tales of the hotel st crispian, chapter 109: "a sensitive guy"

by Horace P. Sternwall

edited by Dan Leo* 

illustrations by danny delacroix and eddie el greco

*Associate Professor of Speculative and Fantastic Literature, Assistant Checkers Club Coach, Olney Community College; editor of Love Is Like a Sock on the Jaw: The Love Poems of Horace P. Sternwall, Vol. 1, with an Afterword by W.H. Auden; Olney Community College Press.

Meet Mack Treacher, international tough guy.  Interplanetary, intergalactic, time-traveling freebooting soldier of fortune.  Needless to say, an ex-Navy SEAL.  But nonetheless a sensitive guy.  Hey, he plays the blues violin.  He likes to play the deep plangent dark-blue blues, the sad Negro blues of the black night of lost souls everywhere, and he likes to play them late at night in his lonely shack up in the Sierras.  Also Mack Treacher has, or had, a drinking problem.  And a teenage daughter who hates his guts.  And an ex-pornstar ex-wife who double-crossed him by sleeping with what Mack thought was his best friend, Chad Chadwicke, a former Navy SEAL and now an elegant international hit man. And then his bitch wife had screwed over both Chad and Mack by taking off with a traveling evangelist by the name of the Right Reverend Dr. Moses X. Moses.  The Reverend Moses had gotten dumped too, and then his wife had joined the San Francisco police force and risen quickly to detective and then to head of the Homicide Squad.  Only in Frisco.  Mack hated Frisco… Mack Treacher had brawled and shot and knifed and clubbed his way through wars and insurrections and dirty black-op missions in thirty-two countries, six dimensions, four planets and a dozen different eras going back to the time of the ancient Romans (The Colosseum Caper) to the Seventh Interplanetary Walmart Reich  of the 26th century (The Walmart Insurrection). His bulky but muscular body was covered in scars, as was his tortured soul, on account of all he had seen, and done, and had done to him. Mack Treacher was tired.

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tales of the hotel st crispian, chapter 108: "no good is a bourgeois concept"

by manfred skyline

illustrated by danny delacroix and eddie el greco

editorial consultant: Prof. Dan Leo



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the groundskeeper - 2: a foundling

by nanette nanao

illustrations by danny delacroix

the record of my life begins with my being found in a basket by the side of the high road in the province of d------, on a cold sunny morning a little after the beginning of this unfortunate century. as it is unlikely that those who placed me there expended themselves by traveling any great distance to do so, it seems that i was probably born in the said province. i have never found occasion to doubt this most reasonable assumption, and i suggest that you, dear reader, accept it also. mademoiselle clotilde de t----------- de v-------- did everything at a most (100) leisurely pace, and liked her journeys through life and down the roads of the kingdom to be slow and smooth, so when the coachman spotted the bundle containing myself nestled between a rock and a flower and brought the coach from a trot to a halt she simply yawned and settled back in the coach, without even enquiring what he was about. reader, i believe i have already indicated to you my distinct preference for simple and pious persons, and i have no doubt that this preference was sealed on that distant morning when charles the coachman - the sole cause of (200) my continued existence, the most pious creature i would ever know and the first person i encountered in this life - after my anonymous mother and perhaps an equally anonymous midwife - picked me up and brushed the dew off my still blind face. did he say a prayer over me? probably not. curiously enough, despite his piety and his apparently limitless knowledge of the saints and angels and prophets and such, i do not recall that i ever actually saw or heard him pray. but i digress. charles picked me up and brought me over to the coach and handed (300) me to adolphe, a "footman" or generally underfoot servant of mademoiselle, a lazy worthless rascal of a type she was all too complaisant about, and who on this morning was accompaniying mademoiselle and her maidservant and charles to - well, that is of no interest to you, dear reader, so i refrain from the description. knowing adolphe as i later would, i have no doubt he was a veritable fountain of witticisms and droll remarks about my sudden appearance. but as he was always somewhat cowed by charles and did his bidding - more promptly than he did mademoiselle's or charlotte (400) the housekeeper's or jean-pierre the butler's - all of whom i will describe in good time - i do not doubt he handled me gently enough as the coach made it's easy way back to the chateau.

