Damian Myron Writes

Imaginative Thrillers Horror and Fantasy

Tales from Dig Down

My Story (Part III)

by

Even sitting, Ryan’s knees became wobbly as his source fed him the hook for the story. On the other end of the line, the voice was asking if he was still there.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m still here,” Ryan said, snapping out of it.

He had gone lightheaded with euphoria.

His pencil snapped under the frantic force he was using to jot the story down as fast as he could. When he looked down at his scribbled notes, he counted at least five grammatical errors. He tore the page out of his notepad, balled it up, grabbed another pencil, and as calmly as he could manage, asked his source to start again from the top.

This story is gonna be huge, Ry. Don’t fuck it up!

The gravity of the story dragged his thoughts to the thief. His neck whipped around towards Horace’s office door.

Still closed.

He could feel his source on the other end of the line grow more impatient by the millisecond. This was a juicy development where they worked, and it was clear to Ryan that they wanted to get back to work before their absence was noticed.

For Ryan’s part, he wanted to get the story as quickly as they wanted to give it. But he knew there was another dynamic at play. The thief was an obstacle, and would swipe this story too if he wasn’t careful.

Paranoid, he twisted his neck back towards Horace’s office. In the split second it took him to do so, he had the unshakable feeling that the door would swing open if his eyes didn’t reach it fast enough.

Still closed.

With that fear subsided (for now), Ryan soaked in the story, finding he had never felt this level of craving before. Each detail bred another question.

If his ears could salivate, his neck would be drenched.

His hand cramped as he hungrily filled page after page of his notepad with shorthand. His mind worked overtime juggling all the details he was being fed. His neighbor asked him to stop the incessant toe tapping.

The words he scribbled down were a jumbled mess. Taking down the story he was given had always come naturally to him, but that wasn’t what was happening here.

After every couple of lines, he’d snap his neck back towards Horace’s office. He couldn’t shake the feeling of being observed.

Still closed.

After filling five pages, his source stated they were done, they had to get back, and asked if Ryan had everything he needed. Ryan recited every word they had told him in his head, and when he was convinced he wasn’t ever going to forget the story that made his career, he agreed to let them off the line.

He hung up, then flipped to the front of his notes and reexamined everything. His concern was that his hastily written notes wouldn’t make sense to anyone that read them. When he was done reading, he slowly lowered his pad, and smiled.

His smile quickly dissipated. Slowly, he willed himself to peek around the newsroom. He swiveled in his chair until he was facing the thief’s door.

Still closed.

He didn’t see you, Ryan thought, as he continued  to spin his chair back toward his desk. His rotation halted as he faced the break room opposite Horace’s office.

Horace stood in its doorway, watching him.

My Story (Part II)

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Even by the time he reached his desk, Ryan had still refused to accept any culpability in losing the story. As far as he was concerned, it was his baby, his birthright, and it didn’t matter if the paper had given that snake sole credit.

It also didn’t matter to him how many people had told him to beware of the thief. How often they compared Horace to a vulture, circling around the other reporters, waiting to pick up a juicy story that he could swoop in and claim for himself. 

How many others he had done this to already?

The pulitzer winning reporter had been so friendly to him, an ambitious nobody, fresh out of college, looking to make a name for himself. It didn’t seem possible that Horace was the heartless betrayer the whole paper made him out to be.

Ryan had rationalized the collective attitude in his head. It had to be jealousy, that Horace, a decorated reporter, was simply superior to the rest of them, that they couldn’t stand the praise lavished on Husk year after year, and decided to shun him in shallow retribution.

He ignored the fact that they all told the same story, using that to strengthen his own reasoning of what was going on. That they each said practically the same thing showed they lacked ingenuity and creativity, and that was why Horace surpassed them again and again.

He groaned at the recollection that he had sworn not to turn into his colleagues.

His mentor’s betrayal forced him to look at their warnings as what they always were: facts. They all gave the same testimony because he had stolen from each of them the same way.

What killed him was this happened to him because he had committed a cardinal sin as a reporter. He had ignored the truth because it didn’t fit with the story he wanted to tell himself.

Never again.

Replaying the betrayal in the harsh light of hindsight over and over again forced Ryan to reassess the duplicity with a new perspective. He still refused to accept that the story now dominating the headlines belonged to anyone else, but oddly, this no longer ate at him like it did when he first stormed into Frank’s office.

His focus now was to not end up like the rest of the druthers he worked with. The last thing Ryan wanted was to remain haunted by Horace’s treachery for years, opting to bitch about it to anyone who would listen rather than ever do anything about it.

