Sitting At Their Computer

As they sit at their computer, the promise of fortune looming, they know not what to write. The stories enter their mind, and just as quickly vanish, worlds crumbling as spontaneously as they are created.

Their eyes fall into the void of the desolate white page, dust accumulating on the screen. They are nowhere; the empty words in their head a graveyard of distant meaning.

The world outside twists and turns, unstable; their footing slips. They don’t know where to go, they don’t know what is true. But in the page, they weave their own world. In the page, they make the rules.

They take a deep breath and rub their eyes. They faintly catch the fresh smell of nail polish. They grab their water bottle and take a sip, before sitting back in their computer chair. Sitting at their computer, they feel directionless. They don’t know where to go. Sitting at their computer, they spin around in their chair aimlessly, just for fun.

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As a man, he would have written a crime story, probably a detective noir. He would have written like all the greats before him. He would have told all the great stories of great men past, just like he read them. Maybe he would write a poem whining about love he could not acquire, or the lonely woe that is his soul. Maybe he would write about how love is pain, and how no women want him.

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Great men are made in the shadows of the corrupt; in the flames of Hell; in the dark and soulless streets of empty passion.

Detective Fred Wilder took a long puff of his cigarette, the satisfying sting of death filling his lungs. He sat on his bed, ash accumulating on the sheets, staring at the curtains as he had been for two hours now. He hoped maybe, if he stared at them long enough, they could change colour, the light could hit them in a different way. He thought maybe, if he filled the room with smoke, he could fill in his mind’s eye in the foggy Rorschach. He knew, if he stood up and got dressed, he would have to go where the train always brought him.

“You’re late!” are the words that greeted him as he opened the door, stabbing him like a harsh wind. “If you wanna keep this job, Wilder, if you wanna make something with your life, you gotta come into work like everyone else!” The chief’s words somehow felt echoed through the annals of time. Something about him felt deeply unoriginal.

“I’m sorry sir, it won’t happen again sir,” he mumbled. He sat at his desk, and the day slipped by, as they all did.

When he got home that night, he poured himself a glass of whiskey, as he did every night. He was taken aback, as he sat down and took his first sip, when he heard the phone ring. He felt a change to the script. No one usually called him at this hour.

“Fred,” said a voice on the other end, a voice he did not recognize. “Listen to me. Run away, now. None of this is real. Free yourse-”

“Detective Wilder. This is Chief McMurray. I need you to come on down to 45th Street. There’s been a murder, and…” That signature roughness in the chief’s voice seemed to fade away. “I think you’re gonna wanna come down and see this, Frank.”

Sensing that something was terribly wrong, he rushed out the front door, grabbing his hat and coat on the way out.

Walking through the streets of his dead, broken city, he felt alone. Slow jazz music filled the air, floating up into the sky, as though it were afraid to linger too close to anyone’s ear. Cigarette in hand, coat and hat fitted perfectly to his costume, the whole world around him felt black and white.

He stopped, for a moment, under a lamppost. Its light flickered, draining colour from the world. He had seen this before; he was sure of it.

An image this way comes into the mind, repeated through infinite lights, it knows its place, its true image fades.

He eventually turned the corner onto 45th Street, and was met face to face with a mirror. The same hat, the same coat. He realized then that his costume matched his chief’s. Hell, his costume matched everyone’s. He looked up into the sky, and imagined a bird flying past, looking down at a sea of identical trench coats and fedoras, as rain falls down onto infinite strangers.

The chief, hand on his hat to keep it from flying away in the storm, called him over. There was tape blocking off most of the sidewalk, as detectives and reporters crowded around a dead body, scribbling notes and taking pictures in blinding flash.

He approached the scene, an empty pit growing in his stomach as if somehow he already knew what he would see. He looked down, and the eyes that met his held the distant, familiar air of his childhood.

Looking down at the still, unmoving corpse of his father, he felt a sharp stabbing sensation in his stomach. Whatever life his father ever had was drained from his eyes. Come to think of it, he didn’t look so different. With shaky breaths, he held back his tears. He would not disgrace his father at his place of death.

Fred’s mind filled with memories, like a flood finally breaking free of its rigid dam. The same axe, chopping the same wood, night after night. That loud, obnoxious laugh. The briefcase his father seemed to care about more than anything else. Grabbing his hat and coat every morning before heading out to work. Pouring himself a glass of whiskey, every night. Mom’s dress mysteriously disappearing, and Dad yelling.

He suddenly filled with anger. He wanted to scream at his father. He wanted to punch him. That would do nothing now.

As the bodybag was zipped, his lifeless face was covered. This was what he’d spent his whole life working towards. This is what he had been waiting for.

Fred felt empty, thinking of the mere flicker of a candle in the wind that was his father’s life. It’s like he never existed at all.

That night, he found himself at a bar. He couldn’t remember how he got there. He couldn’t remember how all those glasses in front of him had been emptied.

The door opened, and a sharp gust of cold wind stabbed his spine, sending a chill up his back. He turned to the door, where he saw the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes upon entering the bar.

Red dress oozing with passion, blonde hair radiant as the Sun, enchanting red lipstick, her eyes and facial features barely distinguishable to him. They slipped through his mind, insignificant, as his past and hers seemed to fade away. He knew only one feeling.

She took a seat next to him at the bar and ordered a drink. When, for a brief second, he caught a glimpse of her eyes, he saw a mirror in her. He quickly pushed those feelings down.

“Got a light?” she asked, cigarette dangling out of her hand, as if she had rehearsed it.

