Editors Nightmare

Percival McMadeUp the III squinted at the crumpled manuscript in his hands. It had been consigned to the slush pile weeks ago and as per his twice a year promise to the PTB he would 'review' the slush pile to give some aspiring writer a boost, chances were beyond slight that this would happen. More likely, a final cup of bitter poison in the hopes that they would now concentrate on the reality of their situations and spend pennies on real life and not self publishing drivel suitable for the matted coverings of cages of small rodents.

But this..this was just plain weird, the accompaning cover letter was in the proper format, he read it again, raising his head to see if heads were being poked over cubicle walls, were those muffled giggles?

An English professor wrote this? Better things were left on the outake floor of daytime serials as too impossible, implausible and unbelievable.

The syntax was wrong, the characters beyond wooden, he referred back to the cover letter, published numerous times? Whhhhaa? Percival did what his grandchildren told him do in such information crisis moments, Percival went forth and googled.

So he googled and so he learned. In google veritas.

Layer upon layer of delusion, stilted diaglog, loops of fatal logic errors that could be easily explained by simply having say..2 working brain cells. He was astounded, he was floored he was humbled.

Percival gave the slush pile readers a sumptuous lunch that week with a bottle of wine each on him. He kept that manuscript and used it as the last nail in the coffin for 'unsolicited works'. The slush pile was no more, recycling was in.