13 Fiendish Fables

Stephen Schmoyer

Description

If a man bargained his soul to the Devil in order to become a successful author, what kind of stories would the man write? If a woman risked everything to read the man's book, what would she find out? If a third man knew the answers to the previous two questions, what would be revealed? The new book, Thirteen Fiendish Fables: A Novel by Stephen Schmoyer, attempts to tackle these three propositions. At times tragic, at times humorous, this unusual book explores the bizarre menagerie of what doesn't exist, but what could exist according to human beliefs and human imagination. The scenes and tales take place within the panorama of Heaven, in Hell, in some in-between places, and in both fantasy and reality.In many ways the novel is one of contradictions, experimentation, and upended expectations. Hell is shown to dispense mercy and allow for love. Heaven is portrayed as a place of sometimes monstrous atrocities all in the name of salvation. The in-between places are, well, in-between. And reality is reality and fantasy is fantasy, or is it? Most of all, this is a book of patience, waiting to be read by anyone willing to embrace complexity.

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800468252
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2021 Stephen Schmoyer

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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ISBN 9781800468252

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Contents
Acknowledgements

***Preface***

***Postface***

About the author
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank and acknowledge all the people who helped me bring this book to completion. First, I’d like to thank Jackie Hayfield for her decades of encouragement. Every time I even thought about giving up, you’d ask about my writing. It was a blessing. Equally important was the support and contributions of so many friends and family members. To Jenny Mazepa Schmoyer-Malouin, Carl and Debbie Schmoyer, Carl Schmoyer III, Jason Taylor, Stephen and Kelly Batarick, Stacy Hein, Sonia Versuk Kleintop, Mike and Mara Metzger, and Mary Ashner – my gratitude goes up through the sky and down to the sea. Finally, I’d like to thank my excellent illustrator, Dave Hill, Fern Bushnell, and all the fine people at Matador Publishing who helped make my obscure notions a reality. Without support everything falls and each and every one of you helped me stay vertical.
***Preface***
The author gleaned an idea, so naturally he went to his mother to talk about it.
“Mom?” the author asked.
“Yes?” his mother answered.
“I have an idea for a book,” the author said.
“Okay…” his mother replied.
“It starts out with a conversation,” the author explained. “In fact, it starts out with this conversation —the one we’re having right now.”
“That seems like a weird way to start a book,” his mother remarked.
“Why?”
“For a couple of reasons. First, how can you insert something real into a work of fiction? Second, I think it’s unusual for authors to write expressly about their mothers. Third, where would you even put the conversation? In the opening chapter?”
“I was thinking about putting it in the Preface.”
“People usually skip the opening bits.”
“Well, I’ll put asterisks around it or something—to draw attention. But this conversation has to be the way the book begins. And I don’t care most authors don’t directly write about their mothers. Actually, I plan on doing a lot of things most authors haven’t done.”
“Like what?” his mother pressed.
“To begin, I believe I’ve found a way to merge a collection of short stories within the larger narrative structure of a novel. Also, I’m going to explore different ways to tell my tales in form, format, and content. Lastly, I will unconstrain myself from convention. If I feel I can break a rule—spoken or otherwise—and get away with it, I’ll do it. I figure it’s high time genres become more fluid. Something new just doesn’t fall from the sky.”
“Sounds risky,” his mother commented.
“Perhaps. But I don’t want to write an ordinary book. I’ll settle for a good book , aim for a really good book ; however, I passionately desire to write an extraordinary book ! This means taking chances. You understand?” the author clarified.
“Yes,” his mother stated without pause or struggle. “‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever.’ Keats. That’s the idea?”
“Exactly.”
“Is there anything else you need to tell your mother or the audience before we wrap this conversation up?”
“Only that the subject matter is heavily religious and is bound to cause some controversy. Oh, and I’m going to start with the last story first. I might as well start breaking rules right out of the gate. Do you have any questions for me?”
“What’s the title of the work?” the mother asked.
“The book is called, 13 Fiendish Fables: A Novel ,” the author answered.
“That breaks a rule right there. The title is a contradiction,” his mother observed.
