It Takes One to Know One

"I don't care how you do it, just get it done!" Seline's voice sizzled and her eyes flashed fire.

Sheila cowered beneath the vehemence of the spoken words. She quickly scuttled to her paste-up board on the other side of the room to do the job Seline wanted done.

Maureen stuck her head around the corner of Seline's paste-up board, her eyes wet and wide with anger. "How many times have I asked you not to yell at my people?"

"I did not yell. I didn't even raise my voice." Seline didn't look up from the story she was pasting up on the grid sheet before her, but the careful enunciation of her words carried the weight of her anger.

"No, but the tone you used was uncalled for."

Seline tossed the paste-up knife she was using into the gutter of the paste-up board and placed a hand on her hip. "I'm not about to stand here and beg or sweet-talk anybody to do my paper right!"

Now Maureen stepped around the corner of the paste-up board so that she faced Seline with her entire body and put her hands on her hips. Maureen was short, round and full of sound and struck a formidable sight when she did that. "Well, you know just as well as I do that the only reason we do your paper is because we have to!"

Seline took a step closer to Maureen. "I am all too aware of that, Maureen, since you insist on reminding me at every opportunity. But just because you have to do my paper, doesn't mean you can do a shoddy job on it!"

An Xacto knife rattled as it hit the carpet and a few people jumped at the sound.

"Does anybody know another way outta here?" I asked from the paste-up board in the corner next to Seline's paste-up board.

Bobbie laughed. "Kinda trapped back there in the corner, ain't ya, Jodie?"

Nervous laughter filled the empty void.

"I like working back here in the corner," I said. "I like it when the setting sun shines in the window." I looked from Maureen to Seline and back to Maureen again. "But if you guys are gonna start hurling Xacto knives, at least let everyone else get out of the line of fire."

"Fine," Seline said curtly to Maureen. "It won't happen again."

Without another word, but with a dirty look my way, Maureen huffed back to the paste-up board on the backside of mine where she was working on the daily paper.

I didn't appreciate the dirty look, but it told me Maureen had gotten the underlying message. We each had been given the "give Seline the proper respect and professionalism" speech.

Every Tuesday night, the battle of wills provided a good show. Being the pre-press supervisor, Maureen was responsible for completing the daily metro paper as well as Seline's small local paper by the same deadline. Regardless of how they got done.

Seline was the editor of the small local paper and she enjoyed pushing Maureen, and the other paste-up artists, to the very edges of their limitations of patience and stamina. Which made it difficult for anyone to show her any respect.

When Seline finished with the page she was working on, she brought it over to me. "Tell me something, Jodie." She held up the grid sheet, a thin piece of cardboard roughly the size of a newspaper page, for me to view. "Do you think the photo looks better where it is or would it look better in the upper right hand corner?"

Bobbie joined us as Seline finished her question. "I think it's fine just where it is," she commented. She placed the grid sheet she had just completed on top of a stack of other completed grids.

"No one was asking you," Seline said tartly. "Jodie?"

"Actually, I agree with Bobbie. It does look fine where it is."

Seline looked at the page for a moment. "Yeah. I guess you're right. Is that one ready, Bobbie?"

"Uh-huh," was all Bobbie could say. Bobbie watched as Seline signed several pages out on the roster and walked them to the adjoining camera department. Bobbie shook her head and looked at me. "What kind of hold do you have over her, girl?"

"Look," I said as I trimmed a galley of copy. "I've been proofreading and editing Seline's pages while I paste them up. I've caught quite a few errors that way. I guess she appreciates it."

"I guess," Bobbie said.

"Ya know, if Maureen would let me do all of Seline's pages on Tuesday nights, it would take the heat off everybody else."

"It sure would. Have you asked Maureen about that?"

"I did. But she wants all the pages evenly distributed to get it done quicker."

"I'll talk to her about that," Bobbie said. "I'll get her to do it."

I chuckled. "If anyone can, you can, Bobbie." Bobbie and Maureen had worked together at this paper about eight years. Bobbie was one of the few people to have any influence on Maureen.

I was still chuckling when Maureen shot around the corner of my board.

"Okay, look, Jodie." Maureen spoke fast and out of breath as though she were afraid that time would run out before she finished what she had to say. "Since you work so well with Seline, we're gonna go to lunch and leave you here with her. I think you can finish up what's left and then you can go to lunch."

"Sure. I'd be glad to," I said. I could feel a sly grin cross my face as though I knew something they didn't. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a look pass between Bobbie and Maureen and Bobbie just shook her head. Maureen disappeared to the other side of the board. "Lunch!" she boomed out. No one in the room needed a second announcement.

