Deadline

It was another late night at the Mirocaw Daily Gazette for Barry "Scoops" Copeland. Nobody actually called him "Scoops," but as a junior reporter and the newest member of the investigative reporting beat, he was trying his darndest to make the name stick. His colleagues didn't take him seriously, yet, on account of he was the editor's nephew, and fresh outta reporter school. Sure, he was still a little wet behind the ears, and it didn't help that he was technically kicked out of reporter school, but he had gumption and he knew that's what really mattered in the broadsheet biz.

And tonight was gonna be the night he made a real difference around here.

He'd had some bad luck lately. He'd snapped a picture of Mayor Flatley taking a bribe from the biggest bootlegger in the state,  Mash O'Reilly. One of O'Reilly's goons had spotted Scoops hiding in the dumpster on account of the flash went off and lit up the entire alley. 

They fired a few shots at him as he scampered away, and missed all but one shot, and that one hit him right in the Graflex Speed Graphic press camera.

When he ran back to the Gazette and told everyone what had happened, all they cared about was where their lunch order was.

But Barry was gonna show them. He'd begged and cajoled the grumpy old men in the darkroom to let him try and develop the film from his shattered camera and they finally agreed, but only after they were done with all of their work so he wouldn't ruin the rest of their work. When the photo came out, it was just clear enough. He raced to his office to churn out some copy.

His office was more of an old storage attic and was way at the opposite side of the printing warehouse. While he worked, he could hear the groans and wheezes as the massive printing spools warming up. The were gleaming steel cylinders, many times the size of a rookie reporter. When they were printing, they were like rolling pins of God. 

With a final tap of his Singer typewriter, he was finished. He tore off the finished copy and ran out of his office. "This is it!" he thought as he raced along the rickety metal walkway high above the whirring printing presses. "If I can just make it to the cold type in the next minute or two, I'll make it!"

"Stop the presses!" He shouted as he ran. Then Barry slipped on the slippery metal walkway, plummeted 50 cruel feet down, and landed smack in the middle of the Kreuger-Gutenberg Industrial Printing Press just as she was getting up to full steam.

And that's how Scoops Copeland finally made the front page of the Mirocaw Daily Gazette. Actually, I believe he made it onto darn near every page of that particular edition. That's one way to go down in history, I suppose. You might could even say that the circumstances of his untimely death fulfilled to the letter, if not the spirit, his lifelong goal of making a real impact on the newspaper world, on account of his physical body was crushed to death by the literal machines of industry. 

*Editor's Note to Proofreader: Cut that last line, clean up the tense agreement errors, and then throw the whole goddam thing in the trash. Don't ever put garbage like this in front of me again or you're fired.

-Dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft and Norman Gene MacDonald