REVENGE
Sadly ineligible...
As an editor, you come across a surprising number of people like Roger.
To be fair, we got off on the wrong foot. My publication, Saturday Short Stories, has strict submission rules, but there’s no charge to submit and there’s even the odd prize to be won.
Stories must be the correct length and submitted in exactly the required manner. There’s a little box at the top of the online Submissions form. There, authors must write the story title, then a comma, a space, the word ‘by’, another space, then their name. One false move leads to rejection.
Writers then have to paste the story itself into another box below the title. Further down, there are some further things to ‘certify’. Writers have to provide some personal stuff*, say they’ve written the story in the past week… and to state that they’re not using a virtual private network – a ‘VPN’ – or ‘hiding’ behind a remote ‘proxy’ server..
Roger called me ‘pernickety’ many times, particularly when rejected – but it’s my site. He who pays the invoices sings the song. I’d have helped him, but Roger was too mean to pay the nominal feedback fee of £5.00. Instead, he conducted a guerrilla war, posting rude comments about me wherever possible.
He kept entering competitions, though. His recent Christmas Contest entry was particularly nasty anout me personally. It got nowhere, of course; instead, the judges decided that the contest, and the prize of £50, should be won by a newcomer, Lavinia Ramsbottom.
I contacted Lavinia to arrange payment of the prize… and received a reply instead from Roger!
GOT YOU AT LAST! it said. REVENGE IS MINE! PAY UP LIKE A MAN!
I was annoyed to be duped. It’s against the rules to submit a second story under a false name, and he’d also used a VPN to conceal his identity. Too busy, I’d let it through by mistake. But the judges had decided, and I reckoned it would be easier just to accept that, for once, he’d beaten me.
And I keep my word, so I sent him a PayPal link to download the prizemoney. I added the message
ALL YOURS, *ROGER*, YOU DESERVE IT.
Shortly after, I received a message from the server to say that he’d completed the download.
Reader, I’m not sure what your computing knowledge is like, but there’s a particularly nasty form of malware called the Editor Virus. Unlike most, it’s an ‘overwrite worm’ that not only wipes out a computer’s hard drive, it also overwrites its operating system as well. Put simply, the computer is totally destroyed and even the most advanced antivirus technology can’t undo it. The owner’s only consolation is that computers can be recycled for the precious metals inside.
Each time Roger switched it on, all he would see would be a screen saying
To be fair, we got off on the wrong foot. My publication, Saturday Short Stories, has strict submission rules, but there’s no charge to submit and there’s even the odd prize to be won.
Stories must be the correct length and submitted in exactly the required manner. There’s a little box at the top of the online Submissions form. There, authors must write the story title, then a comma, a space, the word ‘by’, another space, then their name. One false move leads to rejection.
Writers then have to paste the story itself into another box below the title. Further down, there are some further things to ‘certify’. Writers have to provide some personal stuff*, say they’ve written the story in the past week… and to state that they’re not using a virtual private network – a ‘VPN’ – or ‘hiding’ behind a remote ‘proxy’ server..
Roger called me ‘pernickety’ many times, particularly when rejected – but it’s my site. He who pays the invoices sings the song. I’d have helped him, but Roger was too mean to pay the nominal feedback fee of £5.00. Instead, he conducted a guerrilla war, posting rude comments about me wherever possible.
He kept entering competitions, though. His recent Christmas Contest entry was particularly nasty anout me personally. It got nowhere, of course; instead, the judges decided that the contest, and the prize of £50, should be won by a newcomer, Lavinia Ramsbottom.
I contacted Lavinia to arrange payment of the prize… and received a reply instead from Roger!
GOT YOU AT LAST! it said. REVENGE IS MINE! PAY UP LIKE A MAN!
I was annoyed to be duped. It’s against the rules to submit a second story under a false name, and he’d also used a VPN to conceal his identity. Too busy, I’d let it through by mistake. But the judges had decided, and I reckoned it would be easier just to accept that, for once, he’d beaten me.
And I keep my word, so I sent him a PayPal link to download the prizemoney. I added the message
ALL YOURS, *ROGER*, YOU DESERVE IT.
Shortly after, I received a message from the server to say that he’d completed the download.
Reader, I’m not sure what your computing knowledge is like, but there’s a particularly nasty form of malware called the Editor Virus. Unlike most, it’s an ‘overwrite worm’ that not only wipes out a computer’s hard drive, it also overwrites its operating system as well. Put simply, the computer is totally destroyed and even the most advanced antivirus technology can’t undo it. The owner’s only consolation is that computers can be recycled for the precious metals inside.
Each time Roger switched it on, all he would see would be a screen saying
DON’T MESS WITH SATURDAY SHORT STORIES
*Not as personal, please, as Suzy Alfresco, who wrongly assumed that my judgement might be swayed by a naked photo of herself.
