It was silent in the office. “Maria,” Ben softly called out, and was met with no response. He turned around and rotated the latch on the entry door, locking it. Not bothering to remove his coat, he made for the doorway that divided the two rooms, into the empty office, and over to his desk. On it was a neatly stacked series of folders, garnished with a pink sticky note. “You’re own your own today. Call with any questions!” It had been four days since Benjamin had challenged himself to write one blog post and one first draft page per day – for 30 consecutive days – and he had…

8:00 pm. Ben had written about 45 uninspired words. He was so buttfucking angry with his wasted self, his useless, braindead, meaningless life. He didn’t want to die. But he surely didn’t want to keep “living” like this. Flaccid. Ineffective. Unworthy. Having performed about an hour and fifteen minutes of useful work throughout the entire day, he found himself exhausted. He looked in the mirror and saw a wretch, unworthy of the sacrifice made by the animals which had died to support his loathsome existence. Benjamin finally surrendered. He would not write, edit and publish two posts tonight. He could not. His mind was scattered and fragmented, as it often…

Mara had not moved by the time he had returned from the other room. He heeded her twisted smile for a moment, but then moved towards his desk, placing his coffee on the corner. Reaching over her head, Ben gripped the back rest of the chair and rotated it away from himself. Mara’s head rotated with the chair in the opposite direction of her body, her grotesquely wide smile and devious gaze never breaking from his face. Ben breathed in again, grabbed his coffee, and taking a swig he looked up at nothing in particular on the wall. Then, in an act of feigned confidence that not even he believed,…

Consistently, diligently, he stayed focused on his singular task of incorporating all red marks and alterations on the pages before him into his computer, for what felt like the better part of the morning. Of course, when he glanced at the clock on his screen, he realized that it had only been an hour and fifteen minutes since he sat down. He felt a twinge of worry upon realizing that there was so much more morning to go, but regardless, he felt proud. He thumbed through the pages of printed drawings, making certain that he hadn’t missed anything. He scanned over the red markings, the notes, the pink– The desk,…

Benjamin continued to bite down on his finger with his eyes closed, wanting nothing more than to let out an unbridled scream. But he knew that he could not – though the office might be empty, the building was not. The Thumper let out its own oddly-timed scream, and began slamming its watery body against the back of the drywall, in an apparent attempt to break through. THUD! The awkwardly protruding leg flailed about as it tried continuously to bash it’s way into the office. “Redo, redo!” cried both of the fists in unison. Finally, the Thumper reeled back into one last heaving slam of its body against the wall…