I am still in the computer lab, the bell hasn’t rung yet, there is just this vigorous plastic clacking of two dozen black keyboards, there is still the low grade migraine of poorly adjusted cheap screens inches from our faces, there is a word-per-minute rate I am trying to hit with minimal mistakes, I am trying to make no mistakes at all, not a single screw-up, getting each sentence perfect, no misspellings, I am still in the computer lab with a mortgage and taxes and dormant dating apps my thumbs can’t figure out, I am glued to the words scrolling by, I have not slept in twenty years, I am still in the computer lab, searching for someone else who feels like this, whose skull feels like it’s separating all the time into four or five large sections, 40 words per minute, 50 words per minute, 80, 90, getting better and better, hitting my marks, executing perfectly, flawless, straight A’s, moving closer and closer to something, I am right at the door of this thing, it’s right fucking there, my whole body vibrating, exploding with it, and then backspace.
Chris Scott’s work has appeared in HAD, Expat Press, Apocalypse Confidential, Burial Magazine, Scaffold Literary Magazine, and Michigan City Review of Books.