Free Writer

Free Writer

  J. DeWayne Pierce

  Copyright © 2013 J. DeWayne Pierce

  All rights reserved.

  Free Writer

  "Who do you think you are?" The wild-eyed publisher said with that holier than thou condescending tone we all just love to hear. "You haven't been okayed by the Snob Bureau yet."

  "But I'm not a snob." I replied, quite indignantly too, I might add.

  "Then you'll never make it in the writing game."

  "Why is that?"

  "You got fresh ideas."

  "So, shouldn't everyone."

  The publisher laughed in my face, slinging coffee as well as a half chewed bit of pretzel and bacon at me when she spoke. "No, no, no, of course not." She laughed again. This time it wasn't a bit of bacon and pretzel, it was a good sized bite. It fell into her ashtray, but this time she picked it up and popped it into her mouth... Ashes and all. "It's zombies, vampires and werewolves you should writing about."

  "Why?" I asked sternly.

  "Because I say so, that's why. And you don't get published without me... Period. You got it?" She was really mad and offended now, spitting bits of her bacon and pretzel through the air as she yelled.

  "But I don't like zombies, vampires and werewolves." I revealed to her honestly.

  "It doesn't matter what you like. The readers can't get enough of this vampire junk. You had better get with it if you want to survive in this game." She lectured.

  "How can I write with creativity and enthusiasm about something I cannot stand?" I was baring my soul now.

  She laughed so hard this time that she started to choke. She pointed at her coffee cup, which was just out of her reach and motioned for me to hand it to her. "Thanqzzzz..." She tried to say it after I handed her the cup, but couldn't get it out. She was choking and laughing at the same time, while coffee now ran out her nose.

  I started to laugh at her, not out of cruelty you understand. I mean how can you be cruel to a publisher? I laughed because the situation was funny. She was funny, with snot and coffee now draining out of her quite large proboscis. She looked pitiful and helpless. I thought she deserved to look that way. I could not think of anyone who had earned it more. Well, maybe a few lawyers and politicians, but I'll not go into that right now.

  "Creativity and enthusiasm are a thing of the past. Just look at Amazon.com." She had finally recovered from her choking spell, after she wiped her mouth and snotty nose all over my shirt sleeve.

  "I'll have to admit, you're onto something there." I said.

  "See, you are starting to understand aren't you?" She apparently thought I had already surrendered.

  "What if I wrote some science fiction?" I inquired, somewhat innocently, even now.

  "I said zombies, vampires and werewolves were what to write, didn't I?" She said, not getting it yet.

  "No, I mean science fiction. You know, spaceships, gamma rays, aliens and such." I corrected her.

  "No way, little man. We can't touch that undocumented worker angle... Too dangerous. I could get run off the Avenue of the Americas for just thinking that. And you'd better zip it up too. The NSA is everywhere." She looked genuinely afraid now.

  "I'm talking about extraterrestrials, lady. You have heard of beings on other planets, haven't you?" I was overstepping I knew, but she hadn't come out of her blood sucking high yet.

  "Don't call me lady, buster. I'm Mzzzzzz." She scolded.

  It was going to take drastic measures to wake her up. She was acting like a vampire's thrall. "For heaven's sake, haven't you read any stories about landing on Mars and extrasolar planets." I was taking a chance, I knew, using terms probably unfamiliar to her.

  "Oh, that stuff." I was surprised. "It has that science stuff in it. Way, way too heavy for the readers of today. Asimov died you know?" She wasn't as stupid as I had presumed.

  "Science isn't dead." I explained.

  "Oh, but it is my boy. It's as dead as masculinity and patriotism in Washington, D. C."

  "Now, I'll have to agree that all that's dead in D. C., but haven't you heard what NASA has been doing lately? You know, warp propulsion, rovers on Mars, pictures of Earth taken from Saturn, it goes on and on." I was desperate to wake her up now. She just didn't seem to be receiving my transmission.

