Lingeria

by Daniel Kozuh

  Uncharacteristically, for an appliance, the back of the stove opened. Norman never thought to check but be he had always assumed that the the back of his oven was firmly soldered to its walls. A stocky hand slid a domed lump of bread dough on a crude oven stone into the stove, the sharp corner knocking Norman in the head. The smell of death was overwhelmed by a pleasant mixture of yeast, cinnamon, and allspice.

  ****

  The past year hadn't been all bad for Norman. In fact, it had been one of his best, fiscally and professionally speaking... and that was about the only language he knew how to speak anymore.

  He systematically put out a book a year, and the fifteenth incarnation of his celebrated "Tales of Lingeria" series hit number ten on the New York Times Bestsellers’ List on the day of its release It also broke some record for Amazon presales (honestly, Norman wasn't paying attention when his agent told him the news).

  Norman was on a rare jaunt out of his self-imposed isolation. He was not prone to leaving his mountain retreat, or inviting others over, even for good news. His life and its attendant seclusion could be used as the “before” in an anti-depressant commercial. He turned down conventions, book signings, and writers’ workshops as often as his manager would let him. Even before the depression took over, he was an introvert and detested public speaking. Everyone seemed to expect him to just vomit wit and wisdom, but he suffered from peculiar disconnect between his brain and his mouth making impromptu speaking most difficult. His books were tenth or eleventh drafts, with months spent on phrasing and dialogue (and heavy help from an unappreciated editor named Iris). However, today he was forced to journey to New York for a sit down with his agent and a few dreaded meet-and-greets.

  His bloodshot eyes panned over the framed blow-ups of his previous fourteen Lingeria novel covers that lined his agent's spacious office. The first, simply titled Tales of Lingeria, featured a large-breasted Amazonian warrior decapitating an orc (an event that didn't even occur in the book) sandwiched between the title of the book above and his own name below.

  A quick scan of the posters proved to be like a zoetrope, with the word “Lingeria” growing larger and larger and Norman's name shriveling smaller and smaller. It was the 3rd book, Tales of Lingeria: The Palladium Gauntlet where Norman's name became N.T.T. Halliday. The first T stood for Thomas, the second T stood for Norman's willingness to sacrifice his integrity to sell a few hundred more copies of his book.

  The new name was his agent's idea: it took up less of the cover’s precious real estate and also gave some clout to Norman's reputation in the fantasy community. All subsequent reprints of Tales of Lingeria and the second book, Tales of Lingeria: The Goblin Assassin featured Norman's new moniker, making all previous editions highly sought-after collectibles.

  The cover of Norman's newest Lingeria novel made him want to puke, but that may have also been the two double-bourbons he swallowed in his hotel room before attending this meeting. The framed poster was leaning against his agent's desk, awaiting the arrival of janitorial staff to mount it on the wall. The words, “AN ALL NEW LINGERIA ADVENTURE” filled the top of the cover, followed, in a different font, by a redundant Tales of Lingeria – slightly dutched, to "denote the idea of scary exploits", according to the loathsome graphic designer. In yet another, slightly smaller, font, was the title of this fifteenth epic: River of Raael. In the smallest, most forgettable font – probably Times New Roman – at the bottom was Norman's pen name ‘N.T.T. Halliday’. It looked as if it was about to slide off the bottom of the book into nothingness. In a final, most offensive font, stamped in the upper corner of the book, printed but made to look like an adhered, omni-pointed sticker, the words, “Soon to Be a TV Series by Cinemax!” promoted the series’ upcoming adaptation for the small screen.

  Norman experienced another resurgence of bourbon in the back of his throat and swallowed it down, almost thankful for the sting. Someone from Cinemax was on the speakerphone now – maybe multiple people (they all sounded the same to Norman). It was a white noise of lip-service and platitudes, followed by reservations and sacrifices.

  The pilot script had just been "locked" and resembled little of the world that Norman had created. There was a lot more elf sex in the script, for example. Norman had given up trying to stop the changes to the show – he knew it was contractually fruitless. To him, the Cinemax folks seemed like teenagers, returning home reeking of pot, while imagining they were pulling a fast one over on their parents. In fact, the parents were just too tired to yell. However this never stopped him from cashing their checks.

