Imaginary Critters I Have Known

At age 3, I could not talk. I could only utter "Ducka ducka ducka." I think I cemented my reputation as the "weird kid" at that time, and it has never really gone away. I've gotten used to it.

My one-word vocabulary did not impair my creativity. I would lay at night in my bed, my hands becoming puppets, their dialog high grumbles or low grumbles. They would tell jokes to each other, something like this:

     "RRRGGRRRGG."

     "rrrggrrgggrg"

     "hehehehehehehehe"

High comedy.

By the time I arrived at Kindergarten, I had gained language and lost some of the playfulness -- probably because my parents instructed me not to talk with my imaginary critters in public. I was still weird, but not too weird.

So, for several years, I exchanged my own imaginary menagerie for a precocious vocabulary where I used words like "flabbergasted" in fourth grade. Still weird, but not too weird.

At age 28, I discovered my imaginary playmates again. I dated someone who was, in a word, silly. My imaginary critters flourished. Let me introduce you:

• The Spidies. Imagine your hands crawling up someone's back like spiders. (My sister had a spelling list in third grade with  the words "tiny, silent, spider). They talk in squeaky voices, except for Freudian spidie, who misinterprets every phallic symbol in a bored professor voice. My favorite is very tiny very silent spidie, who is very shy.

• Mr. Snail. Make your hand into a snail with index and middle finger sticking out. He talks in a slow, mellifluous voice. He has daredevil tendencies, enjoying slamdancing and mountain climbing -- S-L-O-W-L-Y. His goal is to run a marathon.

• Cute Fluffy Wide-Eyed Things That Love You. These are fifth-dimentional creatures made of iridescent fluff, like round dandelion silk. (For the Trekkies out there, think of Cute Fluffies as the souls of Tribbles.) We can't see them. Pantomime shaping these with your hands while chortling or cooing, then throwing them at someone with a perky "pop!" People usually laugh. Sometimes they raise eyebrows.

• The Monsters. Make your hand into a fist. Big Mean Monster growls; Beefcake yells "Beefcake" in a village idiot voice, and Little Brother says "Grr" in a much less convincing voice.  They all will fall into a happy puddle if you hug them or tell them you love them.

I didn't know if I could write this. I didn't know if I could admit sending Mr. Snail across a dinner table to drink Richard's coffee (Mr. Snail had ADHD, so he falls asleep) or walking the spidies up my niece's back when she was six (Robyn, this one's for you!). I didn't know if I could admit throwing cute fluffies at my students on request when we worked the soup kitchen together back in Oneonta (I'm too scared to throw them at students here). 

I'm still a little weird, because my inner child is at the surface. Maybe I'm a lot weird. But imagine what this does for my imagination and for my writing!

Incidentally, my husband wrote a children's story about Mr. Snail and a freshly-rescued Augustus T. Cat -- who really existed -- so imagination can be contagious. Would you like to catch some?

I've killed my darlings thoroughly dead

You may have heard that no less than Allan Ginsberg (or Faulkner, or Eudora Welty, or Stephen King) said about writing, "Kill your Darlings". In actuality, a man named Arthur Quiller-Couch in 1915, and what he actually said was, "Murder Your Darlings". (Slate, 2017). By "darlings", he meant those cherished ideas that the writer put in the first draft of the book that don't improve plots, themes, or readability.

Yesterday, I thoroughly killed my darlings in Gaia's Hands, my first book and the one that just went through its latest round of rejections. Knowing what I know now about plot, theme, and readability, I proceeded to take my knife and do the following to the first third of the book:

1) Reduce the number of "first person characters" from four back to the original two. The story really belongs to Josh and Jeanne anyway.
2) Tweak out parts of the story that related to Eric and Annie's first person viewpoint. Many words were lost.
3) Put more emphasis on the escalating threat to Jeanne and her reasoning not to tell anyone. If there's a "main" character of the remaining two, it's Jeanne.

There's a lot of work to do, because I'm likely to lose 1/3 of this book cutting out some of the "fun" but uninformative scenes, and will have to fill in with things that better advance the story.


It's going to be impossible to show you the changes, because it's difficult to point out what's missing and why this hunk of deleted prose deserved to die. Instead, I will give you the first threat Jeanne receives, which seems really par for the course for an academic:

Jeanne arrived home to check her email, and noticed among the beginning of semester administrivia and invitations to write in dubious online journals an email from S. Troll. Figuring that some ag student was feeling his oats and wanted to troll her anonymously before classes started, she opened the email with an indulgent smile.

She realized she shouldn’t have as she read the terse missive: 

Dr. Beaumont,

There are ways of getting around problems. One of these is to eliminate the problem. My advice: lay low lest you stick out. 

