by Jon Scieszka
Yes, I will pull up on the hilt. You’ll see that it is attached to a blade, razor sharp, wrought of steel storm-cloud-grey, forged and tempered in the wine-dark blood of emperors. Well, one emperor. You can get a surprising amount of wine-dark blood out of one emperor, if you try, especially if he drank a lot of wine beforehand.
To be clear: you can’t. But then you are not a New York Times bestselling fantasy novelist, like me. You’re probably not a New York Times bestselling novelist of any kind. Once you are inducted into that elite society, let me tell you, the ancient secrets of efficiently ex-sanguinating emperors are secrets to you no longer.
There: it has come free of its scabbard. Hear how it sings faintly in the air. That is a song of bloodlust, a song such as you will not hear on Spotify, or indeed on any other online music service. For I told you the truth. This is not a sword.
This is a Sword of Legend.
You see what I did there.
Could I have slain Herman Mildew with this sword? Undoubtedly. It would have been no problem. I’m like, what, a twentieth-level paladin compared with him. Next to me he’s like, I don’t know, a kobold or something. An unarmored kobold who’s like really fat and old. A kobold that’s in a coma practically. I could have killed him that easily.
But I didn’t.
When did I last see him? I saw him just yesterday, in that degraded hell pit that he called an office. Though it was a little hard to see him, because I’d brought the manuscript of my new book with me—a manuscript of such surpassing beauty that the very pages shone like the sun, and one must look away from them, or have one’s eyes seared from their very sockets.
You wouldn’t be seeing much after that, I can tell you. Not without any eyes.
But actually it was mostly hard to see him because my manuscript, a fantasy epic called “The Trilliad Lays of the Omni-Conch,” took up most of the office. It’s about 35 million words at this point. A lean 35 million words, mind you—seriously it reads like a 30-million-word book, easy.
I feel like the book shows a lot of artistic growth on my part, as a writer. It’s far more epic than my last book, Lonely Windsurfs the Badger-Lord. Just for starters, there’s way fewer badgers this time.
But would you believe it? Herman Mildew—that cur, that wretch, that wretch-cur—told me it was too long. He told me to cut it down.
I told him that I’d already cut it. He told me to cut it more. I asked him do you cut rainbows? Do you cut panda bears and space-unicorns?
He said yes. Sometimes. When they’re too long and boring.
I told him that to tell him the truth, I thought the book was already pretty lean. He told me it wasn’t lean, in fact it was fat. I told him he was fat.
Then, yes, sure, I guess you could say it got a little ugly.
I told him I could not cut this book even if I possessed the Sword of Legend. He pointed out that I did in fact possess the Sword of Legend. I said OK, right, point taken, but I would never use the Sword of Legend for such a profane and frankly misguided purpose as this.
He said fine.
Herman opened his desk drawer and took out a sword of his own. I knew it for what it was. It was the Other Sword of Legend. He prepared to cut my book with it.
At this point I drew my own sword—the first, original Sword of Legend—and the fight was begun. In a trice he had donned the Black Mail of Otherwhere, which I guess he had in a different drawer. It was a big desk. I then conjured and hurled the Fire Spear of Nannerl Grimbrain. He parried with the Four-Times-Accursed Blackmace. It went on like that for a while. I winded the Horn of Babylon. He countered with some Forbidden Kung-Fu—he was actually pretty spry for a fat dude. And so on.
And then he made his mistake. Because I was wearing my favorite cologne, which is Cerruti 1881 pour Homme, which as I’m sure you’ve noticed features notes of sandalwood, bergamot, patchouli, and ylang-ylang. And everybody knows that the Thornwood Shield of the Underbramble has only one fatal weakness, and that weakness is ylang-ylang. I could have cloven straight through that shield with the Sword of Legend—straight into Herman Mildew’s fat face, and bathed my blade in a blood that is even more powerful than the wine-dark blood of emperors, and that is the martini-pale blood of editors.
But I didn’t.
Look, I’ll show you, sirrah. If I had killed Herman Mildew, the Sword of Legend would bear the Crimson Aura of the Editorslayer. And look—see there? It totally doesn’t. It’s more of a mauve aura.
