The Editor from Hell

THE DEVIL’S  EDITOR

Ignacius "Iggy" von Eben That's me. The literary genius responsible for "The Gnome Conspiracy", where I make it evident to the whole world that immortal gnomes from another planet are actually the hidden rulers of our planet, controlling behind the scenes the entire global banking and military-industrial complex. It was gnomes who have started all the wars, created and destroyed nations and religious beliefs and basically hypnotized all mankind to become their sex slaves.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Although I was born in Pittsburg, I decided to leave my so conservative and boring Lutheran parents when I turned 18 and study literature and liberal arts in UCLA. It was the late 70s, and counter-culture was in decline. Disco had uprooted all the value of Rock n’ Roll and the psychedelic revolution had turned into the drug-trade. As a gay, conservative and non-drug user, I was kind of an oddity amongst my peers. In fact, I was lonely. Always lonely. It was then that I began to suspect something very odd was going on in our planet. Something that had to do with how things are presented to us by the mass media, and which coffee-house discussions are acceptable and which are not.

Finally, after graduation, I found myself in the middle of Reganomics and without a job, so I left the depressingly cheerful west coast to join the real, tried and true apocalyptic-thinkers. I had to move to New York City. I did not belong among the beach-bums and bleached blondes.

It was in the Big Apple when I started to write the “Gnome Conspiracy”. I worked a variety of part-time jobs, from telemarketing office supplies to part-time secretarial work for a variety of big corporations. In addition to my principal research, I sent a few science fiction stories to the then popular MORBID TALES, a bi-weekly literary journal of all things strange and disturbing. One of those stories was accepted, a ridiculous tale about a parasitic growth that possesses it’s owner.

But that tale led to my meeting the two most important human beings (or at least I thought so) in my life. One was Super Fly, a gorgeous, insanely healthy negro who worked as a dance-instructor, and who counted with an incredible appreciation of my writing skills. Super Fly moved in with me about one week after we began having sporadic sex.  He did not change my life, but he did give me the bravery to begin writing “Gnome Conspiracy”.

The other was Oswald Henderson Smith. Henderson Smith was the publisher and chief-editor of MORBID TALES, and the person who actually set up my writing career. At first, it was just short stories, but by the mid 90s, I had already published two novels. The reasonably good response from these allowed me and Super Fly to move out of Queens and to rent a duplex overlooking Central Park. I bought a Jetta and we flew to Acapulco for summer vacations. No more shitty jobs. No more telemarketing. No more filing office papers. I was finally “somebody”.

My life was perfect. I knew my place, and oddly enough, I never thought of taking the Gnome Conspiracy to Oswald, since he published fantasy and science fiction, not conspiracy theories. But the work continued, and now, with my mind clear and my lover at my side, I finally managed, 10 years after commencing, to finish the book.

It was Super Fly who convinced me to take it to Oswald.  Oswald was, after all, one of my best friends, and although he did not really care for conspiracy books, he would be certainly the right person to direct me to somebody who could publish my work.

How should I describe “Gnome Conspiracy” to you? Let’s just say that if you begin to read between the line in all the children’s stories, fables of old, and history books, you will begin to see a pattern emerge of the influence of “wee folk” on human affairs that will take you to the hidden vaults of the Vatican, the odd rituals of the House of Windsor, African Voodoo, Aztec Sacrifices and Atlantis. It’s a huge paradoxical tapestry of inconceivably rare historical footnotes which in and of themselves have no real weight, but when put all together, begin to tell a tale of a race of beings who have co-existed with humanity since the beginning of history, and who are more than likely responsible for all the important historical events in our times.

From the discovery of the printing press, the crucifixion of Jesus, Attila, Julius Cesar to Hitler and Napoleon and even Oppenheimer and the Atomic bomb, “little people” were somehow involved with all these characters for good or ill.  And as a firm member of the gay and lesbian community, I have to also admit that these little people have been leading us into stranger and stranger sexual practices, ever since before the times of the Satyrs in Greece and Rome.

 And so, 10 years after, I found myself outside of the door of my great friend Oswald, with a huge box in which was a printed manuscript of 2,982 sheets of single-spaced (he hated that, he always told me to make them double spaced, but I never did to save on paper) print.

It was my baby.