Jeanne had had threats before. At a large regional university, students threatened to sue for grades, get their parents involved in an academic dishonesty charge, and one student even stood on her porch declaring that he would “do anything” to get a better grade. This was just a troll, just an idle threat — he hadn’t even threatened anything. 

The threat seemed so fake, so melodramatic, so empty.  At the same time — it was clearly a threat. And she felt a creeping dread curdle her stomach. She hadn’t felt that dread since her childhood, from an incident she had buried from memory.

She deleted the email with a sense of satisfaction.

"I am coming dangerously close to killing you off in my novel."

No, honestly, I'm not.
I know I've said this before in this blog, but a poem I wrote the other day might have made people wonder who it was about. A couple of you might have thought it was about you, in which case, we have a far more interesting relationship than I can recall!

If you're ever wondering if something you've read from your writer friend is about you, first, ask two questions:

1) Is it about me?
2) Do I identify with the character/situation?

If you really want to know the answer to the first question, ask the author. Luckily, most characters have been shaped from several different people the writer has known. Most situations have been shaped by many situations the writer knows. I know of only one case where a character was directly created from a real person and given a bit of a whooping, and boy, did he deserve it. Most authors do not want to kill you off in their next novel.

If you want to know the answer to the second question -- that's more interesting, isn't it? Writers want you to identify with what they're writing, both good and bad. They want you to feel the love, the happiness, or the frustration of a situation. They want you to see both the hero you could become and the villain you might become, the angel and the devil and the screwed-up person in-between.

Writers want to transform you.

If you ask yourself "Do I identify with the character/situation?" and you answer, "Yes", rejoice. You have been given a gift that only those who truly look at themselves can claim, the gift that opens you to self-acceptance.

Magician

A bit darker than the last poem:

Magician,
I’m the only other one in the world
When you call me from the audience
And pull a flower from behind my ear,
Ruffling my hair.

I’m the only other one in the world
When you play for me,
In a dark room,
showing me illusions.

I’m the only one
Till the show must go on,
Elsewhere.

When the curtain falls,
You have thrilled everyone
But touched no one.

A Short Poem

This, as always, may get revised. I like how it started being about one thing and ended up about something else:

Ephemera

I do not see pictures in my head,

Or not as you do – this old slide

Of yellowed Kodachrome slides past my mind

I see hair or expression, never both.

I stare at you when you are here with me,

I memorize your patterns: swinging hair,

Glasses, a squint, a laugh, a lumbering walk,

All of those together equal you.

I fear to lose you in a crowd;

Too many people almost look like you

I live on faith that you’ll come back to me

The Stories We Tell: Oral Tradition

Before the development of writing systems, storytelling was one of the only methods of communicating the wonder of the world.  Storytellers would regale the gathered people with tales about gods, about successful or unsuccessful hunts, about their history. Someone in the next generation would memorize the stories so he could take the storyteller's place around the fire someday.

The tradition continued around the world even after the invention of writing, with the Gaelic shanachie, family stories at holiday gatherings, sermons in churches all over the world. Even social gatherings have their share of swapped stories.

I grew up in a family with a rich oral tradition. My father's side, a mix of Welsh, French Canadian, and Ojibwe, told stories about their lifestyle, which centered around the North Woods and hunting, reckless adventures growing up poor in Milwaukee, and a certain amount of bravado and subsequent error.  My mother's family told stories with word play and puns, with my grandmother serving as the straight man.



A hunting story on my father's side:

Grandpa had decided to teach his sons how to hunt pheasant. "Boys," he said, "What we do is line up in this field here, and spread out aways from each other. The dog'll flush up a pheasant, then each of us has a try to shoot the pheasant flying by.

"Unless it's a hen pheasant -- they're the brown ones. You're not supposed to shoot hen pheasants. So if you see a hen, shout down the line so that nobody else tries at it. Got it?"

All three boys nod.

It was a bad day hunting -- the hunting dog stayed listless and quiet. The spirits of the hunters drooped, because the pheasant was to be their dinner.

Suddenly the dog yipped, running toward a tussock. A pheasant burst out of the grass.

The youngest, my Uncle Larry, who was no more than four and wasn't even armed, yelled "Hen" in a quavering voice.

The middle son, my Uncle Ron, at 7, again not armed, yelled "Hen!" miserably.

My father, age 9, kept his shotgun down and sighed, "Hen!"

Grandpa thought for just a moment, raised his gun and shot --

"Hen! Heh heh heh."

The family had supper that night.



A story from Mom's side of the family:

Seventeen-year-old Aunt Marie approaches Grandma with a proclamation: "I'm going to marry Wayne."