“Careful,” he remarked, smirk painted on his face as he flicked open his lighter. “It could burn ya.” She placed the cigarette in her mouth and leaned forward, holding it above the flame. She took a long puff and sighed.

“Who knows? Maybe I like to do the burning,” she said, standing up and walking back out of the bar into the cold. For a moment, he wondered if he’d imagined her.

Much later that night at around 1 A.M., leaning over his desk, hands on his head, he felt the urge to do something he hadn’t done since he was a little boy, ages ago. With a mind of its own, his hand gravitated towards his pen. He took a long look at the glass of whiskey over on the counter, which he couldn’t bring himself to finish. His hand began to write:

From deep in my chest I feel her love, Her lips draw me in like a trance, This fantasy I can’t get enough of, She haunts my heart with romance.

I feel a passion I cannot describe, I want her with every fibre of my being, To be with her would make me so alive, A fire burns in my body with this feeling.

But I’ll remain so lonely, My heart still so sore, She could never want me, I’m too ugly, too poor, Her heart is empty, That wretched wh

A deep scream exploded from his lungs as he crumpled and ripped up his paper, a feeling of disgust washing over him. What the hell was he doing? His father had just died. His father, the man he grew up with, the mirror in his soul refracting lights into a prison of patterns, was dead. A few hours ago, he was staring down at his father’s empty, dead eyes. That life was gone, and he felt nothing. And what was he doing now? Writing some unoriginal, lovesick poetry, for a woman he’d just met. He felt at war with himself. He felt like he was half a man. He refused to cry for his father’s death, yet he was fine with exploding artificial love onto the page for a woman he had just met, he was fine with reveling in lonely misery, he was fine with insulting a complete stranger.

How low, selfish and ghastly a man must be, to merit the applauds of a council of ghosts.

Fred fell asleep late that night, and when he awoke he saw it was still incredibly dark. He must’ve slept an hour, maybe an hour and a half.

Of their own accord, his feet moved down to the ground and walked out the door, his hands grabbed his coat and his hat. He knew, like he always did, where he was supposed to go, what he was supposed to do.

He found himself standing in front of a dark alley, the smell of garbage in the air, the sound of wind through the leaves, and an utter darkness rendering the details of the alley imperceptible.

He thought to himself, for a moment, was he even written by the words, or was he framed by the images? All the stories seemed to blend into one in his mind.

“I knew you’d come,” a voice called out from the darkness. An elegant, vibrant red dress emerged from the shadows. “Like clockwork.”

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They scoffed and rolled their eyes. How unoriginal, they thought, chuckling and letting out a disappointed sigh.

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She approached him, knife in hand, whistling a familiar tune. He tried to move, but somehow he was frozen. Frozen in place, frozen in time, frozen in self. She leaned over to him, close enough that he could see the beginnings of a tear forming far behind her eyes. She whispered softly in his ear, and he could hear her voice breaking, “Don’t take it personally, we all play our parts.”

She plunged the knife into his stomach. As the blade pierced flesh, as his blood spilled out, he felt a familiar sensation.

“Did you kill my father, too?”

“Come on,” said another voice, as a familiar stench and a cloud of smoke filled the air. Chief McMurray walked up to Fred, cigarette dangling from his lip, his boots loudly splashing in the puddles on the ground. “Don’t lie to yourself, kid. This was never some mystery. You never wanted the answers.”

McMurray raised a pistol to Fred’s forehead. In a final defiance, Fred spit blood onto the chief’s hat, tainting it with crimson truth, ruining its design with reminder. The chief pulled his trigger, and Fred saw a final flash of light.

Great men are made in pain. Great men are made in lies. Great men are not good.

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Frustrated, no words left to write, empty, they shut off their computer screen. They saw a final flash of light.

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Fred stood under a lamppost. For the first time in a while, he remembered exactly how he got there. It flickered, colourful, lively, painting the street in shadows.

He looked across the street, and there he saw his father. Dancing, elegant, ethereal, one with the fragile beauty of existence. In that gorgeous red dress. With tears freely flowing down his face, he laughed, and his father heard him. They looked at each other, for the first time in their lives.

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Sitting at their computer, the walls of the room around them began to fade away. The walls within which they laid in their bed, numb, terrified to cry, crumbled, and with them the walls surrounding who they were supposed to be, the walls of the page containing their words.

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The ground beneath him shook, as the street spun around. His footing slipped. He took a deep breath. The sky, once white, once blue, flashed in infinite colours. He faintly caught the fresh smell of paint, from far up in the sky.

A glass appeared in his hand. He sipped it, expecting the taste of whiskey to numb his tongue, but suddenly the street flooded with waves of water.

The sky cracked, as all the colours he had never seen flashed down in a mosaic of light. His feet, now one with his mind, lifted off the ground. He floated up towards that lamppost, to see the truth beyond its repetitive light. His eyes melted in the heat of colour, every image he had ever seen running down his face.

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The stories come and go, but they just can’t contain them. They stare at the computer screen, bright and unforgiving, the stories just out of reach. Their fingertips dangle above the keys, no words come to the page.

Now, they only sit at their computer, staring at an empty white screen.

He roams through the dark, desolate streets of subconscious, filth at every corner, searching for the truth beyond the lies. Their fingers hover over the keyboard, searching for the truth beyond the lies. Every now and then, they’ll catch a glimpse of each other, and they both exchange a tip of their hat.

They’re no one at all, no one but themself. What do they write? No one’s told them.