I can’t do this.  How am I supposed to get finished when I can’t start?  What they’re asking of me is too much; impossible.  The deadline is too unreasonable.

As a child I used to piss my pants to get attention, or to get out of situations like this, but now isn’t an option.  Maybe that’s what I’ll do; piss my pants in front of the editor.  If I do, I’m sure I can get the deadline pushed back.  I feel the remnants of pity that would be showered over me as a manipulative boy wearing pants wet with piss and shame.  I still crave that feeling, the hot-faced humiliation that would get me everything and anything.  It didn’t stop as a child.  As an early teen it would happen uncontrollably.  The doctors couldn’t figure it out, but I knew it was a curse from the years I abused the power of my wet embarrassment.  Nothing is more humiliating than urinary incontinence.     

            My guts tighten out of anxiety.  Deep breath, deep breath, deep breath.  I feel my bowels boil and bubble as stress writhes its way throughout my body slithering from the floor, tensing my back, and pulling taught on the back of my eyes.  Uncomfort settles deep into my mind.           

            I slide my glasses off of my nose.  The blank screen glows white iridescence on my pale face, I’m sure the lack of contrast in tone is sickly beautiful.  I move my fingers to the keys, but nothing.  I try to speak out loud what I want to write, but silence.  I sit beside myself miserably watching the other me crack and crumble under pressure.  He looks pitiful, a slouched slinking human trying to embrace failure.  He wants to fail, he wants to have something to blame, he wants precious pity to fulfill his appetite for self-loathing. 

            I creep across my tiny apartment and slide the window open.  From the table I slide a cigarette out of the half empty pack, and light it up.  My lungs fill with wisps of smoke after I take a deep breath of toxic acrid air.  With my slow exhale thin swirls and twirls ooze past my lips and nostrils.  With each exhale I feel more and more like a tired ancient dragon, living alone trying to stay secret from people.  The years of smoke have worn my face into scales, and my throat into a scorched cave of death.  I feel like my years of blowing fire are far behind me.  My cigarette burns out into a fizzled memory.

 I laugh to myself from the thought of pissing my pants in front of the editor.

            What can I write about?  Maybe if I do something pretentious they’ll like it.  I’ll write about the process.  It’ll be above their heads, and they won’t even know it, and that’s why they’ll like it.  The one time I get what I want, to show my skill.  It’ll be perfectly postmodern; a piece about the writing that I’m writing.  They won’t comprehend that they’re reading what they don’t even know they’re reading.  It’ll be what’s on the page in front of them, but they won’t realize it.  I’ll slip it past them with some sly words, and some smooth style.  I’ll build a character that’s myself and show them what makes me, and they won’t even know it.  They’ll see it as a short story that goes nowhere.  That’s not far from what it will be, but that’s if I can do it right.

            The climax won’t happen.  And the end – well, the end will feel like the beginning.  The character will be a Joe Everyman, but not the Joe Everyman that everyone knows, the one that only some people will identify with.  It can’t be too universal.

            What if they really don’t understand and don’t accept it?  What if no one understands it?  I want to sneak it past them, but not past everyone.  I want some people to feel it, to know it, to hold it and love it.  I don’t want it to live a sad film noir existence in an apartment of debauchery.  I want it to be free.  I want it to be a voice, a voice that carries through the wind, but only to those that are really listening.  I want it to be everything I’m not.           

My mind circles itself over and over.  My thoughts that I thought were thoughts are nothing.  Does it even make sense?  Do my words even have meaning?  Why haven’t I been writing this down? 

            I slink back into my chair.  What a chair this is, uncomfortable and full of misquoted quotes.  A back of yellow failure, and a seat of apathy are what make up this chair.  I fail to comprehend exactly what it is I’ve been thinking about.  No one will even understand it.  The editor will see it as words on a page, and nothing more.  It won’t be unique thoughts, just amateur ramblings of a nobody trying to be a nobody. 

            That’s it! 

            My mind starts racing.  Ideas break through the dam of my mind and start flowing through my body.  A creative ghost has taken over.  I stare at the computer screen, blank document; my fingers are poised over the inviting keys like a puppeteer.  The cursor blinks slyly back at me, taunting me to write.