  Norman really didn’t care what they did with his books. In fact, he had grown to hate Lingeria and everything associated with it. It was only intended to be a standalone story, before he moved on to other corners of his imagination, but the first novel was a resounding success and any deviation from the series thereafter was met with hatred and harsh critique.

  Cobalt Cathode was published subsequent to the first Lingeria book and was a six-hundred-page futuristic dystopian epic that ostensibly was Norman’s reaction to America’s intervention into Middle-East politics. Norman’s publisher received piles of hate mail and the New York Times called Cobalt Cathode a “preachy, narcissistic foray into the white man’s shallow subconscious.”

  The publishing house quickly ordered a second Lingeria book as a PR band-aid, always promising to let Norman explore his other writing interests once the Lingeria fever died down. It never did. He finally had the life he always dreamt of. He was a best-selling author and he was still miserable. Norman felt cheated. It was like taking a big bite of a brown muffin, thinking it was chocolate and finding it to be bran.

  Norman kept churning out Lingeria novels, growing to despise the world that made him famous. He refused to fill gaping plot-holes, killed off beloved characters, and borrowed heavily from other books, movies, and generic plot devises. He literally phoned in some of the last book River of Raael; recording drunken, rambling messages on poor Iris’ voicemail and leaving it up to the publisher to transcribe.

  ****

  Norman rubbed the bloody gash on his head as he eyed the dough that had appeared magically in his oven. Obviously, this was some sort of carbon-monoxide-induced hallucination.

  “Even the hallucinations of my subconscious are uninspired. I dream of bread loaves.”

  The back of Norman's stove opened again, and the hand reached back in, feeling for warmth and receiving none.

  "What in the blazes?" questioned a gravelly voice.

  The hand retreated and the magical door was left open. Norman could see straight through the oven and into the dwelling beyond. He could see a rustic kitchen cabinet, with irregular, hand-carved doors and metal knobs hammered into Celtic knots. The hand returned holding a match. The hand's owner knelt before his stove and peered into the space, looking for a mechanical problem but finding a string-bean writer gawking back at him.

  Norman knew it was Roe, immediately. While it took a moment for the left half of his brain to agree with the right, once he knew, he knew. It was Roe – stocky and sturdy, with a sharp sprout of spiked brown hair and a bulbous nose, like three ripe grapes bound together; ears like sprouting mushrooms. He was exactly as Norman had written him. And even though Norman never inked a description of Roe's eyebrows, the thick swipes of hair on a heavy brow, narrowly connecting at the bridge of his nose, was precisely as Norman imagined. Roe had dense, craggy muscles and leathery, tanned skin, from a lifetime of farm work. Moreover, he looked precisely like the person after whom Norman modeled him: Matt Stacy, All-State high school wrestler whose only artistic pursuit was finding creative ways to torture Norman. It was an artform Matt seemed to pursue simply out of passion. Seeing the similarly unevolved features on Roe's face made Norman want to throw his pocket change into the oven and beg for mercy. Norman assumed, judging by Roe's bent body, that he stood about four feet tall. Or two and one-half sacks, in the made-up measuring system of Lingeria.

  Many of Norman's cr
itics accused him of stealing the idea for Roe's race from the Hobbits of Middle-Earth. Luckily, the Tolkien Estate didn't agree with the critics, or at least didn't feel that Norman’s creation was similar enough to warrant litigation. Norman stated publicly, at a Sci-Fi convention in Houston, that he based the Whittle race on a pygmy tribe from the Congo – which was completely factual. Norman loved research; he loved it more than writing. He loved getting lost the in minutiae of historical anecdotes. He would spend hours in The University of Tennessee library, digging through books and journals that had little or nothing to do with what he was currently writing – books about beetle reproduction; ancient Assyrian economics; the lives of Hollywood stuntmen; the history and engineering of dirigible flight. Norman mirrored the Whittle culture on the Mbenga pygmy people, who lived in the jungles of the Congo basin (a culture he had read about while perusing back-issues of the now defunct East German life-science magazine Die Obligatorische Wissenschaftsfabrik). But he made them, you know, white Yes, it was a fact that Norman had done extensive research, before constructing his imaginary Whittles. However, now that Norman was making eye contact with an actual Whittle, in the flesh … yes, he had completely stolen the idea from Hobbits. But all great artists borrow from one another, Norman just never planned to give it back.