My child.

What I had worked my whole life to achieve.

And I was about to present it to my best friend, the man who had saved me from anonymity and the slavery of wage-work.

His door read: EDITOR IN CHIEF on a single simple metal plate. It was a simple wooden door with a copper-plated metal plate, but to me, it looked like the entrance to the abyss. I had never thought of publishing “Gnome Conspiracy”. I had simply wrote it for myself, for my own understanding of things, or my complete map of what I had conceived as real. But publishing it. It took a lot of valor. Opening that door would mean that my innermost fears and thoughts would be exposed to everybody. They would be … I would be…

Transparent.

I never needed an appointment to see Oswald. He was a friend. A comrade. Somebody who understood my peculiarities and accepted me as I was. So I just walked in.

He sat, as always he sat, behind his gigantic cedar desk, which was covered in manuscripts and other documents. He had no computer. He hated them. He needed paper. He needed books, and ledgers and manuscripts and files inside of orange file folders. Outside his office, dozens of employees worked with the best computers. Inside his office, we were traveling in time towards a time when publishers published print.

He was an elegant man. Tall and thin and always immaculately dressed in a custom-tailored suit with a preference for bow-ties. He never failed to have a matching handkerchief on his jacket pocket. His socks matched his tie always. And he had his salt n’ pepper black hair neatly trimmed and his fingernails perfectly manicured. His office was very much like him, an elegant anachronism. Art-deco furniture wooden furniture perfectly polished and of course, potted plants in excellent shape.  A variety of pictures of important authors who had written for MORBID TALES through the years lined his Fleur de Lis wallpapered walls. There I saw the greats, Asimov, King, Barker, Moorcock, Scott-Card…  My dream was to join that illustrious wall one day.

He got up and smiled upon seeing me, shoot vigorously my free hand and motioned me to sit down. Then he called his secretary, the ancient Teutonic Mrs. Schmidt to bring me my favorite: latte cappuccino with a mint-leaf and honey instead of sugar.  He was already drinking green tea from a deliciously expensive, gold-rimmed tea cup.

“Well, Hello, Iggy. New manuscript?”

“Yes.” I managed to say. I felt weak. My stomach was churning. I was afraid I had to fart.

He took the heavy box from under my arm and sat back down.  He opened the box and looked at the title page.

“The Gnome Conspiracy. What an odd title, Iggy. What’s it about?”

“Non-fiction.”

There was a silence while my friend considered this news. Then he smiled at me and nodded, not really looking at the first page just then.

“You want me to help you find a place for it, right?”

“I really was not sure if I should bring it. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to publish it, Oswald.”

“How long have you worked on it, Ig?”

“All my life, I think!”

“I understand.”

 And then he began to read.

At this point I want to discuss transformations. I doubt very much if any of you, gentle readers, have ever seen one. In fact, seeing one is kind of a terrifying, mind-bending event, like a car-crash or drowning in a pool. I imagine it’s similar to seeing a ghost, or a UFO, although I’ve never had the misfortune of either. When you see, with your own eyes, somebody metamorphose into something other than what you believe them to be, it is a horrid, terrible thing. A kind of hypnotic waking-nightmare.

And that’s exactly what began to happen to Oswald as he began to read my pages.

At first, it was very subtle. His posture. His eyes. The manner in which he held the printed pages. I couldn’t really tell you what gave it off, because there were too many and too subtle clues that something paranormal was occurring right before my eyes.

But as he absorbed, each time faster and faster the pages inside the box, placing them, first neatly to one side, and then, increasingly without any care for how they landed, some of them even reaching the plush carpeted floor. Saliva and snot started to pour from his nose and mouth. His eyes bulged visibly, seemingly desirous of popping out entirely from their sockets.

Within a matter of minutes, he had reached the half point of the manuscript, and now his shaking and transforming were truly horrendous. He began to “shrink”, his back curving and somehow… growing… his long legs shrinking into short stubby limbs. His long slender fingers grabbing each paper with increasing anger and frustration.

I got up and started for the door…

“Don’t you DARE move from that chaiiirrrrrrrrr…” he screeched.

