“SHERALEE, COME BACK TO ME.”

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

ARCHIVING THE ONCE-RENOWNED FICTION HOUSE PUBLISHING COMPANY:

Rustling through my great-great grandfather, publisher James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction’s artifacts, I come across a miniature pine coffin, hardly bigger than a jewelry box.  It’s simple, the kind that entombed many a Civil War casualty.

I “creak” open the lid; a sour smell of formaldehyde escapes.  The corpse – a stuffed tan pigeon.  Bronze, silver, and gold metals, with delicate tufts of color-filled feathers hanging from each, adorn puffed chest.  There’s a small plaque – ‘Sheralee Flew Beyond Duty’s Call.’

A melancholy sensation overcomes me.  I can almost feel my great-great grandfather’s hand on my shoulder, his brandy breath warm on my neck as he pines, ‘Sheralee, come back to me.’

Sheralee’s a game bird, nearly half a wing missing.  She seems to sleep peacefully.  I stroke her gently, as if I’m afraid of disturbing well-earned eternal rest.  Her leg moves.  Her body moves.  I pull away.  A lidded wooden cylinder, hidden inconspicuously beneath good wing had slipped, causing the convulsion.  She’s a carrier pigeon, I realize.

I’d heard stories about Blackjack and William ‘Golden Boy’ Golden, his half brother and chief writer.  They utilized these jet fast birds with homing instincts – to deliver messages in their clandestine ante-bellum abolitionist endeavors.

‘Wherever you saw the tracks of the Underground Railroad, the valiant birds were sure to be winging it not far overhead,’ Blackjack says reflectively.  ‘Those were brutal times.’

Inside the cylinder, I find paper rolled so tight it springs at me like a Slinky toy when I begin unwinding it.  I squint to be able to read the small print – Blackjack’s writing.  It was reminiscences about the 1830 s, old Cincinnati, meeting Sheralee’s ancestor.  Sheralee’s aunt was one of the carrier pigeons who carried romance correspondences between Harriet Beecher in Cincinnati and Charles Darwin aboard the Beagle.  (You met the aunt in the last posting, when Blackjack met Harriet.)

I bring out my specially-ground magnifying glass – ‘SOO powerful – it could (almost) view the Higgs boson subatomic particle in a single squint.’ – It has to be strong, to be able to read the tiny script Blackjack and Golden Boy used to get as much information onto a not too-weighty mini scroll attached to the stick-like pigeon leg – so the bird wouldn’t list, falter, and fall.

I squint to read my great-great grandfather’s words.  He wrote:

~ ~ “They’re wearing me out,” I heard Captain Polly squawk aloud as she landed on the perch outside her gabled, swinging door bird entry to my publishing office.  She was gasping.  Her trip from Cincinnati to the Kansas Flint Hills where Golden was running guns to Free Staters wasn’t so hard, but the 400 mile daily, often time semi-daily trips were becoming a drag – aerodynamically speaking of course.

I brought her usual bill of fare, sunflower seeds, apple slices, lightly sugared water.  As she gnarred and lapped, I removed the correspondence from Golden Boy.  The ever-same plea:  ‘Raise more money from sympathizers.  For more guns for the cause.’  And then, Golden Boy’s never same coded directions:  on how to get them to him for disbursement.

I studied the strained, gray look around Captain Polly’s eyes.  They said, ‘HELP!  I need HELP!’  She was a dirty bird from the journey.  Dust browned her lovely, long yellow, green, and blue plumage.

Captain Polly and I knew each other so well, for over 30 years.  She visited Mariner and me often at the wharf-shack when I was growing up.  She’d known him aboard ships for 30 years before that.  She didn’t refuse my hand as I reached to stroke her.  I guess she’d do about anything for me, including killing herself in transit – ‘for the cause’.

“I’ll get help,” she suddenly squawked as she looked up from her feast.

“Sheralee!” we both said in unison…

Off she flew.

Captain Polly seemed to know the whereabouts of just about any flyer within a 1000-mile radius.  Unless Sheralee was off maybe cruising the Galapagos with Darwin, Captain Polly would find her. ~ ~

© 2012 by Raji Singh

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, Short stories, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

THE DISPUTIN’ RASPUTINS OF THE HIGH SEAS (AND THEIR WALK-OFFS)) – A HALLOWEEN SPOOKER UNEARTHED FROM THE TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE

Posted on October 31, 2013 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

The High Seas players:

The Pirates- a scurvy lot

Their Capt’n- a lice-ridden fiend

Captain Polly – Capt’n’s enslaved parrot

Turt- a good-natured land sea creature – almost a garnishment for the pirates’ meal

The Captives:  Buzzard, Mariner, R-r-rose Heather, Kunta- enslaved by the pirates.

The Walk-offs- The lopped off part of the foot, from the tip of the toe to ‘on back just a tad’.

(Buzzard is telling tall tales.  They mask the captives’ clandestine mutiny)

*               *               *

     Buzzard strokes the mast then pulls away with a dramatic flourish.  “Slick-as-a-badger, gents, Kunta slid down the mast, unseen by all but me.  Before I could get here to stop him, he tangled his feet ‘round the throat of your unsuspecting mate.  Wrung his neck.”

Buzzard invents as he tells.  By playing-into audience’s endless superstitions brought on by the fog and grog-life of the sea, he manipulates them into believers.

“Kunta’s the cunning deceiver that sliced out the Moroccan’s tongue.  Fed it to his ravenous Turt, who ingests our languages – to use against humans in the future,’ I’ll wager. [1]  That beak-snouted demon is heartless.  So Kunta cuts out the heart of the Algerian for him to devour while it beat.”

([1] Morrocan’s now a mute, driven mad by the cutting – so he can’t relay what really happened; that Mariner’s the slicer-dicer.)

‘A vile, contemptuous evil pervades the ship,’ thinks Captain Polly.  From her perch, she watches the sallow-faced crew.  Their attention never leaves Buzzard who is wending about the deck.  Parrot knows she must do something to save herself from the stealthy young badger-human Kunta and his shelled beast that her Buzzard warns of:  But, what?  With leg chained.  ‘Only hope,’ she thinks, is this dream-lover bird, Buzzard – but, ‘oh how to woo a human?’

“Kunta stalks,” Buzzard rails.  “LOPPING more walk-offs for his necklace; PLOPPING his victims overboard.  Some of the walk-offs are quick, devious.  They escape.  BEWARE!  These walk-offs gone-feral hate humans.  They lie in wait to destroy us.”

