the Pitch

"There's only one way someone would publish my book." And with that he took the gun from his pocket, pursed his lips and placed the barrel in his mouth.

He attended Pitchapalooza, an event held at the local bookstore in his new neighborhood. Twenty five hopefuls picked at random given one minute to sell their novels to a panel of literary judges, with the winner getting an introduction to an appropriate publisher.

He knew he couldn't sell his book. It was weird, off-beat, a stream-of-consciousness hodge podge of journal entries, essays, poetic verse and a heaping dose of action/adventure pulp, with a liberal seasoning of science fiction fantasy. It defied all categorization, just like himself.

So when the event was just wrapping up and he was not among those chosen, well he just strolled up front, tapped the mic and leaned in to speak. But what was there to say? Anything he had to say was contained in the fifty thousand word file on his laptop.

The audience all gasped and spasmed to attention and yet froze to the spot. There was a murmur making its way around the crowd, and he wanted to hear it all, to find out what they all thought. But it didn't matter really. Nothing mattered anymore.

He wasn't a writer. He had written, this much was true, but he didn't have the backbone to make a career of it. Too unwilling to write by the rules, too stubborn to produce generic fiction, he saw himself as a deliverer of truths. And that was not popular in today's market.

But scandal? People loved scandal. And tragic deaths and really anything or anyone that broke the norm and did something drastic. They wanted blood in the water, he knew this. There was no other option in the end. A sacrifice was demanded.

He wanted to say goodbye, to rewrite this scene to be more dramatic, on a rooftop perhaps, with hundreds, no, thousands of people watching. All filming his final moment and he imagined his suicide video going viral, suckling up to social media and exploding.

Then they'd want to know why. What was this book this troubled soul had written? What had he gone through? What was the message he had nailed down in text and what could we learn from it?

It'd be published post humously, a close friend compiling the jagged chapters and piecing together his madness, then printed up with a slick cover and some photo of him looking sad on the back.

His eyes closed as he pulled the trigger.

"Here's your story."