Outside the room, the world starless, empty and cold. Inside the room, the man paced, back and forth—with little idea of what was happening outside. These two facts, as I have presented them, are all you need to understand.
Well, I suppose not. We can go further. We can go much further. The man has some stuff on his mind: the usual things. Worried about money, worried about sex, worried about the end of the world, and his life. Funny enough, these concerns don’t stand up much to the outside world anymore. Religion, for that as well sat heavy on his mind, or, God anyway, did not have much bearing on the outside world anymore.
All this thinking weighed there, though, for another reason. His mind has such force on it because of a deadline he was not making—he was utterly failing to make. Well, if time existed, anyway. Time, gone now, gone forever—if forever existed without time—left him with nothing to do, and all the nonexistent time in the world to do it.
Something, we need not go into what, curled out there, too. Giving a glance to the small house floating there. An eye, segmented and docile, swiveled toward the abode and narrowed in subtle interest before slithering away—gliding on the water that was not there.
The man peered at his empty computer screen one more time, stopping his pacing to see if, miraculously, words appeared on the page. If words moved into sight or moved into reality or any other of the possibilities that were not actually possible.
“Dammit,” he muttered, not for the first time, and puttered back away from the screen. He let his fingers trace along the wall, leaving oil marks he could not see. The air in there was cloying, echoing his own frustration as if it could take the pounding in his head and rattle it around in the air.
“Dammit all,” he said, which might come off as creativity given the circumstances. A whole new word. More than he got down on his paper.
He debated trying to go out of his room and find some beer, or meat, or a woman who was not his wife, but these went away from his mind quickly as they were an acknowledgment of failure. If it was not for his own moral rules, he would have fucked someone hours ago—weeks ago.
Outside, the second of unlimited space/void/cosmic creatures moved past in languid strokes and gave the house a glance with more interest than the first.
The man, unaware of this, sat down on his chair again and placed his fingers on the keyboard again, and furrowed his brow too hard—again—hurting his head. He concentrated on concentrating, which, of course, was a useless endeavor.
He let out a breath, and then stood back up and went to the window. When he pulled back the curtains, what he saw was a sunny, if partly cloudy day. A third creature looked back at him, so close to the window its beak the size of a bus could have shattered the glass effortlessly.
The man did not notice this and closed the blinds, and then buried his head in a hotel pillow and screamed bloody murder to the fabric, hoping that might at least get mental juices flowing. It didn’t, though, and I suppose that’s what I expected from him.
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