“What the Buzzard says gotta be true,” a pirate belly-aches to the others.  It’s after lunch.  They sit on crates near the railing – so they can vomit.  The Rasputin-of-the-word – Buzzard, his sly comrade Rasputin-of-the-poison, Mariner, has upped the dosage – just a smidgeon – so that the savvy-to-the-tricks-of-the-sea, dregs, don’t notice.  They think only, ‘the waves are having their way with gullets.’  They tremble continuously, and sweat so much that their raggedy limp clothes seem starched from saturating then drying so often.

(The poisons keep Capt’n stupor-fied.  The pentad of mutineers know he may prove an asset if alive.  One of them always guards him in his quarters turned prison.)

Crew’s superstitions beckon irrationality.  In their poison-induced hallucinations walk-offs come to life; stalk.  They begin believing they sail on what is becoming a ghost ship that may be overtaken anytime by the walk-offs.  As Buzzard spins his tale, the dregs mutter vows in a dozen languages, about skirting the mast after dark and keeping near the rail to avoid Kunta.

“That’ll never do,” Buzzard counters.  “Kunta and his shelled vampire straddle the ship’s sides, leaping on the unsuspecting.”  Dregs look warily over the rail, wishing for land.  It’s a thousand miles off.

The usually mawkish-squawkish Captain Polly is quiet.  ‘The monster walk-offs will see I am no dreg.  I will reason with them.  Teach them the humans’ many languages.  (Captain Polly knows at least a dozen.)  Oh so valuable I can be.’  None of Captain Polly’s self-assurances quells her horror of, while still alive, being plucked, de-beaked and de-clawed by Kunta and Turt.

When not stalking the deck with his flapping, Buzzard’s usually arguing in the galley with Mariner about the tactics of their tightly schemed mutiny.  But they agree, fully, with the results.

“How’d it get to this?” the crew whispers to each other.  “Turt’s curse, for ravaging his island for the shell and meat of his relatives?”  Others think hexing, by a tribal witch in retaliation for stealing Kunta.

Ominous signs of the walk-offs – stinking dried blood trails staining the deck – swell superstitions.  A once-tranquil voyage of plunder and pleasure is now, nightmare.  “Why’s our Capt’n keepin’ to quarters?  Even at his sickliest, he’s stayed the deck wielding his whip.  Why’s he issuein’ orders through Buzzard?”

Buzzard, in this short time, seems to have been elevated to acting Captain.  Many pirates are loyal to him – ‘only way to survive’ – as they struggle to man-the-ship to get close to land.

THE TALE OF MAMA L’S SECRET SLICKENS

Mariner, allowed enough chain to come up for daylight, listens to Buzzard’s tales from the galley doorway.  Captain Polly watches Mariner wipe fish blood from cleaver onto his neck-to-knee apron.  In futility, she gnaws her chain, wary of the time he might want her for a ‘fixin’.  From the first meal, he cooked – it smelled sweet as any Amazonian jungle cuisine –

– pirates shoveled it in.  When they spooned some into Captain Polly’s bucket, she sniffed, recognizing ingredients humans cannot.  (plants from Leezian’ bayou; recipes, come courtesy of Mama Lucy.)  Flying over the ‘Big Easy’ Captain Polly had seen their effect on critters.  They went battier than during a Gone Luna.  So now, Captain Polly is subsisting on the array of bugs flying close to her perch.  ‘Oh,’ growls Captain Polly’s stomach, ‘but to fly free of this ship.’

Mariner found the slickens – kegs of North Africa’s plants, almost cousins to poisonous Leezian’ claw-root and twig-lick – during his first day in the galley.  “One dasha’ claw banish evil spirits.”  Creviced old Mama Lucy had ‘scienced-up’ Mariner in her cabin’s kitchen-lab.  “Cure most ills.  Two dasha’ twig cures yer patient of inflictin’ devils.  Three-’a-each, ‘n the devil escape; slitheren’ inta another ta inhabitate.”

Mariner always uses two-and-a-half, insuring deferred insanity.  He can’t give three to finish the job – crew’s needed to get ship to shore.  If it appears madness may arrive before land, he lessens the dose.  For Buzzard, Rrrose Heather, her ladies and himself he prepares simpler fare.  For Capt’n, who killed most of Mariner’s dear friends from the commandeered ship, Mariner prepares meals with another cousin-berry – the dung-flower.

“Gaarente-ad’,” Mama’ll testify.  “Tuz cause most-vile hallucinatin’, yea inde-ad’.”

Mariner looks from Buzzard, who is finishing a tale, and glances at Captain Polly.  She imagines he’s saying, “Ready to join yer Capt’n, Captain?”  She gnaws shackle even more desperately.

TALE OF A SAIL

“Hoist starboard keel.  Set jig-rigging north, northwest.”  Buzzard mangles the orders of the ‘silent-Captain’, Mariner, rendering them illogical.  Doesn’t matter; bedraggled crew sails by rote.  No doubt, Rasputin-Buzzard steers the emotions of fear; Rasputin-Mariner helms the mayhem triggering it.

TALE OF HOW THE WALK-OFFS ‘REALLY’ CAME ABOARD

Late at night:  Cleaver descends.  “WHAP!”  A piercing scream, ‘THUMPS’, of running.  Scream stops with watery “PLOP”!  Someone yells:  “MAN OVERBOARD.”  In the shadows, Mariner wipes cleaver clean and oysters-out slimy walk-off from the tip of leather shoe.

All the crew now wears shoes.  ‘Does ‘em little good,’ Mariner grins.

From her manacled spot near the helm, Captain Polly quivers midst a new revelation:  ‘New Cookie’s got a key.  He can come for me anytime.’

Mariner eases back to the galley and re-shackles himself.  He stows walk-offs in the Capt’n’ humidor.  In a few days, as just another small way to nudge Capt’n closer to insanity, he’ll have Rrrose deliver it to Capt’n’ new quarters – a six by six dungeon-like room, rancid from 50 years of storing smoked mackerel.

Capt’n sleeps constantly, awakens only to his own screams caused by hallucinogenic dreams of sea creatures devouring him alive – more of the effects from Mariner and Mama’s ‘slickens’.

THE TALE OF A ‘GOOD’ LIFE FOR SOME

Buzzard, Rrrose Heather, and the ladies they now occupy Capt’n’ plush quarters.

“You’ll live with the bloody walk-offs throughout hell’s eternity,” Rrrose Heather, veiled as fortune tellers Capt’n always visited when in ports, soothsays to him – her personal revenge for what he’s done to she and her ladies.  She leaves the humidor with him in his dungeon.

THE TALE OF A ‘WORSE’ LIFE FOR OTHERS

Midst hot-cold sweats, Capt’n removes lid and reaches for a cigar.  The slimy walk-offs feel like jellyfish, their stench, worse than the rancid mackerel.  He pushes humidor.  Contents spill.  His eyes widen as hallucinations spiral into a parade of the moldy gray-green walk-offs tip-toeing to come choke him.  Too paralyzed to move, he screams, continuously, curdling-ly.  

