Typewriter

Mess. The whole room was a mess. And it wasn't getting any cleaner, as Harold chucked a few more of those old, dusty books across the room. Sweat trickled down his neck as he glanced at his watch. Three-thirty in the morning. 'Just fifteen minutes, no more. If I don't find it, scrap the idea,' he decided, for the fifth time in the hour. Time was passing, and so was his desperation. If he didn't find it, he was screwed. If he didn't find it, his job was at risk. With time exerting heavy amounts of pressure on him, second by second, he almost forgot why he was raiding his cabinet so aggressively. Why his room was a complete forest of junk. One glance at his blown-up computer, and that depressing incident was fresh in his mind.

                                                                                           *****

It was ten in the night. Harold sat on his comfortable wooden chair, storming away on his keyboard with deep clicks and snaps. Harold was usually a gentle-keeper of things, in particular, the keyboard of his elegant Desktop-Computer. But stress can really change one's behavior. By the side of him, on his desk, was a glass of canned-beer. Despite the two comforting objects, the beer and the chair, that were beside him, he was tortured with heavy migraine and body pains. He glugged down another gulp of beer. 'Just finish the article that they assigned you, and you're done. Done. You can throw that whole darn PC out of the window and CRASH! On bed, duh.' Harold thought, to motivate himself. You see, Harold worked at a Newspaper Agency with a really dominating boss. Bossy was the word that Harold would use. Anyways, when the thought of throwing his PC out of the window occurred to him, he really wasn't serious. Just drunk. But he might as well should have, as it was anyways going tobe destroyed in a few moments time. Engrossed in his heavy typing, he didn't notice his elbow, that was rested right next to the half-filled glass of beer. Just a bit closer, and CLINK! Puddles of beer everywhere. And that is exactly what happened. The beer splashed on the desk, the floor and, uh oh, his PC. Right in the heat vents. It wasn't even minutes before the computer short-circuited and went out.

A volt of shock went through his body. He couldn't move. There was a moment of silence as he stared at his PC, totally blindsided by what had just happened. He felt like crying and punching the walls of the room until his fists were bruised blue. A tear was on the verge of rolling down his cheek. But no, he squeezed it in. 'Stay strong. We'll figure this out. You don't necessarily need a PC to write articles. I could write it by hand!' he told himself. 'What will Boss think though. When he sees an unprofessional, shabby, hand-written article on ruled paper, the same that is used by third-graders to do their homework on?' realized Harold, considering the fact that his handwriting wasn't the neatest. There had got to be another way. But when Harold tried thinking through the problem from a different perspective, his mind just went blank. The only words that popped into his head at that moment was DEAD. I AM SO DEAD. He rested his head on his desk for a few minutes, imagining the consequences for his mistake. And right when he thought the situation couldn't get any better, it did.

'You could. Well, you could type it. Using that typewriter! That old, broken typewriter handed down to you from grandpa!' realized Harold. But the fact of the matter still remained. It was broken. Or was it? Harold thought about it for a minute. Well, he could try. That was his only chance anyway.

And, so the mess.

                                                                                         ******

Four in the morning now. No luck. Harold had grown to be drowsier than ever now. He was certain that he would've blacked out at least five times since the last half an hour. Yet he dug through the pile, keeping the mission at the Centre of his mind: The Typewriter. He was about to doze off again, for the sixth time in those thirty minutes, when something shiny caught his eye. Cold. Rusted. Old. Harold struggled to pull it out from under the remaining junk in the cabinet. After managing to do so, despite his aching muscles and eyes, screaming for rest, he inspected the object carefully. And god, he couldn't believe his eyes. It was, in fact, the typewriter! That typewriter! It had been lost and unused for at least over a decade now.

But still, Harold didn't spare a full minute for celebration. He had work to do. And every second counted. He took the typewriter up to his desk, moving aside his hot, electrocuted computer to make space for the matter at hand. 'Let's do this.' He told himself. Huh. His determination only lasted him a few minutes, during which he barely wrote three sentences before he blacked out again. For good, this time.

The next morning wasn't pleasant, either. He woke up, puzzled, only to find the mess that surrounded him and his small, digital clock on his desk that read Twelve-Thirty PM. And how late was he, exactly, for work? In spite of his head, still aching from the night before, he managed to calculate the result. 'Four hours. I was supposed to be there by....by Nine-Thirty.' His mind screamed to get out of the binds that held him down from finishing his task, as he vigorously tapped his head on the desk, giving no heed to the pain that swept across his forehead in the process. He was so engrossed in punishing himself and his forehead that he didn't even bother to check the page that stuck out of the typewriter. Because, later when he did, one glance at that page got him spellbound. Instantly.

The whole page was written neatly, error-free and with efforts of creativity. Harold naturally assumed that the depression and anxiety from the many hours of work and tension had got him hallucinating. But no, when he closed his eyes and got 'back to the real world' (or at least as he thought of it), the paper that was on the grasp of his hands was a finished one.

Assuming that he had done it the night before and forgot about it, avoiding the thoughts that suggested the idea that the typewriter actually wrote by itself, or more realistically, someone broke into his home and wrote it for him, he grabbed the paper, got satisfactorily dressed and rushed to work.

After turning in the article, Harold felt as though a huge weight had been taken off his back. With his mind and body in peace now, he began exploring the possible ideas that suggested the reason why, or rather how, had his work been done, finished and also, unusually worthy to get him a pat on the back from his critical Boss. Sitting on the city bus, he began thinking. No ideas came in his mind at that moment, though. After a point of heavy thinking, the idea suddenly turned out to be creepy. How was it that his work was finished, with his house being locked and secure all night? How was it that the breaker-in would have managed to break in his home and complete the task without waking Harold up, who was, in general, not a very deep sleeper. And finally, why would anyone be willing to take such efforts and pains to help him, without actually letting him know about it? Even if circumstances supported the bizarre idea, a person would have to be a genius to complete the task so extraordinarily with such a time constraint. Harold did not even look at the Imaginative Department, or as he called it, that suggested unreal solutions to his curious questions, including ghosts and non-human beings that must have done it for him, as he did not believe in that kind of stuff.

Still, Harold never faced such a bizarre, unreal incident in his life again. He pretended that it never happened. Still, Harold continues to double-check if all the doors of his home are safely locked.