It was nothing like his voice. His eyes were now bloodshot and utterly inhuman. His 5 foot 10 inch frame had shrunk to less than 4 feet. His gentle Anglo-Saxon nose had turned into a porous, turnip. His mouth into a jagged animal maw. And his ears… his ears were now the ears of a feral beast, pointed and furry.

He turned his utterly … changed… face to regard me, pointing at the text under his gigantic nose.

“….it was certainly because of the influence of these insidious creatures that Napoleon and Hitler both decided to invade Russia in the winter, assuring the defeat of both dictators…” he read, accusingly.

At that moment, I felt in need to defend my words. My statements. My theories. I spoke rapidly and full of terror to the apparition facing me:

“In the case of Napoleon, there is evidence from a letter he wrote to…”

“SHUT UPPPPPPPP!!!!!! QUIETTTT!!!!! NO A WOOORRRDDDD!!!!” Screamed the Oswald-thing at me, and he continued reading.

By the time my handsome, pristine friend Oswald had finished reading the manuscript, which took only a few more minutes, he had transformed, morphed himself, entirely, into a hideous goblin, a tiny and horrid creature with green skin and demonic, insane factions.

Fearing death or worse… I put my hands over my eyes, asking whatever Gods might hear my prayer to save me from what was about to come to me for daring to write about something that would be best forgotten by history and hidden to mankind.

“I am sooooo sorry, Oswald. I had never imagined you were one of … them… I beg you, don’t kill me. Please. Don’t turn me into something… wretched.”

The familiar, melodic, tranquil voice of my friend replied:

“Whatever are you talking about?”

I looked up at him, opening my fearful eyes. And there he was. Oswald was no longer a troll. He was perfectly normal, human and impeccably handsome and well-groomed as always. Had I just hallucinated the entire event? Was I losing my mind?

“I… It’s just that… I guess you’re not really interested, right?” I said meekly.

“Are you serious? It’s your best work. Of course, non-fiction would ruin your reputation, that would never fly, but I will be happy to publish it. Hell, I already have a few ideas for the cover-art. There is just one thing… Can you change it to the Reptilian Conspiracy? Nobody is going to take Gnomes as a serious threat. Those guys are just there as garden decorations!”

 

The Haunted Trailer Park

The Haunted Trailer Park

William Robert McRoy was not the smartest person in the world. After his mother died and was eaten by cats, he inherited her mobile home in rural South Carolina in the town of Rickenbocker, where everybody was a Rickenbocker and basically they were all cousins. Of course, Billy Bob, as the neighbors soon knew him, was also a Rickenbocker on his mother's side, and, he found out soon, we was related to everybody in the trailer park somehow.

Billy Bob was a big man. He topped 315 lbs with ease. And with a combination of disability insurance (he suffered from chronic back pain from his overweight), sales at the jockey lot of everything from counter-fit porn movies to used comic books, he did actually quite well. He spent most of his time searching for porn on his computer, and of course, downloading it and burning DVDs to sell the weekends.

Folks at the trailer park left him pretty much alone. His mother had been found after two weeks of being dead, eaten by her cats, who when she stopped feeding them, decided she would make a good breakfast. When the smell was bad enough to reach the neighbors, a local cop checked in on her and found her half-eaten body, now too putrid to be of any interest to the felines. The event had been a bit of a scandal at the Rickenbacker Trailer Park and thus, when Billy Bob came in to reclaim the trailer, he was shunned by the rest of the neighbors because they were mostly too embarrassed to speak to him personally.

Years later, nothing had changed. Not even the weird smell of death that clung around Billy Bob's single-wide.  A couple of people did get to know Billy Bob mostly because of the sheer proximity of his trailer from theirs.  The young married couple, Cindy and Al, who were just across the yard. And the single mom Sherry with her 8 year old Dee Dee. Cindy and Al avoided her because they thought that Sherry had been pregnant with Dee Dee by her own brother, who was now in a Federal Penitentiary for lewd acts upon a child. His fourteen year old cousin, of course. They had a fight, and she told about their "love" sessions to a local school teacher.

Because of all this, Sherry was a bit paranoid of Billy Bob and his 315 lbs of man-flesh, including ridiculously large man-tits,  legs thick as hams and his choice of a viking-looking red beard. She also knew that he sold pornos at the Jockey Lot. So Dee Dee was not allowed to speak to Billy Bob, which made it all the most interesting for the precocious preteen to flirt daily with him.

