A Dino That Typed

  January 28, 2021 The final analysis and data reports had been turned into Professor Curton, and the printer stirred quietly as the warm packets of his recent studies popped out one by one. His presentation tomorrow would be concerning the middle and high school proportion of the town, hoping to end the growing anxiety for some adolescents of the new generation.

  The new technology gave him blisters to maneuver as his freakish nails kept getting stuck in between each of the keys. After finishing his PowerPoint, and unleashing his index finger from underneath the H and U keys, he hung up the school-borrowed laptop on the top shelves of the technology lab. He sat down at a nearby desk with a group of papers in his hands, pulling out a portable typewriter from his grisly bookbag. He assembled the outdated machine accordingly and began to type painlessly without worry.

  Magdalena walked by the open door knowing he would be in there typing. She waited in the doorway until he noticed her leaning presence against the door jamb. After a while, he looked up slightly. She smiled at him and saluted, a familiar gesture between the two colleagues. He mimicked pleasantly.

  “What brings you to this side of the building, Lena?” He said while clicking on the return lever and pushing the roller to the right side of his device, continuing his rhythmic typing.

  “A little birdie told me you’d be in here.” Magdalena strode into the dimly-lit room slowly, as if expecting the ceiling to fall down sometime soon. “And I go by all four syllables, Hugo.” Lena tried to sound tough, but she didn't.

  “It’s not my fault my father’s name is only two syllables. It’s only symbolic that I continue his tradition.”

  Magdalena slowly made her way towards Hugo, peering over his shoulder at the black and white typewriter, hands in her pockets.

  “So,” she hesitated for a moment. “Me and a friend are camping out at--”

  “It’s a friend and I.” Hugo cut her off, moving his eyes to meet Magdalena’s pristine face. There was a piece of construction paper stuck in her hair. He wouldn’t tell her, though.

  “Hey, I’m not the one taking English Literature.” She backed off.

  “It’s English Lit.” Hugo’s eyes wouldn’t meet her face this time. He was too in depth to care.

  The familiar glint of fluorescent lighting illuminated the outside halls, and the pace of Hugo’s typing sounded much like a tune that wasn’t well-known enough for anyone to remember. Magdalena kept peering over his shoulder, starting to hum the now-familiar typewriter tune. They stayed there for some time, with Magdalena studying his notes while he wrote them down. Hugo didn’t have anything special to write down; he only wrote what his sardonic mind was thinking. A lot of it included random facts about each of the political parties and what he expected to come home to every night. This would make Magdalena laugh a few times. Not today, though.

  “I think I’m going to head out now.” Magdalena hesitated towards walking out, hands still in her pockets. Eventually, she made her way to the entranceway and flicked on the light switch that had been turned off. He thanked her, letting her walk out on her own.

  “Miss you, Lena.” Hugo jerked his head upward for a second, watching as Magdalena’s lean figure walked through the door and into the visible part of the hallway. She closed the door behind her to let him type in peace, and so he did. Hugo wasn’t writing a story or an essay, just his thoughts. In his thought-provoking paper, he wrote: Lena has dramatically walked out. She has a sweet face yet has not noticed the lump of blue construction paper in her auburn hair. The walls are beginning to swirl, though I can’t tell why, and my head is starting to spin.

  January 28, 2041 The light that had recently been switched on was turned off. There stood a pile of clipped papers and folders resting besides the face of a sleeping man. An unfamiliar woman, almost daunting in presence, walked into the room. The click-clacking of her red stilettos and smell of her awful dogbone perfume awoke the resting man, though he had hoped she wouldn’t notice his awakening. Though, he had no idea why he felt this way considering he had never met her before. Right?

  “Hugo David Sterling! What in heaven’s sake are you doing about here? I need you by your office this instant!” The strange lady had a prominent British accent. It seemed fake, but Hugo was too drowsy and indolent to tell.

  “Who are you?” Hugo readjusted his eyes once more, wiping a piece of drool from the right side of his cheek where some newly discovered black hairs poked out. The strange lady rolled her eyes.

  “I’m your wife. We honeymooned in Rome?” The woman showed no concern towards the somewhat-dysfunctional man or his dumbfounded state of mind. “Emmaline!” She paused and waited for her husband to answer. When he didn’t, she began speaking again. “You are a bloody imbecile! Ian’s waiting in the--”

  “Who’s Ian?”

  “Ian is your kid. And it’s not polite to interrupt, Hugo. What kind of example do you think you’re setting for Ilex?”

  “Who’s Ilex?”

  “Your other kid.”

  “Is that a boy or a girl?”

  The strange woman murmured something profane and buried her inelastic face into both hands.

  “I just cannot deal with you, Hugo! You can come home once you’ve realized what you have done wrong.” And with that, the strange lady click-clacked her way through the metal door in a pounding fury. The smell of her dogbone perfume was the only thing left behind.

