CREATIVE WRITING
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
I looked at her and felt vacant, as though I were an emptied house. The corners in my rooms were dusty, my stairs creaked from their old age, and the windows in the bedrooms could not be looked out of as they were filthy and foggy from a thousand years’ isolation.
When my parents read her form, she was described as intelligent beyond her years, paramountly beautiful to all women in our town, and unconditionally loyal to whomever may be honored to be matched with her. She appeared to be the perfect mate for me, or at least in my parents’ eyes, but I recall feelings of doubt in our pairings. The forms were scary for every adolescent in town; a form essentially determined one’s entire future. It would dictate your job, whom you will be programmed to love, where you will live, your permanent salary, and the number of kids that one will be permitted to have. The forms commence creation the second a child enters the third grade. Once this age is met, school and sociality are graded, as well as appearance and overall character. My form did me a service when it granted me a well-paying job as a systems architect. My starting salary will be double what my father made before he was of retiring age, and nearly quadruple what my mother presently makes. My form supposedly gave me the most desired woman in our town, but for some reason, upon a single glance at her form, I handed it back to my parents, mid-yawn. Of course, I did not get a choice. My parents signed for my chip to be programmed to love this woman. My voice became voiceless in my head and, slowly, I started to find her more interesting. Her parents told me she had hoped to get paired with me; she had been admiring my work ethic and outward appearance for years. She probably knew I would be well-equipped with a hefty salary and, thus, permitted an extravagant house with many children. My retiring age would be earlier and my competence to keep up with the ever-changing society impenetrable. At word of our courtship, devices and animatronic voices were buzzing of what a couple we would make. The two most attractive people in the county, found through not their looks but intelligence. We were promised to be the most adequate and perfect match since the forms were invented fifty-three years ago. What was not promised was for our relationship; our powerful, cogent, exemplar relationship, resulted in the first mistake of the forms. My chip, placed on the far left side of my brain, started to become loose in the middle of my high school years. Unknowingly, it gradually shifted in its designated place, dislodging itself from my brain. I woke up one morning in bed with my new bride to find the chip on my pillow. Before she could see, I tucked it in my bed dresser drawer. I felt something lifted inside of me; I still feel this when I awake today. I turn to my bedside and see the body of the woman I truly love, rising slowly and falling softly. I run a shower and feel the warmth of the shower, taking extra, once considered “wasted” minutes to bask in its steam and heat. Life seemed somehow fuller at the expense of my chip.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
About the author.I love creative writing, especially poetry and short narratives. I hope expand my career as a poet and to always be reading something. Archives
April 2019
Categories |