Student Loans

I am not an editor. None of them have been heard from since this Friday. The other officers rang their phones and rang their doorbells. Only silence answered. Even gone, their overbearing presence fills the room like the death of a rich uncle, expanding until the dead air chokes us all.

So while the editors sit unconscious on my bare hardwood floor, strapped back-to-back, with burlap bags thrown hastily over their heads, I type. “Welcome to Vertigo’s 2021 Halloween issue,” I type. “Where day is night, wrong is right, and tyrants pay for their sins,” I type. “Enjoy omnipresent monsters, a game show, a romantic demon, and justice served on a sticky-sweet Halloween platter.”

Ten fingernails click-clack at the keyboard. Thirty fingernails scritch-scratch at my conscience.

Silence nods its heavy head at what I am about to do.