Beautiful Tech-Tech-Technical Difficulties

*This story includes themes of sexual violence and mental illness*

“You’re so beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.”

His words sting her mind. He moves his hand to her shoulder and towards her chest. Reaching out his other hand, he grips both her wrists with all his arm and hand’s strength.

She can’t move.

His weight seems heavier on top of her than she can remember. She feels immobile.

Frozen.

She’s seen eyes like his before. She knows that gaze all too well.

He desires her.

For now, there is nothing he wants more, and it doesn’t matter if she said “stop” a million times.

It falls on deaf ears.

Pressure.

Heat.

Pain.

She is anyone. 

She wakes herself up from her dream by opening both her eyes. Another nightmare. Sweat spots around her armpits reveal themselves on her beige cami top. Her hair is damp from it. She isn’t sure if she was yelling in her sleep again, as boyfriends from the past have told her. Those relationships never lasted too long. Too much baggage on her part. Too many intense emotions and colors of the past for them to bear.

She reaches for the water bottle still on her nightstand and notes the time: 3AM.

A sharp electrical pain jolts through her brain like a zap, leaving her in a mental fog, dizzy and confused. Amid the pain, she drops the water bottle on the old cheap carpet.

The headache starts now. It’s expected. No longer a surprise. How many nights has she woken up like this? She wonders while holding her head like it would escape from her if she doesn’t hold it still.

She examines the dusty old floor for the fallen water bottle.

It isn’t there.

She gazes back up at the nightstand and there before her is the same water bottle.

Didn’t I drop it?

She’s confused, and she doesn’t have the mental processing power to think it over. Instead, she ignores it and heads a few feet beside where her crappy full-sized bed that no one could ever get a good night rest on; towards the kitchenette where her favorite drink awaits to be brewed. Coffee.

She’s particular about her coffee. Two tablespoons of dark roast coffee. Three to four cups of water in the reservoir. Brew.

The sound of the coffee pot heating always gave her a sense of calm and when the aroma of the coffee fills the air, a little more peace. She seems to live by these minor comforts.

A few feet more from the kitchenette is her used-up old couch that she bought from a local thrift store. Simple. Not aesthetic, but it serves its purpose for now, which is to provide a place for her to work. Small coffee table in front of her with her laptop.

Might as well get some work done early, I guess, since I’m up.

Laptop loads, and she works on a piece of code she has been trying to resolve for the past few days. It’s been frustrating for her, but she doesn’t shy away from challenges because she is used to setbacks. She is used to being hammered down by the weight of the world and getting back up every time.

She has to be.

The smell of the dark roast coffee fills the air around her and relaxes her some. It’s a pleasant feeling, considering the surrounding environment is dingy with only a small rusty window of the world outside. Cobwebs here and there in higher places like the yellow ceiling. Old wallpaper peeling in places like behind the tv and next to the door frame to the bathroom near to her. It reveals an even more yellow dirty wall behind it. She has often attributed all the yellow walls and ceiling to previous tenets who must’ve chain-smoked like their life depended on it. It’s not much of a studio apartment to look at, especially since there are so many other better options in NYC that she could afford, but she’s ok here. If friends ever came to this place, maybe they could see her a little better. A visual representation of what she feels she is inside. Heavily used up, she often contemplates.

The coffee finishes brewing. The sputtering sound confirms it for her. She writes one last line of code, but before making her way back to the kitchenette to pour her coffee, her momentary peaceful bliss to knock out the loud world around her, she drops her head and looks back down at the used-up red carpet. The blue light from the computer screen flickers over it.

The blue light.

Carpet.

No, not again. Fight it. Fight it.

The demons of her past always come. Doesn’t matter how bad she fights or how hard she tries to ground herself to reality. They come and they come in perpetuity. 

“Take this, it’ll relax you,” he says, holding up a small blue pill.

She’s unsure, but she trusts him. A friend from work. Why not? I could do with a bit of relaxation.

Darkness pulls over her eyes. Black.

She feels something. Something gliding across her hips. Is that a hand? She tries to open her eyes, but they’re heavy. She opened her right eye the best she could, but it’s blurry and everything she could see was spinning around making her feel nauseous. A blue light flickered from the tv that was left on. She closes her eyes again. Head pounding.

She doesn’t understand why, but her heart is racing. Why does my back hurt? She notices she can feel soft carpet but a hard floor. Why am I on the ground?

Thoughts race in, but they shoot at her like arrows from a fog in the night. Can’t find their origin, can’t see where they’re going, can’t stop them for a moment to ask one hundred percent what it entails. The rapid thoughts just shoot by like chaos erupting around her.

“You’re beautiful, you know?”

Confusion envelopes her.

Pressure.

Heat.

Pain.

