The Abruptly Extraordinary Life of Hieronymus Bisby
an excerpt

Hieronymus Bisby Gives In
in which
Our Hero Speaks to his Soup, and It Answers Him

On Saturday, November 10th, unlike on the previous Saturday, Hieronymus got to sleep in.
As he opened his eyes and rolled over to look at the clock, he smiled and thought that being able to sleep until twelve fifteen was one of life’s simple pleasures.
(Or so I am told. If I slept till twelve fifteen, my parents would call 911. They would. But it doesn’t matter, because I have never slept past eight and never intend to.)
And then he remembered some things that were definitely not simple or pleasurable, or even normally a part of life. Specifically, he remembered two days of pseudo penguin stampedes and the classroom invasion by sky pirates.
“Oh, man,” he groaned, covering his head with his pillow as if that could block the author from reading his thoughts. Actually, though, it might be best to allow the author to hear his thoughts, because thoughts were words and a steady supply of words would, in theory, keep insanity like yesterday from happening again. But he still kept his head under the pillow, because sometimes one just needs to hide from the author who is controlling one’s life. Or just hide from the world. Whatever.
Eventually, though, his stomach’s growling forced him to get out of bed and contemplate what to have for lunch. He was feeling lazy and he didn’t feel like having a sandwich, though what with all the greasy pizza he’d been eating recently (maybe it was time to rethink his tradition), something low-calorie and wholesome like a homemade sandwich probably would have been good for him.
But he ignored that thought and decided to have some Chef Boyardee “ABC's 'n 123's Mini Meatballs Beef Ravioli.” Sure, it was a little childish, but he’d always loved Chef Boyardee products. So he set a pan of appropriate size onto the stove and let the canned pasta gloop into it. He turned the heat on, hearing the satisfying click click click poof of the flames starting up. He so preferred gas stoves to electric; just after college, he had lived in an apartment with an electric stove, and he had hated it. Gas stoves were just so much more satisfying. You could actually see the flames.
But why was he mentally rambling about types of stoves? Oh, wait, he knew the answer to that. The author wanted words. Rambling created words. Dares also created words, so he supposed he was getting off easily. If he could just keep mentally rambling, maybe the author would never have to stick a dare in her book again! Unless, of course, she decided that the book was getting too boring…
Hieronymus sighed. There seemed to be no end to what the author would do to increase her word count. He couldn’t believe she had practically repeated Thursday twice, the only real change being the addition of sky pirates. Sky pirates! What was a sky pirate anyway? How exactly did they sail through the sky? Did the author even know? Or was “sky” just a handy word to preface “pirates” with, for an extra word every time they were mentioned? In that case she could have chosen something else, like “horrible,” “infamous,” “dread”… Well, no, dread was already taken, so she couldn’t have done that. But something similar.
Okay, Hieronymus decided. That had been a rather nice ramble. What to ramble about next? It had to amuse the author, and he knew nothing of what the author was like, except that she was random. Really random. Suddenly the thought of snow popped into his mind. (Hieronymus had no way of knowing that this was because it had just started snowing where the author was, and in fact the snow was actually not melting right away, and she had moved to where she was from southern California last spring so snow, especially as early as November, was an amazing thing to her.)
Well, snow was all right. He had long since lost his childish fascination with snow. It fell from the sky when it was cold and sometimes it was inconvenient, and those were his only thoughts regarding snow, so it wouldn’t really make a good topic to ramble about. In fact, this whole rambling idea was ridiculous. Surely the author wouldn’t want to write a whole book of random rambles? And it took so long to get words from that anyway. Hieronymus was sure that he couldn’t have rambled for more than five hundred words just now. That wasn’t going to get him anywhere fast. He would need a different plan.
Ah, his pasta was starting to boil. Time to eat, then. He got out a bowl as he tried to think of some other way to keep the author’s appetite for words satiated. Suddenly, as took a cautious sip of his pasta sauce, an idea occurred to him. Yes, he thought, that might work. I would need her cooperation for it, but that might very well work.
How can I guarantee her cooperation? I should ask her. Surely she would find some way of answering me.
“O Author,” he said out loud, addressing the air. “O Author, I have a question for you. If you can hear me, please give me a sign. Anything will do.”