     Reverberations echo through ship and shake the mast.  Crew looks up at the sails, expecting to see Kunta and his monster, their arms, fin-claws stretched in victory sign to show that they now control the ship.

Buzzard swoops from the ship’s wheel.  What to expect?  He is sure he’ll find Capt’n, dead.

Captain Polly hops on the wheel to steady the ship as Capt’n has trained her for times when an automatic parrot is necessary.  Though she loathes Capt’n, she feels pangs of sorrow.  That lasts just seconds.  She sings in an ecstatic combination of a half-dozen languages.  “Blow the man down, mate.  Blow the man down.  You gave us time, we blew the man down.”

The crew doesn’t share her joy.  If Capt’n is dead, hope for survival is with Buzzard.

‘Who will be at his mercy?’  Many silently vow ‘to become his slave if he protects them from Kunta and Turt.’  Captain Polly’s had enough of being a chained slave.  She has another idea.

Buzzard returns to the wheel, relieved that Rrrose’s act of revenge hasn’t killed Capt’n.  Captain Polly hops to his shoulder, brushes plumage sensually against his neck, gently nibbles ear, coos, “Lover bird.  Loverbird.  I’ll be true to you.”

© 2012 by Raji Singh

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, Short stories, Whimsey | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

CHARLES DARWIN’S VICTORIAN ROMANCE

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

RESURRECTING THE FICTION HOUSE

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never  lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

My hired ‘experts’ jokingly, good-naturedly call me an archeo-apologist.  It is because of my zeal for my reclamation project – that of unearthing and archiving files, notes, books – over a century’s worth of information on one of America’s oldest, most prestigious publishing houses – Fiction House Publishing.

Often the work overwhelms me.  When that happens, sometimes I become careless in my separation of fact from fiction.  But the experts, professional archeologists, and anthropologists all, do not pardon any of my historical misinterpretations (my ‘archeo-apologizing’).

“Unblemished”, will be the term to describe the accuracy of my work, with their knowledgeable assistance, as onward I archive, collate, and now, finally – present.

But wait.  Fact and fiction for me is a blur.  That trait is I truly believe, engrained in the fiber of my being by my orphan circumstances.  As a youth, I would slip into my imagination to cope.  So comfortable in my cocoon of make-believe, the fiction of it all became fact.  In my imagination, I sought out and befriended my great-great grandfather, James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction, the Fiction House’s founder.  He too was orphaned, but 140 years before.

Ahh!  Best of friends, though we never met.

Our common orphan heritage – it binds us yet today.  Our oneness and solidarity so colors my resurrection work that ‘archeo-apologist’ is probably what in fact I’ll always remain, because though my name is Raji Singh, a Fiction is who I am.

Now, here is a short excerpt from Blackjack’s publishing journal that briefly shows his orphan background that so played a part in leading him to the hierarchy of 19th and 20th century publishing.  And, within it – the answer to my last posting’s question, with whom was Charles Darwin beginning his romance – ‘THE literary romance of the 19th century.’

*               *               *

~ ~ I watched her for so many consecutive Sunday mornings.  It was the mid 1830’s.  I think I was 11, maybe 12.  Just before daybreak, I’d rise; look out the porthole of the wharf-shack where I grew up.

By the banks of the Ohio, she’d be standing, arms outstretched.  Her long black hair, an ebony river all its own, flowed in the breeze.  Or maybe her hair was a flag, waving in the bird that flew up the Ohio and landed on her shoulder just as the sun started its rise.  Her frame was post-straight, like the sensuous figureheads on the ships bows that I imagined beckoning me to accompany them on adventures as they departed the docks.

I was entranced by this woman, not like a boy with his mother, aunt or sister; or a near teen with a female not more than ten years his senior.  She was mystical, magical.  Someone, I just knew who harbored secrets of emotions few others did.  I wanted to breathe in full the scent of those emotions; to caress, to hear their siren call, somehow even taste their culinary delight.  I knew, at that moment, she would lead me to the vast banquet that is pure, virginal joy.

‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ Mariner so often ‘adaged’ me as we spun tales of our days, by night’s lantern light of the crate-wood wharf-shack – Home.  (Mariner was my father, friend, brother, teacher.  Every book I ever voyaged into was because of this man who couldn’t read a word.)

Today, I would venture to meet my living bow figurehead.

“Hello,” I shouted, but the word came out barely a whisper.  She turned as I approached.  She was unwinding a paper from around the bird’s leg.

She smiled.  “A letter from my soul mate.”

I wasn’t disappointed.  “How did the bird find it?”

“She’s a carrier pigeon.  She brought it.  All the way from a ship, thousands of miles away.  In a few days, she’ll return to my Charles with a reply.  Charles is such a keen man.  He’s trained them to do things one would think unimaginable.”  She put her finger to her mouth, giggled, and then put her finger to the pigeon’s beak.  “Shh!  Our romance is a secret from our papas.  For now.  But one day we’ll tell them.”

“Did his ship launch from Cincinnati?  What’s its name?  Maybe I know your Charles.”

“You’d not have met.  He left from England, on HMS Beagle.”

Maybe one day we’ll meet.”

“Perhaps.”

We sat on the rocky bank and talked for hours that Sunday.  And for countless hours on what seems now like hundreds to come.  My – banquets of Sundays.

“I’ve seen you tell your tales to the gathered dockworkers,” she said.  Their smiles are a joy to behold as they listen.  How many nickels and dimes do they fill your capper with?”

“Sometimes six, ten, once even a dozen bits.”

“You should write down your tales, and sell them.  Think of all the others who could wear such smiles also.  If you tell better than you write, there are scribes for hire.”

Thus did Harriet Beecher plant the seed in my thoughts.

Fiction House Publishing would be the thriving result. ~ ~

Read Blackjack’s story; and, how Harriet Beecher Stowe came to write, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in Tales of the Fiction House.  Published by the resurrected Fiction House Publishing.

NEXT WEEK:  Blackjack returns to the Fiction House, over 150 years after he founded it.

© 2012 by Raji Singh

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Charles Darwin – ‘The Beagle Has Landed’, the Evolutionist Encounters the Editor

Posted on October 20, 2013 by Raji Singh

UNEARTHING THE FICTION HOUSE

by Raji Singh

(Raji Singh is on promotion for his novel Tales of the Fiction House.  Enjoy this posting that inaugurated his whimsical short story blog site.  We will return soon to his recounting Shelva Fiction’s 1870’s Russian girlhood tales of being serenaded by Tchaikovsky, evolutionized by Darwin, de-revolutionized by Czar Alexander, and tormented in her thoughts by the Rope Haired Man, a pre-Hitchcockian mysterian.)