  The two stared at one another through the cooker, both wearing expressions of perplexed astonishment.

  “It’s you,” they both exclaimed.

  TWO

  “I will join you,” came a meager voice from the back of the room. Roe, the village’s most cowardly and pedantic member, stood up. Although, being small even for a Whittle, he had to climb on the table to be seen. His trembling hand remained raised.

  “You?!” the Innkeeper guffawed.

  “What good could you possibly do? Are you going to pester the Draug to death?”The entire inn burst into laughter.

  - Tales of Lingeria: The Goblin Assassin, Chapter 4

  Norman hadn’t completely ruled out that this could simply be a hallucination, caused by his brain chemicals sizzling from monoxide poisoning. His true self was probably, now, a near-dead lump of flesh bubbling out of the oven like an ill-prepared cake. While not particularly spiritual, Norman always assumed the afterlife would have a bit more pop to it than this. “If this truly is death, I really regret my decision.”

  “What are you doing in my oven?” asked the quasi-Hobbit in an English accent Norman never assigned him.

  “I should ask you the same thing,” Norman answered. Not his wittiest retort, but it would do, considering he was simultaneously wrapping his consciousness around an interdimensional portal in his Viking stainless-steel convection oven. The damn thing cost him almost ten grand and Norman was finally beginning to understand why.

  The little man pulled out the baking rack and slid his body into the crevice, like a plump goose. He wiggled his way forwards, as Norman kicked his body back against the granite island. Roe birthed himself out onto Norman’s kitchen floor; promptly standing up and brushing himself off. He wore a simple, collarless, button-up shirt, and home-spun woolen trousers. With Norman sitting on the floor, the beefy hominid was able to make level eye contact and examined Norman as if a discovered artifact.

  “Tactless little twit,” Norman thought, “inviting himself in like that.”

  “It is uncanny,” Roe said to himself. “You must be him.” Norman pushed himself harder against the island and Roe leaned closer. Norman’s eyes grew wide, his eyelids lost deep in his cheeks and forehead, acting towards Roe the way some may towards being cornered by an unfamiliar dog. Roe puffed hot, putrid breath directly into Norman’s face, at least one of his teeth must be rotten.

  “Who must I be?”

  “The Author,” Roe stated.

  Norman deflated. “Cripes.” He released his anxiety. “You people just don’t stop, do you?” Norman pushed himself off the ground and past Roe.

  The midget seemed confused, “Pardon, my lord?”

  “I’ll hand it to you. That is some detailed cosplay for a fanboy.” Norman was talking to the air as he walked into his living room and picked up the phone. “I hate doing this, because I’d love to learn how you did that oven trick, but I guess we’ll get it from your deposition. Hello, police?”

  “What is a Fanboy, sir? Is that a religious order?” Roe wandered into the living room, his fat neck craning to peer at the giant map of Lingeria on the west wall.

  “Yes, I have some sort of crazed fan in my house,” Norman said into the phone. “I dunno? White and tiny – a kid, I think. How am I supposed to know – his mom probably dropped him off!”

  Like a curious bird, Roe tilted his head as he examined the map of his home world. He read the various towns and mountains named, in mock-rune script (most of which were just sounds Norman made while choking on dry toast). “My word, it is perfect.”

  “Because I don’t run a home for runaway nerds!” Norman shouted at the obviously reluctant police.

  “But you do not have the Tower of Wrence on here,” said Roe.

  “I think you have your fantasy fiction confused, kid,” Norman snapped at Roe. “When will the roads be clear?” he asked the policeman.

  Roe climbed up onto Norman’s refurbished, vintage mid-century-modern liquor cabinet. “Hey, come on, get off there!” Norman yelled.