"I forbid it," Grandma snapped.

"Then I'll elope," Aunt Marie countered.

"You can't elope!"

"You watermelon!"

(If you don't get this, read it aloud.)




I have changed these stories by writing them down. I have tried to use the language of the people involved, but my writing techniques have crept in.  In the spoken story, I could merely use tone of voice and gesture and not provided cues to emotion. However, these changes would have happened even in the transmission of the stories from generation to generation. For example, a Native American cautionary tale about white animals being sacred, one passed down in my family, has morphed into a story about a hunter shooting a white deer and being arrested by Wisconsin Conservation.

I have changed these stories by writing them down in a way that freezes them in time and place. When you read a written story like these, you read an "official" version of the story, and you will go back and read this again to get the story right. It has no way to adapt to the needs of the generations to come -- a change in the settings, a change in the consequences.  Grandpa will always be the one to shoot the hen. The elopement story will always be between a mother and daughter.

This is why, when someone suggests I collect my family stories and save them so others can read them, I am reluctant to do so.

Dancing with Words

Writing involves the desire to dance with words.

Novel/essay writing resembles choreographed dance, with steps defined. The writer hones her ability to hit the steps just so, so that she doesn't detract from the feeling the dance is supposed to convey.

Poetry writing looks more like interpretive dance, where there's less direction yet even more need for precision, as poetry and interpretive dance both seek to convey impressions that crawl into the subconscious and affect the reader from the inside.

Lyrics derive their power from their deep roots in the chants of the oldest peoples. Through rhythms and melodies, they become a common prayer to God or nature or life itself, one shared from mitochondrial Eve.

Technical writing has the most regimented steps, seeking as it does the utmost clarity of thought. Its structure of "tell the reader what you're going to say, say it, summarize by telling the reader what you said" thoughtfully takes the reader through a journey of education and provides signposts to where they can find the information again quickly.

In all of these, the words are important. There's a difference between dancing the nae-nae, slam dancing, grapevining through a Jewish folkdance,  or mincing through a minuet. The differences in written forms comes from the words chosen. The words present the music for the dance. A thought exercise: imagine a couple making love through Pink Floyd's "Run Like Hell", or Ed Sheerhan's "Shape of You", or Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, or "Latcho Drom" by Tony Gatlif (if you don't know some of these, listen to a preview on iTunes). Different moods, different feels, right? In writing, the words chosen represent the music.

Choices made in active vs. passive verb forms, length of sentences, point of view (omniscient, limited omniscient, or first-person) change the steps of the dance. Some of these things, like passive verb form and sentences all the same length, put stumbles in the step.

In conclusion, writers dance with words -- and invite their readers to the dance.

Writing, Teaching, and The Golden Age of Chicago's Children's Television

I must confess that I write these blogs off the top of my head. I edit as I go along, but I don't prepare ahead of time:

"Richard, what should I write about today?" I grumble as I stare at the computer screen.

"Why don't you talk about how TV influences your writing and teaching?" Richard inquires, leaning into his bowl of cereal as if properly slurping ramen noodles.

"I haven't watched TV since fifth grade. Netflix doesn't count." It's true -- my attention span varies from too short to too long, depending on the situation. Writing -- long attention span. Watching -- about the length of a 30-second commercial.

"Chicago improv," Richard replies as he slurps the remainder of the milk from his cereal bowl.

Ah! When most people think about Chicago improv, they think of comedy clubs, from the obscure to Second City. Improv remains one of the delights of Chicago comedy. However, the Chicago improv scene extended itself to the lowliest of mediums -- children's television on local TV stations like WFLD and WGN. I lived in the "Super Boonies", the rural towns just close enough to hook onto Chicago stations by cable, so I grew up with Chicago's rich children's programming.

By this, I mean Bozo and Cookie at the circus, who improvised whole scenes and sometimes cracked each other up to the point where they had to stop the scene temporarily. I mean Frazier Thomas, who deadpanned erudite conversations with a goose puppet -- and had to interpret his beak clicks for the audience, which meant he improvised for himself and the goose. I mean Ray Rayner, who not only entertained the children during the go-to-school time slot, but quipped for the adults and relayed school cancellations. And Bill Jackson, my first crush at age 7, who served as the mayor of a town full of eccentric cartoonish residents, including a clay statue that wanted to be reimaged on a daily basis, a contrary dragon, and a kid named Weird. I cried when BJ's show went off the air, but luckily it re-entered the station's lineup under a different guise.