Tales… is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

*     *     *

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

I am discovering the most intriguing material as I archive through, cataloging the dusty old library and files of my great-great grandfather, James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction.  He founded Fiction House Publishing in the 1830’s and ran it for much of its over century in existence.

Though he was quite successful, hosting influential authors of the era, the two Harriet’s, Stowe, Tubman, among others, some correspondences show his literary judgments weren’t always at their best,

Dear Charles,

Love the ‘Voyage’ angle.  But, Gal-op-ogus?  Who could even pronounce it?  Instead, how about a cruise to the Virgin!!! Islands.  Just the anticipating of the romantic or illicit content could really build your readership base for future books.  Just think about it, will you Charlie.

Sincerely,

Your Publisher……

Dear Herman,

Lose the whale and the surf.  Stick to the turf.

Sincerely,

Possibly your former Publisher…..

Though lacking the shelf life of Melville’s or Darwin’s later works, The Fiction House’s Travels with Moby, and The Beagle Has Landed, were extremely popular in their day.

Join me in my journey as I unearth the works, papers, and letters of some of America’s literary giants, best sellers, and mid-listers.

Thank you—Raji Singh.

NEXT WEEK:        ‘Tediously going through ages-old notes on faded scraps of paper, edited, re-edited books that never saw the light of day, collating, archiving – what drudgery – then I found it, the thing that made it all worthwhile – The Darwin Letters.’

“Dear Charles,” began THE literary romance of the century…

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NO. 64: TCHAIKOVSKY SAVES MY LIFE AT THE CZAR’S PALACE – PART 2

Posted on October 13, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

Shelva’s girlhood memories of her first, most unusual, ball.  It’s St. Petersberg, Russia.  The 1870’s.

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

OPUS 3:  BLINK, AND THE WHOLE WORLD BLINKS WITH YOU

     Maestro Pyotr Illych escorts me down the winding marble staircase of the Winter Palace and into the vast ballroom.  The alabaster rail is slippery-cool to my touch, letting me know this magical moment is not a dream.

The guests of course look at he not at me.

Nor do they heed Captain Polly perched open wing on the shoulder strap of my satin gown.  Any other occasion the orange, blue, and green plumaged, golden beaked grand lady, would command twice or thrice a look.  But this is the official commencement for the First International Cat Boxing Championships.  Czar Alexander has opened wide his Palace to all creatures small and tall, usually two each.

Animal chitter and people chatter meld, sounding a single language.

A banner drapes from the 75 feet high ceiling proclaiming, WELCOME TO CZAR’S ARK.  Two giraffes reach, in vain, for the laurel wreaths dangling from it.

Of course, thousands of cats – yowling Siamese, smash face Persians – malinger about.  This is their royal affair.  Gray-bearded Himalayan Mountain cats furry up the balcony parapets.  Henna hued Lindian Lapeze monopolize elaborately panoplied velvet chairs.  Silky Abyssinians leapfrog along the walled coats of arms.  One after another of the cats turns to me, purrs, and slowly blinks.  (We’ve a saying in Russia.  “Revel in a blinking feline.  This is how they say ‘I love you’.”)

‘All the purry love here today!’  It makes me forget my worries about not fitting in; forget my fear of the Rope Haired Man who torments my thoughts.  I decide,

“Shelva, you must revel in and just enjoy this spectacle.”

I do a lot of slow blinking this day, at cats, later at the human guests.  The humans observe me warily.  I am the “funny girl”.  Eventually though, they will smile and return the blink, the cat clause known to all my countrymen and women.

OPUS 4:  AN ODD MIX OF ATTENDEES TO THE ROYAL FESTIVITY   

The cats have their own caterers, hundreds of meandering turtles.  Pans with milk and dishes of catnip anchor their shells.  Wouldn’t it be fun if Blackjack’s Turt were here?  He could be the entire buffet table for the pusses.  From atop his tattooed shell – “if hollowed out, it could hold hundreds of them,” I tell myself – they could dine on sardines and study depictions of sumptuous deep ocean fish they may only dream.

Wary cat eyes heed the imposing Captain Polly, and a trained Peregrine Falcon that bides its time darting within the Palace sky.

The falcon strafes me.  I duck.  Its breath is rancid from a rodent meal.

It screams in my ear; tries to seize the glistening, real-looking tiara Uncle Vanya has given me for the occasion.  (Or is it priceless?  Never know with Uncle Vanya, his connections.)  With outstretched talon, Captain Polly deflects the preying bird.  With his baton, Tchaikovsky masterfully eases it away from me.  It careens away and snatches a diamond bracelet from an unsuspecting guest who is helpless to give chase in the jam of people.

I adjust my hair and then the Maestro’s takes my arm.  I see in one of dozens of fountains, a pair of pygmy albino elephants midst gleeful romp.  They’re hardly bigger, but much whiter than the lean Russian elkhounds studying them.  Answering their watery blare, from another part of the ballroom, is a lilting, almost angelic trumpeting crescendo, not one of the Maestro’s musicians.  They are on a break.  “That is not from another elephant,” I say.

“Indeed no, Miss Shelva.  Isn’t it lovely?  Surely, the seraphim weep joyously when, to the heavens, the notes ascend.  It emanates from a dear friend.  I shall introduce you.  I am certain he will also become your friend.  We shall see, shan’t we Miss Shelva.”

(Indeed, the Maestro would be right.  I would grow to love “My Trumpeter!”)

Tchaikovsky leads me through a crowd of cigar-smoking mustached men toward that sound, between elegantly gowned women eyeing me resentfully – ‘Why herrrr, and not me on the arm of the handsome Maestro.’  I blink politely.

OPUS 5:  SHELVA’S AWAKENING  

Before now… in pictures, I have seen the Winter Palace; its opulent floor to ceiling frescoes, hundreds of train car-sized stained glass windows depicting the geographies of Russia, dozens of door leading to who-can-tell-where in the 1,500-room palace.

Endless flights of stairs seem to go everywhere-nowhere.  (Uncle Vanya has warned me often, “Up them you musn’t roam, dear Niece.  For the Romanoff have special areas.  They guard them like a mad dog a bone.  You could find yourself alone; young girl prone.”)