“Yes it is. Yes it truly is,” finished the author.
The Thirteenth Fable
Part 1
(Story #13: Part 1)
The apprentice nun traveled silently through the convent fretting at every necessary step. She abandoned her dreary, but immaculate, cell and moved soundlessly along the stone corridors filled with all the other drab and solitary cells of her Sisters. It was after curfew and was forbidden, and each inch forward increased the severity of her potential punishment. The punishments were scaled. First would be confinement, then the lash, then the stones… then something truly unpleasant. Still, she had somewhere to go that would hopefully get her to some place even better. Thus, she slunk down hallways and slipped around corners, until she reached the ascending staircase which topped out on what was called the ‘gallows platform’ where another staircase on the opposite side descended downward to the garden gate. This was because the convent was built like a maze—easy to enter, but hard to leave. She might have even thought the layout had an ‘Escher-like’ quality, but she never heard of Escher. In the convent, information was tightly regulated and so much was off limits. She wanted to change this tonight. Subsequently, made her way to the most dangerous place she knew of: the Library.
So the nun went up the steps and down the steps and tip-toed to the garden gate. The garden gate was supposed to be locked as was the cemetery gate on the other side, delineating where the convent ended and the monastery began. Quite frequently, though, both gates were left open for what the Ladies of the Order and the Gentlemen of the Word called ‘nighttime meditation.’ Yes, sometimes nuns from the convent and brothers from the monastery liked to move freely and meditate together. Yes, sometimes they liked to meditate in the garden. And sometimes they liked to meditate in the cemetery. Some nuns even liked to meditate with other nuns and some brothers with other brothers, so the gates were often left unlocked in an act, not so much of acknowledgement, but because of an agreed upon, but unacknowledged, communal ignorance. These nighttime sojourns were, of course, punishable by expiation and death, but such contemptible sins could never be contemplated—not even among the sinners committing them. The apprentice nun marveled how pious minds are sometimes forever immune to evidence of their own impiety. She depressed the latch. The gate opened.
The apprentice nun crossed the garden redolent with smells of mint and jasmine and freshly tilled earth that, however dry, always seemed to hold the sweet scent-memory of rain. There was a humble vegetable patch and a quiet grove of citrus trees lit iridescently underneath a pregnant moon. The nun reached the cemetery gate and, like the garden one, it was open. And, in just seconds and footfalls, she was mutely cat-stepping among the tombstones. The yawning maw of an underground crypt would take her into the monastery and beyond.
Entering the crypt, the novitiate paused because of a noise, but she was sure the noise hadn’t come from her. This was because to be a postulant is to practice silence—and such was doubly true for a nun who hadn’t yet taken her vows. Yes, she had learned stealth by being unobtrusive and learned surreptitiousness through speechless obedience. Indeed, she made less sound than the shuffling of a couple leaves of paper. On top of this, now she held her breath. The noise sounded like a monk and a sister were robustly meditating somewhere in the damp darkness among the moldering bones. In fact, it sounded like more than one nun and one brother meditating furiously.
The apprentice nun resumed breathing, said nothing, and paused no more. Continuing onward, she traversed to the back ossuary wall comprised of little cubicles containing holy bones, and the cubicles, too, were made of even more reverent calcium in a gruesome bit of monastic carpentry. She searched around the last cubical housing a baker’s dozen of skeleton relics from a former penitent soon to be anointed an honored saint. She was looking for the clavicle and found it. The nun removed the bone and felt along its smooth contours to one of its denuded ends that had been carved into the teeth of a key. Then she groped in the shadows for the hidden key eye. Unlike the garden and cemetery gates, this door was always locked. She found the aperture, slid the key in, and turned it. Muffled sounds of gears meshing and mechanisms gnashing prefaced a section of wall sliding open to reveal an ancient elevator. The nun entered the space and hit the top button which illumined in a tired disc of tired yellow. She was going up. The library was the highest point of either the convent or monastery except for the monastery’s bell tower which knelled and tolled over everything. The rising momentum made the nun’s stomach flutter and she thought about butterflies.
Reaching the top floor, the elevator door opened once again and the apprentice nun stepped out to find