Click

“Juvenile.”

Delete.

“Juvenile”

Delete.

 

“Juvenile”

Delete.

This was what I walked in on in the dead of the night after a long day of lectures, angry, ranting professors, and rushing across fluttering images of red brick roads in the torturous beating heat.

The dorm room had been dark from the entrance, but a faint blue-ish glow resonated and flickered from the furthest corner. A succession of clicking seemed to echo around the room, bouncing from corner to wall to corner, until it finally landed a strike onto a dark, hunching silhouette sitting all too still in front of the glow.

Sighing, I dropped my backpack with a soft thud next to my own desk, and walked over to hover behind that dark huddling figure.

Click. Click. Pause. Delete.

Click. Click. Pause. Delete.

The screen flew from page to page, document to document, almost like it was late for everything, like the White Rabbit. I barely had any time to capture and process the pictures shown to me before it was gone with a harsh click over the trash button, and the next image took its place.

“Why are you deleting your stories?!” I rushed out angrily. 

Click. Click. Pause.

The statue sighed a frustrated sigh, and bit back, “Because they’re all stupid.”

Click. Cli-

My hand struck on its own accord, sinking its fingers onto the flinching flesh and dragging it, tense, off the mouse. 

The shadow tugged, pulled, and spit against me, a barely concealed sort of rage about to explode from under the pale, thin layer of skin that just barely covered it. But I couldn’t see reason anymore, all I could think about was red, flaming passion, and all the work, all the soul, all the life that had been given to these poor electronic pieces of fragmented pain and love and happiness and humor, all wasted into some garbage can that barely could be counted as existent. Everything that had taken hours of precious time, gone within just a millisecond, and for seemingly no good reason!

“Let me ask you this again. Why are you deleting your stories you utter fool?! Do you know how long those took you? I know exactly how long, because I was watching you! You put your blood, sweat, and tears into those shorts, and you’re just tossing them all away like that? Why?!”

At that moment, the rage split into two dripping halves, exploding into a color of long buried insanity and hurt that had been converted unconsciously into a crazed, roaring wave of anger.

He slapped my hand away and jumped out of his chair, knocking it over in his fury, snarling like a rabid animal. His eyes were gleaming, sharp and utterly, totally, completely mad, ripping from color to color in the darkness of the room.

“I’ll tell you why!” he spat, “It’s because it’s all stupid and naïve and childish and it is trash so it belongs in the trash! Everything I wrote was trash! It’s all trash! All the endings are stupid, all the plots are stupid, and everything’s stupid! Everything! Every…thing…”

And with a snap of my fingers, all the boiling, bubbling, excess rage simmered down into a lukewarm sort of throbbing as I gently reached out to slide my arms around a swaying torso full of hidden ribs, and the statue finally crumbled, falling, almost as if in slow motion, softly onto my right should, sobbing dryly. 

“I hate them. I hate them. I hate them.”

“No you don’t, you just hate that you’re stuck,” I murmured as the tears finally came. 

I carefully led the now shattered person onto the nearest bed, and he gratefully pulled the covers up to his face, almost like time had reverse, and he was a small child again, afraid of unseen monsters in the dark, hiding under warm blankets to keep safe, eyes squeezed shut.

I whispered, cautiously, “Did you keep any of them?”

Sniffling, he replied in a hoarse voice, “Yes. You came before I started deleting the ones I keep online.”

“Good, now go sleep okay?”

He nodded once, and snuggled deeper into the blankets. I watched as his breathing deepened and evened out, before turning around and walking over to the still laptop. Now it was my shadow that blocked the faint light, but this time, my shadow was a looming one that stood tall over it, and my shadow was one that reached out and snapped the computer shut with a finalized click, settling the room into complete darkness. 

Sighing once more, I turned around, felt my way slowly in the night, and flopped down onto the other bed, and my last thought before falling asleep as well was that that had been enough clicking for tonight.