Why do you care for me? (KINGDINGS)

Chapter 2

The tapping of a keyboard filled the still air in the dark room. A quick succession of quick taps and rapid clicking created a sense of urgency in the black room. This coupled with the mumbled curses under a certain skeleton’s breath, charged the air negatively with pressure.

“Damnit!” He cursed. Falling back in his black rolling chair, causing it to slide backwards by a hair. The skeleton brings a hand to pinch the bridge of his nasal bone as he lets out an agitated sigh.

Another possibility, gone. The idea had ended an abrupt end. A dead end. Meaning yet another failed attempt to free the Underworld. He recounts the choices that led him to this end, trying to figure out if perhaps he took a wrong route, wrote a wrong answer, calculated something wrong. He leans forward to his desk, reviewing the data on his laptop, making sure everything is as accurate as possible before he sighed again. A habit that was proving to appear more often than before.

He closes his laptop, deciding to start from scratch again. It’s not like he’s been re-doing, and re-attempting and re-thinking all possible experiments that could lead to the answer he so desperately wants for the 100th time. Heavens no! He could feel the agitated sarcasm roll off him in waves as he goes to stand up, already considering probabilities that could lead to the freedom of the underworld before he’s struck with an intense pain in his skull. He falters, his body crashing back into his seat as his trembling legs lose their strength. He groans in pain, placing his arms on his desk while cradling his head in his trembling hands. He takes deep breaths, trying to soothe the throbbing headache that he’s sad to say has become quite a buddy of his. The stress of the current predicament he finds himself in, the obvious culprit. He massages his boney skull despite knowing how ineffective it will be. Rest will be his sole savior if he could convince himself to fall asleep.

Sleep has abandoned him for weeks now. His guilty conscience of having yet to find a cure for this curse of entrapment, and for failing to pursue a certain experiment that was proving to have been creating positive results, leaves him restless. He disregards that last thought. It was decision he made with his full consent and one he does not regret. He’d do it again if given chance. He does not regret choosing to save his sons. Remembering his children, he glances to the left of him, at the clock that should be hanging on the wall to remind him of the time, but he frowns as he sees it is shrouded in darkness. He forgot that he’d dimmed the lights as too much brightness only aggravates his constant headaches. Opening his laptop, his eyes fling to the bottom right corner. His eyes sockets widen in shock.

‘5:40? I’m late!’

Hurriedly closing the laptop, he stands abruptly, shaking his head to clear the fuzziness from his eyes from standing too quickly. He grabs the lightly illuminated bag to the right of him. Stuffing the laptop in without a care for the rest of the items inside the brown worn messanger bag, he departs from his office. Shutting off the few lights he had left on and locks the door.