That’s just some ranch dressing from lunch.
First of all I want to point out that I actually had to shower and put on clothes, clean clothes at that, to venture out into the real world for this meeting. If that’s what we’re calling a get-together at an abandoned pickle factory these days. Is it because there’s never a dill moment in pickle factories? Of course I’d relish an opportunity, any opportunity to have a conversation with a real live person.
You think I came here to kill someone? No. There’s another reason.
Look at me, not the pieces of grass in my hair or the mud on my boots—I tripped in the bushes on the way in, but if you overlook that, I’m clean. I smell fresh. Seriously, I put on deodorant. How could anyone who committed murder smell pleasant? Like lavender shampoo. Or maybe Dove soap.
I get that Herman was thought vile by most, but honestly I considered Herman a friend. Don’t look at me like that. Good old Herman. I mean, if you overlook the way he constantly criticized everything, the relentless berating and name calling weren’t really so bad. Maybe he was even my best friend. I don’t have a lot of people to talk to. I mean real ones. So just because every time I talked to Herman, I *might* have cried and locked myself in my closet to punch my favorite pillow (the one I clutch like a baby every night when I’m sleeping), that doesn’t mean I wanted him dead. Even though I’m being treated for a skin condition brought on by a stress disorder my doctor believes could be cured if my self-esteem improved. No.
How could I kill Herman? He called me. All the time. All day long, even when I was working. Over and over. It didn’t always interfere with my creative process. Not every single time. Herman told me I was special and that’s why he didn’t believe in emailing or even texting me. No, he thought it was super fun to have a phone phobia. He told me he was trying to help by forcing me to talk on the phone. All the time. And if I didn’t answer, he’d just keep calling and calling until I did. Hilarious, right?
So what that he didn’t stop talking and sometimes I realized I’d stopped listening to him and that I’d made myself a pot of coffee, drank most of it and had a full meal while he still jabbered on? Even though I caught myself saying things under my breath, with increasing urgency, like just STOP TALKING! Shut the heck up! At some point he’d pause and demand to know if I agreed. I appreciate a man who speaks his mind. Like all of it. Every single thought he ever had even if it’s not politically correct. Or nice.
Anyhow, I didn’t kill him. Trust me. The only reason I came here was to make sure Herman didn’t tell people what he knows about me. Especially that one thing. Yes. That one. Because if that gets out not only will I have to change my name, I’ll have to cut my hair short, dye it, and move to Canada. Wait. Too late. I already live in Canada. Somewhere else cold then. Siberia?
Damn Herman and his satanic ways.
But no. I mean. Good friend. He was a good friend. I would never hurt Herman. Not badly.
Note: I must warn you that the following address to Herman Mildew and/or his so-called interrogators is full of vitriol (look it up!) and a few other sophisticated words. If you encounter a word you don’t understand, please use the context of the sentence to figure it out, and then confirm the word’s definition in the dictionary. Thank you.
Sincerely,
FBHIII
Dear Mr. Mildew:
First of all, I don’t believe you are dead.
You’ve always been mealy mouthed at best, and at worst a liar.
So why should I accept the spuri
ous announcement of your demise, especially when it is intrinsically linked to (yet another unpaid) writing assignment? Honestly, the fact that the solicitation of an alibi for your purported murder comes with no promise of payment—and that this anthology is intended to benefit such a worthy and reputable organization as 826NYC—are chief among my reasons for accepting the assignment.
Knowing at the outset that neither my accomplished dog nor I will be compensated for our efforts, I am spared the dread that you will once again bilk me of payment for services rendered.
Due to your imposed limitations on word count, I will refrain from recounting the numerous shady book deals into which you (and your ilk) have lured me over the years, whereby you led me on, led me astray, and/or flat-out flimflammed me. Not to mention, all the instances in which you so heavy-handedly “improved” my prose. For a more lengthy discussion of our acrimonious professional relationship, I refer our young readers to my forthcoming blog: I-Should-Have-Killed-Mildew.com.
Second, you are well aware of my hostile feelings toward all editors, and especially toward you, Mr. Mildew.
