Mole Mann

“Your new world, Monsieur President,’ she said. Well, maybe she didn’t say “mister” in the French style, maybe Jefferson’s just remembering it that way because he likes the accent, but the point remains that when he slid the box open he found inside it just a few blades of green, green grass. Mr. Jefferson fails to remember how he responded to this, or even whether he asked his visitor to explain herself; she may well have vanished from his office before he could so much as speak (after all, a mysterious entrance should always be complimented by a mysterious exit). [from Grass]”
― Lawrence Miles, Dead Romance

“Fire and sword laid waste the Earth. Darkness stalked the land. From the ashes of
defeat and the smoke of despair, the people of Earth, searching for a future,
plundered the past. It was the time of the Great Concoction, when the world was
remade.
In the thirty-first century of Our Lord, the Europe of the past rose again in the
shape of Europa. In Europa, history was reborn.
The geologic upheavals of Europa's formation resulted in an acute psychic
backlash, manifested in periodic shifts in reality and embodied hallucinations. Spatial
dimensions became mercurial in their behaviour. Entire counties could be crammed
into a field. These anomalies were exacerbated by advances in psionics which
produced dream worlds that were as close to the notion of a real supernatural as
makes no odds. Spectres, poltergeists, fallen angels, unfallen angels, trolls,
hobgoblins, vampires, werewolves and suchlike entities sprang into pseudo-being.
It was upon this ontological quicksand that the Dominions of Europa were
founded, recreations of ancient European countries, each containing several time
periods. Within each of these historical eras there existed a small percentage of
'Reprises'; clones of famous figures from history artificially encoded with the
appropriate personality matrix. These Reprises were prone to severe identity
confusion. Yet more acute was the confusion of the fictional Reprises, clones of
actors who became identified with particular roles: in these cases, it was not the
actor's personality that was encoded into clone-body, but the role he played.
By the thirty-third century, Europa was plunging into chaos. Reality unravelled. It
was a time of heroes, whimsical worlds, blood and thunder, and general Byronic
excess. Dark powers arose. Fearful villagers locked their shutters at night. Fire and
sword laid waste the Earth. Darkness stalked...
Excerpt from The Tenebrous Testaments of the House of Rue. chapter XIV. volume
CLXVII
[From Count (Baron) Dracula and Baron (Count) Frankenstein]”
― Stephen Marley, Perfect Timing

“Train held up the head of the statue, the priceless Primavera of Florence, the seventeenth-century prize created by the Great Frenchman Pierre Tranqueville, which he'd found in the gutter next to the Arno and couldn't unload for fifty dollars. In the dim light of the barn loft, the dirty piece of marble looked like a piece of whitened shit.”
― James McBride, Miracle at St. Anna

“Citizens of both sexes withdrew along the walls and watched the water turn into a thin gruel of blood and filth and none could take their eyes from the judge who had disrobed last of all and now walked the perimeter of the baths with a cigar in his mouth and a regal air, testing the waters with one toe, surprisingly petite. He shone like the moon so pale he was and not a hair to be seen anywhere upon that vast corpus, not in any crevice nor in the great bores of his nose and not upon his chest nor in his ears nor any tuft at all above his eyes nor to the lids thereof. The immense and gleaming dome of his naked skull looked like a cap for bathing pulled down to the otherwise darkened skin of his face and neck. As that great bulk lowered itself into the bath the waters rose perceptibly and when he had submerged himself to the eyes he looked about with considerable pleasure, the eyes slightly crinkled, as if he were smiling under the water like some pale and bloated manatee surfaced in a bog while behind his small and close-set ear the wedged cigar smoked gently just above the waterline.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West