  The typewriter he had recently been typing at stood silently in front of him. The letters on each key seemed to be scratched out in some sort of way. Each symbol was still visible, though, so nothing to raise an eyebrow at. He began to type again on the typewriter that had stayed with him throughout his transcending confusion.

  In it, he wrote his thoughts down for the second time; An odd woman who I will call Emmie has just walked out of the room. I do not miss her as much as I have missed Lena when she walks out of a room. In fact, the only reason I have given this odd woman a nickname is because I have already forgotten her real name. Oh, no. The room is spinning again.

  January 28, 2071 In a new room, a darkened room, Hugo sat alone in a wooden chair. The typewriter sat a couple feet in front of him on a mahogany table decorated with intricate flecks of gold embellishment by the edges. He examined the heavy sheet of white hairs slumping from his two-chinned face and the deep wrinkles weighing him down. His face felt wet, but when he touched it his hands stayed completely dry. He looked down at his potbelly gut and the penny loafers poking out from underneath his belly button.

  Tick Tock

  He looked up to notice an analog clock ticking in front of him. There was no door. Instead, there laid a series of seven plated portraits on ivory walls in front of him. He got up slowly to examine them. The first three had dark sapphire frames and the embedded names of Emmaline Sterling-Wright, Ian Eugene Sterling, and Ilex Emmaline Sterling Ybarra. The older Emmaline’s eyes were completely scratched out. Underneath the embedded name of Ian, there was a type of handwritten calligraphy scribbled. It read,  In loving memory of Hugo David Sterling the Third, whose picture was never taken and life all too suddenly. The wrinkled Hugo rested his hand on the black ink, suddenly feeling an emotion for a boy he had never knew.

  Tick Tock

  The feeling in his legs was weightless, as if nothing but two chubby poles were holding the other 200 pounds of himself upright, so he sat down on the brown, wooden chair. He fixed his eyes on the remaining four portraits. Through his terrible eyesight, Hugo managed to read the names of his parents Layla Elizabeth and Hugo David Sterling. He couldn’t recognize those people, though. His dad was wearing a monocle, which he had never worn before, and his mom seemed old and disabled with her silver hairs and bulgy flabs of skin hanging down. The last one was that of a close friend, Magdalena Marissa Marquez, the triple M. The painted faces of those closest to him, even Emmaline and the Sterling trio, stippled a lonely tear. Each painting embroidered a date of birth and a date of expiration. He leaned back in the chair hoping to forget his lonely state of mind.

  Tick Tock

  “Why am I here?” He bobbed his head backwards on the chair, not expecting anyone to answer. In a way, no one did.

  The typewriter did. It started by emitting its fonted letters once recognizable by all those who typed. The first few letters came out slowly, not attracting the attention of Hugo, but as more and more became visible, the old man saw what was happening. The white sheet placed inside the roller moved slowly while the stems of ink-blotting letters pressed against the sheet in a repeated motion. ‘You know why you’re here,’ the olden machine finally typed.

  “I guess I do, huh?” Hugo admitted.

  Tick Tock

  “I guess I do.”

  Tick Tock, Boom

  January 29, 2021 In front of him, the standard brown door Magdalena had walked out of before stood quietly in its place. The boy immediately grasped for his face--smooth, dry and shaved. He put a hand on his stomach, sighing a sigh of relief. The typewriter appeared in front of him. Its letters were fully scratched out. He scrambled to find his way out, wondering what time of day it was. Outside the corridors of the brick building, the heat of an orange semi-circle undulated in the distance. Remembering he had committed himself to a class of random teenagers, he found his car in the back of the parking lot and drove home. He didn’t want to think anymore, he just wanted to go about his daily schedule and forget everything.

  An hour later the clock ticked 7:52 A.M., Hugo sat in the driver’s seat in a borrowed suit his cousin had never asked to be given back. He hopped out, figuring the walk to the school’s grand auditorium would be less than ten minutes.

  With the mosquito inhabitants swarming around him, he decided he would stop for a vending machine snack. At the vending machine, Magdalena walked in behind him wearing a pencil skirt and tight bun. She didn’t recognize Hugo’s combed head of hair leaning over to get a wedged-in bag of Cheez-its. Once he turned around, she finally recognized him but didn’t want to chat. He did, however.

  “Hey, Lena.” He waved, and she grimaced accordingly.

  After an awkward moment of nobody moving, she gave in. “Hey,” she managed.

  “How come you’re all dressed up?” He motioned towards her formal attire and neat hair.

  “Oh yeah, I’m a T.A. on the middle school side, so I try to make my students think I’m mean.” She grinned a cynical simper.

  A thought came. One of his first thoughts to occur that morning.

  “I have a presentation to attend to, but um…” Hugo realized it was his turn to hesitate. “Would you like to go out for a cup of coffee afterwards?”

  “Er… actually I have to T.A. until noon, but afterwards I’m free. Anything else you’d like to attend to?”

  “Actually, I think it’s time to buy a new typewriter.” He munched a Cheez-it and offered one to her. She smiled.