Sad, disappointed, he gawked at the blank paper on the desk. His forearms were sore and his fingers were freezing, contrasting with the dynamic, up-beat music his headphones were blasting in his ears. The runny nose decided that it wouldn’t stop, and the bloody eyes which were staring at the white sheet resembled those of a smoker on his death bed. The pen, helpless in his hand was screaming at him to start writing, that he was running out of time, that the deadline was getting dangerously close. Surprised at the rudeness of his pen, and at the fact that it was shouting at him, he got up briskly and threw it out the window. “YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!”, he cried. He could’ve sworn he heard it yell at him one last time as it traveled through the cold air of the night and fell into the poorly lit street, letting out a subtle moan as it hit the hard pavement. His eyes were wide open. “Am I going mad?” He said out loud to no one but himself. He scrambled out of his room into the bathroom, stumbling, feeble. He flipped the switch and tried to stand straight, staring at his own reflection in the mirror. He started analyzing his own face, staring into his own sickly eyes, checking his tongue, trying to stop the leaking nose. Everything looked normal. “Ugly as ever” he heard himself say. As he spoke those words, his mirror-self smiled at him, an unnatural, wide, forced smile. He gasped, jolted backwards, hitting his head against the wall and dashed out of the bathroom, stars dancing before him, rushing through the house and out of it into the somber neighborhood. Can you outpace yourself? He started running into the nightly-shadows cast by the buildings, titans threatening to crush him as he ran along their walls. Music still blasting through his ears, he could not hear the engine roaring as he was crossing the road. As he lay, bathing in an oddly enjoyable warmth, he whispered to the silhouette standing beside him: “I’m free.”