One such day, when Sherry had gone off to work at the local Waffle House, Dee Dee came upon Billy Bob while he was cutting the lawn. He was not a fastidious housekeeper, but he did like to keep his busy body neighbors out of his way by keeping his yard reasonably clean.

"Ever been inside the haunted trailer, Billy Bob?" said the cute but mischief seeking child.

"Dee Dee, you know your mom don't let you talk to me. Why you bothering?"

"I ain't worried about you like my mom, Billy Bob. You're too stupid to be a rapist. Or a kidnapper." 

"You mean the abandoned trailer?" replied Billy Bob trying to change the subject.

"Yeah. I've been inside. There is a pentagram drawn in blood inside."  she said, with a weird other-wordy voice.

"Dee Dee go home and watch some cartoons or something."

"Scaredy cat. Scaredy cat.".

"I got work to do." said finally Billy Bob leaving the weed eater he used to cut his grass to one side and going back in without having another word with the child... Dee Dee kept repeating "scaredy cat, scaredy cat" until she got tired of it and went off to do some other terrible thing somewhere else.

In fact, Dee Dee hat hit a nerve.

Billy Bob did not think of himself as a obese freak living off social security. He actually believed himself to be a great adventurer. A paladin of justice. In fact, he considered himself the "avatar" of a powerful other-dimensional being, caught in this body at this time in this trailer park because something was going to happen to alter all reality and he was going to be in the right place at the right time to save the world.

In his dreams, he was Billy Bob, sure, but he was also Rainsong, a powerful warrior who lived in a distant planet called Nagaloka, and who had somehow split his "soul" into various bodies to make himself immortal, and one of these parts of his soul was Billy Bob. Rainsong was muscular and popular and immortal, and he was a kind of King, who lived in a huge yellow skyscraper in the middle of a forest full of weird and exotic beings.

He couldn't explain it all... but in his dreams, he knew... He knew.

And he also knew that the "Haunted Trailer" was actually some kind of doorway to this other dimension, a kind of gateway. He had dreamed of this haunted trailer many times. Dee Dee was right in calling him scaredy cat. He knew that he would find the gate if only he would go in.

But he was afraid of "breaking and entering." He had never done anything illegal in his life, (besides making pirate copies of porn videos hacked from internet, of course)  and the idea of breaking the law terrified him. Well, maybe not the idea of breaking the law, but surely the idea of getting caught.

But Dee Dee's taunt had made up his mind.

He would BUY the haunted trailer.

The next day, he went early to the manager of the Rickenbocker Trailer Park, Dona Rickenbocker, a heavyset dirty blonde 30-something, who must have been gorgeous when she was a teen, but had long since lost her figure and her smile along the way, and who had inherited the trailer park from her cousin. A male cousin who lived with her until his untimely death in a hunting accident. She lived in a gorgeous double-wide home, something like a "trailer" palace, with a huge yard that even had a real apple tree. The apple tree had little green apples, but nobody ever touched them, so the vast majority of them were just rotting under the tree.

Dona was inside drinking ice-tea and vodka and watching soaps on television. She had a Vanity Fair next to her with a half-rolled joint and some loose weed on it. She closed it and went to answer the doorbell.

"Billy Bob. What can I do for you?"

"Is the haunted trailer still for sale, Dona?"

Dona saw money in his eyes. When it came to selling or buying trailers... She could smell blood from a mile away.

"You mean No. 23?"

"Yeah."

"You are ready to buy, Billy Bob?"

"Yeah."

"Hold on, I'll get the keys."

Dona and Billy Bob walked over to 23 Trailer Park Rd, the place where waited "the haunted trailer".

Number 23, as it was known, was a handsome single-wide with fake dark ceder panels, arched "venetian style" windows, a fifty-foot yard with a couple of pine trees on either side and a well-manicured lawn and a fake German-style roof.  The only weird part of the trailer is that the huge venetian style windows had been boarded with plywood from the inside.  

"You know, Billy Bob, I haven't mentioned but if you are buying then I recommend Number 47, which is on sale right now and it is bigger than this one, it is also cheaper." Done knew that Billy Bob had more money than he showed. She knew he had sold his mobile home back in Charleston when his mom died, and she knew that his pirate-video business was thriving.

