Perfection

Perfection. I need perfection.

It doesn’t sound perfect yet, but it will. It has to.

It must be perfect.

I reach out for my typewriter once again. I no longer feel the blisters, I only know they are there because of the blood on my fingers. It is a small price to pay for perfection. The clicking sound of the keys bring me comfort and anger all at once.

I can see and feel the words in my head, but they don’t translate to the literary perfection I seek, the perfection I want to give the world.

Each page I write is now worse than the one before. More polluted, more poisoned by a bastardized language I no longer recognize. It enrages me! I ball up pages of paper, feeling the burn of cuts between my fingers each time.

I can feel the anger welling up in my stomach. I throw my typewriter across my chamber, slamming it against the wall. I feel exhausted and nauseous. I run across the room, making sure I haven’t hurt it. Like an abusive partner, I beat it up and then ask for forgiveness.

The words are my prison, the typewriter my warden. Each day I sit in front of a machine, trying to produce a story I no longer remember. Was it a drama? Was it horror? Maybe a romance? All I know is that the words make no sense. Writing was second nature to me; I would write beautiful stories that people loved to read. Fans would line up in bookstores just to hear me read my own words.

Billboards with my face all over the world, announcing the coming of my next book, and the braindead, illiterate zombies would line up to preorder. They should be grateful to just be in my presence. I am a god; gifting them with perfection in the form of pages, beautifully curated words that submerge them into worlds they have never dreamed of, taking them into adventures and giving them sensations their pathetic selves could never venture into. I created this for them!

The typewriter calls my name from the other side of the room, with a whisper it calls on to me, reminding me that I am not good enough to produce another story. I still remember the day I bought it. I had been saving for a while to get it, feeling the keys under my fingers felt electric, it was magical.

“You’re not a real writer, you’ll never be a real writer!” said my father mockingly whilst holding another beer. The car lot might be good enough for you, old man, but not for me. My world is hidden between words and ink. Hundreds of stories later, I proved him wrong.

Old man died surrounded by his used cars and beer cans, alone, never having read a single book I published. The only piece of writing I did for him was his eulogy, and he didn’t even get to hear it. Empty words full of lies, I wrote what people expect me to write. What people wanted to hear about a miserable human who left nothing behind, other than the resentment and bitterness of mocking me for being different. For seeking perfection.

I’ve written about fantastic worlds, never ending romances, terrifying monsters. I’ve given the world perfect words, perfect grammar. But now, I am out of stories. I am out of synonyms, out of verbs, out of punctuation.

I plead to my typewriter to give me one more tale; one more perfect idea I can type out. This machine has turned me into who I am. Everything I’ve become I owe to it.  I can hear it mocking me, just like the old man used to do, telling me I am a failure; I am not a writer.

It, the machine, owns me. It tells me when to eat, when to sleep, when to move. I am but its puppet. I succumb to its call and sit before it, hitting random keys, entering a trance as I spit out word after word, forming sentences that will be read but not felt.

Page after page, I feel the chain tightening around my neck. The typewriter won’t let me go until it is perfect.

It has to be perfect!

Another balled up page is ejected in anger from my hand. Paper rips, bleeding ink, pouring out each word I had produced. Yet, I start again, and I keep going until my eyes close and I wake up hours later, still at my typewriter. A mountain of disorganized pages lay next to my cup of stale coffee. I arrange them carefully, as if I were tucking in a newborn. I place them in an envelope and slowly walk into my editor’s office. She reads.

“This is your best work yet,” She assures me.

“I told you I could do it!” I yell at the machine, giving it the middle finger. “I knew I could do it… it is perfect!”  

“You think you did this?” I hear the machine whisper, in that mocking, raspy voice. “I typed it all out. You simply pressed the keys I ordered you to press”.

Is it in my head? How can an object control me so? Why do I allow it?

I grab my typewriter and throw it through the window, broken glass caressing my face and arms. Blood leaking out of each small wound. My heart beating so fast I can hear the pounding in my chest, I begin to feel lightheaded, the room spins as small flashes of light hit my eyes, faster and faster. My fists tighten until my bones crack. Am I dying? Is this what the end of the story feels like for me? Darkness, at last. Finally, I shall rest.

I wake up a few days later in a bright room, welcomed by a kind face. A woman dressed in a nurse’s outfit. She adjusts the medication from my IV and helps me sit up. For the first time in years, I feel at peace. Even though I almost died, I am finally resting. I can no longer feel the typewriter taunting me, making me write out senseless stories. I am free.

The dark gray suit is elegant and modern. The bright yellow tie makes me look daring; women love that. My latest book release party will also be my retirement announcement. I will not write again, I’ve sold my apartment, and I’ve purchased a nice houseboat, I’m going to travel. I will no longer be its slave. The typewriter is finally out of my life. MY life.

Champagne bottles pop open as people I’ve never met praise my literary work, which they never have read. And even if they had, would they understand it? They shake my hand and take my picture as if my presence brought excitement to their otherwise bland existence.

There is only one person in this whole place I recognize; my editor. The rest of the people in this room are strangers, gathered under the promise of an extravagant evening full of free alcohol and over-hyped hors d’oeuvres, so they can later brag on their social media that they rub elbows with a famous writer.

A monotone conversation with a lustful woman dressed in red is abruptly interrupted by a familiar sensation; a muffled sound I know all too well. I feel it vibrate as if it were in the room.

The parcel boy wearing brown interrupts my anxious thoughts with a large box. I ask who I can thank for the gift, but he just shrugs his shoulders and turns around as soon as he’s collected my signature.

Anticipation fills the small room where I am hiding, I carefully take the ribbon of the box and tear out small pieces of paper. Cold drops of sweat start falling down my face. My hands are shaking, unable to reach inside the box. I am greeted by a familiar sight, my typewriter; still intact after being thrown out of a window, with a few scratches but as beautiful as the first day I saw it.

A simple note written in my own hand makes me shiver; “You owe it perfection”.

And so, I will never be free.

I owe it perfection.