The con man had taken him under his wing, even fed him some small stories while he was still making headway, just so he could pitch something to Frank. Ryan now saw the ruse for what it was, how deftly Horace had gained the confidence of a plucky young reporter so that when the protege finally broke a big one on their own, the first person they’d share it with was their office hero.

Ryan peered across the bullpen at Horace’s closed door. It still pierced his heart how quickly Horace had scooped up the story after Ryan had shared it with him during their daily afternoon coffee break.

The clarity of hindsight left him pining for the opportunity to have kept the story to himself, or better yet, to have an even greater story up his sleeve.

But he didn’t have a promising prospect of a scoop. Sitting glumly at his desk, he didn’t have anything on the horizon in any aspect of his life. The only thing he had to look forward to was an invite to his brother’s poker game. The only catch was it was being held at his brother’s job, and the last thing he wanted was to freeze his ass off all night on Baltimore’s inner harbor.

Oh if I could do it over again, I’d feed him a line of bull. But that thief will know better than to trust any story I give him after what he just pulled.

Ryan was so caught up in the thought he didn’t notice his desk phone ringing until his neighbor begged him to answer it. He did so sheepishly, but his embarrassment quickly faded away when he recognized the voice on the other end of the line.

“I’ve got something for you. Got a pen handy? Believe me, you’re gonna want to write this down.”

My Story (a serial set in the Dig Down universe)

by

I

“THAT WAS MY STORY!” Ryan’s voice boomed between the four walls of Frank’s office.  

The whole room had taken on a reddish tint to Ryan. This must be what it’s like to see blood. He had never been so enraged in his life, afraid of what his scrawny frame was capable of in this state.

In an effort to calm himself, he took in deep huffs of breath. A stack of papers on Frank’s desk fluttered with each forceful exhale, a paperweight the editor kept on top of them the only thing keeping them grounded, and just barely.

Frank remained steadfast in his usual posture, deeply reclined in his chair behind his desk. When he felt Ryan had calmed down sufficiently to have a conversation, he simply asked, “Do you have any proof of that?”

The editor raised a steadying hand when he saw Ryan ready to explode again. “I’m not calling you a liar. I’m just asking if you can substantiate that claim. You’re a reporter. You wouldn’t just run a juicy story without verifying it.”

“You mean like all the drafts of the story I’ve got on my desktop?”

“They’d have drafts on theirs as well.”

“Yeah?” Ryan challenged. “Going back to last week when I first started writing the story? Check the created dates on my drafts, I bet they’ll be earlier than anything that thief has!”

Frank shook his head. “If it were me, I’d just say I deleted some of the earlier drafts until I was satisfied with what I was writing.”

“How about my notes with all of the sources used in the article?”

Frank was shaking his head before he even finished the sentence. “I’m sure they’ll have the same notepad filled with bullet points from their own interview.”

“You really believe that? That we’d each have the exact same contacts on the same story?”

Frank shrugged his shoulders. Ryan always hated that gesture, but never more so now that he was on the receiving end of it.

“We’re all on the same team. It’s possible your contacts wouldn’t think anything about a reporter from the same newspaper asking to verify the information they gave you. Especially if it was Horace calling them.”

Ryan saw an opportunity and seized it. “So you agree it’s possible he stole my story.” Not a question.

Now it was Frank’s turn to exhale deeply. “As much as I’d believe it’s possible that a struggling reporter tried to take credit for a story by a heavily honored newsman.”

The editor let that hang in the air.

And there it is. They all warned you Frank wouldn’t turn on his golden boy. 

“So I’ll ask again. Do you have any proof?”

Ryan’s deep breaths were on the precipice of hyperventilation. Each successive inhale was as tough to swallow as the admission.

“No,” he said, barely above a whisper.

Frank started to give a pep talk about hanging in there, but Ryan barely heard it, let alone processed it. Leaving Frank’s office did nothing to help him escape his nightmare.

As he made his way back to his desk, Ryan stopped at a profile picture Horace Husk used for each of his articles, that the paper had blown up to cover the wall from ceiling to floor. Each pearly white of his eat shit grin was as big as Ryan’s head. 

Still fuming, Ryan fought the urge to claw at the picture, to rip that smug grin off of its face. Fantasies of doing the real thing paraded through his mind, seducing him.

He noticed his fists were clenched, and took a moment to study his stature. Reality set in, and he knew, even in a fury, attacking the “reporter” physically wouldn’t amount to much.

He’d probably write a story about how he survived a “deadly attack” from a “deranged colleague” and get another award.

For the first time since storming into Frank’s office, Ryan felt calm. He knew a fight wasn’t the optimal way to exact his revenge.

And he would have his revenge.

(The story will continue, next Thursday)