Please bear in mind while you are “editing” this alibi that any suggested revisions will be met with extreme malice. If you change as little as one comma or semi-colon within this document, I promise that I will hunt you down and make absolute certain that you are indeed dead. If you are not really dead yet, and if you so much as mark one of my words herein, then mark these words, Mr. Mildew: I will kill you. And if you happen to be already deceased when I find you, then I will flog your corpse like a dead horse.
There. Now that I’ve dispensed with my preamble, please let me take this opportunity to profess my innocence: I. DIDN’T. DO. IT. (And remember: leave my punctuation alone; any editorial noodling will result in grievous bodily harm to the editor.)
Now, onto the defense of my innocent dog, Tillamook Cheddar. Mr. Mildew, you cannot be serious. How could you possibly presume that my dog Tillie, the world’s preeminent canine artist, had anything whatsoever to do with your death? Why would you drag my dog’s good name through the dirt, unless you intended to leverage her good name to sell more books? While I myself am relatively unknown, Tillie is far more famous than the vast majority of the other contributors to this anthology. She has nothing whatsoever to gain from lying, telling the truth, or contributing artwork to this collection. You, on the other hand, hope to boost book sales, and make a name for yourself as a deceased crime fiction editor, all on the backs of the most successful living animal painter, a handful of notable writers and illustrators, and a slew of nobodies. Having said all that, I’ve decided to play along with your dead man’s ruse.
I asked Tillie, point blank: “Did you do it? Did you kill Herman Mildew?” She barked twice. I had no idea what this meant, but I continued my interrogation: “Do you know who did it?” Again, she barked twice. Still clueless, I decided to set up the materials for her to make a painting. Since she had barked twice two times, I decided to have her make two paintings.
After thirteen years of living and working with Tillie, I have a shamefully limited understanding of what her barking means. When she barks her head off, it usually means that she is in the middle of making a painting, or someone is at the door, or both. When she only barks once or twice it usually means (a) she’s hungry and/or wants a bite of whatever I’m eating, (b) she needs to “go outside,” or (c) she wants to make a painting. Since she had recently been outside and we had both just eaten lunch, I opted for option (c). Realizing that the editors of this anthology wanted to include at least one of Tillie’s paintings in this book, I figured this was our best course of action.
Having spent a total of about ten minutes writing my own “alibi” for this anthology, I gave Tillie five minutes to work on each of these paintings. I welcome the editors/interrogators to include one or both of the paintings Tillie made that day. Just as with Tillie’s barking, after all these years I am still at a loss when it comes to interpreting her paintings. Perhaps our young readers will shed some light on their significance to this purported “murder?”
Innocently yours,
F. Bowman Hastie III (& Tillamook Cheddar)
Exhibit #1 (Tentatively “Alibi”): Abstract representation of how neither I nor my manager, FBH III could have murdered Mildew; we were sharing a plate of bacon at the time.
Exhibit #2 (Tentatively “Mashed Investigator”): Expressionist representation of the sort of mess I might make of a silly person who wastes an important artist’s valuable time.
Yes, I wanted him dead. Herman Mildew. I hate his face. I hate his fat ears. I hate the white monkey tuft he calls his hair. I hate his dirty hands and his fish belly fingers that wiggle when he talks.
Yes. Dead. Good.
Love is what? Love is desire. I am in love with Mildew’s death. Love! My desire is to pop a serrated grapefruit spoon into Mildew’s eyeball. My desire is to drop his eyeball into my soup. Butter. Vermont cream. Parmesan? Yes, please. Pepper! Will Mildew feel this pain?
No more…no more. Oh, walnuts.
He is dead but not from me. I am sorry.
I wanted this.
Here’s a story: It was a beautiful morning. I did my stretches in my favorite pocket park. Seven floors up Mildew stood at his office window. The sun warmed my tight hammies. The park’s pavement radiated into my chest. I loosened. I breathed. I thought, You’ll be fine, little dumpling. But then a cawing. “Caw!” I turned from the ground. Monkey-tuft hair, sun lit at a window.
“You!” came a cry. Then came the laughter.
“Me?” I asked.
“Keep your day job, Herbach, you rambling putz!”
