She sits down at her desk to begin her process. With her left hand she taps the handles of each drawer. She delicately aligns the various types of pens and pencils to her right. To her front rests a blank sheet of pure potential lined up perfectly with the bottom of the desk.
Crack, crack, crack, go her knuckles.
She stares at the writing utensils as though each one contains a different fate. She straightens them, orders them, re-straightens them, and re-orders them. With a small smirk of satisfaction she’s about to choose one, but her cuff shifts the paper she had perfectly laid out. She adjusts it. She re-adjusts it. Satisfied with her current situation she straightens her back out and delicately grabs the pen third from the left, and as she does so she does not come into contact with the other pens of fate.
With a click the ballpoint is exposed. Click. It’s vanished. She repeats this as if she is a child trying to get attention in class. Each click echoes in her ears as the sound of imperfection. Maybe the next one will be right, she thinks. Maybe the next one. Maybe the next one. Maybe the next one. There.
With elegant form and penmanship she begins to scrawl. Her thumb and forefinger tensely hold the paper taught and in place. Letters grow to words, words to sentences, and sentences to dreams. With each word she crosses the Ts and Dots the Is in reverse.
Her hand slows as she reaches the bottom of the page. She pauses to think. She spins her pen in her right hand. She watches as it twirls and swirls between her slender fingers. She looks concentrated, but on the activity at hand, not thought. Before she can commence she has to get the twirl just right. She can’t be happy unless she does it just right. It needs to be perfect to her own set of standards. Twirl. Swirl. Twirl. Swirl. The pen spins as the colours blend into optical streaks on an unknown dimension. One last spin and she catches it perfectly. Her mind can now focus on other things, like her writing.
Where do I want to go with this, she asks herself. Do I want him to live or die, she wonders.
I know he’ll fall madly in love everything will seem perfect but it’ll be too good to be no no no he’s going to be a hard man but delicate at heart and he’ll no that won’t work he’s going to have to prove himself to the world by revealing how disgusting imperfect and how wretched of a human he really is the perfect anti-hero some will love him and some will hate him his flaws will be perfectly fitting beautifully ugly they’ll laugh they’ll cry they won’t know what to do
As pen kisses paper she starts to form letters, but the black ink smudges as she dots an I. Frustration paints her face, and she slides the paper to the side with a sigh. With her left hand she reaches for another white sheep waiting to be something and lines it up. She makes sure the angles are perfect and align with everything on the desk and she begins to copy from the piece of paper she so barbarically soiled with her inelegant clumsy hands.