My imagination lived in Chicago's children's shows. I subconsciously picked up the patter and the timing and the riffing off each other that made Chicago children's programming more involving than much of what adult TV had to offer. I learned that one could connect with an audience by understanding what the audience thought as they watched and voicing that thought. I intuited that there was a fine line between gently teasing the audience and insulting them. I don't know when or how I learned all this, but I know where every time I stumble across clips of Bozo's Circus, BJ and Dirty Dragon show, The Ray Rayner Show, or Garfield Goose and Friends on YouTube.

As I mentioned above, I improvise when teaching. I keep a loose script with the "what" of what I want to teach, and as illustrative examples come up, I use them. I act concepts out occasionally. Improvisation requires that one does not censor oneself, does not accept feeling stupid, and lives completely in the moment. Introspection waits for later. (Note: I do work hard at censoring a small list of things: opinions on politics not supported by data, and swearing. I do not always succeed at not swearing, given that my French Canadian ancestors considered swearing as punctuation.)

I improvise when I write this blog, somewhat. I write now and read it over later and tweak a few things. But like classic improv ("Whose Line is it Anyway"), I start with an idea and have to flesh it out.

Writing novels is the least like improvisation. I may write the rough draft spontaneously through fits and starts, but editing requires refining, tightening, and sometimes even eliminating a plot line. And sometimes, that's not enough. I'm looking at my first book, which came back from a prospective agent with the comment "The time stamps take me out of the story". The time stamps she refers to are the fact that the story has four points of view and we need to move between the four. I can see this could be confusing, but what can I do about it? Rewriting the whole book from the beginning is as far from improvising as I could get. And I love improvising. It's a dilemma -- needing to step from a strength to a weakness to get to my goal of getting published.

Random Thoughts

I've been having trouble writing over the last few days because: 1) I've been feeling down; 2) I've been starting the less obvious beginning-of-semester prep (going through my work wardrobe, setting up my calendar, accepting 8 meetings for this week, cleaning up my chaotic mess of an office; fielding emails from students who MUST get into my courses at the last minute.

But that's not what I want to talk about.  Here are my random thoughts:

Last Few Days of Peace

Next week, the faculty and staff at my university make their translation to the school year. On the train, I watched my calendar next week fill with meetings: All-employee meeting, all-faculty meeting, division meeting, back-to-school picnic, training for new software, fireworks on Sunday...

Although some of these meetings will be high on the educational model of the week and the continued poor outlook over education funding, I will still be optimistic -- it's hard being pessimistic when facing a new school year.

Those of you out there who have children understand the rituals behind the beginning of the school year: the shopping for back-to-school clothes and shoes and supplies, the beginning-of-school introduction letters from the teachers, the first day of school photo in front of the house with the neighborhood kids ... to be fair, some of us didn't have those things; some had second-hand clothes and shoes, some didn't stand in front of the porch for the beginning-of-school year photo -- yet we stayed optimistic, because the year became shiny and new the moment we walked into that building and met the new teacher, if only for a moment.

Many of us teachers (PreK to professor) feel the itch to shop at Office Max in August just because. We re-clean our offices to prepare for the school year. Many cultures have cleaning and shopping rituals to herald the new year. Faculty have the same, but the new year starts on the first day of school. Our class rosters have come out, and some of us will send them a beginning-of-school note to introduce ourselves.

I will prepare by enacting my rituals. I will clean and organize my office. I will travel down to St. Joe and buy another teaching outfit and maybe some new pens at OfficeMax. I'll make sure my online course access is trouble-free. I will attend the meetings. I will let myself feel the shininess.

******

What about my writing? I still write during the school year. I wake up early -- and I mean early -- in the morning to get writing done. Sometimes I write during coffee hour on Friday when nobody shows up.

I will write. I will find inspiration to write.

Imagination

I type this while in a roomette car (tiny sleeper car) on the Lake Shore Limited barreling -- no, creeping -- toward Chicago. The train will arrive two hours late because last night we had a train robbery -- NO, we did not have a train robbery, Marcie. We got delayed because of middle-of-the-night track repair...

I like Marcie's version better. Marcie has a lot of imagination -- and energy. A lot of you liked Marcie's guest post yesterday. Someone from Portugal viewed it -- what, four times?

I pull Marcie out of my imagination every time I need a boost -- like the time she guest-lectured in my Resource Management class: "Aunt Laurie said I could talk to you about what she calls 'satisfaction' -- or what I call happy. There are lots of types of happy..."

After twenty minutes or so, my class asked Marcie to step down and let me teach again. Why? Because as much as we desire imagination, we need it to be grounded by reality. Even high concept fantasy needs to have an internally consistent world. Otherwise, as Marcie will tell you, the bad guy could change the rules again and again and always win. None of us want the bad guy to win, much less win with a stacked deck.

