Deadline

The deadline was upon me, and I had nothing!......NOTHING!

I stared at the blank screen in despair, the shame of certain failure weighing heavy as a rock.

I leaned forward and rested my forehead wearily on the keyboard.

And then the tears came.....

Trickles of them....

Streams of them....

Rivers of them....

Floods of them....

As my body shook with great racking, heaving sobs, the salty deluge soaked the keys, seeping through the tiny gaps, and into the circuitry below.

Tiny blue sparks and arcs lit up the underside of the keyboard like a miniature lightning storm....

I became aware of the screen flickering, a white lightning mingling with the blue...

I looked up.... words were appearing on the screen, faster and faster, too fast to read....

And suddenly, they stopped.

I wiped my eyes dry, and began to read, my heart lifting more and more with every word....

Before me was the wittiest, deepest, most meaningful short story I have ever read in my whole life.

A miracle had happened, I would hit the deadline.

And more... It was a gem... an absolute masterpiece... a piece of such literary genius that the whole of the writing world would be taken by storm.

Nine hundred and ninety nine words of supremely perfect eloquence.

It would make me famous.

Visions of all the awards and accolades that were certain to come my way filled my ecstatic mind...

I reached toward the mouse to save the story to the hard drive....

But before I could grasp it....

There was a final staccato spiderweb of blue arcs across the keyboard....

A small tendril of grey smoke curled upwards from the computer tower....

And the power went off.


©2010 Stephen. J. Green.