"I like this one. I have been thinking about buying it for a while, Dona.  It's a way to invest my money. That way I don't spend it on stupid stuff."

"Billy Bob, I must be frank with you. Part of the reason the windows have been boarded up is that there is some damage on the inside. Nobody has seen the inside but me... and... The original owner was huh... eccentric." Dona was not sure what to do. She had counted on convincing Billy Bob to look at some of the other trailers on her park. She knew what was expecting them inside. She also knew that if Billy Bob saw what was inside the trailer, he would probably even move out of the Trailer Park. Nobody had ever been allowed to go inside. Nobody. For a reason.

"Oh? I'd like to see anyway.  I love this home, Dona. I have made up my mind, and I am gong to buy it. I really want to buy THIS trailer. I don't want another trailer. I want this one."

Dona considered her options. She could try to woo him away from the dastardly place, but Billy was very firm and he was also a little eccentric.

Dona kept her mouth shut as she opened the door for him with a keyring that held dozens of keys. She shrugged. If he didn't like it she was sure to sell him another.

The moment Billy Bob entered the trailer, he was transported to a dream within a dream. He knew this place. He knew every inch of the trailer. He always knew this trailer. It was exactly what he expected.

There was no furniture in it. The entrance was to the largest room, the living room, with it's arched ceiling.  The walls were totally charred, as if they had been used for bonfires. In fact, all the walls  were blackened with soot. But the kitchen, adjacent to the living room was intact.

In the center of the 6x4 ft room there was a pentagram, drawn inside a circle painted with what looked like dried blood. At the five corners of the pentagram were five skulls, apparently human, upon which candles had once burned.

Dona cringed.

"This is the living room. It has a master bedroom, a bathroom and you can see the kitchen and dining room from here.  It's 8x27. I think all the utilities work fine. There's a little smoke damage, but it was definitively not a kitchen fire. It's an oldie. From the very first double wides that came out in the early 70s. She's only had one owner. A weird guy, European or something. He's the guy who probably burnt the walls. You could easily replace the wallpaper. Don't know how he did that. Maybe he was trying to do bar.b.q in here.  It's over 30 years old, but it's never been used by anybody else. He bought it, put it here, and then abandoned it. He disappeared."

Actually, Billy Bob hadn't heard. He was transported to another time and another place. Dona's

"I'll buy it."

"Don't you want to see the rest of it? Nobody has been here in 40 years."

"I have seen enough. This is the place I want. I will buy it." said Billy Bob. "Just one thing...Did he make that pentagram on the floor?"

Dona looked at Billy curiously.

"What pentagram?"

Billy looked again. The living room was utterly clean. No trace of the pentagram was there.

Dona said: "The caretaker comes in once a month to check the fixtures and to make sure no animals get in. He also cleans it."

Billy shook his head. Had it been a dream? Was he hallucinating?

"I want this trailer, Donna. I'll buy it. How much does it cost?"

Dona couldn't believe her ears. But she didn't hesitate to pull out a series of documents out of her attaché case. And she didn't say much more, other than showing the transfer of documents to Billy Bob.

The final cost of the mobile home was $32,572 dollars, which for the antiquity of the structure was actually not a bargain. But Billy Bob didn't care. He wanted the trailer. He wanted to live here. He wanted to keep it to himself. He felt it was his "home" somehow... 

Billy Bob had been thinking about buying a trailer like an investment for a while. He always imagined that if he could rent a trailer and live in another, he would have a secure form of income, but when he actually wrote the check that would wipe out his saving of over ten years, he realized that he was actually not really interested in an "investment". There was something about No. 27 that transcended completely any monetary concerns.

Within a matter of one week, Billy Bob had moved into his new home.

Billy Bob did not clean his new place, Instead, inspired by his dreams and hallucinations, he began to redo the rituals and ceremonies which he imagined had already taken place here long ago.

First, he cut his left hand with a straight razor and re-traced the pentagram on the living room. Then he bought new candles and lit them. For a while, he sat in the floor, watching the candles burn, not sure what to do next, but one minute before midnight that same night, he became “inspired” and started to circumvallate the pentagon, chanting strange words which came to his mind.