But at the same time, we need our inner Marcie so we feel free to use our own imaginations. Marcie would like you to know she looks like this:

... what? You don't think Marcie can be a big-eyed shape-shifting cat? It's all about imagination.

Guest Blog from Marcie

(Note: this blog entry will be written by Marcie, my imaginary alter-ego. Marcie sees things differently than I do, and for good reason ...)

Hi! My name is Marcie, and I'm seven years old. Aunt Laurie gave me permission to write her blog today, and I have so  much to say! Right now, we're at a coffeehouse -- it serves coffee, which is blech, and it's a house. Aunt Laurie says most coffeehouses aren't in houses. Then, why call them coffeehouses? Luckily she got me a hot chocolate because I hate coffee.

We just got out of summer camp. I didn't go with the adults who ran around in all different colored vests and looked like they needed to poop more. I got to hang out with Aunt Laurie. She made me look really gross with wax and fake blood, and she told me this was for a game that would teach the people in vests  how to behave in plane crashes. I got to pretend I was hurt so that the people in the vests carried me back to lay on a cot. A person in an orange vest walked by and told me I died. It didn't hurt to die, but I was still alive, so I guess I wasn't really dead.

We're in a place called New York, and it has these huge mountains all over the place. Aunt Laurie says they're not mountains, they're hills. I think she's wrong, because we have hills in Missouri and these are much bigger. I mean they're taller than houses -- lots taller. The hills back home aren't as pretty as the ones here.

I haven't seen Bambi yet. Or a raccoon. I'm disappointed, as Aunt Laurie would say. But not often, because Aunt Laurie's happy most of the time. She's a lot like me, except she trips sometimes over nothing.  Aunt Laurie says she's had too much coffee because her teeth are buzzing. I think that sounds kinda fun, even though coffee tastes like blech.

Tonight we're going on a long train ride. We have to sleep on the train in a tiny room with bunk beds. There's not enough room to play unless I sit in my bunk. We rode on the train on the way out and I bounced off the walls when I walked to the dining car.

I have to go now. Bye!

The Enforcer

WARNING: The story below contains swearing, attempted murder, murder, and lots of blood.

Sometimes I write short stories with little plots to help me develop characters. One of my favorite characters is the evil Archetype (immortal) who calls himself Boss Aingeal. This story is from his point of view as an enforcer in 14K, a Chinese street gang in Chicago, hence the warning above.

Two of the other characters -- the lawyer Luke and the young man with the braid, Allan Chang, show up in later stories and novels. I love all of these characters.

*************

Boss Aingeal, as he called himself, glanced around his office on the second floor of an Asian grocery in Chinatown. Sleek and austere Chinese furniture in black and red accented the textured cream walls with cinnabar stripes. A series of swords – jian and dao, straight sword and saber, hung on the wall to make a point – this office belonged to an enforcer, a Red Pole. Although he usually negotiated rather than killed, Boss figured that the pole was represented as red for a reason.

It suited him well, the Chinese provenance of the furniture reminding him of the only woman he had ever loved.  He knew she was likely still alive – as an Archetype, she could have survived the damage he had done. As an Archetype, he could survive otherwise fatal damage as well – or had thought he could.

The evil he had done in his lifetime had caused him to crumble like the façade of an ancient building. The man in the mirror was a hideous parody of the proud Celt he had once been – pale whitish-pink hair that hung like hags’ hair, sagging cheeks, and bags under his eyes. The wages of sin, he thought, were truly death.

He heard a knock on his door, and he wondered if it was one of his compatriots in the Triumvirate. The Triumvirate didn’t transport to Chinatown often -- when not in InterSpace, as Archetypes should be, the others in the Triumvirate played with power and influence in high places – in banking, in the courts, to skew the odds toward those already with money and power, who could be trusted to wield control. No blood on their hands, but no less evil. No less deadly. They, too, had aged for their evil.

He strolled over and opened the door; a tall, chubby liaison with shaved head and western business suit stood there. Boss recognized him as Nua Li, a lower ranked messenger for the gang. “Red Pole,” the man in the role of Straw Sandal said, and nodded.

“Sit, sit. Let us have tea,” Boss welcomed.

After the preparation of tea in the ornate Gong Fu style, which Boss had developed some skills in, the liaison said, “May I speak to you of business?”

“Of course,” Boss responded, steepling his fingers, “What business shall we speak of?”

“We have a loose cannon among the 49’s. Big mouth. Talking about our uh, -- more shadowed business in the gambling den and how he’s so important in it.” The man, Boss noticed, fidgeted with his teacup.

“That could get us in trouble with the garda, no?”

“He brags that he deserves your job, especially as you are lao wai.” The liaison spoke in a hushed voice.

