Her wide, beautiful, eyes, the color of an ancient mystic Chinese jade dragon, glittered in the dawning moonlight, drawing the strong and mysterious and black haired, very muscled, billionaire Jones closer and closer because there was this magnetic power pulling them together even though he just saw her like, five seconds ago and-
The old lady stood, brushing commas off her pants as she did. It was getting quite a bit tedious, this business of badly written novels, she thought, picking her way through the scattered similes from the last dumpload. Not that it wasn’t good money. Or that she would ever judge a book based on content, oh no. It was not the way.
For she was the keeper of the words, and the keeper of the words would never commit such a blatant act of pretentiousness. Never.
Except…
Except. The place was starting to look like a thesaurus, really. Andeveryone knew a thesaurus was not a very healthy environment for well-bred wordians, not at all. It had the most peculiar effect on delicate sinuses. Which she had, of course.
Sniff.
It would, she reflected, be nice to get a decent story every now and then. With proper sentences and perhaps not with such an abundance of exclamation marks. Exclamation marks were quite the bother to clean up, what with the small dots always fluttering off to who-knows-where and clogging up her drains. And they were very hard to sell on the market.
Maybe a poem or two? Yes. Something with the air of a Poe would do quite nicely. Or perhaps a long-lost Orwellian tale! That would be such an excitement. Oh, the old days had been much more enjoyable. The keeper of the words still remembered when Bram Stoker’s Dracula had come tumbling down the chute. Very lengthy, but a proper horror with very decent vocabulary. Not like nowadays, where they pranced about glittering and making triangles with werewolves and all other sorts of embarrassing things. She snorted. Vampires indeed.
The chute clanged about, indicating another load coming through.
I want you to become well acquainted , on first name terms, if you will, with my favorite and most cherished part of my-
Oh, bother. It was that one again. The keeper of the words put on her macintosh, donned on her surgical gloves, and waited.
That sort of literature was always bound to be sticky, after all.