Twisting Topeka

Annette Hope Billings, Annabelle
Corrick, Jamie Crispin,

Aimee L. Gross, Ian Hall, Reaona
Hemmingway,

Duane L. Herrmann, Miranda Ericsson
Kendall,

C.R. Kennedy, Diana Marsh, Roxanna
Namey, Vernon Neff,

Craig Paschang, Marian Rakestraw,
Leah Sewell,

Lissa Staley, Paul Swearingen, and
S. R. Thompson

Topeka and Shawnee County
Public Library

Topeka, Kansas

Twisting Topeka is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors’
imaginations or are used fictitiously.

Project Organizer: Lissa Staley

Project Organizer: Miranda Ericsson

Consulting Editor: Marian Rakestraw

Copy Editor: Bethany McGuire

Book Layout: Ian Hall and Reaona
Hemingway

Interior Illustration: Lana Grove

Cover Design: Michael Perkins

The Community Novel
Project
is a work that is collaboratively
conceptualized, written, illustrated, edited, published and
marketed by members of our local writing community. Learn more at
tscpl.org/novel.

Copyright © 2016 Topeka and Shawnee County
Public Library

All rights reserved.

ISBN-10: 1535596287

ISBN-13: 978-1535596282

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
TWISTING TOPEKA

“
A
rich collection of talent and imagination. The
diversity of the stories is stunning, but they share one thing in
common--each one will make you think.”

—
R.L. Naquin, author of the Monster
Haven series

“
An eclectic collection of stories
that will be entertaining for fans of short form
literature.”

—
James Young,
author of
Acts of War

“
TWISTING
TOPEKA
—time travel, tricks / turbulent
& terrifying times / tunnels / tragedy, treasure, triumphs /
trysts & twists—NOT your typical Topeka
tales.”

—
L.J. Williams,
author of
The Crystal
Egg

“
The 18 short stories in this book
twist the past and warp the future, challenging the reader to
imagine ‘what if?’”

—
Angel Edenburn,
author of
Night Blind

“
Welcome to a world where nothing
is as it seems. The stories, characters, and prose flow from each
story like interwoven chains. Authors turn Kansas history upside
down and inside out, giving us alternate timelines and new spins on
the ordinary. Fellow Topekans, watch out! History is about to get
twisted.”

—
Romualdo R.
Chavez, author of
El
Vampiro

Twisting Topeka

Contents

Foreword

1.
What Fate
Ordains
Diana
Marsh

2.
Native
Son
Marian
Rakestraw

3.
The Printed
Word
Miranda Ericsson
Kendall

4.
Tovarishch
O’Sullivan
Craig
Paschang

5.
Test Year
Jamie Crispin

6.
Proclaim the New
Name
Duane L.
Herrmann

7.
Cleansing
Waters
C.R.
Kennedy

8.
As Mercy Would Have
It
Annette Hope
Billings

9.
Underground
Ark
Reaona
Hemmingway

10.
Shake, Rattle and
Roll
Roxanna
Namey

11.
Black
Blizzard
Vernon
Neff

12.
A Library for Every
Kid
S. R.
Thompson

13.
The Jesse Owens
Effect
Ian
Hall

14.
Happiness is a Cold
Pistol
Paul
Swearingen

15.
Psychic
Shift
Annabelle
Corrick

16.
Tunnels
Leah Sewell

17.
Love and
Friendship
Lissa
Staley

18.
Dance with the
Devil
Aimee L.
Gross

Afterword

Author Biographies and Interviews

Also Available

Foreword

On the eve of my heart
catheterization I felt anxiety, not on account of my health, but
because I was afraid I would miss a presentation on editing the
novel. It was the program of the library’s 2016 series for writers
that I most wanted to hear. But alas, the doctor came to tell me I
had only months to live. We moved to Paris. A fellow writer
translated my novel into French and I hers into English, and I left
my husband an inconsolable millionaire.

Oh, did I mention that that happened in an
alternate timeline?

In our own timeline, I merely
missed the presentation and the story deadline, but in that version
the reader also misses out on the suspense and drama of my triumph
and death. In this anthology, Twisting Topeka, the writers have
twisted the past or the present and made fascinating results appear
when they asked “What if….?” It’s surprising how many of them have
taken a small real-life incident as the starting point for their
fictions.