  "You poor kid. You just don't get it." I could not believe she was saying this. SHE was the one not getting it. "Nobody cares about that stuff anymore. It's too hard to think about. Hurts the brain you know. It's all bad for you. Besides, it doesn't fit the plan."

  "What plan is that?" I surely didn't know about any... plan.

  "You know... THE plan." She looked at me like I was just off the turnip truck.

  "No, I really don't." I was clueless.

  "Wow, you really are clueless aren't you? Didn't you get your package?" Her first question was rhetorical, but she expected an answer for the second.

  "I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about." I was beginning to doubt my own sanity now.

  "The package from the Snob Bureau, it tells you what you are allowed to write about. That 1950's science fiction and stuff was the first to go. The 'Plan' is explained in the package. You should read it."

  "Well, give me a run down on it. I don't like to read too much." I was jabbing the dragon.

  "Excellent, excellent. You may not even have to take the test." She hadn't caught on.

  "There's a test?" I was dumbfounded.

  "You don't think we can have people writing and publishing just anything they want to... Do you? It would be chaos." I could tell she actually believed in what she was saying. She had put her hands to her head when she said it, one over each ear.

  "I thought that was the idea of eBooks actually." I must have seemed dumber than dirt to her.

  "Oh, you poor dear. Did you fall for that too?" She laughed a big belly laugh and snorted too. "The eBook idea came straight from the dungeon under the 'Avenue' kiddo. It was designed to make people who fancied themselves writers think they could actually become published authors." She snorted again, loudly and got tickled at herself and snorted again, several times. She saw me look at her sheepishly. "You did fall for it." She laughed so hard this time her big belly jiggled and she snorted so loud it hurt MY throat. "You are so innocent. You should be in a museum."

  "I don't think that's funny." I said very assertively. I wanted her to know I was offended.

  "I don't care. You're a man and I can say anything I want to to you. Men just don't matter in this society. Your opinions, likes and dislikes, wants and desires, feelings and emotions are irrelevant today." She said, snickering. She apparently had a bad experience with one of her husbands along the way. After listening to her now, I pitied him. He probably hanged himself in a closet, in shame.

  "My poor Harold, he hung himself in the closet, right over there." My Gosh, I was right. She pointed to a small door on the other side of the office. "He just could not accept the inevitable."

  "The inevitable?" I asked, this woman was hard to follow.

  "Good gracious, boy, haven't you been listening? My husband was a science fiction writer, one of the best. He just could not adapt." She looked sad for a few seconds, but then her expression changed back to her stern demeanor.

  "Adapt to what?" I wasn't understanding her.

  She rolled up an old newspaper on her desk and began hitting me with it as she spoke. Swats on the back of my head with her paper kept rhythm with each of her pronounced syllables. "Are you stupid? Haven't you been listening to me?" She was getting exasperated and was out of breath now. She swatted me a couple more times, just for good measure and smiled at me. "You are just like him. If only..." She stopped speaking. It was obvious she missed him.

  "What was his full name? I might have read some of
his books." She was getting to me now. I was truly feeling sorry for her.

  "Harold Ganchize, but he wrote under a pen name." She had that longing look in her eyes again. Could it be? Were publishers human?

  "What was it?" I asked.

  "Oh, I can't tell you that." She answered, still looking wistful.

  "Why not? I'm sure he would want you to." I proffered.

  "Can't do that... I promised him. When I saw him hanging there in that closet..." She started sobbing a little, I think, pointing with her left hand and forefinger at the closet door. There might have been a tear in one eye, but I'm not sure. She continued. "Well, that was it for his writing career."

  "I'll bet it was." I almost busted out laughing at my own joke.

  "I had him hauled out of here as Spiro T. Williams, the building janitor. I wasn't about to let my husband embarrass me." She looked very indignant now.

  "But wouldn't the police have already checked all that out, I mean fingerprints, dental records, DNA and so forth?" I inquired naively.

  "You are so amazing. You are not that simple minded are you?" A rhetorical question again. "Of course you're not, you couldn't be. Anyway, what do you think money is for?" She answered, as she walked over to her coffee pot and poured a fresh cup.