The sound of a monstrous thunder clacking snaps her back to reality. She jumps and breathes in a long, sharp breath. Eyes wide. Fearing as though she was being pursued. Pursued to be killed.

The coffee sputters its final drip of coffee into the pot. The sound of it levels her back some. Not all the way, but some and in her life that is more than she can hope for.

Little comforts help you get from one moment to the next. A thought she repeats to herself like a meditative prayer.

Before she goes back to make her cup of joy, she looks back at the computer screen and realizes several lines of code have appeared where they weren’t before.

“Why is this shit increasing?”

Frustrated, she pushes the palm of her hands into the torn up couch, clinching any part of it she can grab. Closing her eyes with tension, she rubs her forehead. It helps a little, but not much.

Coffee.

She raises and heads to the kitchenette, and there on the counter is a coffee pot.

An empty coffee pot.

Struck with confusion, she checks the filter for coffee. Nothing there. Checks the reservoir. No water.

ZAP!

Her head feels like it’s splitting from the electrical jabs to her brain. Is it the headaches? She wonders. The dense fog clouds up in her mind.

“What the hell is causing this?” She says as she purses her lips, increasing in anger from all the decades of these episodes. A frustration that has plagued her for too long.

Rubbing her forehead again, she disregards it and resumes to make coffee all over again. Did I ever make it before? Did I imagine it? She ponders. Can’t focus too much on these things. It’ll suck me in again.

Back at her make-shift desk, she turns on the small table lamp beside her. The light is dim, but it’s enough. She gets back to work on her coding as the coffee brews again, working around the new line of code that wasn’t there before but somehow seems to fit with what she was aiming for.

Rain is pouring now.

A line of code here. A bit of research there. Her app will be up and running in no time if she keeps this pace. If she can keep this focus.

The coffee pours out the last bit of precious liquid and, once again, the apartment fills with its scent.

Small momentary happiness.

She leaves the laptop behind and heads once again to the kitchenette, only to find something even more confusing than before.

Two coffee pots are now filled to the brim with coffee. Fresh hot coffee.

“The hell is going on with me?” She wants to shout, but doesn’t. A silent scream is all she can manage.

She hastens to her nightstand, back beside her springy bed. Opens the top drawer and pulls out a bottle of the latest medicine prescribed.

Takes a pill.

Swallow.

“I hate this crap.”

She ignores the coffee at this point. Too much confusion. Too much for her to process at that moment. Her momentary happiness, gone.

Just get the code finished, fuck everything else. Focus.

She hurries back to her laptop and works more diligently than before.

Only a few more tweaks here and there and I’m finished, she thinks to motivate herself. This app is a long time coming for her. She’s worked on it for years. Not just the app in making, but learning to code. It means a lot to her, what it represents. What it could represent for people like herself.

A hope.

Done.

A sigh of relief as she feels years of hard work and dedication come to fruition.

Power goes out.

“FUCK!” she yells. Did I save it? She wonders. Please God, tell me I saved it!

Then it hits her. She’s surrounded by darkness. Complete darkness. Not even a streetlight outside to shine into that rusty old window.

Utter darkness, and it feels alive.

She can’t see her hand before her. It’s a silhouette. A chill runs up her spine, making her shiver as it reaches the top of the back of her neck.

ZAP!

Another electrical jab to her brain sends her into jerking motions. Jerk motions that seem to dictate where her body moves without her consent. She can’t make it stop. Not all the grounding techniques in the world could make her break away from the jerks her body seem to pull her in. Her head flicks back and then forth again. Right arm jolts forward and then to the left. Her legs twist in ways a body shouldn’t.

She wants to scream, but in doing so could disturb her neighbors.

This is nothing. I’m fine. I can’t bother others with what’s most likely nothing at all.

Jerk. Jab. Flick. Quiver. Quake.

Oh, no. Not again. Focus! What’s around me?

She looks around for something to pull her back to reality.

Black.

Black.

Black.

“NO!” For a moment, she let out her cry. A momentary weakness. A shame felt.

Thunder. Rain. Black.

“Get in my bed tonight,” he says with a firm command, and she is too young and too afraid to object. Not after what she read that he wrote about her. His feelings, his desires, his hopes of what he could become with her.

“Ok,” she says, just above a whisper.

If I don’t, he’ll know that I know. She contemplates between running right then or surrendering for a time until it is safer to run. Maybe she could get away. Would he chase me? She wonders. Kill me?

“I just need to —” She pauses for a moment to find the right words, “get my —”

The right words don’t come.

“What? Just get in the bed, it’s late” His tone rises in deceptiveness, like what she needs is trivial, and his need is superior. 

