Dream - Scary, Sad, Snake Story

Red and yellow venomous snake

I hear 999 being read out loud for radio. The publisher has given it 4 alternative titles and I like the jaunty feel of it. 

I crawl on hands and knees through the darkness into the black but circus-like tent where a publishing meeting is in progress. I clear my throat.

"Anyone want a scary story?" I ask.

A large woman in a tent-like black dress leans to one side so she can see me over the shoulder of her colleague. She has short, curly, blonde hair and has a touch of Victoria Wood about her. She speaks loudly but in hushed tones, which I find an endearing affectation.

"People send me scary stories," she says excitedly from her cross-legged position on the floor. "What I really want is a sad one!"

She puts her fleshy hands together, illustrating how much she wishes for this.

"Twenty-four hours?" I suggest, considering how long it will take me to craft a story for her.

"I'd publish it!" she says, beaming. I know that she smiles at everyone like this. This is her manner. What will be different about our interaction is that I will actually come up with a story and deliver it within 24 hours.

I nod and slide out of the tent.

As I go, someone looks in a bin bag, which is serving as the slush pile, and she says:

"Did nobody take the snake out of there? Oh, never mind."

I spend the rest of the night watching for snakes coming in under the doors. All the doors seem to have snake gaps.

"We just paint the poisonous ones with a yellow stripe and send them on their way," I hear one guy say.

I'm sleeping on the top bunk tonight. Tomorrow I'll write my story and get the f*ck out of here.

Professional Bloodbath

I just wrote 'bloodbath' in an email to a client. It's part of a serious discussion.

I love this job.

I first met this client while working in my car. I was just a blob in the dark with eyes sparkling every now and then and he was in his room on the other side of the planet. He'd done this before, an online chat across the world. I was, in his words, a virgin to this.

This is where the dogging analogy ends.

We chatted online for two or three hours, until my battery died, about zombies and vampires and how to make better monsters and why ours was going to kill, again, and again.

Then I had to charge him for my time. It was amazing to to me then that I get to charge for this, but he needed my expertise and I can't help that I'm in love with what I do.

Hating work doesn't make it work.

Hating what you're doing doesn't make it more viable or valuable than something you enjoy.

work

wəːk/

noun

noun: work; plural noun: works; plural noun: the works

1.

activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a result.

"he was tired after a day's work in the fields"

synonyms:

labour, toil, exertion, effort, slog, drudgery, the sweat of one's brow;

verb

verb: work; 3rd person present: works; past tense: worked; past participle: worked; past tense: wrought; past participle: wrought; gerund or present participle: working

1.

be engaged in physical or mental activity in order to achieve a result; do work.

"an engineer who was working on a design for a more efficient wing"

synonyms:

toil, labour, exert oneself, slave (away), plod away;