"I feel better now," Seline commented when she returned after everyone had left.

"You should," I grinned. "You got your weekly dose of flirting with the camera guys."

Seline grinned back as she picked up a page that I had just completed. "Brash."

"That's what you like about me," I retorted.

"One thing I can say for you, Jodie," Seline said as she bent over the paste-up board to edit stories, "is that you don't get bent out of shape over things like Maureen does."

"Maureen's hyper. Besides, since the new manager arrived, she's been afraid that her job's on the line."

"Who? Mike? I think he's kinda cute."

I shrugged. "He's arrogant. No matter how good a man looks, I think that definitely takes away from them."

Seline laughed. "Yeah, but when you look as good as Mike does, you can afford to be arrogant."

"Yeah, I suppose."

"I think that's what I like best about working with you, Jodie." I looked at Seline. "We can have a difference of opinion but we don't have to fight about it."

"You mean like you and Maureen?"

"Something like that." Seline tapped a page with her Xacto knife. "Don't forget the Abby photo for this page."

"Right." I turned to the filing cabinet behind me to search for the photo, otherwise known as a sig in newspaper lingo. As I searched through negatives, old house ads and cartoons, and other sigs, I thought about how everyone else thought of Seline as a bitch, which she could be, but how amazing it was that she and I got along.

"Maureen's filing system," I muttered under my breath. "Toss it in a drawer until further notice. Aha! Here it is."

I turned to continue working on my page.

Seline was still at her board, but she was bent over it, her hair falling down around her face and her face only inches away from the board.

"Taking a nap, Seline?" I asked lightheartedly. When there was no response, I became alarmed. "Are you okay, Seline? Seline, are you all right?" I took a step toward her.

Seline's body began moving jerkily; first, the shoulders, then the arms, then the hands. My first thought was that Seline was having some kind of seizure or convulsions or something and that I should get help. But then she threw her head back and let out a long, gutteral scream. Her eyes had changed: they had no pupils or irises; they were a hideous yellow color, like that of a spoiled custard.

Upon seeing Seline's eyes and hearing the scream, my legs turned from flesh to water. I was at that point of fear where my brain was sending urgent messages to my legs to RUN!, but my legs were not receiving any messages at the moment, thank you very much.

Seline began to undergo a transformation even as I watched. Her face grew longer and the skin began to sink into her face and turned a dark, leathery brown. Her mouth became longer so that the lower jaw jutted out. The rest of her body spasmed as it, too, began to undergo changes.

But when Seline turned those custard-yellow eyes to look at me, my legs woke up and received the startled message from my brain: RUN!

The paste-up boards were lined two back-to-back, two rows of three sets. A space wide enough for a person to walk (or run) through was between each set of back-to-back paste-up boards. I forced my feet to move to the end of my board to within a few feet of Seline, and I shot in between the two boards.

In my panic to get out, I raced into the camera department. There was no way out into the hallway through the camera department. I turned around and flew back into the pre-press department. I shot across the room and made for the door. I glanced Seline's way and stopped in my tracks.

All evidence of human form was gone.

The entire structure was covered by brown, leathery skin, wrinkled, like the face of a prune. The upper part of the body was a large rib cage with a spinal column descending from it. The lower part of the torso resembled hips but they were wider and more flat than human hips. There were now six appendages, long and thin, extending from the rib cage and each appendage had three sharp claws extending from it. The brown hair once worn by Seline had been replaced by thin, silver wiry strands. And it was tall. Seline was only five feet, two inches tall. This thing had grown at least two feet in the last few seconds. A thick, yellow mucous flowed from the yellow eyes and clear, thick mucous dribbled from the mouth. Those eyes focused on me and the Seline-thing took a step toward me.

My fascination for this unknown creature was replaced by pinpricks in my abdomen as the adrenaline of fear pumped through my veins and that message RUN! began flashing in my brain again. My legs answered.

I plunged through the door and raced down the hall in elongated stumbles, my mind crazy with terror. I could hear myself crying, laughing, laughing, crying. The absurdity of the situation brought bouts of nervous laughter but the reality brought the tears.

I heard the Seline-thing burst through the door behind me, issuing a high-pitched screech that echoed down the quiet hall.

I didn't look back, but flew blindly down the stairs. I could hear the Seline-thing as it approached the stairs; stairs that went down a half-floor, then turned so that it was possible to look down upon someone on the bottom half of the stairs from the top half. I felt it when it looked over the top half down at me; felt its glare of hatred through those yellow mucous-filled eyes. One drop of yellow, thick mucous landed on a stair in front of me and I practically jumped that stair to avoid it. I didn't dare look up at the Seline-thing, too afraid that I would be frozen to the spot with paralysis and just be too easy of a prey for the thing.

