I am beginning to type an essay that is due next week. You are my friend, sitting beside me, browsing your social media website or application of choice on your smartphone. I glance upon the empty word document, then carry my eyes to you, a dominant, merciless smile evident in every inch of my face. You look back at me with an expression of confusion, with a slight taste of concern. You eventually scoff and smirk, looking back at your phone. I keep my focus straight onto your right eye unblinkingly. You shoot a slight glance at me, as somewhere in your mind you still have a hunger to discover what I am about to do.
My ring finger, one of the craftsmen of what is to be my greatest act of sin, gracefully slides toward the Caps Lock key and presses it. Your smirk fades into a blank expression, as your feelings of mirth and concern completely cancel into neutrality. Within an unseeable recess in your conscience the idea of what you are about to witness stands like an exile on the lip of a city trying to keep his return a secret. I press the key corresponding to the first letter of my first name, then the Caps Lock key again. Your expression gradually turns into that of Fear himself as you sweat, short of breath, and shudder a "N-...no..." My smile, likewise, mirrors that of the Dark Lord Lucifer upon the eternal torment of the damned. I type the rest of my first name. You are too frozen in absolute adrenal terror to stop my hand. I press the Caps Lock button again. A salty, delectable tear wells up in your eye: Your pent up internal frustration expressed in a small droplet of saline. I type out my last name in the correct casing, but by the same diabolic means as my first name. "P-..." you sputter, trying to seize control of your hyperventilation and quivering jaw, "P-Please. n-...no..." I type out the rest of my header, never to stop committing my act of sin. My silent breathing turns into that of a deep giggle that resonates booming in my chest.
As I begin typing my thesis paragraph, my laugh evolves into a harsh, throaty cackle not unlike that of a cross between a raven's caw and the pant of an enraged, starving bear. You cannot stop watching, but you are streaming with tears, your eyes like the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates awash with an ugly, horrified poison; your visage contorted permanently into an ugly, pudgy, wrinkly reflection of the final looks the victims of Deimos and Phobos could never but express.
Suddenly, I lift my hands from my laptop keyboard and seize your shoulders with a painful grip. My laughter evolves further into a diminished triad. We lift up into the air slowly as a quickly-spinning ring of a sourceless fire manifests itself around us. The keyboard still types my essay, but with phantom hands. You drop your phone, whose screen shatters against the floor, but you are too numb to even sense it falling out of your hand. The keyboard continues to type away, pressing the Caps Lock key before and after every necessary capital letter. My laptop orbits the point between us tauntingly.
The ring of fire disappears, my face changes back into what it had always been, my laughter ceases, we drop back into our places on the couch, and my laptop lands safely and delicately back into my lap. “Whew, finally, my essay is done!” I triumph in my regular, lazy speaking voice. I send the essay to our professor and shut down my laptop, then get up from the couch. “Welp, I’m going to bed. Good night.”
The next day, I walk through the hallway: “Hey man, guess what? I got a B- on my ess--” My exclamation is interrupted as I see you have never changed position or expression since last night. “Hey, man, you alright?” I ask you as I wave my hand in front of your face as though to check if you were blind. You do not respond.