Chillin’ [FICTOID]

“When shall we three meet again?  In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

“Will you knock it off that Shakespearean shit?  You do it Every.  Single.  Time. we meet.”

“And it gets funnier each and every time right?  Right?”

“Wrong!”  The horror novelist cleared his throat.  “We need to get back to the topic at hand,” he said, his breath frosting in the chamber’s chill, cold air. 

The chamber sat just under the peak of Mount Everest.  A few feet above them wealthy imbeciles with a fondness for long, slow suicide struggled to reach the top of the mountain for a selfie to show people to prove they climbed to the top of the tallest rat and corpse infested mountain in the world.

The three novelists couldn't care less about that sort of vain glory.  They rode a secret elevator dug up through the center of the mountain, disembarking at the apex to walk the remaining 30 feet up a stairway carved in the stone to a small chamber that awaited their deliberations.

Who dug the elevator and chamber and why is a fascinating story, one worthy of a 200,000 word epic but we won't get into that here so.  Suffice it to say there's a chamber and there's three novelists in it.

The horror novelist -- the most rational of the trio because who could appreciate true horror more than an utterly rational person forced to exist in our sad, sorry world? -- looked at the young adult author and the science fiction / fantasy writer with no small measure of disgust.  “We must attend to business,” he said.  “The fate of the children of the world is in our hands.”

“Get rid of the transgender groomers,” hissed the young adult writer.  She wrote a never-ending series of novels in which shallow, unthinking adolescents played at independence and rebellion without realizing they strictly adhered to their parents morality.

The sci-fi / fantasy novelist rolled his eyes.  Under a dozen pseudonyms he used to crank out barely readable parodies of famous literary works retold for the tentacle porn sub-genre.  “There you go again, invoking transphobia when you don't understand even the basics of -- ”

“I don't need to understand,” the young adult author snapped, turning on the sci-fi / fantasy novelist.  “They're whacking off little baby's wieners and yoohoos without checking with their parents first!”

“That's a nice plot idea,” said the horror novelist, writing it down in his tiny blood red notebook.  “I'm stealing it. Totally batshit but a good story idea.”

“It's the truth!” hissed the young adult writer.  “Use it and I'll sue!” “You just hush now,” said the horror novelist.  “You'll do no such thing and you know it.”

The young adult novelist turned away from the horror novelist knowing he had her number.

“Can we get on with it?” the sci-fi / fantasy writer asked.  “I've got to meet some people.”

“You know better than to schedule a meeting that conflicts with ours,” said the horror novelist.

“Yeah, well, sue me” the sci-fi novelist said.

“I can do worse than that,” the horror novelist said.  “I can get you expelled from this group.”

The sci-fi / fantasy novelist’s wide eyed expression told the horror novelist he scored his point.  “Okay,” he said.  “Let's not go off half cocked -- ”

“Who's cutting cutting kids’ own wieners off?” 

“Will you can it with this gawddam transphobia?” the horror novelist said.  “I want to get through this thing in time to create catch the last flight home today.”

The other two looked chagrined.  “Okay,” the sci-fi / fantasy novelist said. 

“Good,” said the horror novelist.  Nobody elected him leader but he possessed a loud, strong voice.  “Now let's focus on the fate of children for the next year.  What do we want most?”  

“For them to keep their yoohoos and weenies,” the young adult novelist muttered under her breath, the horror novelist mercifully opting to pretend he didn't hear her.

“How about promoting dystopian futures where adults try to kill kids?” the sci-fi / fantasy novelist said.

“Two reasons,” said the horror novelist.  “For one, it's been done; everybody and their pet monkey has written one.  Second and more importantly,  it's what they're living through right now, so no, no dystopias.”

“An ordinary world,” said the young adult novelist

“I don't follow,” said the horror novelist. 

“An ordinary world will make children realize this world is unfair and unjust,” she said. “The weak among them will sink into despair and remove themselves from the gene pool either by suicide or by refusing to reproduce. 

“The strong will grow into people who want to change the world for the better by opposing the selfish and greedy.”

The horror novelists hated to admit it but for a gawddamn bigot, the young adult novelist could concoct pretty brilliant ideas.

“But what about me?” the sci-fi / fantasy novelist wailed.

“You guys can write about the contemporary world but I can't.”

“Sure you can,” the young adult novelist said.  “Just set your story in the real world and have an elf or a fairy or a unicorn or an alien go up.”

“A nice alien” said the horror novelist.  “Like ET or My Favorite Martian, not a chest bursting face hugger.”

The horror novelist liked his long out of date horror references. 

The sci-fi / fantasy novelist grumbled but agreed.  When the three of them -- the best selling novelists in the whole wide world -- agreed on what their next books would be like they knew they would launch countless imitations in print and media with spillovers to music and unrelated genres that wanted to seem hip by belatedly referring to long established trends.

Their job done, the trio climbed down the stairs and rode the elevator to the secret subway station that bore them back to their homes to write their books and await next year's meeting.

The horror novelist made sure to turn off the lights because the last time he left them on and the electricity bill was murder.

© Buzz Dixon