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Author's Note: Not strictly fanfiction, but almost. I wrote it for my English classes last year, and my teacher didn't get it... Let me know if you did, will you? ninja
Morning. The alarm clock rings, and wakes me up from a deep and satisfied sleep. I fumble after it, still half asleep and desperate to get a few more minutes under the duvet before putting my feet down on the icy floor. As always, my hand misses the doze button by mere millimetres and sends the screaming clock in a curve towards the nearest wall.
I try to ignore the horrible sound of the morning alarm, but it is useless. Without a thought, I move my body to get up; the ice-cold feeling under the palms of my feet when they meet the floor makes me scream like a little girl and pull them back up on the bed. Cursing under my breath, I look desperately around for my slippers, but they’re nowhere in sight. Maybe the dog stole them again, under the cover of the night this time. I don’t know why he even bothers to try; they are pink and smelly and he knows that I will take them back from him the second I discover where he has hidden them.
Once again, with a strong feeling of valour deep inside my chest, I put my feet back on the floor. I am prepared for the chill this time, but that doesn’t make this meeting any more pleasant than the last one was. I dive towards the shrill sound of the alarm clock, longing to get the unpleasant sound out of my ears forever. For this morning, at least. I will probably wake up to the same horrible sound tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, an eternal and thoroughly evil circle only broken by weekends and the occasional holiday. I try not to think about it too much; it will only make me depressed.
When the daily fight with the alarm clock is over, it’s time to take a long shower. It’s usually the highlight of my day, standing there and letting jets of steaming water wash the tiredness out of my body, but things aren’t going my way this particular morning. The water coming out of the shower makes the floor in my bedroom seem warm, and I scream for the second time. The shower is over before it has even begun, and my morning routine hangs in a thin thread.
After the disappointment with the cold water, I want to soothe myself by having a long and pleasant breakfast, without any stress whatsoever. When I look into the inner debts of my refrigerator, I realize that the plan was a fool girl’s stupid hope. I suddenly remember why I was supposed to go shopping yesterday. Not for the blouse and the fabulous skirt I found at Mark’s & Spencer’s, costing peanuts and barely that, but to get something eatable into my tiny apartment. As a result of me forgetting to go to the grocery shop, my fridge is now as empty of food as an average political speech is of reliable facts. The thoughts going through my head looking at the depressingly empty shelves is probably something much alike those of someone being part of the audience at the mentioned speech: “What the bloody hell am I supposed to do now?”
I resign myself to my cruel morning destiny. The one light beam in my dark and stormy sky is that I’ll probably look wonderfully skinny, lacking any content in my stomach at all. That light is brutally put out forever when I look at myself in the mirror. The pantsuit I put on, my lovely, moss-green pantsuit, makes me look like a fat and shapeless clover. Well, there’s nothing to do about that now. Even without my long shower and breakfast, time is ticking away from me and I have to hurry up to get to work in time for the morning conference.
When I finally arrive in the conference room, red in my face after running up the stairs, I catch myself wondering whether this will be my last day at work or not. The firm hasn’t had a bestselling book for ages, and the money is running low. I wheeze out something that sounds like an apology for being late, and find my seat at the end of the table. This is going to be a long and painful day.
The meeting is over in a matter of minutes. There’s not much to say that hasn’t already been said a dozen times; we need to find a hit, or we’ll have to go into bankruptcy. As if any authors in their right minds would send their books here anyway. At least, any author with a halfway decent book.
The economy is bad for a good reason; the last bestselling book we published was “101 things to do before you die” by Richard Horne, and that book was just printed as a favour to the author, who happens to be a talented artist. As for me, I’ve never actually had a bestseller. It was a close call on “If Tomorrow Comes” by Sidney Sheldon, but I decided against it. I’ve been feeling like the manager who rejected the Beatles ever since.
One of the assistants pops his head through the door. He makes no haste with delivering the files he carries in his arms, but why should he? It’s probably just the same boring s**t that comes in every day, books found unworthy by other publishers and shipped off to us as a last, desperate hope on the author’s behalf.
These books are just the top of the iceberg. As any other publishing house, Bloomsbury has assistants to read through the books that comes inn. They sort out the worst garbage, and bring those books they find worthy to be considered to the likes of me, the literary agents. Most of the things I have to read through in the course of one day are a complete waste of paper, but sometimes I find a book that has some potential, or potentially has some potential. I haven’t had any luck with finding the really great ones, though. Seeing how the day has been this far, I don’t have very high hopes for any of the “masterpieces” the assistant lays down on my desk.
Well, I’ve got to read through all of them, all eleven manuscripts. It is my job, after all, no matter how short it continues to be that way. If I’m lucky, I’ll still have a job this time next year. Ah well, on to the reading, then.
The first book is a hopeless detective novel taking place in a spaceship in some other dimension headed for Mars. The murderer was obvious from the first page, even for me! It’s no way I’m going to recommend that one; off to recycling it goes. One down, only ten to go. I make myself comfortable, and reach for the next book in the line with a sigh.
Two unbelievably untalented poetry collections, four overly sweet love novels, two utterly and completely dull biographies and one do-it-yourself knitting book later, I’ve got only one manuscript left. Battered and stained with some mystical substance, it looks like the worst one of them all; at least it’s not overly long. I don’t even bother to check the title or the name of the author before starting to read.
“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved with anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.”
 General Subtext · Wed Mar 28, 2007 @ 07:23am · 0 Comments |
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