In Laymon's Terms

It’s probably best that he did. I never would have submitted to it, had I known. I would not have bothered. I was a beginning writer. I had all the confidence of a dead fish, and with the way the rest of my life was going at the time, it only compounded things. My non-existent ego was already pulverized by non-writing events, and I couldn’t handle the rejection one should expect when going in to play on a field that is populated by those authors you read in high school. You need a tough skin in this business—and at the time, I didn’t have any skin at all: it was stripped raw, and every nerve was exposed. Rejections sting. Oh, you get used to it, after a while. You learn to roll with the punches. Some editors (particularly inexperienced ones) really rub it in, and I’ve had a few of those. I could not imagine Dick ripping my story to pieces, even if he hated it, but I could see him sending a rejection letter if he believed it was warranted.

Do you understand? Do you understand that I could not have sent that in, had I known it was a submission? Submitting a story always—ALWAYS—carries the risk of rejection, and at the time, that would be one rejection too many. It would have killed me. The final straw, the camel’s broken back. The 230-grain.

Perhaps it was chance, Dick taking an interest in my work at that time. Perhaps it was something else. I’d heard all of the slots were to be invite-only, that he was taking only two newbies. I also knew that my friend, Rain Graves, had been asked to be one of them. I never would have guessed that I was to be the other. Not in a million years. He could have taken Ryan Harding, or Mehitobel Wilson, or Keene, Oliveri, Huyck, any of those guys. It was inconceivable to me, that he would want a story from me. It was...it was worth setting the gun down a moment and signing the contract. It was worth telling myself that now, at least, I had to stay alive long enough to see the book released. And yes, I even smiled, because I thought: contributor copies.

I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in Satan. I don’t believe in angels. But if there ever was an angel that walked this miserable fucking planet, its name was Richard Carl Laymon.

He gave a kid a chance. A kid who, without the chance, would have either been in jail right now for two counts of first-degree murder, in a grave or in a mental institution writing a story in black crayon. He made me smile once, during a time when it was all I could do to get out of bed. If it weren’t for him, I would have no writing career. I believe that. Bad News was a major anthology. At the very least, it was major to me because I started submitting with a little more confidence, thinking, “Maybe Dick was right. Maybe I really can do this.”

I’m still prone to kicking myself in the teeth—especially when it comes to the writing. Every time I do, I hear Dick Laymon’s voice in my head. To me, he was a mentor, a father figure, a friend. My loss is not the same as Ann’s and Kelly’s, or the friends he’d known since Moby Dick was a minnow and Stephen King was trying to make ends meet. I know that. I cried for three days straight when I learned of his death, and every day for damned near a month after. Sometimes I still cry. I mourned his passing, Ann and Kelly’s loss and how I never got a chance to show him my first novel (which he blurbed, but we’re trying to stay under that three-quarters-of-a-million word mark, here, so I won’t go into it) or my first collection. That I never got a chance to tell him—

“You were right, Dick.”

To think about that still brings tears.

Even now.

Goddamnit.

Geoff Cooper

AN I HELP YOU?”

“Holy shit, he’s got a gun!”

“Terry, no!”

Jon had no time to turn before he heard gunshots. Two, maybe three. Someone screamed, someone swore. Something fell. Glass shattered, footsteps crunched wetly through broken liquor bottles.

He hit the deck in front of the cooler, quickly scuttled to the end of the aisle, hoped the shelves would conceal him. He felt vulnerable, exposed. From his position, Jon couldn’t see the men, but heard their exchange with the cashier: demands for money, hurry the fuck up, her pleas to not be hurt. The drawer dinged open. They demanded more, she had none, that was all—and she could not open the safe: she’d just started the job, was not trusted with a key. Over this, Jon heard someone else crying in hysterics over Terry: “Please, Terry, be all right,” she said. “Please, Terry don’t die. Hang in there, Terry. Terry? You listening to me, Terry? Don’t you fucking die on me!”

“Bitch, shut the fuck up before I put a cap in your ass too—you all whining and shit is pissing me off,” said another voice.

Both men were near the register, their attention drawn by the cashier, the drawer, and whoever was crying by Terry. Jon wondered if Terry was going to make it—whoever the hell Terry was.