In dreams, Catherine the Great has even given me personal Palace tours.  The tile floor is so slick the Empress and I ice skate to see all the wonders.  Characters in dozens of Rembrandt, Rubens, and Raphael paintings – soaring angels, chubby-torso nymphs, vainglorious black robed judges – they applaud our pirouettes as we turn the corners of the cavernous foyers.  Great Cathy decrees, as I look up in awe at the hundreds of 15 feet tall portraits of Czars and Czarinas who ravaged and ruled over 1/6th of the world’s land mass.  “My dear, very young lady:  All the glories you see before you – they are the fruition of my foresight, mine alone, for Mother Russia.”

But, now, awake…never before have I imagined what I see.

In the spacious rotunda is Leonardo da Vinci’s marble Madonna, and sleeping, miraculously midst all the animal-people clatter, on each side of the Child, a gentle lamb and a red fox.  The calmness this image of peace conjures, of a sharing caring Russia, quickly dissipates.  My head spins as I look up briefly.

Nearly blinding are of hundreds of inverted mushroom shape, candlelit crystal chandeliers.  They hang midst opulent mosaic tile frescoes on the domed ceiling; so far up one can barely see the top.  Monkeys and Chimpanzees swing from the chandeliers.  The continual chimes of the tapping-together crystal, each time the furry creatures grab onto them or thrusts off, is like rain ‘plipping’ into a calm waters.

The scent of the creatures’ slowly singeing fur begins to overtake the alluring bouquet of banquet – steaming fish, sizzling meats, and sweet French wines.  I want to hold my nose.

Am I the only one who notices?  Has the comfort of wealth and power taken away all sense from those present?  Even the simple sense of smell?  So that jungle life, jungle survival is the life they live, midst civilization.

I am beginning to understand why Mama and Uncle Vanya feel such revulsion, bordering on revolution for these ‘people’.

“Shelva,” you tell yourself, disgusted.  “There is enough food on the tables to feed the Moscow poor for a month; room inside here for a farm to feed 100,000 starving peasants for a year, more.”

Maestro Tchaikovsky and I arrive at where dozens of guests group anxiously together.  I know they must be the Czar’s entourage.

I am to be introduced to the Czar.  The Czar:  I cannot believe it.

Wait.  I think of the peasants.  My awe turns to Mama and Uncle Vanya’s revulsion.  I shall give this Czar an unforgettable slice of my thoughts for him to dine on.

‘Whom do you kid, Shelva?  You’ll not risk being minus your head.  You will bow it, and curtsey, and do all you must, as do all. 

     ‘NO!  You will confront Alexander, as would Mama, with your truths. 

     ‘WAIT!  In your thoughts, as if Captain Polly whispers them in your ear, relaying, you hear Uncle Vanya’s warning of necessary but conniving compromise. 

     “You know not what staircase you mustn’t roam Shelva.  So bide your time.  Soon you will discover it.  And then, what a grand room into which you will roam”.’

NEXT WEEK:  OPUS 6:  LIFELONG FRIEND OR FOE:  WHICH SHALL I MEET?

©2013 Raji Singh

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon (Kindle and trade paperback) , and Barnes and Noble.)

Visit us also at Fiction House Publishing

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No 63: TCHAIKOVSKY SAVES MY LIFE AT THE CZAR’S WINTER PALACE

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

(Shelva Fiction’s girlhood writings – the 1870’s.)

OPUS 1:  THE APPROACH

     “Ahh!  The Royal haven in St. Petersburg:  The grandness that is its Elizabethan Baroque style with stately ivory columns, glass smooth, far as the eye can see.

“Breathe in, deeply, the sweet perfume of the red rose arbors above porticoes that say ‘vell-come all mine fellow R-r-russians’.  From the stately spire of the Palace’s Cathedral – the gloriously tolling bells – hear the herald.  It says, ‘Our land is the jewel in the crown of all the world.”

This is how my teacher describes the Winter Palace.  Teacher is what Mama and her friends in Moscow call “PHHT!  an unapologetic pro-Czarist.  One day they will pay a price for ignoring his brutalities.”

Uncle Vanya holds dearly to the same passionate sentiments, though seldom expresses them vehemently as Mama.  “The chairs of that grand palace, my dear niece, one day soon Mother Russia’s fine citinzens will surely sit-in-zems.”  But I am certain he still gasps in awe whenever he arrives at the grand Palace to undertake his works of ruse for pleasure, profit, and subterfuge.

I see the Palace for the first time as I approach in the glittery-gold horse drawn carriage the Czarevich provides for me.  (Protocol says he must arrive with the Czar; so he cannot accompany me.)  I wish Papa, Uncle Vanya, or Blackjack Fiction were with me – someone to share the view with, besides the stern-face, black-uniformed guards not allowed to talk (more silly protocol).  At least they keep me safe from the Rope Haired Man.

I feel Poppy Sol’s warmth sliding into the seat beside me.  He caresses my arm with his beam and glares understandingly at me.  ‘I shall share the experience with you, Miss Shelva.’

I smile and say.  “Thank you, Poppy Sol.”

The horses whinny their approval.  They know who is there.  I notice the eyes of the guards move curiously, dumbfounded-ly.  Their rigid Cossack imaginations haven’t advanced as far as those of the horses.

Poppy Sol whispers.  ‘Describe what you see, in that special way you have, Miss Shelva.  So I may repeat it later to Luny Mum.  She so loves your imaginings.’

I start, noticing, under the guards’ thick beards, are slight smiles of enjoyment at how I see the Palace:  a way their rigid imaginations could never allow them.  (How could I know that at this moment I was making friends; ones who would assist me mightily against the Rope Haired Man, very soon?)

“The ivory covered walls:  250 feet long, at least, 100 feet high,” Poppy Sol.  “I imagine them as the body of a skinny sea monster floating on the Baltic.  This is just how I will describe it to Mama, Poppy.  Dust from the rhythmic beat of footsteps against the winding gravel pathways of the lush gardens, of all the pristinely dressed officials, servants, and royal guests coming and going, seem puffs of steam rising from the monster’s head, which is, of course, the glistening, golden onion dome.

“Your own glistening rays, Poppy, they make the endless rows of pillars look to me like, like…massive bones, outside of, the monster’s insatiable carcass.”

I whisper this next part to Poppy Sol, so the guards won’t hear.  “As  Mama says, ‘the Czar, his edifices, and his Cossack minions feed on the flesh and spirit of the people to sustain themselves.  So beware, Shelva, that you are not eaten.’”

‘Indeed, Miss Shelva,’ Poppy alights.  ‘Your Mama is a sky full of blusterous thunder about them.  Often I’ve observed your Papa warn, “Shh, dearest!  The walls and the lampposts have ears.  You cannot tell; someone like Shelva’s teacher may be listening”.’

Clip-clop.  Along go the horses.  We are almost there.  Poppy Sol departs, as he must.  The Czar would never allow his light be shed on the secret goings on within his walls.

