On submission, p.21
On Submission,
p.21
“Please…”
Moyer watches from the floor, on his knees, one hand over his face, the other pressed against the stab wound. He flashes a grin, full recognition of the story being complete.
Pendel is out of breath, dropping the knife. His entire body is coated in a layer of red, eyes wide on a classroom full of menacing details. It clicks, understanding what just happened. Pendel doesn’t feel anything, not anymore. Never again.
He leaves the front of the room, stepping over a body or two to get to a seat in the back. He joins the lone student in her seat, clenched into a ball, mortally afraid.
She whimpers.
What else can be said? Pendel catches his breath. Eventually, he turns to the student and asks her, “Did that really happen, or did I just imagine it?”
Pendel’s cell phone rings, a number familiar, a name forgotten until he accepts the call.
“Put the knife down, Pendel.”
Detective Monroe. Right on time.
Chapter 11
They’ll find me on the ground with the other authors, victims of a collective fear. Detective Monroe spares nothing, bringing in enough units to swarm the perimeter of the building and surrounding campus, effectively derailing the festivities, the new and unexpected main event being the capture of Henry Richmond Pendel. (And an emerging author named Alexander Moyer.) That’s okay, it’s all according to the story and how it needs to be told. All part of revision and ensuring the best possible ending.
It doesn’t take any longer than a half hour to deflate the scene, the authorities securing every room and hallway until they find Pendel bloodied at the front of the room.
He doesn’t put up a fight. When the detective storms into the room, heading right for Pendel, his reaction is telling of the events to unfold.
“I can explain!”
Monroe grabs him and shoves him face-first against the wall, cuffing the man without saying a word. No Miranda Rights, nothing. He is dragged out of the room while three other outfits tend to the varying states of the victims.
I’m face up on the ground, the wound in my shoulder enough to play off while I wait until they get to me.
“Where were you stabbed?”
I release my grip on the wound, showing them the worst of it. “Shoulder.”
“Just the shoulder?”
I nod.
In an instant, it seems, the room is crowded, arms reaching, and bodies being lifted onto stretchers, but maybe it’s the relief, or maybe it’s the pain because I’m finding it difficult to focus. The sequence of events blurs together, and I’m unable to think or speak clearly until much later, when I’m sitting up on a stretcher, my wound dressed, and there he is, Detective Monroe, sauntering up to me because he must know more than he’s letting on.
I’ve prepared for this moment. He’ll expect a confession, factoring me into Pendel’s downfall; he’ll expect that I am an accomplice, when I’ll soon reveal to him that I am innocent, a young author manipulated by a man who has made a career out of using others.
“Alex?”
I ball my hand into a fist, “Yeah?” I unclench my hand, getting the blood flow going, the nerves in my arm remain tense, sending signals that cause jolts of pain. Pendel didn’t get me clean. “That’s me.” I try to shake it off, annoyed that he couldn’t get any of it right.
“I’m Detective Monroe,” he says, like I don’t already know.
“Hi,” I say, remaining distant. Remember—I’m supposed to be traumatized by the events. I’m supposed to be in a lot of pain, not just physical. When he looks at me, he must see a person that will never again be the same. Something like this changes a person.
“How are you feeling?”
The look I give him says everything.
“Yeah, I know,” he says, looking at his phone. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?” He eyes one of the paramedics standing near my stretcher. “I realize this might not be a good time, but, well, can we begin?”
Not about to ease off the tears. Instead, I nod and start sobbing loudly, “Just ask them.”
He sighs, “This is difficult for you, I know… how do you know Henry Pendel?”
“He…” This is it, the best part. Allow me to manipulate you, Detective Monroe. “He said I was his author.”
“His author?” Of course, he won’t understand.
“Yeah, he owned me,” I say. “And…”
“So he was your literary agent?”
Slow nod. “Yeah.”
“I see,” he says, typing out a note. “One Kevin Armisen, a production assistant at Alfred A. Wolf, said in our interview, I quote, ‘He begged me for help. I was too afraid to do anything. He said he was making him do things.’ Care to explain?”
“He made me…” I choke up. Let the tears flow. Be the image of a psychologically manipulated individual. He’ll see how I fall apart, and it’ll make him feel bad.
“I hate that I have to ask you this, but… were you there when he murdered Jeremiah Church?”
I nod slowly, “I was there for all of it.”
He shakes his head, “My god. Can you explain further? What did he make you do?”
