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!”