Editorial Decision

“Edward, you LEECH!”

“You’re a stinking DOG, Jacob!”

Then the two fell upon each other, snarling and biting, ripping at each others’ clothes, then flesh.  Jacob was the first to clutch Edward’s penis and slide it into his mouth, chomping down.  Edward followed suit, grasping Jacob’s—“

I tossed the manuscript on my desk before I tossed my cookies.  This was hopeless.  This was also the best work I’d received yet for the newspaper writing contest.  I rubbed my eyes, trying to think up yet another new, polite way to say you so utterly suck.

“So?  What do you think?”

I looked up at the writer responsible for this masterpiece.  Mrs. Muldoon was a deacon in our church, and had fallen inexplicably hard for Ms.Meyer’s vampire wiles.  I was as mystified as anyone, I suppose.

“Mrs. Muldoon—“

“Grace.”

“Grace.  It’s… um, kind of… intense?”

She nodded vigorously.  “Yes!  You can see by chapter three they’ve totally gotten over that Bella girl and are well on their way to Ohio so they can get married.”

She’d fixated on gay rights, specifically gay marriage ever since Tony, her older boy, had come out.  It was a fine thing to support one’s children, but this was the oddest outlet by far she’d utilized.

“Mrs. Muldoon—“

“Grace.”

“Grace.  It goes on for…” I flipped pages of her manuscript.  “Six?  Six pages.  This one sex scene.”

“Oh, it’s not pornography, Mr. Taylor.  It’s pivotal to the story.  They’re trying to kill each other, you see.”

“By fellating each other for six pages?”

“They’re supernatural creatures!  Of course they have stamina.  They have to suck the venom out of their veins, you see.”

“And then they fall in love and decide to get married.  In Ohio.”

She sensed my skepticism, her smile faltering.  “Well, it’s a complicated relationship.”

“I can see that.”  I tried a different deterrent.  “Um, you do realize it’s a creative writing contest?  In a public newspaper?  The Gazette’s read by over twenty thousand of your fellow townspeople.  And this is… very… explicit.”

“Mr. Taylor.  My message requires a certain amount of—“

“And it’s very, very long.  214 pages is well beyond the scope of—“

“I’d be pleased if you serialized it.  A chapter a week until it’s complete.”

I had to admire her calm determination.  I sighed, blew out my cheeks.  This really was the best we’d gotten, and the contest was officially over, and I had an entirely blank Features section holding up the Gazette’s presses, and it would be soooo easy to…

“You know what, Grace?  I’m running it.  Chapter one in tomorrow’s Gazette.  Congratulations for winning the contest.”

Her beaming face almost made up for my imagined meeting with the Gazette editorial board tomorrow.  Well, this’ll teach ‘em to fuck with the Christmas bonuses around here.  I picked up the winning contest entry again, flipped it open to a random page.

A serpentine length of Edward’s vampire tool coiled around Jacob’s—

Oh sweet jumpin Jesus in a sack race.  This was gonna be good.