THE EDITOR
~ Short tells of horror
Page after page, boredom and blur as one; The pages seemed spin like a well worn rolodex below her editing eye. You could see the reflection on her small square reading glasses. In fact, that is what most people saw, not her day dreaming eyes slightly turned up into the right eyes. Her eyes were dark and asiatic . They receded enough such that her window to her soul remained hidden in plan sight, much like a haunted mansion.
She was sort of a Winchester house, The crazy old mansion of the Winchester gun maker responsible for untold number western murders and gun fights.
Painful submission after painful submission, she was being tortured . Up late and 35 years old, still digging around in the trash at St. Matins press as an ordinary editor going through submissions.
She always needed the extra work do to her lavish spreading sprees. A glorified secretary by day, pick a character by night; they all lived well beyond her means.
Her blazing fast reading skills and surgeons eye always saved the day. It also kept her employed and where she was, basically no where except for night.
All the way up on the 17th flour , deserted, she liked it that way. No 20 something bimbos screwing the way up the corporate ladder. This bad grammar was enough. She wished they would all find the roof and jump. They often did, marrying the executive and then being dumped after kicking out a few pups and spreading the genes.
Scanning the text as if she had a bionic eye and yet day dreaming; basically, a paper shredder or better a dream executioner . Her paper basket was like a boxcar for manuscripts heeded to the company incinerator. Oh, the chimney belched out giant clouds of smoke like the famed Bergin Belson concentration camp.
Faraway, into the night, well ensconced into nightly fantasy inhabited by her imaginary friends, she was entertaining the thoughts of some cheesy romance novel.
Having buzz sawed through just about all books known to man, she found goofy , 1950 like novels strangely fascinating. Barbie like master pieces, Andy Whorhol wonders, faded cheep, dime store covers, they were her fine art. Passed down , from one feminine grimy mit to another, lip stick stains, nail polish, chocolate, and angst ridden sweat stains and even clues to a murder mystery, small blood stains.
She well knew the literary world in which she worked and lived would see her readings as bizarre and even blasphemous. She knew this world not fathom the his Harlequin Romance genius she had discovered in a dusty used book store. As cheesy as it was, this house wife had a serious left, she packed a king size lusty punch . She was so real and seemed to whisper, moan and scream into her soul. As much as she may have suppressed her fantasies in life, she let it all out in her novels.
Abigail spinning through the manuscripts in a late nite in a trance. She came to a submission that seemed to stab her like a burning poked from hell. It seemed to reach up and put a dirty minors pick from the dead through her heart.
“Sicko!”
She adjusted glasses and came to attention like a blood hound finding the sent of a run away murderer.
Her intuitive sirens screaming red. It was as if someone poured a bucket of cold water on her.
She just knew.
This was a killer writing her. It was too real, it was a death threat with her name on it, it was surreal and she seemed invaded her like some pervert on the street. The walls closed in on her. After 15 years, this building became very haunted. She broke out in a sweat and was reaching for 911. Shaking, she had enough, and silently it was time to go, really go, shivering from her own July city humidity , she mistakenly reached for her winter coat. She had a victims panicky jitters. She was literarily in the authors hand, book open and under it’s spell. It would be along cold subway ride home. Her imagination made her her a yunky that could not resist a good horror. She would read it on her way home. She tucked the manuscript in to her bag and away she went.
Like a beat down judas nun, the walls of her convent were assembled, book by book, since she was seven. Having climbed Calvary and into Cornell, it wasn’t supposed to be like this, whimpering and moaning. She felt like a forsaken old madden that really needed to be saved . Her fantasy life was becoming too real and she knew it like a heroin addict with all sorts of strange, city corner strange ticks.