And he looked around. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but surely the author would do something to his surroundings if she wanted to speak to him. But nothing seemed to change. Nothing suddenly fell over—he was half-expecting some of his books to fall off the shelf, or a window to blow open, or something dramatic like that. But he saw no change.
Hieronymus sighed; if he couldn’t tell the author his plan, she would fill next week with more randomness before he could even put it into action. He’d have to think of something else, he told himself, and he looked back at his Chef Boyardee ABC’s ‘n’ 123’s. Then he gave a shout of alarm.
The soup had answered him.
In the soup, the letters had formed the words “I HEAR YOU.”
Hieronymus gulped. Okay, this had definitely crossed into the realm of the impossible. “You… hear me?” he asked in a shaky voice.
The letters that formed “I HEAR YOU” sunk back into the depths of the soup, and in a moment, a Y, an E, and a P floated to the surface.
YEP
“Y-you’re the author?”
Nothing changed for a second. Then, the P was replaced with an S, and then those letters sunk down, and an H and an I emerged.
HI
“Um, hi,” Hieronymus answered.
The HI disappeared. Two dots and a D took its place.
:D
When it became clear that Hieronymus was, at the moment, a little too overwhelmed to speak, the author used the soup to prompt
YOU HAD A QUESTION 4 ME
“Oh. Yeah,” Hieronymus said weakly. “Um. First of all, just to clarify, you’re not going to give up, are you?”
The letters (and number) of YOU HAD A QUESTION 4 ME went under and the letters H, A, H, A appeared. It was really quite eerie to watch. Then those letters disappeared and NO WAY took their place.
“Yeah, I thought as much,” Hieronymus sighed.
Then NO WAY sunk down, and to Hieronymus’s surprise, up came an S, an O, two Rs, and a Y.
SORRY
Hieronymus stared into his soup. He hadn’t imagined that the author might feel remorse for what she was doing in his life. He was so shocked that it was several moments before he said quietly, “You don’t need to apologize, I guess. I mean it’s not like you’ve actually been hurting me or anything.”
BUT U R STRESSED, the soup protested.
Hieronymus could hardly deny that, but he shrugged. “I’m getting over it. “
The letters to BUT U R STRESSED sunk back into the soup. For a moment nothing new came to the surface; then the word THANKS rose up.
“You’re welcome,” Hieronymus said. Then he got to the subject at hand. “Anyway, listen. I have a plan.”
OK
“I would really, really appreciate it if you stopped making my job so crazy. I’m sure that was fun to write, but it’s kind of been causing most of that stress we were just talking about. But I understand that that would create fewer words for you, unless you described every single action of my day, which would get boring. So I propose a trade-off: my next week is normal. No dares, no insanity. I don’t care if you write about it, but I’d prefer no craziness. But for Thanksgiving, we have an entire week off.” Hieronymus took a deep breath. “If you will let me have a normal week next week, I will go on A Heroic Quest to generate words during Thanksgiving break.”
The soup made no reply for a moment. Then about five Os popped up, followed by an H.
OOOOOH
“Does that sound good?” Hieronymus asked cautiously.
YEAH, the soup answered.
“So is it a deal?”
SOUNDS GOOD
“Good. All right.” Hieronymus thought for a second. “O Author, are you still there?”
YEP
“May I ask your name?”
OK, the soup said briefly. Then those letters disappeared and the author began spelling her name. A W popped up, followed by an A and two Ls. Those floated on top of the soup for a moment before going under. O and F replaced them; they sank as well, replaced by an I, two more Ls, U, S, another I, O, and N.
“Wall of Illusion?” Hieronymus asked incredulously.
ON INTERNET, the author—Wall of Illusion—explained.
“I was kind of thinking more along the lines of your real name,” Hieronymus pointed out.
THIS IS MORE WORDS
“Oh.” Of course. Hieronymus should have known that by now.
IS THAT ALL, the soup asked.
“Yeah, that’s everything,” Hieronymus answered. “It’s been nice to meet you, Wall of Illusion.”
U 2, HB, Wall of Illusion replied. BYE
And with that, all the letters that she had been holding to the bottom of the soup by not mentioning them floated back to the top. Hieronymus looked at his meal for a moment before shaking his head compulsively.
He did not want to eat something that he had just been talking to.
All right, he’d have a sandwich for lunch.