The group that writes the
Community Novel has major input on the direction the work takes.
The writers at the planning meeting considered a long list of
themes, and chose this one because it narrowed the focus enough to
make the book interesting and characteristic, without limiting the
reach of the writers’ imaginations. Kansas, maybe Topeka, maybe
even the library- which turns out to have a snarky alternative
history of its own in “A Library For Every Kid.” Another,
unexpected library appears in the elegiac “The Printed Word.”
Topeka’s mental health institutions feature in three stories: the
supernatural prose poem “Tunnels,” “Psychic Shift,” in which the
chaos butterfly gets a workout in a garden at Menninger’s, and
“Cleansing Waters,” which divides its setting between there and
Gage Park and drops some famous names. The State Capitol is the
setting for “Native Son,” in which John Steuart Curry pulls a
moving fast one, and for ambiguous, layered “Tovarisch
O’Sullivan.”

Ordinary Topekans are menaced by
death in the cynical “Happiness Is a Cold Pistol” and the tender
“As Mercy Would Have It.” A girl makes a hasty choice in the
chilling SF story “Test Year.” Bureaucracy is the villain in the
delightful Austen homage “Love and Friendship.” No one chose the
Pentecostal origin story, but Kansans get religion surprisingly in
“Proclaim the New Name.”

Turning our attention to the wider
world, we see a presidential candidate undone by one unconsidered
act. A small piece of tech changes the space program drastically in
the vividly imagined “What Fate Ordains.” Supporting the troops
leads to trouble in the WWII-set “Dance with the Devil.”
“Underground Ark” has echoes of “The Stand” and “A Boy and his
Dog,” but it’s merely what many people might have chosen. Of course
Nature has a say in a couple of stories. In the flash fiction
“Shake, Rattle and Roll” the end is inevitable; in “Black Blizzard”
the lost opportunities sting as the tragedy slowly
unfolds.

Nonetheless this is a pretty cheerful book,
and one we hope you will enjoy. In another timeline you might read
my story for this project. A grown-up Dorothy, who never went to
Oz, has always had odd and disturbing dreams….

Betsy McGuire

Topeka, KS

2016

What Fate Ordains

Diana Marsh

“
Fate has ordained that the
men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon
to rest in peace.”

Excerpt from undelivered
speech prepared for President Richard Nixon in case of an Apollo 11
disaster.

July 20, 1969

The rocket hits the ground hard enough
to snap in two; you join it a second later. You, at least, stay in
one piece, even if your cheek throbs. When you look up, Claire
Hooper stands over you, bent nearly in half at the waist. “Take it
back,” she says. Her fists are poised in front of her and she
shakes one at you as she speaks. “Take it back right now, or else.”
Her eyes are narrow green slits slicing into you.

You scramble to your feet. “Will
not!” You kick one dusty rocket half at her. “It’s
true! Not my fault it’s true.”

“
You take it back or I’ll
pop you another one!”

Two adults run out of the house.
Claire’s dad reaches the two of you first. He grabs her around the
waist and hauls her off her feet. Your dad stands in front of you,
tanned, meaty arms crossed over his chest. “What the hell are you
doing, Joey? Picking fights with girls now?”

“
She picked the
fight!”

“
He deserved it!” Claire
squirms in her dad’s stringy-armed hold. You know without a
doubt if she could get loose she’d sock you again for
tattling.

“
Claire Alice Hooper, you
stop that right now.” Mr. Hooper looks at you, then the broken
rocket next to you. “This over that busted thing? You breaking toys
now, Joey?”

“
I broke that.” Claire
sounds almost proud about it, too. “It’s over him being a
dufus.”

“
Who’re you calling a
dufus? You’re a dufus!” You look up at your dad, convinced if
anyone will see the logic of your argument, it’s him. “Girls can’t
be astronauts, right Dad? They don’t allow dumb ol’ girls in
space.”

Claire lurches against Mr. Hooper’s
tenuous hold. “They’d let a girl in space before they’d let a dufus
like you anywhere near it.”

“
All right, you
two.” Your dad grips your shoulder. It doesn’t hurt. It’s
not the “you’ve got a whipping in your future” grip; it’s the “just
hold up” one. You know the difference by now. “Let’s just head
inside, all right? Almost time for the big event.”