“Come,” He says with the authority he has over her with legality. She sees him there on the side of his bed, in his room down the dim corridor leading to an absolute dark bedroom.

Darkness.

“Ok,” she says with a little more effort, this time louder. Two quiet replies will send a sign that something is wrong. I have to act like everything is ok. With every step, her heart rate increases. She can feel it thumping in her chest. Pounding in her mind. She lies beside him in the dark with all her nerves trembling. Thank God I had my cell phone on me. Laying beneath the covers, she clinches her mobile phone to her chest. He lays down next to her.

“You’re beautiful, you know?”

“Thank you,” she replies, trying not to quiver or shake her words and clue him in that she knows what his desires are for her.

Desires.

Don’t fall asleep. Don’t fall asleep.

She’s too afraid to let herself rest, but the immense stress is demanding she do so and if she does, who knows what she could wake up to?

Black.

Matter rubbing against her. Under her shirt. A callous, thick hand wakes her. She knows what it is. She knows what it’s about and she knows why. Holding back tears, her mouth silently quivers.

BUZZ!

Her cell phone vibrates.

Where is it?! She panics to herself, realizing she doesn’t have her cell phone on top of her chest anymore.

The sound of the cell phone vibrating signals him to jolt upright. Startled by his own guilty conscious.

BUZZ!

BUZZ!

BUZZ!

MAKE IT STOP! She screams inside her head. He’ll know I have a phone with me! She feels the mobile phone next to her on the side of her stomach, on the bed. She presses it hard as if it would silence it.

He leans over towards her looking for the source of the vibration and she tries to remain still, quiet, even though all her body is shaking in fear, but she has to control it. If she doesn’t, it could get worse. Who knows how bad this time? She must look like she is asleep.

BUZZ!

He’s closer now, looking for her cell phone. He knows she has it, but she knows this cell phone like the back of her hand and can work it without looking at it. She remembers the interface. She remembers how to get to the silent mode.

It stops, but he doesn’t.

He’s so close to where she can smell his breath. His breath always smelt horrible to her, like rotten teeth and chewed tobacco. She still tries to appear asleep.

What do I do?! She screams inside herself, frozen.

He whispers to her, thinking she’s unconscious, “Beautiful.”

Pressure.

Heat.

Pain.

Her eyes jolt awake and she gasps for air like she is underwater. Several breaths. Too many breaths. She can’t stop breathing. Rapid breathing. Numbness and tingles take over her body. Her mind can’t process anything. All she knows are those moments she can’t seem to escape.

The power is back on is what she can contemplate amid her body shaking, almost violently. What would the world think if they could see her now in this weak state? Could anyone out there rescue her from herself? From her decades-long struggle?

Would they care?

It takes a while for the shaking and rapid breathing to cease and once it does; she doesn’t think about what happened. She has too much important work wrapped up in code that she has worked on for years that needs to be launched.

Did it save?

The past six years she’s dedicated to this moment, but when she stares at the screen, the app is ready to launch. All she needs to do is hit the “publish” button and it will send out all over the world. She didn’t get to this step yet. There was still a little more to do. Finesse it. Confusion covers her mind and she can no longer bear what is happening to her.

She cries and screams as loud as she has wanted to for years. Lets it all out. Doesn’t hold back.

I don’t give a fuck who hears me.

A ringing in her ears materializes. It’s deafening. Then the tv starts the same sound, louder. Then the coffee pot. Even the small table lamp. It seems like everything around her is making an ear piercing ring.

“It’s too much!” she cringes, gripping her ears, mind, in pain.

Rain increases. Thunder is louder and seems more menacing, like it has a taste to strike her.

Body vibrates. A vibration that feels like she is losing control of herself and of her physical body. She wants to disappear.

Just disappear.

In all the rage of senses consuming her, she taps the “publish” button and sends her app, her message, to the world.

Knock, knock.

Not now! Go away! More silent screams inside.

Knock, knock.

Everything stops. All the ringing. All the shaking and vibration. Even the rain and thunder cease. She doesn’t concern herself with it. Her focus is on the door. She stares at it, afraid.

The door opens.

“Hey, beautiful,” a man’s voice says behind the door as he opens it.

She closes her eyes and summons the will to become invisible, and this time she does.

Dissipating in the atmosphere, she’s vanished. She is no longer made up of matter. All the ringing, vibration, headaches, glitches in her reality have seemed to come to a head, and this was the pinnacle of it all.

The man walks in, confused. He was certain she was here, like she always was. She never leaves this place. He wonders around looking for her under the covers, in the bathroom, near the kitchenette where one old, stale and moldy pot of coffee has sat for a long time, days maybe.

She’s nowhere.

He notices the laptop on the coffee table and examines it. He sees the name of the app she launched into the world:

#MeTooHelpIsHere