  “It should be right here,” Roe said, stamping his pudgy finger on the map, “On Fraan road, between Helkie and The Red City.”

  The only thing that Norman hated more than his obsessive fans were the ones who thought they knew more than he did about his own work. “Just get someone here are soon as you can. I have... plans,” Norman finished, and hung up. “I’ve never written about any Tower of Wrence, kid. You’re confused.”

  “I know it’s not in The Volumes, but it’s there now.”

  “Yeah, interesting,” Norman lied, as he dug for vodka in the cupboard below Roe. He came back up with a bottle and glass, “but I don’t read fan fiction.” The clink of the glass bottle against the rim of his cup woke up Calamity Jane.

  The boozy coonhound wasn’t sure what was more interesting: the liquor or the stranger. She opted for the stranger, because maybe the stranger had liquor. She kicked herself up and started the journey to Roe, hip-dysplasia making her stiff gait resemble some unpopular dance from the 1950s.

  The practically-paralyzed pup greeted Roe with a wet nose right on the rear. Roe swung around and confronted the perverted beast. “You wrinkled gargoyle!” Roe leapt from the cabinet, diving on to Jane, and wrapped his arms around her neck. Whatever youthful spunk remained in Jane suddenly reappeared and she playfully wrestled her opponent. The two stumbled across the living room.

  “Janey, stop it!” Calamity Jane knocked Roe on to his back, with a swipe of her heavy skull. She pinned him down with her impressive paw and lowered her rumpled face to his.

  “You have not bested me yet, beast,” wheezed Roe. Jane’s tongue slapped Roe’s reddening face. Norman smiled, for the first time in weeks, as he watched Roe attempting to squirm away from Janey’s affection.

  “All right, girl, all right.” Norman patted Jane’s rump and she instantly relented and retreated to her bed. He helped Roe to his feet. “Okay, fun’s over. I need you to call your parents and have them pick you up.”

  Roe pulled a kerchief out of his pocket and cleaned the slobber off his face, “My parents have passed.”

  Norman felt a twinge of guilt in his gut. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Hear it? You wrote it.” The child’s sad situation finally dawned on Norman. This kid, obviously, lost his parents and, in an effort to deal with the pain, he retreated into the stronger personality of Roe the Whittle.

  “Who is your guardian, then,” Norman tried?

  “We Whittles are a free clan,” Roe said, proudly!

  Norman had little patience, even for orphans, it seemed. “Where do you live? Group home? Foster care?”

  “I live in my house! You
saw it through the cooker.”

  Norman glanced at the stove. “How did I see those cabinets through the stove? Must be a backdrop of some kind.” Norman didn’t want to be the one to shatter this kid’s fragile fantastical reality, but someone had to.

  “There is no house. You hid in my garage and dug a hole to the back of my oven.” Even as Norman issued what had seemed the most sensible explanation, the logic crumbled like dry clay in his hand. He walked back into the kitchen and looked into the open stove. The backdrop of cabinetry across the way was painted with striking realism – this kid was obviously some kind of savant.

  “Come on. I’ll show you your house.” Norman put more derision behind the word “house” than he intended, but meant it, nonetheless.

  Norman tightened his robe, to avoid snagging it, and climbed into the oven. His feet still wiggled in his own kitchen as he pushed his way into Roe’s. He pulled himself, gracelessly, free of the oven, falling on to a rustic wood floor. This was not the floor in his three-car garage. Instead, it was the meagerly-appointed home of Roe the Whittle.

  ****

  Norman pushed himself up and immediately slammed his head on the ceiling of the hut. "Ow! goddamn it." The pain reminded him of the wound he’d already incurred from the bread stone.

  "Everything all right in there, sir?" asked Roe, peering through the oven.

  "What the...?" Norman trailed off as he scanned the modest home. All walls, floors, trim, and accompaniments were done by hand, with rugged craftsmanship. Nothing was leveled or squared, but it was all perfectly functional. The walls were coated with a rough, gravelly plaster, and the floors and ceiling were thick, wooden planks, with minute gaps between them.