He’s sitting alone in the dark. Not complete darkness, of course. The blue screen throws dim light into the room and he sits there, tapping away at the keyboard.

Writing. He’s writing a story. He writes about the protagonist. She dies. Someone always dies in his stories. He sees it as a creative outlet. He supposes his stories touch other people. He supposes they touch his readers. He doesn’t really care. He just wants to kill off the stupid jock that pushed him into the lockers today.

As he types, he remembers the first story he ever posted. It’s a piece of crap, but he wants to leave it up, perhaps as a marker. It got one review.

He glances at the bottom right corner of his screen. It’s 2:18 AM. Weariness began to wrap its arms around him at one. Now it squeezes. He supposes he should get to bed. But writing has become an addiction for him. He still doesn’t care how the things he writes affect people, but he likes to know that the words on the screen are his, of his own hand. He supposes that this is how God must have felt at the Creation. To the tenth power, of course, but a similar feeling nonetheless.

A few more words and he’s done. Tap, tap... Tap. The end. People are crying in his story, but it doesn’t matter. They aren’t real. He posts it on the net. The story will probably make people sad, but the stories are for him, anyway. He stretches, yawns. He shuts the computer off. He gives it an appreciative pat on the hard drive, then walks over to his bed and falls in.

His mind is still whirring with ideas as he falls asleep, long after the humming of the computer stops.