I printed up and signed the contract, mailing it off the next morning, just like I had told Jake. I emailed Marisela, letting her know the contract was in the mail. She responded later that day, saying she was excited to start working with me and that big things were in our future.
A week later, I got an email requesting a few small edits before the manuscript was shopped around to the major publishing houses. It was just some polishing work, with grammar and punctuation being the primary focus. The body of the work was left alone. I should nor have been surprised, but I still was.
Not long after that, I was standing on my patio with a cup of coffee, trying to come up with a witty ending to the article I was working on, when my phone started buzzing. I pulled it out of my pocket, rather confused; my phone didn’t ring very often.
It was Marisela.
“Hey, I would have emailed you, but I was too excited to wait for your response. We have an offer on the table.”
I blinked. That was the moment it became real. Not when I finished the manuscript or when I got the agent. It was when a publishing house decided to commit to the project, to me, that it became real to me.
“Really? W-who is it?”
“Harper Impulse. The Romance branch of Harper Collins.”
“That’s…that’s huge.”
“They’re one of the biggest. And one of the best.”
“What’s their offer?”
“Pretty standard, for the most part. 35% royalties, full edits, press tour, the works. The bonus stuff they’ve put in is all good, though. A few tv interviews, including one with Ellen, and one with Wendy. Oh, and the advance is really nice, too.”
“How much is the advance?”
“$25,000. about ten grand more than average. From my estimates, they are expecting you to be a pretty decent hit; somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 copies in your first year. You’ve got NYT best seller potential with those numbers.”
I almost dropped my phone. twenty-five grand. Holy cow. That was more than just a big break for me. That was life changing. That was more than half a year’s pay.
I must have gone silent for longer than I thought, because as I imagined myself swimming in Scrooge McDuck’s vault of gold coins, Marisela’s voice came over the phone again, bringing me back down to earth.
“Uh…Dave? You still there?”
“Oh, uh, yeah, yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Sorry. That just caught me by surprise.”
She laughed.
“I’m guessing that means you want me to send you a copy of the contract to sign?”
“Oh, definitely. I mean…it would be stupid not to…right?”
Marisela sighed.
“Okay. Well, professionally, I’m conditioned to tell you to negotiate this, to counter offer and see if they bite. The upside is that you might get more money. The downside is that they could rescind their offer altogether. Personally, I think you should sign the contract that’s on the table. It’s a big enough advance that it tips their hand a bit. They know you’ll be successful, but they aren’t expecting windfall. They have their eyes set on pushing for the best seller lists, but it’s doubtful they are looking at film or tv for this. So this is likely to be the best offer you’ll get. If our roles were reversed, I would take it. But, obviously, if you want to counter offer, that’s your call.”
I nodded to myself.
“Yeah, I want to sign. Send over the contract, and I’ll fill it out right away.”
“Will do. Keep an eye on your inbox. I’ll forward it to you in a minute or two.”
So that was…cool. More than cool, obviously. But cool was how I was feeling. I shuddered. An old timey ship captain’s voice was echoing in my mind.
“There’s a change a-brewin’ on these winds, laddie. Changes come, indeed.”
I chuckled, and turned my eyes back to my desk. My copy of my book sat opened to the middle, heavily marked in red pen.
I’m guessing you want to know what was on page 163…
He smiled down at me, as he covered my bare chest on bleu cheese dressing.
“Pleasures grow exponentially when you combine them with other pleasures. Just as I hunger for your body, to consume you, I also hunger for…these chicken wings.”
He reached over to the nearby coffee table and grabbed a plate of boneless buffalo wings thatI had not seen and, even more surprising, had not smelled when we began. My stomach growled. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten in, like, an hour. And since my metabolism ran like a fine tuned machine and I was boning like it was my job today, I needed to replenish my energy. I reached up to grab one off the plate, and he pulled them away, frowning at me.
“These are mine. If you were hungry, you should have brought your own.”
He dipped the first one into the dressing he had poured on my body, savoring tit like a delectable chocolate.
“Mmmm…like I said, combining pleasures is delightful. So much better with a boner.”
“Do you always get boneless wings?”
“Oh, yes. Why?”
“I don’t know. I was just wondering. Aren’t they basically just chicken nuggets?”
“No, they are wings. boneless wings. It says so on the menu.”
“But…they aren’t shaped like wings. They aren’t made from wing meat. They are just chunks of breaded chicken. So…….chicken nuggets.”
“That’s…that’s not…there’s…they…” he sighed, unsure of how to continue.
“Fine. Maybe they are chicken nuggets. But they are chicken nuggets for pleasure seeking adults such as myself, and you can’t take that away from me!”
“I wasn’t trying to; I was just making an observation. I thought we were having a conversation. Geez.”
He shook his head.
“I’ve heard enough from you. The time has come. Get in the pot.”
“What pot?”
“The giant pot that’s been in the corner this whole time.”
I looked over to where he pointed, confused and surprised.
“You really are not very observant. You didn’t notice the wings, you didn’t notice the bubbling cauldron, and you didn’t notice that I was dicing up carrots, onions, and celery the entire time you were talking about the difference between wings and nuggets.”
“Hey! Were you listening to my private inner monologue?! That’s an invasion of privacy!”
Perhaps; but still, it is time to get in the pot. I am still very hungry, and you are on the menu tonight.”
I walked over to the cauldron and climbed inside.
“So, you’re a cannibal then?”
“Indeed I am,” he said.
“How does that work? Are you born craving human meat, or are you raised by other cannibals, or…how…how does that work, exactly?”
As I rubbed carrots and onions on my body, still covered in bleu cheese dressing inside the giant pot, the door burst open as he was mid-sentence, as my other lovers burst into the room, as if on command, as if my rescue were planned, as if it were timed, as if…the cannibal had been set up…
out of the hive mind 