The Collector

As I've said before, being the alter ego of someone else is no walk in the park, especially if you're nothing more than a face in the mirror like me. A face that has a mind and an astral body and a life of its own, I might add. It's bad enough being a second-class entity but when the Real McCoy you shadow is an independent science fiction author who thinks his farts don't smell, it can be a living nightmare.

Wait... it gets worse.

That's right, it's bad enough that I have to spend most of my time in Michael Casher's World doing Michael Casher things and pretending that I'd have nothing if it weren't for Michael Casher, the indie author, the great and powerful Big Bad Mike. Yep, it's bad enough to play second fiddle to a rube who's only saving grace is that he can write novels, without having to be hounded by bartenders from Earth who think they can put the bite on me for his overdue bar tabs.

That's right. It finally happened one night this past week. The "astral figment" or else "the dreaming self "of a Middle-Eastern tavern owner they call Sheik Sousé (see pic) blew in from Earth, looking for me. The big bully pushed me off my bar stool and used it for a soapbox. The big goof didn't even know what I looked like. This is what he said:

"I am looking for the infidel Jonco Bugos who still owes me ten denarii NO! fifty thousand drachmas NO! twenty euros for drinks at Green Parakeet in Istanbul. If you see him tell him he is thief and viper and he is banned from Black Cricket in Baghdad. Stupid hack! And I am not liking to do this in stupid low boozer!"

Then he eyed the silent crowd with hatred in his black eyes, jumped down from my stool and stormed out of Think-A-Holic Lounge in a big huff before anybody could even say anything (and they wouldn't have said anything anyway). Give a fool enough rope and he'll always hang himself. That's our motto.

Anyway, as soon as the door banged shut, I was up to my eyeballs in free shots of think-a-hol from a crowd of admiring patrons. Even Angus McCloud, the Lounge's bigass head bartender, set me up with a double think-a-hol and a bubbly chaser... on the house. Why the celebration? Well, we hacks have a code and that code is that we never rat on another hack, especially if he's the innocent alter ego of a deadbeat author.

If there's a moral in this story it's this: maybe we're all hack writers around here and author wannabes and POD publishers (the flotsam and jetsam of the publishing industry) but we stick together.

So, the next time Mr. High and Mighty Sheik Sousé and that stuffed shirt Author From Another World storm into Think-A-Holic Lounge like bigass birds, we'll show them which side of the space-time continuum the butter's on.

What does that mean? Well, that's for me to know and for your to find out. Besides, I'd break another hack code if I told you.