Winnie's Letter

Winnie's letter

John made a policy to never respond to the authors complaints after he gave them a

negative review in the magazine. When he was a young journalist, he would make it a point to respond to every gripe, complaint or editorial mistake. Nothing he said would ever seem to calm anyone down. Heavy Is the Man Who Wears the Crown was a trusted magazine for pseudo-intellectuals to bond over the newest craze. Pseudo-intellectual people have always needed an intercessor to help them understand high concepts. Where the Israelites had Moses, the pseudo intellectuals had this magazine. The Arts section was the crown jewel of the magazine. John had been entrusted with the Art section for five years. Nothing in his five years prepared him for what was about to happen. He received the letter written on papyrus. The letter just said John Byrne, you are cordially invited to my house for dinner. I would love to talk to you about your review for my book Under the Sun. If I recall correctly, you wrote something to the effect of -Ms. Winnie follows up her promising debut with the disappointing new novel, this novel attempts to satirize the Me Too movement by making the heroine of the novel a victim of a vampiric rape. This novel has more in common with Stephanie Meyer than Oscar Wilde - I never forgot that review. Dinner is at 7. Hope you like blood sausages. Signed Carmen Winnie. Byrne says who the hell writes a letter on fucking papyrus. I feel like I'm going to regret going to dinner. Byrne thinks to himself rules are meant to be broken, especially mine. After my review was published, I remember being inundated with emails from concerned parents stating that their 16-year-old daughters had last been seen with Carmen. Carmen was a prominent author. People are drawn to an author’s success like a moth to a flame. Besides, there was this ridiculous rumor that she was a vampire due to her being a member of the albino community and the fact that she had a large protruding scar on her neck. John was many things but an ablest he was not. He got in his Cadillac and he drove to the address she provided. On the way there, he was listening to the song Bullet and Butterfly Wings by the Smashing Pumpkins. The song serves 2 purposes, one was to psych himself up, the other was for ironic detachment. When he arrived at her modest townhouse, she greeted him. “I hope you found my house okay?” “It was no trouble at all”, he said. She did not have the appearance of an albino, he thought she looked more like an angel. When she gestured with her hands for him to come inside, she almost looked like a bat taking flight. Her two eyes were like radiant black holes sucking him into her orbit. He let gravity pull him to the kitchen table. “I'm sure you have heard the rumors about me. The rumors that I have seduced 16-year-olds. It's not true. I was trying to protect these vulnerable girls.” John said, “Listen, I am an art critic, not a priest. The one thing I know about art is that it is subjective, just like life”. She asked, “how do you feel?” He answered, “I don't know.” She said, “In my day, powerful men made up stories about me.” Carmen admitted,” Mr. Byrnes, I am a vampire. I’ve been thinking a lot about your review and how you compared me to Stephanie Meyers,” she said in a sincere voice. “It is extremely important to me that you are earnest with my story.” He just thinks it’s an Oscar Wilde joke and said, “Ms. Winnie, you really are a genuine storyteller.” She gets up from the kitchen table as if to attack him and says, “how dare you!” “How dare I what? Isn’t that what you writers want? For a critic to call you a genuine story teller.” “You don’t get it John, I’m a fucking vampire. How else did you think I was able to hypnotically lead you to the table?” “I don’t know, I’ve always had a soft spot for the feminine eye. You literally expect me to believe that you are a vampire? Things that go bump in the night? How am I supposed to know that? And you said it’s important for me to be earnest with your story. How am I, as a literary critic, not to take that as a play on words with the Oscar Wilde play The Importance of being Earnest?” Carmen answered, “I was telling you the truth. That’s the problem with you critics, you see the truth as something that can always relate back to literature but sometimes the truth is just the truth and sometimes a rape is just a rape.” John was aghast. “How do I know if all your rape talk is reality and not just fantasy?” “Because John, even I could write such a heinous act, I wouldn’t. You must understand that there are forces at play you can’t comprehend.”  “Wow Carmen, now you have me feeling as if I’m in the middle of an X-Files episode.” Now Carmen is extremely frustrated. “What do I have to do for you to believe me?” “I don’t know, turn me into a vampire.” “I’m not going to turn you into a vampire.” “Why not? I don’t turn you on?” “ You don’t get it, once you’re turned, there’s no going back. Plus, even if I did, you still wouldn’t believe. Look at how many people witnessed Jesus’s miracles and still didn’t believe. Humans can make myths out of everything. That’s the problem with your world system, A girl says she’s a rape victim and then gets paraded around like livestock and if she misses one minor detail, she’s cast aside as a liar. Everything in this world is spectacle. That’s why when a vampire literally says I’m a vampire, you can’t believe it. Why would I lie to you? What benefit would I have for doing this? I would lose my reputation. I would lose my career. Believe it or not, vampires have to work too. Contrary to popular belief, we’re not all aristocrats.”  John replies, “I’m sorry, I still don’t believe you. Well, I had hoped that if I could convince just one person then maybe some innocent girls would get saved. How naïve of me, apparently that was just one old ladies dream.”