Name…address…phone…email
Name…address…phone…email
    
It goes on and on.  When they still can’t find me, they ask for my “bio.”
        “Get his history.  Where does he work?  Where is he writing?  It isn’t where he told us!”
    
“Send SASE.”  I do, knowing they will never be returned.  Still, I mechanically send them.  Even if they try, the address isn’t right.  I have made sure of that. They don’t fool me.
        Short stories, poems, novels, they are all the same: thoughts.
        That’s what they want to know:  “What is he thinking now?”  But I never tell.
    
I have learned how to confuse them.  I don’t write what I am thinking.  I never share. They know that, so they continue asking me for submissions.  They are clever, though.  They don’t do it outright.  Oh no.  That would be too obvious.
        They do it through their magazines and web sites.  They advertise for “Submissions.” They pretend they don’t care and suck us in.  Thousands have succumbed to their ruse.  But not me; I only pretend they have convinced me.
    
I send them submissions of prose and poetry that I haven’t thought of yet; that’s how I fool them. That’s why they can’t beat me.
        I write.  I type.  I lie.
    
Still, they are intelligent beings, I suspect.  They know the difference. They know what is mine and what is yet to be mine.  I keep them two steps ahead of me, so they are three steps behind me.  As long as I can keep them ahead of me in the mirror behind me, all will be well.
        I read the e-zines, the magazines, the shamazines and the ragazines. The names are endless.  They herald the authors.  They allow them to claim the prize of “published.”  They have killed their minds.  They have made them theirs.

        Many will become editors and publishers when the drain is completed.  They have surrendered their will.  But I shall not.
        They seek my soul, to add it to their list. They seek my mind, my thoughts.
    
It wasn’t always this way.  There was a time when we all could think freely—a time when we all could write what we chose and share it with the world of comprehension.  But that was before they took over. That was before we had to be published, to be published.
    
They don’t fool me.  I will submit this piece just like I have the others.  But they won’t accept it either, because they will know it is not my present thought.  They will know that this did not come from my present mind.
    
I survive because they live to destroy me.  As long as they survive to destroy me, I live.
        They will read this, and they might ask others to read this.  If they ask you, remember:  
        I haven’t thought of this yet.
  
  
               About the Author
  
        David Kentner has returned to writing after a thirty-eight year hiatus.  He retired as Chief of Police of Freeport, Illinois, and has been a former auctioneer, antiques dealer, and still performs Estate Assessments occasionally for specific clients.  He has a degree in Law Enforcement and is a Federally-certified instructor in “Communication for Community Policing.”                 His short stories have been accepted for publication in Faraway Journal, Jukebox Journal, Static Movement, and Clockwise Cat.  He has completed one novel, #16, and is currently working on a second—The Last Knight of Camelot.
    
    
    
                                  Copyright © D A Kentner