Hello full confession, complete with a nervous breakdown. “He told me… I had to prove myself… and, and…” Time for a visual aid, tearing the bandages off my stab wound, “He threatened to hurt me and make sure my career was over if I didn’t meet his benchmarks.”
“Benchmarks?”
“It was them or me,” I say. “I had to kill to have Pendel all for myself.”
Stunned, the detective calls for another to join him, yet he is distracted when I begin tearing at those fresh stitches. “Hey,” he raises a hand. “Don’t do that.”
I’m not going to stop.
He’s not going to stop me.
The blood will flow.
The rumors will circulate.
I’m going to do some hard time.
No escaping a sentence.
35 years in prison, something about being an accessory, after seven years there’ll be an opportunity for parole. During the uproar, there’ll be fascination mounting in the media. They’ll see him as the menace he always was, amplified into an example of a human monster. Me, I’ll become Alexander Moyer, the author who went through hell and back. Some will hate, others will hope for healing. Inevitably, it will be as I had thought all along, hiccups and all:
I will become infamous, both in name and the body of work accumulated over so many kills. Infamy transcends, becoming a source of financial gain and the foundation for my career to follow. This will become fact long after the fiction fades away. A story will take time to be fully told, but the pieces, I can rest in my cell peacefully knowing that they are all in place.
He doesn’t ask me why, why Pendel did this to me, to his clients, and finally to himself. So it’s up to me to tell him before I am restrained and later cuffed. Just like any story worth telling, you got to risk it all. What I tell him becomes the last sentence of the story.
“We all have a story to tell; some are willing to do anything to tell it.”
Emily,
What a wonderful lunch yesterday! I’m still buzzing over what you said about him. How insane is that?! I want nothing more than for us to work together on finding you the best manuscripts and the authors most befitting of your talents and taste. I aspire to be nothing like my former employer, who shall not be named. I’ve put in a lot of hard work building new professional relationships with editors, and I’m actively building my list. In fact, I have one such author that I think you’d dig. It just might be a perfect fit. You’ll recognize the name because there have already been so many articles and features about him. There was also that documentary about him. You know the name, Alexander Moyer. There’s already been interest from other publishers, but I have yet to go out on submission. I’ve been waiting for the right pairing, and I think you and Alex might just hit it off. The way I see it, this could be the beginning of a long career for all three of us! As his agent, I’ll do anything for him. An agent looks out for their authors, just like an editor wants the best of an author’s words.
Let me know if you’re interested in having a look, and I’ll send over his memoir (yes! A MEMOIR!!)!
Sincerely,
Marina Grace
Literary Agent
Cooper Willis Endeavor
Deal of the Day
Author Alexander Moyer’s memoir, MY AGENT, MY AUTHOR, an exploration of his capture by controversial literary agent Henry Richmond Pendel and the murderous events that unfolded; TO MANDATE HEAVEN, the untold stories and traumas of the author’s nomadic childhood and volatile adolescence; and FRIENDS SELLING FRIENDS, a debut novel about a group of twentysomethings in a heated game of wit and violence as wagers are increasingly dangerous and no one’s life is off limits, to Emily Mills at FSG, in a seven-figure deal, by Marina Grace at Cooper Willis Endeavor (US).
About the Author
MICHAEL J. SEIDLINGER is the Filipino-American author of Anybody Home?, The Body Harvest, and other books. He has written for, among others, Wired, Buzzfeed, Polygon, and Publishers Weekly. You can find him at michaeljseidlinger.com.
Also by Michael J. Seidlinger
THE BODY HARVEST
ANYBODY HOME?
MY PET SERIAL KILLER
SCREAM (OBJECT LESSONS)
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI’S HOUSE OF LEAVES: BOOKMARKED
Also by CLASH Books
THE BODY HARVEST
Michael J. Seidlinger
ANYBODY HOME?
Michael J. Seidlinger
INVAGINIES
Joe Koch
LETTERS TO THE PURPLE SATIN KILLER
Joshua Chaplinsky
EVERYTHING THE DARKNESS EATS
Eric LaRocca
VIOLENT FACULTIES
Charlene Elsby
CHARCOAL
Garrett Cook
THE MIDNIGHT MUSE
Jo Kaplan
I CAN FIX HER
Rae Wilde
OF BEASTS
M. Jane Worma
Michael J. Seidlinger, On Submission