Boss chuckled, “But I am literally lao wai – I am old, and I am Caucasian, and I am most certainly an unusual hire in this business. He did not call me ‘lao wai’, most certainly?”

“He called you gao bizi, ‘high nose’.” Boss thought that the man’s words certainly weren’t too insulting, but only because Boss wasn’t one to get insulted easily. And the only way for the man in question to get the job of enforcer was to kill the current enforcer, which was Boss.

“Ah, a bendan, then? If he can kill me, he certainly deserves my job.” Boss sipped his tea thoughtfully. If it was the man Boss was thinking of, he certainly was a bendan, an idiot, for thinking he was a match for a killer like himself.

“It is not the bragging itself that we are worried about.” A long pause from the liaison.

“So, Straw Sandal, because you visit me, I assume there is a sanctioned hit on Chang Li. Does this come from the head of the gambling den or from Mountain Master himself?”

“You know these things do not trickle up from the foot of the mountain. I bring an official sanction by the Mountain Master himself.” The liaison took out a piece of thin paper, written in Cantonese and English, and placed it on the table.

“Really? For bragging?” Boss raised his eyebrows, and then read the paper before him. “Ah, the truth will out,” he murmured. “Screaming and beating people in the gambling den. That could lose us customers. He should take that to an alley.” Boss consulted the list once more – “Bragging about beating his wife. Has anyone told him about his culture’s belief in mianzi?” Mianzi, or ‘face’, was the key to Chinese character, meaning status, prestige, and the like.

“Chang Li wants to be a big shot, but other than that, buyao lian.” The words the liaison used, buyao lian, meant ‘does not want face’. Boss suspected that the hierarchy tested him with Cantonese words to see if he really understood the language or not – little did they know he spoke fluently the Cantonese he had learned 150 years before. Boss kept his little secret, and he learned much about 14K he perhaps wasn’t supposed to.

Boss could not ask the Straw Sandal why he fidgeted with his cup, or the man would lose mianzi. So he mused, “What’s the catch?”

“You must kill him by Monday, before the divorce becomes final.” Divorce? Ah, the Lis. How considerate to give the long-suffering wife a survivors’ package with the bank account and possible insurance policies.

Boss burned the contract in a candle flame, showing his acceptance. Inside, however, he felt his stomach had knotted.

Four and a half days to kill Chang Li, Boss considered as he walked the few blocks to the river. He could have transported to the river in another life, but now his energies needed to be conserved to give him more time. As he looked up the street, he saw a midsized man with straw-blond, almost white hair, wearing a pale-grey suit and looking as young as he had 5000 years ago. “I have four days to accomplish the impossible, and Luke Dunstan shows up,” Boss muttered.

“Need some legal help?” Luke inquired as he sized Boss up. Boss seethed – Luke Dunstan, the Saxon male Archetype, was his nemesis, as well as protector and probable father of the chaotic Lilith. Lilith who set off thousands of years of chaos and wantonness just by showing up at a ritual and getting Boss’s fool son to choose her over Eve.

He would settle that score soon. “Dunstan,” he said, peering down. “I’m working on a job.”

“I know. Li Chang.” Dunstan, Boss noted, used the American form of the name. “Your liaison Nua Li can be made to talk. Don’t fault him; he has a wife and kids, and I’m the only one he talks to. I’m his lawyer.”

Boss tried not to sputter, although he knew who had more face in this conversation, and he hated it. “Could you slow down the paperwork for Li Chang’s divorce? Or better, could you pull it?”

“Can’t do it. I put the papers in the pipeline, and it’s set to be settled first thing Monday.”

Boss realized that he didn’t have four days – he had three days. Two days to plan, and Sunday to execute. “Can’t you transport in and grab the papers for me to hold?”

“No can do, don’t want to break any rules.” This from the man on the side of chaos. Boss simmered as Dunstan strolled away, calling over his shoulder, “If you need me, just drop in.”

Boss stood there for a moment shaking as Dunstan strolled off. Then he took two deep breaths – it wasn’t good to lose one’s cool if one was the highest-ranking Caucasian in Chicago’s 14k Triad.

Boss decided to catch the water taxi at Ping Tom Memorial Park at the pagoda. It stood, a one-story open structure of wood, unpainted. It did not look like any of the pagodas he’d seen in China. Perhaps it was Japanese, or Vietnamese. Maybe someone made a joke at Chinatown’s expense. Maybe modern Chinese pagodas were minimalist, he considered.

The loop through Chinatown would allow him to survey the riverside for a good spot to kill Chang. He decided Chang’s demise had to look like an accident. It could not look like suicide, or Chang’s life insurance would not pay. It could not look like murder, or Mrs. Chang would be considered the prime suspect and the estate might get tied up.  And maybe attention would focus on him.