I feel sad my brutter, Ivan could not be seeing everything with me:  Poor Ivan, serving his time at the mandatory Youth for Czar Summer camp.  Nothing could have stopped that.  Mama fought to keep me from making the trip, “Feh!  Our daughter needn’t see what transpires in that corrupt haven of…”

“But Mama,” Papa, convinces, against odds great as the owner of Swavorsky’s China Shop in Moscow of trying to convince a raging bull to exit, gracefully.  “It is Shelva’s one chance to see the Palace.  After all, we the people built it, with the sweat and blood of our hard earned kopeks, no matter who resides there.”

Mama could not argue with that.

OPUS 2:  My Grand Entrance – Unescorted?

     The carriage stops near a staircase wide as our Moscow house.  I have dreaded this moment.  I am aware and self-conscious, of almost everything about myself.  The buttons of my satin gown make a ‘tap-tap-tap’ sound as they brush against the door as I exit the carriage.  The taps are explosions to me.  I think all the fine ladies and gentlemen secretively look my way and sneer at my disruption of their pleasant chatter.

The unsmiling guard who helps me down – his hand is rough in mine, but I do not mind, because I feel human touch in alien surroundings.  That lasts only seconds, until I am on the stone steps.  He lets me go.

I am alone.  I remember Papa and Uncle Vanya’s words of encouragement they have so often given me.  “You are a beautiful young lady Shelva.  Many are the handsome young gentlemen who will desire to dance with you at parties and balls.”  Their words, honest and loving as they are meant, cannot ease my fear and I feel I cannot make the long walk up the stairs.

Suddenly from a slightly open window of the Palace, I hear a familiar voice, so loud, that all around me look about for the speaker.  “Pyotr!  Pyotr!  Miss Shelva is here.  You must come.  Hurry!”

Flying out through the window is Captain Polly, repeatedly squawking, “Pyotr!  Pyotr!  Hurry.”

She lands on my shoulder.  Everyone is looking at us.  She puffs her plumage boldly.  I follow her example and stand brave, and straight and proud.

“BRAAK!  We’ll both have an escort, Shelva.  One who makes music – pretty as any feathered flyer.”

I look to the top of the staircase as the bastion doors of the Palace, metallically scream slowly open.  Emerging is Pyotyr Illych Tchaikovsky, wearing a deep blue velvet tuxedo.  The crowd quiets, and all looks are on him as he traverses the stairs, in what seems to me, the most glorious of minutes anyone has ever spent on this earth.  Everyone is watching as he reaches me and takes my hand, and then slides my arm within his.

“Allow me to escort the most beautiful girl in all Russia,” says he.

Slowly, up the stairs, we walk.  An eternity.  A grand eternity.  Each of our steps seems a sway.  It feels a never-ending waltz, heaven bound, in the arms of the great Maestro.  Even Captain Polly waltzes, from my shoulder to his, back and forth.  I glance briefly at her.  I realize she too has a partner.  She winks at Poppy Sol, as his rays encircle her outstretched wings.  They’ve succeeded in their mission, making their Miss Shelva, happy.  Now they’re partaking of that enjoyment, and I am so happy they are.

NEXT WEEK:  Opus 3 – Tchaikovsky saves my life, in the flesh.

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, humor, Short stories, Whimsey | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No. 62: THE MAN RESIDING IN THE SECRET ROOM OF THE FICTION HOUSE – PART III

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Accidentally trapped in the secret room and awaiting Nanny to come unlock the door so she can nurse Jamoy, her infant son, Shelva recalls:

*     *     *

     Just when you are sure the Rope Haired Man will leap from behind a chair, or charge through a hidden door, you hear.  ‘Up here, Shelva.  Look up here.’

“Where?”

‘Through the window.  Oh, never mind Shelva.  I am swift.  Now I am on the couch.’

You look over.  See, no one.  Just a light beam.

‘Surely you recognize me, Shelva.  I’ve often visited you in your secret room no one knows of – your imagination.  But I am a gentleman.  So I arrive only when invited.  Or when you need me.  As now.’

“Poppy Sol?”

‘At your service Shelva.’  The room dims briefly, and then brightens, as if a celestial doff of the hat has occurred.  ‘How may I lighten your burden and warm a chill in your soul?’

“I have not thought of the Rope Haired Man in over 15 years, Poppy.  I, like everyone else, was certain of his death in St. Petersburg.  For no rational reason, I suddenly have doubts.  I believe he lives here, stalking me:  At the ready to torment me.  Ease my mind, kind Sir.  You reside here too, I see.  Tell me that the Rope Haired Man is not your roommate.  Tell me you do not brighten his path as you do mine.”

You feel your hand caressed reassuringly by Poppy Sol’s warm ray.

‘Ah my daughter.  You well know I must lighten the way for all.  That is my fate.  It is up to them to choose my day light, Luny Mum’s night bright, or to reside in the darkness of their own soul.  That; is their fate.  It appears this is what the Rope Haired Man chose.’

Poppy Sol, his seeming cryptic answer angers you.  Impatiently you pull from him and shout.  “I am scared for tiny Jamoy, my dear sun:  Because the Rope Haired Man may take his mother from him; or maybe my son, from me.  I am desperate.”

Unable to control your emotions, you fist your hands.  You cross your arms and begin to shake.

Hanging on the wall is a reminder of old time Mother Russia’s brutality and enslavement (as you feel enslaved by your emotions now).  It is a rogatka, a spiky iron collar used to punish rebellious serfs.  Poppy Sol’s rays slowly sweep the room, casting finger-like shadows onto it and it seems to begin encircling your throat.

You plead to Poppy Sol.  “Please!  Unshackle me from this yolk of despair I feel, Sol.  Assure me the Rope Haired Man is not your roommate.”

‘Would I, if I could, my daughter.  But I am here just a few hours a day; not when whoever else may be.  Seems, he is a kind who treads only life’s murky fringes.  If that is the case, even Luny Mum could not enlighten you about the intruder’s identity.’

The imagined, but so real choking of the icy rogatka makes it hard for you to breathe.  You pull at the shadow collar.  You feel that its icicle spikes stab your hands.

Your heart pounds.  Blood, like ocean waves, rush through your veins and arteries.

So hot!  You feel your skin could melt the rogatka.

      Thoughts – a frenetic swirl.

“Help me, Poppy Sol!”

As you begin to pass out, you hear Poppy Sol assure,

‘You have the power to help yourself, dear Shelva.  You must demonstrate the will to harness it, and to throw off that other harness.’