I hit the door at the bottom of the stairs with the full force of my body and stumbled out into the hallway. The time clocks were at the end of this hallway. The security guard was at the end of this hallway. The exit door was at the end of this hallway. Away out of this nightmare was at the end of this hallway.

It was such a long hallway.

I heard the Seline-thing screech behind the closed door, its clawy appendages grappling for the push-bar to open it. There was no time to think about my aching legs or my lungs that felt as though they were at the bursting point. I lurched forward, forcing my legs and body to obey the command now flashing urgently in bright neon in my brain: RUN! RUN! I heard the door open behind me and that Seline-thing screeched again. One stumble, one fall, old girl, and that Seline-thing will have you for a snack.

One foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other. That's all you have to do. Get to the end of this hallway and you're safe. I hadn't the faintest idea why I felt that way. After all, if I could get to the end of the hallway and out the door, so could the Seline-thing.

The security guard. The security guard would know what to do.

They were trained just for this sort of thing.

Right. I bet they even have classes in it: How to Deal with Employees who turn into Strange, Unearthly Creatures. I'm sure.

My legs were beginning to fail me. Fear had eaten away most of my adrenaline and I felt that my pace had slowed to a crawl. And we were only halfway there.

I felt the hot breath of the Seline-thing on the back of my neck. I could smell the stench of it; a smell like old wet autumn leaves when something has crawled in them for the winter and died there. That one hot breath and that one putrid smell were enough to give me my second wind and I took off down the hall in a burst of speed.

At long last, the guard's station came into view. He was sitting there, in the darkened room with a reading light on, calmly reading another of his spy thrillers, no doubt, oblivious that anything was amiss.

He looked up upon hearing me plunder down the hallway. I uttered a faint, hoarse, "Help me" before plunging for the exit door. I hit it with the full force of my body and fell face-first on the pavement outside.

I gasped wildly for a few breaths before willing myself to crawl a few more feet.

I heard the exit door open behind me and I thought, this is it, it's over. The Seline-thing has got me.

But it was only the security guard.

"Are you all right? What's wrong?"

What did he mean what was wrong? Hadn't he seen it?

The exit door burst open, swinging all the way back and popping the top hinge. I must have found a third wind because I was up on my feet and trying to run again.

"Wait!" the security guard yelled.

I stumbled against the wall and leaned there. I turned around to see if it was all really true.

The Seline-thing was there, large as life, standing in the doorway as if it owned the place. The brown leathery skin was pulled back from its grimy teeth in a maniacal grimace and the security guard was facing it.

The Seline-thing was breathing heavy, its breath rattling around in that expansive rib cage. It eyed the security guard, the mucous running from its yellow eyes and dripping onto the pavement.

The Seline-thing took a step outside the door, its eyes never leaving the security guard and the security guard never taking his eyes off it. It edged along the side of the wall, clearly making me its destination. For every step it took toward me, I took a step back along the wall myself.

The Seline-thing took its eyes off of the security guard for a moment to look at me.

A moment was all it took. The security guard took something from between the pages of his book. Something shiny. Something gleaming. Something metallic. Something that caught the brightness of the sun and reflected it. There was a blinding flash of light, not from the reflection of the setting sun. A laser? A starburst? The Seline-thing was plastered to the wall for several seconds, that high-pitched screech echoing throughout the parking lot, over the top of the building, down the hallway from which we had come.

The screeching ceased. It didn't drone on or fade away. It ceased.

The creature we had all known and loved to hate as Seline slithered down the side of the wall and onto the pavement.

I looked from the Seline-thing to the security guard as he replaced the object between the pages of his book. From where I stood, it looked like a bookmark. No longer shiny, no longer gleaming. Just a plain, ordinary bookmark.

The Seline-thing hissed and sizzled and melted away into a thick, slimy mucous lying there on the pavement. I unglued myself from the wall and walked over to the security guard, carefully avoiding the growing mess.

"Don't worry about the mess," he said. "I'll clean it up before everybody gets back from lunch."

So calm. So cool. So collected. As if someone had spilled coffee or soda there on the sidewalk instead of this hideous thing melting there.

"But what? How? What?" Cripes, I still couldn't think. I took a deep breath and burst out with the question, "But how did you know?"

And this security guard, this fellow who walked us to our cars each night, this fellow who read his spy thrillers by a reading lamp in a darkened room, this fellow whose name I didn't even know, but whom I suddenly felt that I should know better, looked at me and smiled.

"It takes one to know one," was all he said.

Behind the irises and pupils of his blue eyes, I swear I saw the faintest hint of custard-yellow.