“Who are you?” I cried.
“Mildew! Your nightmare. Your words are turds!”
Herman Mildew had my book, Ricky’s Big Day. I wrote it on an IBM typewriter over a period of fourteen years. One. Copy. Only.
Mildew said he’d take it. I thought that meant publish it. Instead, Mildew tossed it from the window above. It exploded on the pavement next to me. Confetti took to the air. One scrap settled on the ground in front of my burning eyes. The only sentence I have left? “Ricky loves tacos.”
Yes, I am in love with Mildew’s death. But I did not do it. I wanted to.
And, so, yes, I was in the Mildew mansion. And, yes, I crept, a ghost, through the upstairs hall as a party bubbled below. I brandished my grapefruit spoon and also a bowl of warm soup. I found Mildew alone, drinking tea, slumped on a leather chair. I entered the room and pointed my spoon at his awful face.
“Ah. Herbach.” He nodded.
“It’s go time,” I said.
“Come for your revenge?” he whispered.
“Don’t blink,” I said. The grapefruit spoon sparkled in the lamplight.
“Do it. Put me out of my misery,” he said. “But know, it is I who should be carving you with that…is that a spoon?”
“Yes. Spoon,” I whispered.
“My wife cannot forget your lips,” he said. “So kill me.”
I stood straight. “These lips?” I shuddered, smacking. “Your wife?”
“You kissed her at a Lemony Snicket reading in 2006. She says you smell like a pumpkin.” A tear spilled from his left eye.
I dropped the spoon and dumped the soup into my sandals. “I do smell like a pumpkin!” I cried.
He nodded. He winked.
I ran. I crashed through the party below. I threw myself into the bushes in the yard.
Only later did I wake in those bushes and think, I’ve never been to a Lemony Snicket reading. He lied. He lied. He dies!
And now I find out he’s already dead? Why not by me? I want to eat Mildew’s eyeball in my soup.
I didn’t even know the guy. I mean, yes, I’d met him. But only once. He came snooping around my farm last spring, asking all kinds of questions about raw milk cheese, like why it tastes so much better than the pasteurized kind. He claimed to be looking for someone to write a book about cheese and he’d heard I
was both a writer and cheese maker and he was just so passionate about my cheese. I should have known something was suspect; have you ever known a grown American man to weep while scarfing down Taleggio? Say what you will about this man, he did love cheese, and I let my guard down. I answered all his questions. And there were a lot of them. He was so informed! I told him I’d work on a proposal.
Just so we’re clear, I didn’t always live such a bucolic life. I grew up on the Lower East Side and I had a single mother who was never home. I dropped out of high school and I worked as a pedicurist uptown, which I didn’t mind (I have this weird thing about toenails, which was how I ended up in beauty school instead of, y’know, bartending or waitressing like a normal person who wants to be a writer), but I went through my cash like you wouldn’t believe. The city is so freakin’ expensive—don’t get me started—I don’t know how you people live here.
ANYWAY. Where was I? Right—my hardscrabble upbringing, my thing about toenails—look, this is crazy, of course I didn’t murder him!
Seriously—look in my bag.
Yes, I realize it looks like a frozen leg of lamb. Because it is a frozen leg of lamb.
For Herman, of course.
Because, on his trip to my farm, he mentioned he wanted to start eating meat without hormones, okay? It’s for Herman. From me. Why would I bring a hormone-free frozen leg of lamb for someone I planned on murdering?
Have you not figured it out by now?
He’s my father.
Yes, seriously.
Well I’ll definitely take that as a compliment.
But it’s true. He’s the father who abandoned me before I was even born, the father I’ve tried to imagine my whole life, who I’ve written books about—albeit obliquely—and who I’ve fantasized about meeting for as long as I can remember fantasizing. I guess he was finally curious enough to find a way to meet me. He didn’t tell me who he was. Not even after I signed a book contract with him. Didn’t have the stomach for that, I guess. Imagine finding out that guy is your father? Herman Mildew? When I told my mother about the fellow who came around asking me to write a book about cheese, she actually fainted. When she came to, she told me the truth about Herman and her. And Herman and me. She also mentioned he was lousy in bed.