia loved but could never be with. For all her globetrotting and espionage, Sophia could never overcome the traditions that bound her. She could never love a human. The coconuts wouldn't approve. And so Mimi, the shy pastry chef, could never know that she was loved. Sophia couldn't bring herself to tell anyone, least of all the object of her forbidden affections.
Mimi, the actual subject of this story, was deeply in love too. But she too couldn't tell anyone, not because they wouldn't approve, but because her love was an ancient wizard of great power who had placed a charm on Mimi forbidding her from ever telling anyone. And so Mimi suffered in silence.
The moral of the story is that sometimes you shouldn't tell people you love them if they're ancient and nigh-omniscient wizards.
Sophia looked at her watch (which she kept in her top hat), excused herself from the table, and five minutes later was rappelling down the side of the hotel toward the fourteenth floor to steal your secrets. Because she told you. Eldritch magic was just part of the cover story. Don't trust coconuts.
This story isn't about Sophia. Let her sit there in Prague, being fêted by financiers who longed to woo her but from whom she was stealing secrets and in return offering only vague promises of wild Caribbean nights. She may be the most interesting person in this story, for all that she is just a coconut in a top hat. But leave her there. We can't interrupt her.
This story is instead about the woman Sophia loved but could never be with. For all her globetrotting and espionage, Sophia could never overcome the traditions that bound her. She could never love a human. The coconuts wouldn't approve. And so Mimi, the shy pastry chef, could never know that she was loved. Sophia couldn't bring herself to tell anyone, least of all the object of her forbidden affections.
Mimi, the actual subject of this story, was deeply in love too. But she too couldn't tell anyone, not because they wouldn't approve, but because her love was an ancient wizard of great power who had placed a charm on Mimi forbidding her from ever telling anyone. And so Mimi suffered in silence.
The moral of the story is that sometimes you shouldn't tell people you love them if they're ancient and nigh-omniscient wizards.
Sophia looked at her watch (which she kept in her top hat), excused herself from the table, and five minutes later was rappelling down the side of the hotel toward the fourteenth floor to steal your secrets. Because she told you. Eldritch magic was just part of the cover story. Don't trust coconuts.
For Dorgistan
You haven't lived until you've flown a jetpack through the plume of an active volcano. That's what they told me as they were strapping the rocket onto my back, at any rate. I maintained that I wouldn't live long enough to appreciate my conquest, and also that this wasn't a jetpack and was more of a discount Lithuanian firework, but they predictably silenced those objections.
As they lit the fuse, I pondered the choices which had led me to this. Should I have joined the space agency of a country which no longer appears on any maps? Possibly not. Should I have believed them when they said that Dorgistan had once been a country but had been cruelly disenfranchised by the Treaty of Klimpt? Well, I certainly could have made a few checks in history books.
Should I have allowed them to give me aptitude tests for space travel which mostly consisted of pouring warm beer over my head and then pushing me down a flight of stairs? No, that was pretty stupid. Once I recovered from my injuries in the testing program, should I have insisted on being given flight status? I had felt I'd earned it at the time, but in hindsight, perhaps the patch on my shoulder wasn't worth it.
Should I have examined the so-called "flight status patch" for signs that it had been impregnated with dangerous levels of horse tranquilizers and black-market hallucinogens? That, with the benefit of knowledge gained, seems likely, but I hadn't known their predilections at the time. Should I have placed the patch on my bare skin? Even they told me that was a bad idea, so while I'm not sure I could have trusted anything they'd ever said, if I were going to have trusted one thing, that might have been it.
Should I have asked to be paid in advance? Yes. I did, in fact. Should I have checked to make sure they'd deposited the pay? Also yes, and also did. Should I have insisted on being paid in Dorgistani currency? No. That was a misstep. Should I have conducted salary negotiations while wearing my flight status patch? That might explain a lot. No, that was also a miscalculation on my part, though in fairness to me, I was extremely convincing to myself in the mirror even though my face was melting and winged demons were eating my skull. It was a power move to wear my patch, I told myself in a beautiful language of my own devising.
But the biggest mistake of all, if I'm being honest, was asking for a longer fuse, because it gave the drugs time to wear off and allowed me to have this lengthy internal monologue. Fear crept in, my rational brain was screaming, and when the rocket blew up as I had been reasonably sure it would, my last thought before the blackness was that I hoped the black box would survive so the noble Dorgistani people would learn something from my sacrifice and perhaps one day find a homeland among the stars, free from the tyranny of the tsar.
As they lit the fuse, I pondered the choices which had led me to this. Should I have joined the space agency of a country which no longer appears on any maps? Possibly not. Should I have believed them when they said that Dorgistan had once been a country but had been cruelly disenfranchised by the Treaty of Klimpt? Well, I certainly could have made a few checks in history books.
Should I have allowed them to give me aptitude tests for space travel which mostly consisted of pouring warm beer over my head and then pushing me down a flight of stairs? No, that was pretty stupid. Once I recovered from my injuries in the testing program, should I have insisted on being given flight status? I had felt I'd earned it at the time, but in hindsight, perhaps the patch on my shoulder wasn't worth it.
Should I have examined the so-called "flight status patch" for signs that it had been impregnated with dangerous levels of horse tranquilizers and black-market hallucinogens? That, with the benefit of knowledge gained, seems likely, but I hadn't known their predilections at the time. Should I have placed the patch on my bare skin? Even they told me that was a bad idea, so while I'm not sure I could have trusted anything they'd ever said, if I were going to have trusted one thing, that might have been it.
Should I have asked to be paid in advance? Yes. I did, in fact. Should I have checked to make sure they'd deposited the pay? Also yes, and also did. Should I have insisted on being paid in Dorgistani currency? No. That was a misstep. Should I have conducted salary negotiations while wearing my flight status patch? That might explain a lot. No, that was also a miscalculation on my part, though in fairness to me, I was extremely convincing to myself in the mirror even though my face was melting and winged demons were eating my skull. It was a power move to wear my patch, I told myself in a beautiful language of my own devising.
But the biggest mistake of all, if I'm being honest, was asking for a longer fuse, because it gave the drugs time to wear off and allowed me to have this lengthy internal monologue. Fear crept in, my rational brain was screaming, and when the rocket blew up as I had been reasonably sure it would, my last thought before the blackness was that I hoped the black box would survive so the noble Dorgistani people would learn something from my sacrifice and perhaps one day find a homeland among the stars, free from the tyranny of the tsar.
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