Freedom of the Presses

This one didn't really come from a specific prompt, but it is the result of me expanding at length on a joke which took The Simpsons roughly ten seconds to do. The word "overextension" does not appear in my lexicon.

“Stop the presses!” he called, his voice echoing through the cavernous room. Pandemonium ensued- a chaos of levers being pulled, buttons being frantically pushed and, in at least one instance that he could see, crowbars being jammed into expensive machinery in flagrant disregard for life, limb and insurance policies. Within a minute or so, the presses had indeed stopped, grinding to a halt with a pathetic squeal of tortured gears as a roomful of printers and journalists turned to look at him.

“Oh,” he began weakly. “I didn’t mean to actually… I just, I was speaking metaphorically. Like, I have a big scoop. But… I mean… it can wait for tomorrow’s edition. Really, it’s fine. Just, er, carry on.”

For a moment, he thought his prayers had been answered, and the ground was indeed opening up to swallow him. But it was just the sound of the presses laboriously clanking back into life, the beginning of a process that would take at least an hour. On reflection, he supposed, the opening of the earth would probably not have been accompanied by quite so much abusive swearing. Unless the mole people were thoroughly irritated by the whole affair.

He glanced down, mainly to avoid the sharp gazes being directed his way, at the barely legible scrawls that covered his notebook. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and assured himself that the self-flagellation could wait. He had a story to write.

***

“Do you have any idea how much your poorly thought-out use of cliché cost us?”

“Er… not as much as might be expected?” It was a vain hope, given the rage writ large across the editor’s face, but he could always dream.

“If only,” she breathed, somewhere between a sigh and a snort. “It was… well, I won’t give you a figure. I find you do better work without your brain dribbling out your ears. Suffice to say: lots. Lots and lots, if you want to be technical.”

“But not lots and lots and lots?” Despite his slightly sardonic tone, he was relieved. The comment about “better work” suggested he wasn’t about to be hounded from the office.

“Very nearly. We were this close to that third ‘lots.’” The editor held up her thumb and forefinger, so close together that they were almost… no, in fact they were touching. She looked at the gesture, furrowed her brow, and shrugged. “I’m not much better with usage of metaphor and analogy than you are. I’m a journalist. Which might be why I’m minded to actually listen to your story before deciding whether or not to fire you. And before you celebrate, by ‘fire’, I do potentially mean setting you alight.”

By way of answer, he placed his open notebook down on the table, turned it around to face her and stepped back, grinning. She bent over it, then looked up at him after a moment looking puzzled.

“‘Butter… bread… cigarettes… AA batteries.’ Maybe I just don’t have your keen investigative mind, but I really don’t see how this-”

He snatched back the notebook, flipped over a few pages, away from the shopping list, and handed it back, red-faced.

As she read, the editor’s brow furrowed further, but her eyes simultaneously lit up, creating a deeply odd and confusing effect. After a couple of minutes, she looked up again, her eyes hard.

“You’re sure of this?”

He nodded confidently, glad to be back on relatively safe ground. “I trust the source. And I’ve seen the records myself.”

She nodded absently. He supposed she was picturing the next day’s front page, if it got printed in time.

“You’ve got an hour to write it up. Make it good. Arresting. So to speak. Don’t use any metaphors, I don’t trust you with them. And don’t go near the printers again for a few weeks. I’m fairly certain I saw them constructing an effigy of you on my way up here.”

He smiled, and nodded. “I won’t let you down, chief!” He was halfway out the door when her exasperated call made him turn around.

She held up the notebook. “You might want this.”