He stood on the brink of frenzy teetering on the edge of civilized dignity and insane raving. Drawn all together into a wrinkled, red furrow, his face glistened with the sweat of the angry and his eyeballs twitched in his skull, the tension of each muscle in his body taut with strain. His hands were clasped, each finger woven between its compliment on the opposing appendage, and his feet were squared and firmly planted on the ground. Hunched forward with spine bent and shoulders raised, he sat in his chair as though it were a throne or director’s seat, the center of authority in his personal domain. It was not a far leap, not even a rabbit hop, to say that he looked unhappy.
The man was seated in a plain room with old carpeting and chipped walls, the paint peeling away in places and spreading cracks webbing hither and thither. A fluorescent bulb burnt openly fixed in its place in the ceiling, reverberating a pulsating hum that rang mechanical yet organic — the sound of the tides of the ocean clawing away at the white sands of a beach then reversing and replacing the shores with new turf. Nobody else was presently visible in the room, a few other chairs of identical design and of varying degrees of wear and tear solemnly awaited visitors in clusters positioned against the wall adjoining the man’s chair and the one opposing it. A door lead out in one direction, and another door lead out in the perpendicular direction.
He watched the door across from him at a forty five degree angle, attentively and eagerly, with his expression of grave outrage. The line of his mouth was straight like an architect’s ruler, lips pressed together and pulled inward. The only movement he made was the slightest shifting as he unconsciously thrust his weight from one leg to the other. The light flickered for an instant, pausing in its electrical song of life, and the man blinked his dark, narrow eyes.
With a sudden noise, the door next to the man, which was not the one he had his gaze affixed upon, swung wide and another man stepped through, dressed primly in an ironed shirt and slacks. His demeanor was decidedly calmer and more pleasant to view than the sitting man’s, his eyes soft and mouth curved slightly upward at the tips in a close-mouthed smile. He held a pen in his right hand, and his left was tucked away in his pants’ pocket.
“Yes, sir, I understood you had something to say to me?” the standing man asked with a tone of curiosity. Locking his stare onto the other man’s face, with a flare of a fiery something in his eyes, the enraged man in the chair puckered his lips then spoke:
“You, yo–you, I understand who, what, you are, do, but God damn it, God damn it!” Spittle escaped from his mouth as he formed each word in a series of bursts of exhalations, his chest heaving out and in violently. He braced his knee with one hand, and balled the other in a first and held it up toward the only other person in the room.
“God damn what exactly, may I ask?” inquired the man with the pen, his voice slightly rising in offense. With a sigh of exhaustion, the seated man thrust his arms out from his sides and gestured at the empty room emphatically.
“Th–this, all this. Everything!” he interrupted his own speech with a cry of agitation, but continued, “I mean, look, yeah, I understand the nature of my existence and all that, but what is this, this?” Bringing his arms down, he pointed a finger at the middle of his chest and shook it. “This!”
“A shirt, I believe, is what you’re pointing at, sir, but I doubt that’s what you’re trying to make reference to.”
“No, no, of course not that. I mean — I mean, me, what’s my deal! Huh?”
The first man let his hands fall to his knees, and sighed, again, with the fatigue of the world on his shoulders. His face did not relax, though, and tiny beads of sweat made their way down his face in lines of wetness that traced the ridges of his wrinkled forehead. The second man, seeing the frustration the first, put his weight on his left foot and then crossed one arm across his chest, placing the other arm on the crossed one and, with the hand belonging to that arm, rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, I don’t know.”
“You don’t, you don’t know?”
“Well, no. You’re angry, obviously upset — peeved beyond normal and bestially feeling wronged, correct?”
“Yes!”
“Good, that’s what I meant for. But as to the cause of this outrage? I haven’t decided.”
“You haven’t decided? Then — then, decide, God damn it!”
“It takes time, and I admit I’m a bit stumped, out of ideas . . .”
“I don’t care if you’re out of ideas, you’re the fucking author of me! Give me something! Anything!”
Humming a low ‘hm’ to himself, the man at the door withdrew his hand from his chin and walked into the room. Semi-circling around the man in the chair, he took a seat near to the first man and slouched down, stretching his legs out to their full length and humming to himself, again, louder. For a minute, he blankly gazed at the ceiling light, listening to the ebb and flow of the currents of power running to and fro to keep the bulb lit, not speaking nor moving more so than to breathe. The first man impatiently tapped his foot against the floor, tilting his head up and down and bending his neck left and right. His eyeballs twitched. “WELL?”
“Like I said, I don’t know! I haven’t come up with anything, yet, okay? I wanted a character who displayed moral outrage or indignant fluster, but I hadn’t had time to create a context for you, yet.”
“Come on, you bloody bastard, I need motivations before emotions, that only makes fucking sense.”
“Don’t get uppity with me, mister. I never said my process made any sense . . . Fine, you give me a reason for you to be upset.”
“What?”
“You’re bound and determined to have a purpose, then give me one. Tell me what would be a good idea for your anxiety?”
The first man ceased his nervous jittering and eager movements, still appearing quite in an uproar though, and looked toward the other man in the room, the one with the pen and the absurd notions. The second man raised his eyebrows and fiddled with the pen in his hand, tapping it against the chair’s leg.
“My anxiety is caused by YOU, you stupid fucking shitface. How about that? My damn author can’t think of a stupid purpose for his own fucking character and wants the character to think of his own stupid purpose, and it’s all the stupidest shit in the world! . . . How’s that, then?”
Adjusting himself to an upright posture, the second man nodded his head and smiled very slightly. “That sounds good, I think,” he said, retrieving a small pad from his pocket. “Hm . . . How about . . . ‘He stood on the brink of frenzy teetering on the edge of civilized dignity and insane raving’? Does that sound good for a starting sentence?”
The character put his head in his hands and grumbled darkly and sat malcontented. Shrugging his shoulders, the author stood up and waved goodbye to the seated man. In a blink, he was replaced by a giant walrus that bit off the angry man’s head.