There, in the heart of Chinatown, not far from where he had started his excursion, he saw the perfect place – a metal sign pole six feet tall, holding a sign for boaters, advertising Lawrence’s Fish and Shrimp. It would be construed as an accident if Chang slipped, hit his head on the pole, and fell into the river. As long as Boss could time it such that the taxi would not be passing by at that moment, it would work fine.

His time on the boat now free, he considered how to attract Chang Li to the site. Chang wanted Red Pole, and the only way to become Red Pole was to kill the current one. All Boss had to do was pass a note to Chang insulting his manhood. It was an open secret Chang had sired no children, and that another man sired his wife’s son. The finishing touch would be suggesting that Chang would never beat Boss Aingeal in a duel to the death. That would work well, of course, unless Chang Li was a coward or a man of at least minimal intelligence. The former might be true, not so much the latter. At the same time, nobody ever died overestimating his foe.

Boss looked in the other direction to see a young man sitting, with long dark hair in a braid, bare dusting of facial hair in the shape of a goatee, almond-shaped eyes. He wore a black tank top and jeans with ripped-out knees. The man looked straight at him.

The man scrutinized him and said, “I think I saw you ‘round here years ago. You were younger then.” His voice spoke of years of drugs, years of vice – but he smelled clean, like a little babe.

“We were all younger then,” Boss grumbled at the man. “What is the point?”

“14K,” the other said. “You work for them.”

“Do you think a man like me would run around a dirty gambling den and break knuckles to facilitate collecting debts?” Boss asked, indicating his pristine black suit, subtly Asian in cut and expensive.

“You need to get out,” the man said. “That work’s gonna kill you.”

“You are correct, young man.” Boss turned to watch the riverfront.

The exit lay ahead at the pagoda. Boss climbed off the boat as it moored at the dock; the man with the braided hair climbed off ahead of him. He noticed a blackwork tattoo peeking out from under his sleeveless shirt. Brilliant work, but not Chinese, he noted. Especially not gang Chinese – no dragons. Boss wondered idly if his lack of gang tattoos set him up for potential challenges.

Boss walked up the walk to the sign he had identified as his crime scene. He noticed that the man with the braid and the tattoo walked ahead of him. As he got close, he saw that Chang Li stood at the post, examining it closely. The young man stopped to talk to Chang. He looked nothing like Chang, so the youngster with the braid wasn’t the son. His voice sounded flat and terse; Boss wasn’t close enough to hear the words. As he approached, Chang broke out in his legendary fury and tried to push the other man into the river.

“Good try, but I can swim now. You can’t do that twice to me,” the younger man said in a defiant tone that suited his gravel voice. He then walked off, dodging a grab from Chang. Chicken, Boss considered, using the common slang for a young male prostitute. The young man’s swagger looked right. Maybe Chang liked chicken.

Boss strolled up, his hand clamping hard on Chang’s shoulder, and hissed in his ear, “Sunday. Six AM. Be ready to die.”

“You be ready to die.” Chang hissed and tried to grab for Boss as he had the younger man. Boss dodged – for all his aging, he had lost none of his agility, speed, or strength.

As Boss walked back to his apartment, he considered that maybe the Chinese were correct about the stars aligning. He had done two days of preparation in one day.

Boss’s apartment was no less pricy than was his office, but the décor skewed toward the Celts he represented – handmade bobbin lace curtains, rough-hewn antique table from the 1700’s, tweed pillows on a new, but rustic green couch; ornate meerschaum pipes and Waterford crystal in a display case. It was a man’s apartment, despite the crystal and bobbin lace – it was an apartment for the man he had passed as before he started rapidly aging. The apartment depressed him now.

InterSpace, his true home, depressed him worse. He considered the uneven black-on-black pebbledash walls that should have comforted his Celtic roots but didn’t. His mind wandered, and reminded him that ‘pebbledash’ also meant diarrhea in Irish slang, which sounded about right. He thought of the white floors and the eerie lighting that showed only in the immediate vicinity of an Archetype. He thought about the lack of sound, the lack of Archetypes to visit, as they were solitary creatures. He thought of the lack of humans, who were at least amusing to watch.

Boss took a deep breath and thought of how he could refine Chang’s death. There were different types of death, he thought, the main ones being deaths that are not suspicious-looking, and deaths meant to send a message. Chang’s was one of the former, and although it would be tempting to give him a showy death, as he had declared himself a rival for Red Pole, it would cause problems for the widow and, thus, his assignment.  Innocuous deaths took no less time and effort to enact than did ornate ones.

