Pre-publication copy. All rights reserved, September 2014.

The Reich and Your Duties: A Very Brief History of the Reich Territory for Students Entering Gymnasium

by The Reich Institute for Child Development

Note:  To be issued and read on the first day of gymnasium to all schools within the Territory

Welcome to Gymnasium, a scary and turbulent but also exciting and wonderful time. You will spend the next years of your life training to be a good Citizen of t. . .

CHAPTER 1

That summer of 1970, Houston baked under a miserable sun.  Detective Nick Noelle felt as miserable as the weather.  Two months ago, his wife Sally had kicked him out of the cottage he’d bought just after they married, thinking this was where they’d both find peace.  Last month she showed up at his crummy place in a boarding house, whipped as a dog and needing nothing from him but money.  She was hooking again.  Between that and this goddamn heat, he was going crazy. That morni. . .

Jennifer Dawton and Winston Fields used to run a quaint diner off Old Highway 86. It was a long, winding road slicing through dense forests and meadows grazed by cows and other four-legged creatures. The barns used to hold horses and pigs and chickens, but by the time The Beast was born, there were only machines. Still, when the Dawton-Fieldses relocated back in the eighties, there were no sub-divisions or shopping centers or cookie-cutter homes. Just tick-infested forests filled with agile an. . .