Hey guys I wrote something based off of Bruce Wayne and my Professor really liked it and wants me to use his name instead of ‘he/him’ that’s in there right now, isn’t that crazy? His comments kinda made my day so here’s my short story;
He sat at the bottom of a wooden crate.
All slanted horizontal holes filled up and blocked his escape. The neat oaken rows were thin and sturdy to hold so many classic blocks. Books decaled in yellow script outlined the room and everything he knew. His inverted corners drew away as they reached the ceiling; an irregular box, but there was still a top.
His comfortable chair creaked as his shoulder blades pressed into its plush leather backing. The chair shuffled backwards gut wrenchingly unexpected on stout plastic wheels. White knuckles over the arm wrest kept it from dumping him on the carpet. The carpet that covered hardwood floors and a line up each his legs strained until he settled down into sitting again. He didn’t need to get up anyway.
With the thought tucked huffishly away for personal explanations he started at the keyboard anew. There was neither rhyme nor reason to delay other than the bright window and freshly green grass so far away behind his dour double panes of glass. The window. A distraction he had sought to clothe in drapes and blinds against that other world. Places outside his temperature controlled rooms and impeccably clean floors loomed shining into his focus like the stray beam of sun. It was easy to keep a place clean when no feet came to drag in the dirt and debris.
A splash of cool air against his reddened cheeks, he felt the relief shore up the need to get away. The city, a lively, bustling center of activity, at night he saw what he had only heard from those folks coming out of the place, that the stars were not visible there. Day broke idle fantasies. It favored work above the wondering wilds of public sidewalks and tall yellow lamp lit circles hiding away brick buildings unexplored.
A pause of silence from his muffled walls had him take notice of his still hands resting inactive over unimpressed keys. Lightly without registering the sensitive board, each fingertip tapped their respective home row key in tandem starting with the middle pointers and ending with both pinky fingers. An outside game like the mental hula-hoops keeping him from planning a word or sentence except he could see it painfully plain on the bottom magnified half of his glasses.
Fluttering despite his stationary legs splayed easily under the only wide desk in the room, his chest thumped, the more it did the more he could imagine them irregular and sickly. Sweet solitude thickly coated his sparsely furnished office. Warm browns all around at the edge of his vision tunneled his attention onto one brightly lit screen displaying how few lines were written and saved twice. Only the stark, cold light from outside crossed his room daily highlighting each section of wall in view as the hours passed.
Hours, minutes, seconds ticked away as the deadline drew to a close. So close he could taste horrible biting bile at the back of his throat. Flaps of skin drooped from his maddeningly quiet fingers. The hangnails grew when he was not looking; they sometimes were bloodied or just irate red.
His window’s gaze was cool but the computer flipped open, so flat it nearly as unreal as paper, shone a frozen, squinting glare. It was amplified by bifocals and sent achingly accurate into both pupils.
Teeth grit, shoulders bunched under a constricting clean white shirt, and pressing hard one a longer button than the ones that represented their letters. Delete was too simple an action. Every line hard-won went back, the cursor started skipping gleefully at the speed of which each letter then word and finally sentences were disappearing under one easy graphical.
An itching heel bobbed with his knee, ready to leave and start typing on another cycle but as soon as the last dark mark disappeared from the computer program a solemn line of regret was left marring his white page. Both feet fell flat heavily grounding to the carpet hiding so much wood, heels digging in on his eager escape. He drew out the options at the top left-hand corner of the rectangular screen and closed without saving. Unseen, those pulled out words leaving sucking maws open from their effort like teeth pulled without numbness of the dentist’s practice remained untouched from his unproductive whim.
He leaned back into the swiveling chair in a breathy sigh, shoulders drooping and head bowed to his window, acknowledging the victor of the day. The restless blinking war would continue elsewhere. Quiet glee considered the library, a bigger box with bigger gaps and more books than he could possibly know all at once.
