I open emacs

There is nothing else i can do: i open emacs. Dark grey rectangles covered with light grey symbols welcome me. Blinking cursor grabs my attention, suggesting new exciting adventures. But i close my eyes. For a while.

That’s right – i think to myself, tapping on keyboard – i didn’t come here for “adventures”. All i wanted was to ease the pain. On this thought i instinctively open my eyes and look at the wound: still as disgusting as ever. Faint signs of it getting better, which i glimpsed yesterday, have faded completely.

After seventeen long seconds of almost masochistic staring i avert my gaze. I want to puke. I retch, but remnants of my stomach are empty. Back to glimmer of LCD, i think to myself. That’s all i can do now.

Or, can i really? The weight in my fingers increases sharply, i can’t control, organic pieces fall onto plastic keys, leaving dllknw jasjsdklw cxkkjkjl; as my dying message.

***

There is nothing else i can do: i open emacs. Dark grey rectangles incrusted with greyish characters stare at my face. I stare back, neither typing nor moving my hands away from keyboard; letting the cursor stop blinking. I need inspiration. I close my eyes for a while.

That’s right – i think to myself, feeling the acute silence – i didn’t come here for a mindless break. Quite on the contrary, i wanted to fill the emptiness inside my head. With something more solid than ephemeral moving pictures. Something that can let me forget about the pain.

I open my eyes, trying hard not to look into that direction. Open buffer is still almost empty, so i start filling it with characters, words, paragraphs. Unable to think deeper than three inches, that’s all i can do now.

Or, can i really? The weight in my fingers makes them hard to lift and soon they freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz in place of a more proper dying message.

***

There is nothing else i can do: i open emacs. Dark rectangles textured with rare text, cursor blinks at me happily, energetically. I lack the energy to blink back and close my eyes for a while.

That’s right – i think to myself, mindlessly altering space and backspace keys, – i don’t remember the reason to come here. Perhaps my tired hazy mind wandered here on its own. Failing to come up with anything sensible, i open my eyes. Screen is filled with familiar characters. Latin-1, a thought pops up.

I stretch my fingers and add another sequence of letters. Its meaning slowly evaporates from my mind and soon enough i’m back to square one. C-x C-s, i erase two asterisks from the status line. That’s about all i can do now.

Or, can i? Almost as if having a mind of their own, my fingers keep pressing plastic buttons, and asterisks return, leaving my dying message unsa

***

There is nothing else i can do: i open emacs. Dark, but still fluorescent, rectangles, long and short sequences written in a script i should recognize. For a while, cursor blinking is the only process happening in the world. Then, i close my eyes.

That’s wrong – i think to myself – that’s very, very wrong. I open eyes again.

“That’s wrong”, i type into current buffer, adding more shapes into the chaos. “Something’s wrong”, i type again, after a small pause.

Nice dying message. I don’t type that.

***

There is nothing i can do. Neither me, nor anyone else in this dying world. My disgusting wound will continue fluctuating, consuming my flesh, eating me alive. Tomorrow, or a week later, or an hour earlier, – i will die.

I stare in the darkness of my small shrinking place. I could turn on LCD, start typing some nonsense in emacs, but i don’t.

I give in to depression and die without leaving a message.

***

There is nothing. It is not even dark, because i already forgot how the light feels. My existence is an old joke.

***

There is nothing else i can do: i open emacs and start typing. For no discernable reasons, i keep pressing the keys to produce long rant of characters who appeared out of nowhere and will return there in a while.

There is nothing else and will probably never be, for someone who exists between six asterisks.