By Roseirene Kalogianopulos
You know, I really thought I did a good job on that story, but I’m thinking back on my meeting with Rockplace…
The date is March 4th, exactly 1 week before the submission date. I went to Stanco Rockplace’s office. My former English teacher and head of the writing club at my high school. He has my story printed out crabbed between his large hands. His large, lumpy muscles combined with his always-terrible posture makes him look like a human beanbag. He takes off his reading glasses and looks up at me. He sucks his teeth and nods.
“So Tellmelos, your story is very emotional….”
They always call you an ‘emotional’ writer when you suck; or ‘bold’, ‘interesting’, those are always good ones! I had a bunch of teachers that did that to me in my old college, those red cardigan bastards. Those skinny work pants bastards! (for the men). It’s incredibly dumb, obviously. Hurting your feelings is what teachers are supposed to do.
The response he gave me earlier this morning didn’t kill my desire to continue working on my story, though. I have no idea why I wanna write this so badly. I haven’t had the drive to write anything for leisure the past 3 years and I don’t know what changed now. I know it won’t amount to anything, it’s not going to scoop me up and bring me to a castle deep in the woods. Even if I do somehow get accepted, any praise I do get will be a spark’s lifetime, and dies in the same flash the spark does. Everyone will move onto the next best thing.
And the worst part is, there will always be the next best thing. When I got home I looked around for other short stories online from people roughly my age, just to get a concept of what I should do myself. All these actual prodigy writers mocking me in the past tense with their incredible, disgusting metaphors and symbolism. The block of my rage made me want to punch my computer, but that shit was too expensive, so I took it out on me instead. If I didn’t I would be murdered. I would be murdered, I would be.
Rockplace looks up at me. His eyebrows squash together like two teenage caterpillars trying desperately to kiss each other in between the bell, it’s awful.
“Why are you running this by me, Tellmelos? You know this won’t get accepted for your magazine, you barely wrote anything at all.” His suit is such a loud shade of blue, this dental blue that makes him look even more official. He always looks completely professional. Always smiling in that acceptable way, never referring to students by their first name. Strangely, even the suit he’s wearing looks like business. You’d never expect someone in a suit so comically small to not look like a halloween party superman, but here he is.
“What happened to you? You used to be such a good kid. Smart, too. You haven’t been the same since your little…” he waves his hands around like a fly too big to kill. “….episodes started kicking in.” By ‘episodes’, he means demonic ones; as in DMED; as in demonic episode disorder. I have demonic episode disorder and all its wonderful parts: the false beliefs, incoherent speech, the endless, ruthless paranoia, blah blah blah. You know what DMED is, you’re not 12. Essentially, I’m psych ward crazy.
He’s sort of wrong, It’s not only the DMED. Even before I got these episodes, I was inflicted with a terrible, mind eating disease; my own pig laziness. A result of unearned results as a kid .I produced like I was told to, and that’s all that mattered. That habit lives hard.The only thing that stopped me for years was the fear of failing, but that only went so far; I cared until I didn’t. The DMED only added spice to the burn.
“You know, when you went all crazy!” See? Even Rockplace said so. Crazy. It was about time….. He laughs at me in that half-and-half scared-funny way. Go fuck yourself.
The next morning, I work towards making my coffee. I have to move every digit and limb separately from each other to even move.
I‘m painfully aware of my place in this world. I’m not good at holding down jobs, or maintaining friendships or dealing with stress. That’s the demonicness. 23 years; that’s how long my life expectancy is cut by. Although I think it might be even longer for me; everything’s a trigger for it. I know I can’t do this forever. And yet beyond all reasonability, I continue writing.
Today, I worked on making the plot more concise. I did it for 30 minutes, with a timer.
On Friday, I added some more symbolism. 30 minute timer.
I got a demonic episode on Saturday.
On Sunday, I switched up some of the language. I went beyond the timer. In these years, I forgot how much I loved to do this.
On Tuesday , I fixed the grammar. Most of it…
Your main mistake is the grammar. A lot of singular they’s too”
“Yeah, that was on purpose”
“For…Mark?”
I’m pretty sure I nod when he says that.
He looked at me for a moment, then at the dye in my hair, then out at the window. Then, he looks back at me. “You’re still onto that whole thing?”
I don’t answer him.
“They’re not going to accept this.”
I still stay silent. I think he sees the determination in my eyes.
He sighs deeply. “Just– you know, stay safe out there.” He pauses. I can hear the fan moaning out, a haunting spirit. “I’ve listed all my revisions on the paper, do with that as you will. I’ll see you later, Marshall.”
“See-ya.” That’s when I leave Stanco Rockplace, with the haste of sound on my side.
By the following week, I was finished; 941 glorious words. I work up all the courage and might in my soul, and I beat that submit button into a living gray submission.
I got a rejection email the next day, but I still grinned; going ear to ear, large and bright like a smiley-face cut out in a classroom.
Roseirene Kalogianopulos is an aspiring author driven to write fiction about anything that can be written down. She is known by many for her first and last name.
