Part 1: I Woke up Dead

“So, why are you so fascinated with death?” asked the publishing agent, leaning over her impressive, oak desk, staring down on me.

I was trying hard to impress superbitch - Wanda Scythes, and was attempting to form a witty one-liner, something like Bob Hope might retort.  

“It’s the only sure thing in life,” I tried my best smile on her.  Dead silence.  She did not even crack a smile.  Suddenly the leather chair became even more uncomfortable.  

After several terrifying seconds, tapping her fingers on the desk, she said, “Mister ######…”

“#####,” I corrected her.

“Mister #####, we gave you a contracted agreement for three books.  To date, you have produced ZERO that are acceptable to this agency.  We certainly enjoyed your first novel for young adults, and it’s upon the sales of this first book alone, we gave you such a generous contract.  Now, give us something more like that first effort.  This?  You have given me nothing we can work with, nothing.  Death? 

We cannot sell death to young adults.  What could you be thinking, Mister #####?” 

I decided not to correct her this time.  She was on a tirade. On a mission.  On a lecture tour. 

Let’s just say, the conversation degraded from there.  The summation of which was a not-so-subtle threat to terminate my contract with Big Bookstores incorporated, unless I wrote more drivel like the Sirens of Jupiter.  And by Friday. 

Let’s see, about eighty nine thousand words divided by fifty-eight hours is about…. Ah, crap.  And without sleep.  Of course, I could pull out the old box of tricks that I stuffed away in my garage storage.  As Ms. Ballbreaker was blabbing on about the virtues of shit-cake Company incorporated, I was weighing my options. 

A certain part of my conscience detested my forward line of thinking.   In the box about ten years of college student assignments and short story segments, I had taken with me when I left Bresser College.   To say I owe my entire writing success to stealing other’s ideas would be simplistic at best.  Besides, the clown heads at that college owed me.  

They owed me, bigly. 

Okay, sure.  So, I lied about my teaching credentials.  Look, I was teaching those classes every day for ten years.  I was present more often than any of those so-called “real” professors, that’s for sure.  I already had tenure!  I would have gotten away with it forever, if it were not for that slut, Heather. 

Okay, Okay.  I get it.  I’m not painting a very rosy picture here.  Look, Heather was eighteen years old when we first met, so it’s not like I was doing a child, for Christ sake.  She knew what she was doing.  Brother, did she know what she was doing.  That chick was a total nymphomaniac.  I mean, anywhere, anytime. 

She was a freak for sex, I think.  I mean dangerous sex.  Like in public, that sort of thing.  The more in the open it was the crazier she became.  In the car, the park, the swimming pool, the tennis courts, dressing rooms at the mall, the woods.  It just did not stop.  And I was such a willing stooge. 

Just when I thought it got as freaky as it could, it got way out of hand, when she introduced me to her friend, Vicky.  Vicky would join us on occasion.  Me; little old me, laid a sum total of ten times in my life, suddenly lost in a sea of young tits and ass.  I guess I should have asked how young.  Since Vicky was a “friend” of Heather’s I just assumed…  

Well, you know what they say about assuming… 

The Dean herself caught us three after class one night, having a “special study session,” in my own classroom.  That was the end of a golden time in my life: Employment, housing, sex, and adoration from my peers.  They pulled my records and found I had no records, at least not for a college degree.  Hell, I never even went to college. 

Well, come to find out the bitch girlfriend’s name wasn’t even “Vicky”.  She was a seventeen year old runaway from Las Vegas and running her own “business” out of her foster parents’ house.  It was just too sickly sorted for the little college to expose publicly.  So, they covered it all up and after all the dust settled they allowed me to exit with nary a scratch.  I tell you, somebody up there must love me. 

Hey, I’m not proud of some of the things I’ve done in my life, okay.  Let’s just say I had to take a few shortcuts to get ahead.  Fact is, I landed as a writer partially because of my inclination to….well, take certain liberties with the truth....