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tales of the hotel st crispian, chapter 107: "somebody uptown"

by manfred skyline

illustrated by danny delacroix and rhoda penmarq

editorial consultant: Prof. Dan Leo



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tales of the hotel st crispian, chapter 106: "the last chance"

by Horace P. Sternwall

edited by Dan Leo* 

illustrations by roy dismas and konrad kraus

*Associate Professor of Mid-Victorian English Literature, Assistant Shuffleboard Coach, Olney Community College; editor of Poems from the Poop Deck: 197 Previously Uncollected Ballads of the Sea by Horace P. Sternwall, with an Afterword by Lowell Thomas; Olney Community College Press.

“Now you’re talking. Let’s head into the bar then, shall we?” “Well, all right, but just one, mind.” “One and done,” said Flossie. The two women crossed the lobby, and Roland the night clerk seemed to rouse suddenly from a waking dream. “Good evening, Miss Wilde. And Miss Flanagan.” “Hello, Roland,” said Hyacinth.  “Hiya, Roland,” said Flossie. “And how is your evening going?” “Just swell, miss, thank you very much.” “Catch you on the flip side, pal,” she said. The two women headed on into the Prince Hal Room, and Roland sank once again into his reverie, dreaming of that motel he hoped someday to own. Perhaps just on the border of Death Valley? Wouldn’t motorists want to stop and rest up before plunging into the parched wasteland of Death Valley? Perhaps he could also have a gasoline pump, and a small shop, in which people could stock up on provisions, just in case their cars should break down in the middle of the desert. He could call his motel The Last Chance Motel. The last chance for the weary traveler, before heading off into that burning and merciless hell… Nolan came out of the hallway leading to the restrooms just in time to see Miss Wilde and Miss Flanagan entering the Prince Hal Room. And what were those two fillies up to? Perhaps the Flanagan girl was doing one of those personality profiles that people liked to read about actors and actresses, even ones as empty-headed as that Wilde girl. He strode over to the desk, where Roland looked, as usual, to be sleeping with his eyes open. “So, Roland, did ya hear the Commies have landed in force out by the West Side docks?” “Pardon me?” said Roland, blinking. “I said did I miss anything while I was in the john?”

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tales of the hotel st crispian, chapter 105: "i'll have to talk to my friend"

by horace p sternwall and manfred skyline

illustrated by danny delacroix and eddie el greco

editorial consultant: Prof. Dan Leo

jake's head hurt. it had been a long night - and it was not over yet. he had lost track of lullaby lewinsky's tale of meeting corporal gray in times square and his rambling account of his and gray's - or was it just gray's? - exciting adventures in war-torn europe - and was there any point to it all? at all? finally, the venerable hotel st crispian loomed up ahead. up on the sixth floor of the hotel, stan slade was standing to the side of the broken window in room 603 and looking down at the dimly lit street. "come on, jake, where are you?" he turned to cosette, who was sitting on the bed. "i must have been out of my mind to trust him." cosette came over and looked out. "you want me to go look for him? i can ask to get off early, it's slow tonight." "thanks for the offer, but if he didn't go to the drugstore he could be anywhere by now. he could be on a bus to d c, to talk to j edgar hoover." "maybe you should think about getting out of here." "yeah, maybe i should." cosette thought for a few seconds. " there are a couple of empty rooms on the third floor." "it might be better if i got out of the hotel. i just wish i had somewhere good to go." "that's up to you." stan went away from the window and sat back down on the bed. "maybe you should go up and see if hyacinth is back." cosette peered down the street. "wait - i think i see him now." "yeah?" "and he's got somebody with him." "what !? it's got to be a cop." "no, wouldn't the cops come in a car?"

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on the corner

by horace p sternwall

illustrations by penmarq studios

i stood on the corner all my life and never got lost and everything in the drugstore i knew what it cost the pizza parlor behind my back the echoes from the railroad track the endless movies in my head the roads down which they never led the distant highway with its phantom trucks the silver rolls royces and the big bucks everybody's dreams or only mine? the flicker of a match or endless time? i want to jump in the river of darkness and wash my life away let that shiny moon rise over my grave and let them never find me the next day