Iron Fist

I stood in the open doorway for a second, unnoticed, before rapping my knuckles against the frame to get my editor’s attention.  ”You wanted to see me?”

He looked up at me.  ”Ah, yes!  Come in!  Sit down.”

I walked into his office and casually plopped down in the chair.  ”Some weather we’ve been having, huh?  I can’t believe how–”

“SHUT UP!” he barked, bringing his fist down solidly against his desk.  ”None of your smooth talking!  We’re gonna talk about what I brought you here to talk about: your blog!”

“Okay.”  I scratched behind my ear, nonplussed.  ”What about my blog?”

“IT SUCKS!”

I looked at my editor for a moment in astonishment, before indignation found me.  ”Dude, what do you mean my-”

“SUCKS!”  He slammed his fist into the desk again for emphasis.

“Hey-”

“SUCKS!” THUMP.  ”You haven’t written a goddamn thing in this blog for the entire month of August.  You’ve got entries two months old on the front page still.  And you have the nerve to call yourself a blogger.”

“Whoah there, dude, I-”

“Enough with the ‘dude’ already!  Who still talks like that?  How old are you, anyway?”

“Dude, I-”

“STOP IT!”

“Okay!”  I held my hand up.  ”Okay, I won’t say it anymore.  Wow.  Look, I know I haven’t touched this blog in a while, but-”

“And just what’s your excuse for slacking off, anyway?” he said, interrupting me yet again.  ”And don’t try to tell me it’s because of pretty girls again.”

“Hey, those pretty girls are out there, dude, and they-”

“WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST SAY?!”

I was starting to get indignant.  ”Okay, you know what, Mr Slave Driver, it’s pretty hard to type out a post when you only have one hand.”  I waved my prosthesis in front of his face for emphasis.

He just stared at it.  ”And what the hell is that?”

“It’s the prosthetic limb they gave me at the hospital.  When they, ah, amputated me.  After my accident, you know.”

“Bullshit.  It’s a plastic hook.”

“Well, that’s what they give you when you’re poor.”

He slammed both fists onto the top of his desk.  ”It’s a goddamn plastic pirate hook!  You bought it at a costume shop!”

“Oh.”  I stared at it, realizing my ruse hadn’t worked.  ”Um, maybe it is.  They told me I had to wear it while I was recuperating, though.  Crazy, huh?”

“SHUT UP!  Stop trying to distract me.  We’re here to talk about your goddamn blog, and what you’re going to do about it, mister!”

“Okay!”  I held up both hands, tossing the plastic pirate hook over my shoulder with a flick of my wrist in hopes that he’d forget I’d tried to pull a fast one on him.  ”Look, I don’t really have much in the way of an excuse.  I’ve got some side projects I’m working on that I can’t really talk about on my blog yet.  Work sucks, but it always does, and I can’t go into too much detail about it in my posts.  Things have been going pretty well for me lately otherwise.  Nothing much going on, other than getting in that bike wreck the other week-”

“Ah ha!”  He squinted at me, pointing one finger directly at my face.  ”That’s what you’re going to write about.  I want you to put together a post about you taking a spill off your bike, and I want it on my desk by this afternoon so we can publish it first thing tomorrow.”

“Okay.”  I scratched my head.  ”Yeah, I can probably do that, unless something comes up between now and-”

My editor turned purple with fury, veins popping out all over his head.  ”You’ll bring me a goddamn post about you wrecking on your bike by this afternoon, or you’re finished here!  Do you understand me?  If you don’t make this deadline, YOU’RE FIRED!”

“What the…?”  I stared at him, my own ire beginning to rise.  ”What the hell are you talking about?  You can’t fire me!  IT’S MY BLOG!”

“Oh, it’s my blog,” he said in his most mocking tone.  ”I got news for you, ace: we’re in the middle of a recession here!  I got a hundred bloggers out here looking to start a blog, able to turn out the same sort of stupid crap that you do, only probably better, and willing to bust their hump to churn that crap out more often than once a month.  So you either get your act together and bring me some posts, or I’ll get someone else to write for this crap pile.”

“Fine!”  I yelled.  ”Fine, I’ll get you your post today.  But you will rue the day you talked to me like this!”  I stood up hastily, catching my leg on the chair and nearly falling over before regaining my footing.  ”You hear me?  You will RUE THE DAY!”

He grunted, waving his hand towards the door in a curt gesture of dismissal.  ”Get the hell out of my office and get to work.”  I was halfway to the door before he called out to me again.  ”One more thing!”

I looked back over my shoulder at him.  ”Yeah?”

He pointed towards the floor of one corner of his office.  ”Get your stupid pirate hook and take it with you.”

Comments(17)