This time, he wasn't doing his usual work. This time, he was writing. Did he know what he was writing about? No, he just let his hands scuttle about the keyboard as they pleased. When they stopped moving, he just stared blankly at the screen, furrowing his eyebrow as if he couldn't figure out what he should write next, but then again, he wasn't the one writing. No, in his head, he was working out the next project after this one, a project he would be more inclined to actually work on. Once this writing thing was done, he could move on with his life and be happy.
He liked working with his hands. It made him feel like he was passing the time meaningfully. If he was asked to do something, he would do it right away, he would put those hands to work. It wasn't that he liked helping people, he liked having something to keep him occupied. He was intelligent - working on things required knowledge, so he learned.
If there was one thing he couldn't work on, it was people. He was intelligent - he wasn't knowing. It wasn't that he didn't like helping people, he didn't like having to open his eyes to the world and think about it. If he was asked to console someone, he would sort of shy away, he would wring his hands while sending back some clouded answer that never actually answered the question. It made him feel like he was hurting the person indirectly. He liked escaping from the truth.
Was there any point in him thinking about the world? Was there any point in him opening his eyes? If he did, he would never get anything done. He would be surrounded by incompleteness, imperfection. He wouldn't be able to stand that, he would have to finish everything, perfect it. That's the kind of person he was. Once he saw something wrong, once he noticed something missing, he had to finish it or he had to ignore it. He chose to ignore.
. . .
He sat in the food court of the mall, not to eat, but to work. What was he working on? His hands stopped and he stared blankly at the screen, furrowing his brow as he read what had been written.
And the screen stared blankly at him.
What had he been working on? What had his hands been doing? When he looked down, he saw his hands not on the keyboard, but on the table, drumming furiously like they were frustrated. Shocked, he sucked them back toward his sides as if they had been touching something awful. After such a long time, his hands had accomplished nothing. His eyes shut in disbelief, and he let out a sigh. And then he opened his eyes.
. . .
He was sitting alone in the dark, and lined up in a circle around him on a screen were scenes from the movie of his life, projected by the light of his mind. They showed everything about him, through life and death. Slightly to his right, at the two o'clock position, the early afternoon, he saw children screaming, laughing, tripping, falling. He was among them, just a kid with nothing better to do than run around in circles as all the grownups looked on and chatted about the humdrum of daily life. His child self turned to where the adults were, five o'clock, and waved. He turned around to see who the child was waving at, and he saw his college years. There were hundreds of people around him in the vast lecture hall, many of whom had collapsed on their desks as a result of the professor's monotonous incantation of a sleeping spell of sorts. He, however, was looking straight ahead and listening intently, knowing that some day in the future, he would need to know this stuff to get a good job and support a family. He noticed a distracting motion in front of him, a girl who was smiling and waving at him after twisting to 6 o'clock, when the warm glow of evening began to fade. He had diverted his head to seven o'clock, to pretend that there was someone else behind him whom she must have been greeting. He ignored her, he hid from her. He looked down and started moving his hands to take down notes. eight o'clock at night, when darkness had taken place of light. He had been told to study hard for that upcoming test, so he was, with his hands frantically flipping through piles of notes. If he didn't get a perfect score, he'd never forgive himself. nine o'clock, when most people went inside, then stayed until they fell asleep and were reborn at the break of dawn. He was now holed up and working, putting his hands to whatever his boss told him to.
From the center where his current self was sitting, he noticed for the first time that something was missing from the screen surrounding him. Ten o'clock through midnight were completely dark - the projection from his mind stopped at nine thirty. Somehow he sensed that this wasn't because he didn't know what would happen from then on, but rather his mind at that point had simply faded. Past six o'clock the light began to disappear, and when the dead of night came, he too would die, in the darkness of an empty soul. This time, he couldn't ignore it, he couldn't ignore those hours of nothingness, he couldn't ignore the fact that something was missing. He had opened his eyes, and now the world would come crashing down on his newly exposed mind. No longer could he just stand on the side and shirk reality. He would be forced to think. He would be forced to act, to play a part in the drama called life. After he realized this, the screen around him collapsed.
. . .
He sat in the food court of the mall, not to eat, but to work. This time, he would actually work, not with his hands, but with his heart. Before, those hands were simply working their way around the edge of the clock. Now, they would be the hands that put the clock together. He looked around where that screen had been and saw life - the human life. Slightly to his right, at the two o'clock position, he saw children screaming, laughing, tripping, falling. He turned more and saw a cluster of students apparently having a group study session. He twisted his back to look directly behind himself and saw a young couple holding hands. He whipped his head to his left and saw the parents of those children, softly smiling. He straightened a little and at eleven o'clock position sat an elderly couple sitting in the distance on one of the benches down the hall, looking quietly at the life they had lived together, acted out by the crowd around them.
He looked in front of him again, at the still-blank script he assumed his hands could write earlier. He thought of what he would write, what he would have changed. He couldn't go back in time, nor could he change the future. To make up for it, he would just write the life he could have had. He could have kept in touch with the friends he once had, then he wouldn't be sitting by himself. He could have gotten a job he actually wanted to do, not just a job to keep himself busy. He could have had the family he always said he would be able to support by getting good marks in college. He could have at the very least waved back at that girl in class. That was where he had to start. Of all the things he could have done, she was first, she led the rush of memories that never happened. In his mind, he found that head girl and remembered everything about her. Her brilliant, eager eyes, beaming in his direction and causing his cheeks to burn with such embarrassment that he had to turn away from them. Her hair, tied up in a ponytail, and the way it swayed so elegantly as she turned to look at him. Her smile, and how he could tell it hid nothing because of the way it glittered like sunlight, even in the florescent lighting of the lecture hall. Her back, and why it was the last thing he saw of her - because by the time he could finally turn to face her, she was already gone. He remembered everything, regretted everything, and wrote everything.
He wrote everything about the life he could have had.
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