You flail about, knocking books, pens, and newspapers from table and shelves.  The ceramic coffee urn smashes and breaks into dozens of chards that slide, squealing across the concrete floor.  The earthen scent of ground beans swell, helping awaken your desires.  Suddenly – for sanity sake, the sake of the everlasting cherish you’ll always want to feel in your sweet Jamoy, for the love of your darlink druzhyna husbant, James – you realize what you must do.

By damn, you will do it.

With the strength of Atlas, you throw off your worldly shackle and enter completely the ethereal realm of imagination.  There you will conquer your demon and at last throw off his mental rogatka that has bound you far too long to him.

You breathe deeply, and return – “Hi ho!” a lone stranger, even to yourself now – to the Czar’s Winter Palace.  You will confront the Rope Haired Man and the vile pain he inflicted on you that you buried and completely forgot 15 years ago, thence.  You will free yourself, once-and-for-all time, from the mental hold you’ve allowed him far too long.

NEXT WEEK:  Return With Shelva, To Those Thrilling St. Petersburg Days Of Yesteryear When…

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, Short stories, Whimsey | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

No. 61: THE MAN RESIDING IN THE SECRET ROOM OF THE FICTION HOUSE – PART II

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Shelva Reminisces:

     The ‘slamming’ shut, the resonant ‘clicking’ lock of the upstairs door:

TRAPPED !  ALONE!  In the secret basement room of the Fiction House.

Despite your trembling, your fear, you try to stay calm by talking to yourself, making rational this irrational situation.    

     “No use shouting for help, banging on walls, ceiling, or pipes, Shelva.  Fiction House is soundproof, since it was an Underground Railroad safe house.  Think logically, Shelva.  Will you be at the mercy of whoever took up residence here, when they return?  Or will they be the ones scared, and cower or run, when they realize they are discovered?

And, how did they gain entry in the first place, without you ever knowing?”

So many questions!

The secret room continually brightens, from the multi-angled windows allowing in the outside life.  You look out and see Poppy Sol wink at Captain Polly who flies past, sky high.  She seems blinded by his glare, and almost splats into Luny Mum who stays the day.

“Tell Captain Polly to find Efraim, so he can let me out,” you want to tell the celestial air pair.  Instead, you tell yourself.  “Don’t allow your imagination free play, not right now.  You don’t know through what frightful corridors of the mind it may lead you.”

Drafts push through the basement’s cool, dark corridors.  They circulate the exotic scent of smoked caviar that emboldens your surroundings.  The secret room’s door sways butterfly wing gently, but carrion crow eerily as its squeaky hinges ‘scree-scree’.  You scrunch up your shoulders, and make a sour face.  This irritating fingernail to blackboard sound:  It must stop – immediately – so you may rationally consider your plight.  You begin to prop the door with a brass samovar from a side table, but reconsider.  Instead, you stack thick copies of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky to keep it open and carry the samovar:  your teatime weaponry, sharp-handled, long as your arm, fat as risen bread dough.

“Don’t be a silly swan, Shelva,” you joke aloud, thinking the sound of your voice will allow you to put discovery of the room into a clearer perspective.  “You wouldn’t want to clout some innocent person.  This perhaps may be your dear, but kooky Uncle Vanya’s secluded domain:  His private place, quietly reminding him of Mother Russia.  Like Efraim has his man cave up in the hills, Uncle Vanya has his healing podval, his basement sanctuary.”

~ ~ editor note:  Podval:  Sort of a Russian version of a man cave, I suppose.  ~ ~

Your fear overcomes logic and you clutch the samovar as you search for a hidden door to the outside.

What other Russians are there in the area besides Uncle, who might replicate such a nostalgic hideaway?  There’s your pride and joy, James III, but he’s but six months into this world.  (Thinking of your little, ‘Jamoy’ helps calm you and you smile.  You’ll need to nurse him in an about an hour.  Nanny will come looking for you.)

There’s a tinker, a Moscow emigrant, in town:  He cannot read a book or maps, or would not keep a place so clean, or appreciate let alone have tasted exotic caviar.  So it wouldn’t be him.

There’s the doctor who delivered Jamoy.  When he’s not in his office or making rounds, he’s studying in his home, which is more, his medical library.  So Shelva, you’ve quite easily eliminated the obvious.

Your suspicions return to the Rope Haired Man.  Some say he is dead.  Yet you have your doubts.  You never truly knew his nationality – Lindian, Russian?  Both?  Could it be the Rope Haired Man, who…

“Don’t let your imagination carry you away to dark corridors, Shelva,” you tell yourself.  The idea that it could be him is preposterous.  You validate these thoughts, when you see items upon a side table.  Secure in a crystal stand is a delicate Faberge egg depicting the garden of the Royal Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.  Beside it are silver table settings as those of the Czar.  No doubt, these are items Vanya, at one time or another, pilfered from his arch adversary, the tyrant.

This must be Uncle Vanya’s podval.

You hear a sound; like a throat clearing.

You look around:  no one.  You hear a familiar   voice of a man.  It is not that of Uncle Vanya.

“Finding what you seek, Ms. Shelva?”

You hold the samovar tight, and prepare to defend yourself.

NEXT WEEK:  The Man Residing In The Secret Room Of The Fiction House – Part III.    

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No. 60: THE MAN RESIDING IN THE SECRET ROOM OF THE FICTION HOUSE – EXHIBIT ‘A’

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Raji Singh
Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

by Raji Singh

Per my archeo-apology endeavors:

I am yet tying together archive data concerning the Rope Haired Man stalking my great grandmother, Shelva.  The incident occurs at the First International Cat Boxing Tournament in St. Petersburg, Russia.  It is the 1870’s.

Shelva’s nervously written girlhood writings I have so far unearthed reveal her protector to be the handsome young Czarevich, Alexander.  He sweeps her away, to one of the Royal Romanoff Manor Houses.  Has Shelva found refuge from danger?  Has she found peace, perchance, love?

(The latter is obviously not the case, since I am no great grand-son-of-czar.)

The incident I tonight display, Shelva relates in later writings.  It takes place 15 years after her stay in St. Petersburg.  I am quite certain a tie, twisted as any Hitchcock mystery, exists between this, the Rope Haired Man and the Czarevich.  The strings of this rope puzzle…slowly they entwine.  Perhaps together we can unravel the Rope Haired Man, via the hints Shelva gives, and then bind him with his own tresses.

*          *          *

     Shelva writes: 

So warm, tender, with family, friends, is the Fiction House.  But oft time, mysterious is the Fiction House.  Your halcyon life takes a quirky turn one afternoon when you round a corner of the dim basement pantry after fetching preserves for supper.  You discover…

PART I:  A DOOR, JUST SLIGHTLY, A JAR

     Your darlink, druzhyna husbant, Dr. Fiction, his vials, carafes, jars of stump juice elixirs line the shelves.  He catalogs them precisely – ayurvedic, homeopathic, herbal, holistic curatives.  These are old, even ancient remedies the Doctor collects from America, Russia, Lindia, really all parts of the world we travel to discover ingredient and formula.  They are medicines either forgotten about or hardly known now in the 1890’s.