The strange words had a weird effect upon the five pointed star on the floor. It began to glow.

It was an unearthly, sickly green glow, a bit like a neon light seen from very far. It quickly filled the pentagram much like a fog, which grew form the edges of the symbol towards the center. More than horrified, Billy Bob was mesmerized.

And suddenly, HE arrived.

He appeared dim at first, like a hologram, but quickly, he took deeper and deeper colors and shape and form until he stood, perfectly solid smack in the middle of the pentagram.

He was handsome. Looked in his late thirties, with a great drooping brown moustache, long brown hair tied in a pony-tail, and a full suit of gold-leafed plate mail armor.  He had a large sword on a scabbard and a beautiful inlaid helm with various colored feathers on top.

The Elder Rainsong, one of the three creators of Lollipop City had arrived to South Carolina.

-Who summoned me?- asked the great warrior.

-I did…- replied Billy Bob, standing up and looking finally perplexed.

-William Robert McRoy, I had not expected this from you.- said the warrior, smiling. And then he laughed. Hard, strong, deep.

Billy Bob would not believe what was happening.

But he knew Rainsong. He had dreamed the warrior his whole life. Even as a child, Billy Bob had lived, in his dreams, fantasies and hallucinations thinking himself as this warrior, immortal, all-knowing, ever-blissful. Lollipop City was the city of his dreams. A mad world of dragons, goblins and giants. And Rainsong …

-You know me? How can this be? You are… a figment of my imagination.- murmured Billy Bob, partly to himself and partly to the impressive figure facing him.

-Actually, it’s the other way around.- replied Rainsong.

-What do you mean?-

-You, William Robert McRoy are MY creation. I created you in order to split my spirit in manageable pieces so I would be able to beat death.-

Billy Bob was incredulous. For a moment, he thought he was dreaming, perhaps a strong nightmare from lack of sleep and using too much marijuana. It was all too improbable. Rainsong, with his golden armor and sword, the terrible warrior of Planet Nagaloka was just a fantasy. He had been building, in his mind, since childhood, whole stories about this strange character. It was logical that his diseased mind would eventually bring him to life somehow.

-You are still thinking that you dreamed me when it was actually I who dreamed you, William Robert McRoy. Let me explain.  This mobile home you are in, this state and country and world you think you live in, they are actually fictions. None of them exist. Only I exist, and you have a part of my spirit in order to do what I cannot. This way, my spirit need not re-incarnate in other bodies, because when you die, that part of your spirit that belongs really to me, will return to me where it will rejuvenate me for all the years you have lived. It is a magic spell that took decades to complete, but it actually works marvelously. Every year you are alive on this planet I will use to cheat death of one more year in Nagaloka.- Rainsong smiled, but he did not cross the lines of blood drawn upon the floor. –How do you think you were able to conjure the right mantras to open a portal to Nagaloka? It was I who gave them to you, William Robert McRoy.-

-You mean like a vampire? Are you some kind of cosmic vampire?- said Billy Bob fearfully.

-No. Not at all. In fact, before you were born, I was already preparing our connection in order to let a peace of my soul lodge itself inside your heart. The process is infinitely complex and almost impossible to explain to someone like you, with your limited knowledge of magic. But basically, your existence accomplishes certain karmic debts that I need not pay any longer, so my own existence can be extended by paying these karmic debts. All your laziness, all your gluttony, your lust and other sins, these sins I need not commit any longer, and thus, I can extend myself.-

-I don’t understand.- replied Billy Bob, angry.

-No, you wouldn’t. But just know this… Your life is far from useless. You are very precious to me. You and I are one. We are two aspects of one being, separated by time and space in order to accomplish a totality of actions necessary for our mutual prosperity. I brought you here to this trailer because I opened this gate long ago so we could see each other and I could share with you the importance of what you do.-

-I sell pirate porn movies at a jockey lot and live off social security. What the hell are you talking about!?- Billy Bob screamed at the apparition, now seriously disturbed.

-Yes, you do. And I travel through time and space in all the multiuniverses thanks to you doing that. So you must not stop. Not ever.  Don’t worry, you need not understand how it is done. But now I am here to tell you that you are worthy. You are very, very worthy.-

And Rainsong disappeared.