  "To buy anything you want, I suppose." I mumbled.

  "Exactly." She said with a vampire grin and a mouthful of coffee.

  "So, you drove your husband crazy, crazy enough to hang himself in your closet. Then you had him hauled out on a stretcher, sheet over his body, under someone else's name..."

  "No, I didn't drive him crazy." She interrupted me. "It was that accursed science fiction that drove him stark raving mad." By her quivering voice, I knew she really believed what she was saying.

  "So, it's the science fiction that's accursed. Hah! It couldn't possibly be that way for zombies, vampires and werewolves, could it?"

  I had struck a nerve. She began swatting me with her rolled up newspaper and like before, with every pronounced syllable. "You got the nerve." She shouted. "Who are you anyway? A phony little ebook writer who has to give his work away for free to even get noticed. What a joke." She spat her words at me in contempt.

  "I apologize. That was very insensitive of me and stupid too. It's not too smart to insult a publisher that you want to publish your work, is it?" I was truly humble and not just for the all too obvious reason. I really could see I had hurt her. I didn't like doing that to most people. I was beginning to see that this lady might be an exception to my hypothesis, that all publishers were inhuman.

  "You are guilty on both counts." She knew she had me now. "I will make a deal with you."

  I could not believe it. She was starting to weaken now. "Okay, what is it?"

  "I will agree to publish your... science fiction," She hesitated saying it and then when she did, it was with such disdain. "if, you give me total and complete rights to all the work you have done so far and all your future work into perpetuity." She grinned that stupid vampire grin again.

  I hit the ceiling, well not literally, but then I fell down into one of the beanbag chairs at the far end of her office, by the open window. "Bull... bull, what do I get out of it? Besides, I thought you said science fiction was dead?"

  "No, I said science was dead." She answered my second question first. "You get the satisfaction of knowing that your work will be on the printed page of work put on the market by one of the finest publishing houses on the Avenue of the Americas." She still had that bloodsucking smirk.

  "At least I get my name out there and some money." I smiled with pride.

  "Oh no, boy, you misunderstand. Your work will be published under my husband's pen name."

  "You can't do that?" I was outraged.

  "Oh, but I can and I will."

  "That's theft." I barked at her.

  "I don't think so." She screeched back.

  "You'll have to pay me though and if it's published with your husband as the author, you'll make gobs of money. You'll have to give me a big hunk of that."

  "No, I won't. You are wanted for murder."

  "Huh? You told me it was suicide." I didn't get it.

  "Money, do you remember money? It talks."

  "You wouldn't."

  "I have to keep my husband's work out there for people to read. You see your writing style is so similar to his, no one will every catch on." She was a she devil.

  "But the police." I warned.

  "It would be much easier for the police to believe a rich publishing lady, rather than a starving 'Free Writer'. I might not even have to bribe any of them."

  "But your husband died some time ago." She was crazy. It would never work.

  "What made you think that?" She laughed. "He hanged himself yesterday and remember the police think he was the building janitor. They would be pretty upset if they found out a poor janitor was murdered. Especially by a vengeful writer whose work had been refused by a major publishing house."

  "So, what will I do? If you don't print my work in my name and don't pay me, how am I supposed to live. I have gotten used to eating, at least once a day, anyway." This was not looking too darn good for yours truly.

  "I've solved that for you. You'll live with me." She laughed like a banshee now. It was eerie to the max.

  "You have got to be joking?" I walked over to the nearby window and looked out. It was getting dark. I walked back to the beanbag chair.

  "It's no joke, boy. You're to be my thrall." She grinned from ear to ear, hissed at me and showed her very dangerous looking fangs.

  I swallowed very deeply. My throat was awfully dry, from my fear no doubt. I could not speak. I looked over at the window. It was a least ten stories to the sidewalk below, not at all survivable.

  "Come along my dear. It's getting late and I have to introduce you to the others." She sounded very authoritative now for some reason.

  "The others?" I asked sheepishly.

  "Why, the other thrall writers of course." She laughed that banshee laugh again.

  I jumped out the window.

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