One of the sections of shelves seems crooked and ready to collapse.  You grasp a section, to prove to yourself that it is firm.  If not, call hirert hand Efraim.  He can sturdy it.  The glass containers rattle; some of the sulfurous odor of the medicines escapes loose lids.  The section is sturdy, yet begins appearing, curiously, even more crooked.

A slight breeze from upstairs, just slight mind you, seems to knock over a row of shelves.  “Quickly, Shelva,” you tell yourself.  “Reach to catch it.  Save as much of the precious medicine as possible.”  You lose balance and fall forward.  You hear a ‘scree’ sound, like a squeaky hinge.  “Scrunch up you face, Shelva.  Maybe doing so will protect you from lacerations when the glass breaks.”  You fall, not into breaking glass, but against the wooden floor.  A mere ‘thud’ is all you hear – that of your body.  There is no chime of glass breaking all at once.

Your preserves fly.  They ‘thud’ too.

You rise, unhurt, befuddled by something you’d never noticed in your hundreds of times coming down here.  (Such are all the innumerable mysteries of the Fiction House as this that you would discover in the coming decades.)  Those aren’t jars, on shelves.  The shelves end abruptly at a door.  The door is painted with shelved jars that camouflage it.  The breeze pushed it open.

You have stumbled into a secret room.  Amazement of it overshadows your befuddlement.

PART II:  SHADOWING SHELVA ACROSS CONTINENTS AND DECADES

     In the room, brightly lit by the series of windows open to the clear skies, are so many reminders of Mother Russia.  A pot of coffee, still warm to your touch:  It’s deep, earthy aroma is that only of a blend you smelled in the coffee houses in central Moscow.  On the walls above the couch, table and chairs – intricately drawn maps of the empire, showing each river, mountain, and grass covered steppe.  You close your eyes just briefly, imagining the slap of sturgeon, growl of bear, and howl of wolf you heard in those places when you were younger.

“Run out and get Efraim, Shelva,” you say to yourself.

You should be scared by this imitation world of your past, existing less than ten feet below the main floor of the Fiction House.  But as you breathe deep, you feel calm.  The mixing scent of all the different climbing plants in the room, overpowers your senses, and relaxes you.  You’ve seen, smelled these broad leaves and lush vines before.  Where?  When?  The pleasantness of them ironically makes one of the most unpleasant times of your life return.

You think of the Rope Haired Man.  Thankfully, he has been out of your head for well over a decade.  But now he revisits, full flourish in your thoughts.

Just then, a voice coming from upstairs startles you.  “Shelva, are you down there?”

You know that voice, Efraim’s.  But against all logic, you tell yourself.  “No, that is not Efraim.  It is the Rope Haired Man.  He is the one who has been living here, waiting for this moment to have you alone.  Just shout out, Shelva.  ‘I am down here Efraim,’ and this awake nightmare will vanish.”

You raise your arms, to bring as much air into your lungs as possible.  You breathe, deeply, get ready to shout, when something you see hanging on the wall shackles your voice.

Thick-chained, cold, terrifying iron shackles – used to contain American slaves on auction blocks a half-century ago.  You look past them, to the shadows of your frame the bright sunlight reflects on the wall.  Your wrists’ shadow is imprisoned by the shadow of the shackles.  This takes your breath away, and when you try to shout out, “Come down, Efraim, please,” you are mute.  Your throat feels glued shut; shackled as your wrists.

You hear Efraim say.  “Mz. Shelva must’ve left it open by accident.”  You hear the door shut, and lock.

“Will you be alone now, Shelva?  When whoever lives here returns.”

NEXT WEEK:  EXHIBIT ‘B’ – SILHOUETTING SERFDOM, SHACKLES, AND SHELVA

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No. 59: THE ARCHEO-APOLOGIST AT WORK

Posted on September 8, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

     This week I take respite from Shelva in the 1870’s, from the Rope Haired Man stalking her at the International Cat Boxing Tournament in St. Petersburg, Russia, and from the handsome young Czarevich who comes to Shelva’s aid.

I do so, not to build serialized suspense, or finger-tapping apprehension as could only mystery master Alfred Hitchcock.  Flat out truth?  I’ve not yet separated fact from fiction in my research of the matter.  I MUST, ‘err on the side of caution’.

Ever exciting, always revealing is my archeo-apology work – that of archiving the home and offices of Fiction House Publishing.  It was the world’s highest-respected, most prominent, and successful book builder of the 19th and early 20th century.  Writings of Shelva Fiction, though so separated and displaced over time, have become a major provider of this information for me.

As a professional archeo-apologist, I must apply meticulous care so findings and conclusions on data concerning recovered stories may pass rigid empirical testing:  Per my line of work, my motto – ‘Always, only – the facts, just the facts, Shelva’.

Slowly, painstakingly I unearth, midst the Fiction House’s intentional disorganization, information that is meticulously organized.  The Founder, Blackjack Fiction, employed a uniquely methodical security system; disarray.  Not only did his system prove nearly indecipherable, keeping rival publishers, the cutthroat land pirates of those days, from pilfering his authors’ best material.  It also masked secrets involving Blackjack’s Abolitionists work with the Underground Railroad.

The Fiction House was a secret safe house with dank maze-like corridors leading to comfortably furnished, hidden-away alcove living areas.  Preserved now, they are quiet reading rooms for guests who visit us at our Fiction House Bed and Breakfast.  Incoming light is soft as it enters through a series of angled windows visible from the outside only by highflying birds.

(Sorry, didn’t mean to make this appear an advertising blitz for our sideline endeavor.)

The wood used to craft the Fiction House in the 1840’s , was pre-saturated with a Leezian’ brew concoction of swamp surface ‘skimmins’ and moss ‘squeezins’, to create a permanent scent barrier, so nary a bloodhound could smell their prey residing safely inside awaiting their connections northward.  (To this day, passing Rexes sniff confusedly when they pass by Fiction House.  Try, as they might, no canine is able to leave their marker and make it last.)

Only now, over 150 years later, after America’s Civil War end, am I discovering many of the Fiction House residents Abolitionist activities.  Join me next week for one such related event.  After that, I should have the stories of Shelva, the Rope Haired Man, and the Czarevich De-constructed and De-Hitcocked down to size.

NEXT WEEK:  The Man Residing in the Secret Room of the Fiction House

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments