I’d Be Deleted, by Charles M. Saplak

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F: AlienAge@wordpod.com
T: Macchione@ymail.net
Subj: poetry submission “Tide of the Graying Moon”

Dear Mr. Macchione,

Thank you so much for your submission of the poem “Tide of the Graying Moon.” I like this very much and would like to post it on the Autumn edition of -Alien Age-.

Is it still available? I know four months is a long time to consider a submission, but sometimes life can be very hectic.

I apologize for taking so long to get back to you regarding this submission. I’d like to post the Autumn edition as soon as possible, so please let me know. Also, please send me a short bio for the contributor’s notes, if you prefer.

Thanks
Rebecca Nansemond
Editor, -Alien Age-
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F: Macchione@ymail.net
T: AlienAge@wordpod.com
Subj: “Graying Moon”

Dear Ms. Nansemond,

Yes, Life could be very hectic.

I’d be deleted to have “Tide of the Graying Moon” in the Autumn edition of AA. It is still available. If possible, let me know a few days ahead of time, so its appearance online will not be totally unexpected.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,
Frank Macchione
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F: AlienAge@ wordpod.com
T: Macchione@ymail.net
Subj: poetry submission “Tide of the Graying Moon”

Dear Mr. Macchione,
Super! I forgot to mention that pay will be five dollars. I’m looking at having this issue laid out and posted online in about three weeks. Do you want a check mailed to you or do you have an internet pay account?

Also, I need a bio. I should have mentioned all of this. Sometimes when I compose an email I can be so sloppy. I was a little amused to see that you accidentally wrote “I’d be deleted….” instead of “I’d be delighted….” in your last email to me.

Still, let me know how you want the payment.

–Rebecca Nansemond
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F: Macchione@ymail.net
T: AlienAge@wordpod.com
Subj: “Graying Moon”

I’ve always liked you, Rebecca; always liked your writing and your editing, that is. So I’m going to share a little secret with you. I didn’t mistype when I wrote you that last email. I actually _will_ be deleted when you publish “Tide of the Graying Moon.”

I’m not really a person; at least not anymore. “I” was once Francis Macchione, but now I’m just a “construct.” It’s impossible to explain exactly what I am and how I exist, but I am certain that once “Tide of The Graying Moon” becomes published, Francis Macchione, – “I” — will no longer be anyone or anything.

It’s fine if you send the five dollars to my Paymate account which you can pay into by using my email address. Or you could keep the money. I don’t have any survivors so I’m not quite sure what Paymate would do with that money when I’m gone. Also, for the reasons I’ve mentioned, I don’t really see much point in printing a bio.

Sincerely,
Frank Macchione
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F: AlienAge@ wordpod.com
T: Macchione@ymail.net
Subj: poetry submission “Tide of the Graying Moon”

Dear Frank,

Whoa! That was weird. Sometimes I feel that way, too. But seriously, if you’re pitching a story idea I think it could be good if you do something with it. You could call it “Ghost in the Machine.” I think I’ll be open for submissions for the winter issue of –Alien Age- in late October of this year.

Best,
Rebecca Nansemond
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F: Macchione@ymail.net
T: AlienAge@wordpod.com
Subj: “Graying Moon”

Dear Rebecca,

Thanks for being so understanding. It’s definitely not a story I’m interested in writing. It really happened to me. I guess I need to give you a little more detail. About fourteen months ago I lost my life. I died. You might even say I committed suicide. And I became transformed, __transubstantiated__ into thirty-seven poems. Since then, they’ve each been accepted and published somewhere, except for the last two, “Tide of the Graying Moon,” and “An Account of Decay from Within a Collapsing Castle,” which should be appearing in -_Delirious Mythology_ any day now. Every time one of these poems gets published, another little piece of me ceases to exist. And when these last two are published, that’s it. -Finis-. Big Sleep. Gone. Nil. Nothing. Nada. And you know what? I am soooooo looking forward to it.

Sincerely,
The Late Frank Macchione
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F: AlienAge@ wordpod.com
T: Macchione@ymail.net
Subj: poetry submission “Tide of the Graying Moon”

Dear Frank,

I saw your email, and I’ve been waiting to send you a response until the time when I could sit down and really take my time with what I say.

I got my copy of _Delirious Mythology_ today. “Collapsing Castle” was an awesome poem. It was everything I like about your work. It was so dense, and it seemed so multi-layered. But it was so melancholy!

As for you not existing, don’t worry. I’m not really Rebecca Nansemond. I’m a changeling left by the Fairies!

Best,
Rebecca
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F: Macchione@ymail.net
T: AlienAge@wordpod.com
Subj: “Graying Moon” and other things

Dear Rebecca,

That’s cute.

Actually I like the fact that you still don’t get me being the remnants of a dead guy. It says something about you. You’re fundamentally a very nice, very good, very decent person. Maybe that’s why everything you write is so “light.” And by “light” I don’t mean trivial, I mean optimistic.

I don’t want to bore you with my exact circumstances. My wife was a shrew, my teenaged daughter hated us both and was using crystal meth and sleeping on the streets, and my son, Frank Junior, who was just four years and five months old, a toddler, died from an allergic reaction he had to a peanut butter cookie he got from a friend’s lunchbox at daycare. The most perfect, most beautiful kid in the world died because another kid gave him a cookie!

And there was a lot of mundane crap, too. I was drowning in a dead-end job and my company was being raided by a bunch of dishonest and irresponsible executives. I was getting arthritis in my knees and elbows and wrists, and my vision was getting worse. All this at age 40! The world was, to my eyes, and endless succession of crap. My only outlet was my poetry. And to make matters worse, I spent most of my days mentally exhausted, and I had very little time for writing!

Still, I tried, maybe more out of habit than anything else.

Then one day something very weird happened. I was checking some online market resources for writers, and a pop-up ad came up. No, it wasn’t about working from home or refinancing my mortgage or a free laptop. It said “Tired? Depressed? Sick of life? Translate your pain into poetry.”

Well, “tired” and “depressed” described me to a “T.” I’d been going through the motions of life for quite a while. The only things that made any kind of sense to me as far as thinking about the future were thoughts about suicide and life insurance and the nagging feeling that every thing would be okay if only I could somehow stop the pain.

Some instinct told me deep in my heart that if I clicked on that pop-up I would be ending my life.

But goddamn, was I ready.

At first nothing happened, but then the screen went blank for a few seconds, then it was filled up with a snowy, moiré-like pattern. It was the type of light pattern that can give an epileptic a seizure. It was multi-colored and swirly like an oil slick and it pulsed like a human heart. I felt as if I were being hypnotized, and I felt as if my mind was being peeled away one layer at a time, like an onion, or maybe rewinding and being erased, like an old-fashioned magnetic tape.

I sat there at the keyboard for about two hours. My hands moved on their own accord. My breathing and pulse gradually slowed to a crawl, with all the urgency of a clock winding down.

In that time my hands typed 37 poems. Now doesn’t that sound like a pretty pitiful output? Doesn’t that sound like a fairly lousy exchange for existence as a living, breathing human being?

But a sum total of 37 poems was actually not a bad representation of me. Most writers only write a very few worthwhile things, and all the rest is padding, churned out because of habit, or for money. Those 37 poems were a pretty fair distillation of my characteristic thoughts and feelings. __They__ __were__ __me__.

Then the program which had taken me did a very considerate thing. I don’t know if it did this to many other people – I can’t imagine that I’m the only one. It sent my poems out to various publications like yours which allow email submissions. It got the work out into the public eye. I’d published things before, had even been nominated for a Pushcart Prize^TM one time, way back in the late 1980’s. But in recent years I’d become so tired of writing anything, and couldn’t get motivated to even submit the stuff.

Well, since then 35 of the poems have seen the light of day, and only two more remain. I sold “An Account of Decay from Within a Collapsing Castle” over a year ago, but you know the guy at _Delirious Mythology_, it takes him six months just to blow his damned nose. At least he got the line breaks right this time.

I’m down to almost nothing! I hardly have enough of myself left to even use the word “I”!

Well, when you bought “Tide of The Graying Moon” the last poem sold, and like I said, once it’s published, I cease to exist.

So now you know.

Best,
(The Late) (Dear Departed) Frank Macchione (deceased)
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F: AlienAge@ wordpod.com
T: Macchione@ymail.net
Subj: poetry submission “Tide of the Graying Moon”

Wow.

That is very weird.

But I’m going to ask a favor of you. Please don’t take this the wrong way. Save all the fiction stuff for submissions. I get a lot of emails, and it’s hard for me to sort through stuff. I try to keep –Alien Age- on a schedule and cope with all the paperwork.

And I’m just not sure how to react. I mean I know you’re not an electronic ghost, so I don’t worry about that, but are any of those other things true? Please tell me you didn’t really lose your little boy. I’ve never had children, obviously, I’ve never even been married, but that seems like something you should never, ever even joke about.

But are you really that unhappy? If you like I’ll give you my personal email and you can email me at that address and I don’t mind hearing how things are going with you personally. Sometimes it helps a lot just to have someone to talk to. But don’t give the personal email out to any writers, okay?

Yours,
Rebecca
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F: Macchione@ymail.net
T: AlienAge@wordpod.com
cc: RNansemond37@wildearth.net
cc: RJNansemond@Radford.edu
Subj: “Graying Moon”

Dear Rebecca,

As you can see, I already know all of your email addresses. I mean, give me __some__ credit. I __exist__ in the internet.

I don’t blame you at all, and believe me I don’t take it the wrong way. You’re just a nice person.

In fact, you’re so nice, I want to give you three little pieces of advice.

1) You sent a story – a very good story, btw – to _Gargoyle Galore_ magazine six months ago, and the editor keeps saying he’s considering it. Send it somewhere else. He lost it, and he just keeps telling people he’s considering things. He’ll never put out another issue. I’ve looked into his computer and he’s so disorganized it’s pitiful. He’s just about ready to declare bankruptcy.
2) You’ve been bidding on a 2004 Honda Accord on Motors4you.com. Get out of that auction immediately! Cancel your bids! That guy doesn’t have that car, all he has is the JPEG image, he’s going to ask for your bank account number to do a transfer but he’ll just clean out your account, and he’s sold that car so many times the past year it’s not funny.
3) You’ve just about decided to give your address and phone number to that guy you’ve exchanged messages with a few times on Date.com. Don’t do that either. That jackass is a worse deal than the Accord. I know he comes across like somebody you’d want to meet when you’re messaging, but he’s an expert in making himself look good, like he’s exactly what a woman wants. He’s phonier than an eight-dollar bill. He’s not even single! And his wife has no idea he’s fooling around!

Best,
Frank (Ghost in the Machine ) Macchione
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F: AlienAge@ wordpod.com
T: Macchione@ymail.net
Subj: poetry submission “Tide of the Graying Moon”

Okay.

Dear Whoever You Are:

Please consider this official notice that I’m not going to publish “Tide of The Graying Moon” after all. And it will be my pleasure to mail you your full payment as a kill fee.

Please don’t submit anything else to _Alien Age_. I won’t consider any more of your work.

R. Nansemond,
Editor-in-Chief,
Alien Age Magazine
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F: Macchione@ymail.net
T: AlienAge@wordpod.com
Subj: “Graying Moon”

I’m sorry!

I realize now just how much I must have creeped you out. Maybe I should have just kept out of your business, but I care about you. Sometimes I catch myself imagining how different my life would have been if I’d met you years before…

Regardless, you’ve got to publish that poem! I don’t have any communication or control over whatever took those poems. I don’t submit them, it submits them. And I can’t be sure that it would resubmit “Graying Moon” to another market!

Please don’t drag this out! Do you have any idea how flat this existence is? Sure, I don’t have any pain, but I don’t really have anything else either. In the movies zipping around in cyberspace looks like a special-effects thrill ride, but the state I’m in is actually like a mathematical state of -unbeing-, like Schrödinger’s cat or something.

But I can still remember, I can still feel! I still hurt!

Please, Rebecca, I beg you, please publish that poem so I can move on….

In desperation,
Frank Macchione
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F: AlienAge@ wordpod.com
T: Macchione@ymail.net
Subj: poetry submission “Tide of the Graying Moon”

Dear Writer,

Thanks for your query regarding the work referenced above. My records show that I have previously answered all questions regarding that submission, and no such story or poem is currently in our editorial pipeline.

Editor,
Alien Age
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F: Macchione@ymail.net
T: AlienAge@wordpod.com
Subj: “Graying Moon”

For God’s sake, don’t do this to me!

I’m not sure that this thing will resubmit that poem anywhere else. I’m going to be in a kind of limbo.

I may be stuck here forever!

When I was a young Catholic, the priests and nuns told us that suicides condemned themselves to Hell. I didn’t imagine then that Hell could mean millions and millions of miles and miles of fiber optic cable, and great cities of circuitry, with wave after wave of clattering, crackling electrons washing in and out of the shore….

One little poem out there, accepted but not published. But I might be stuck here for eternity. Eternity! You’re the only person who could set me free!

I know that I must have frightened you when you thought that I was spying on you. I know you think everything I’ve told you is a lot of BS, and that I’m some kind of cyber-stalker. But Rebecca, WHAT IF YOU’RE WRONG?! Good God, how could you live with yourself?

Please please please let me know….

Frank
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F: AlienAge@ wordpod.com
T: Macchione@ymail.net
Subj: poetry submission “Tide of the Graying Moon”

Okay, Frank –- if you are Frank. I’ve Googled your name, and I’ve read the stories archived on your local paper’s website. I read your obituary. I even read the article about your little boy.

I sent the five dollars to your Paymate account.

So I’m going to publish the poem. But before I do, I have so many questions for you. Do you think you’re going to move on to a different place? Or do you really think it’s going to be nothing? You’ve been closer to the answer than any other person I could ask.

Do you sense something from where you are?

Are there others like you out there?

Can you sense anything about what happens when you move on? Is there another side? Do you think there’s a God?

Rebecca
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F: AlienAge@ wordpod.com
T: Macchione@ymail.net
Subj: poetry submission “Tide of the Graying Moon”

Dear Frank,

I was kind of waiting to hear back from you, but I wanted to get _Alien Age_ out by the deadline.

I hope you can see and like the way “Graying Moon” was presented. I did some last minute shifting around to make it the lead. That’s the first time we’ve ever made a poem the lead.

I had no idea what to say on the contributor’s notes, so we just left it blank.

The Paymate transfer failed, account closed. I mailed a check through snail mail, but it came back.

I cancelled my bids on the car, and I stopped messaging the guy from Date.com. And I withdrew that story from _Gargoyle Galore_ and sent it out to _Ghost Palace_, and it sold!

And I installed a pop-up blocker.

But mostly I’ve just been thinking of you.

What do you think could have happened if we had met each other long ago?

Love,
Rebecca
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From: Mailer-Daemon@wordpod.com
To: AlienAge@wordpod.com
Subject: Failure Notice

Unable to deliver your message to the following address: Macchione@ymail.net
Remote host said: 554 delivery error dd

This user does not exist.
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Charles M. Saplak has been publishing stories and poems for about twenty years.