It was fortunate that Boss had chosen six AM on a Sunday. That eliminated the interruption of passers-by and water taxis. He would prefer a foggy morning, which would be hard to come by in July. The site he had picked was far enough down from the park that he’d be unlikely to be disturbed by the Sunday morning tai chi crowd – not that he expected those ancient fellows to interrupt him.

All perfect, serendipitously. Ordained by the stars.

Still, he felt his stomach knot.

Sunday came, and Boss was ready. Archetypes did not need sleep, but he had meditated to calm the knot in his stomach. Then he reviewed the plan, over and over, until it became a pattern in his head. He wanted to do Chang’s death right, because he had the odd notion that Mountain Master tested him.

Boss arrived at the sign fifteen minutes early, to make sure that Chang did not have the same idea. No, Chang had not arrived. Boss reviewed his moves – clock Chang on the head, throw him in the river, first putting grease on the pavement and shoes to suggest he slipped on some grease. He even had the bottle of peanut oil to break at the scene to give it veracity. He would not bother with gloves – Archetypes had unrecognizable DNA.

Boss waited, his irritation growing. Chang Li, as always, was late -- half an hour late. Typical for Chang.

Finally, Chang Li swaggered up, carrying a baseball bat. China had designed the most elegant martial sword arts Boss had seen, and Chang had brought a baseball bat like a street thug. Thugs did not become Red Pole.

Chang started the fight by brandishing the baseball bat as he charged Boss. Chang tripped and fell headfirst into the pole. Boss deftly removed the baseball bat from Chang, so that any question of another party was obliterated. Boss watched in amused horror as the blowhard with a possibly fatal head wound groaned and staggered backward into the river.

This did not just happen, Boss thought. This total oaf did not take my kill away from me.

As he stood shaking his head, he felt a presence beside him. He turned to find the young man from the boat ride, his dark eyes burning. “I’m sorry you didn’t get your kill, asshole, but my dad’s always been a bit of an idiot.”

“Your dad?” How did Boss miss that?

“Stepdad, actually.” Oh, yes, Boss remembered – the self-styled general fired blanks. Chang’s son was not really his, hence the wider eyes and the stronger nose. If Boss had missed that, what else had he missed?

Boss glanced up the river and spotted the elders fashioning the flowing movements of tai chi in ragged rows. Had they heard the commotion?

“Watch out,” Chang’s son yelled as he ran from the scene.

Boss looked up to see the liaison Li Niu walking up to him. He saw a glint of metal to Li’s right side. A Dao, short saber, was likely what he tried to conceal. “Cac”, Boss muttered in his native Gaelic. “Shit.” He sensed a betrayal here – did it go as far as Mountain Master himself?

Boss had no time to contemplate, and no weapon but a baseball bat. “Plá ar do theach!” he screamed, which played as well in Chinese as in Gaelic, as it cursed the man’s house.

Boss swung the bat to meet Li’s swing, and sword cut into bat. The sword stuck in the wood, and Boss wrenched it out of Li’s hands and threw it in the river, destroying his pristine accident scene. “Why?” he yelled at Li, all suavity gone.

“I’ll say it in English,” Li sneered. “Because you are old. Because you are white. Because you have no home, no mianzi. Because Mountain Master promised me Red Pole if I could kill you.”

“My friend, you do not understand. I am over 5000 years old. Don’t assume you’d be the first to try to kill me, Nua Li, nor the last to fail.” Boss grabbed the other man by the shoulders and transported them to the Mountain Master’s office, which he had been to only once, leaving the peanut oil bottle behind.

This would be a splashy death, Boss decided as he teleported two swords from Mountain Master’s near-priceless collection, and threw one to Li.

As Boss battled the seriously outmatched man, he felt an unaccustomed twinge of pity. A waste of a good man, Boss thought, who had likely been talked into ambition by the Mountain Master. Li Nua might have lasted two weeks until the next contender for Red Pole challenged him – probably the Master’s plan as well. Finally, inevitably, Li Nua fell, killed by a slash to the abdomen followed to a mercy stroke to the neck.

As he hacked Li’s limbs and head off with the Master’s 600-year-old heirloom sword, painting the ornate room with blood, Boss remarked it was a shame that powerful men used good people like Li Nua as pawns. He considered the number of men like Li Nua he himself had used as pawns himself over the years.  

Boss carefully arranged the body parts into the rough outline of a body, with the exception of Li’s right hand. He ended his gesture with a resignation letter written in blood and in Cantonese. He weighted it to the desk with Li’s right hand, middle finger raised. He sensed this was over the top, childish even, but he was so weary.

He turned his back on his work and transported to InterSpace, there to go into exile.