#flowersandcigs

A small phantom feeling of freedom sparked up as he clicked send, and he closed the program.

No, the work hadn't been approved yet, but with this he'd finally not feel like it was an actual sin to avert his attention to something else for a bit. Rym didn’t think the work was sacred in itself, but sometimes he’d feel like it was, with the client as the god capable of determining its (and in turn, his) right to exist. The only laws they’d set for him were to get the work done and to get it right. That, he always did.

Rym wondered how long it would take for the response this time — the same gray squares couldn't possibly be improved much more. He had made sure every little pixel was at the right place, displaying the right color. The work was (just because perfection does not exist) close to perfect. He was so proud of it and so, so disgusted by it.

Rym hated seeing his work outside of the comfort of his room, without the soothing fluorescent light shining down onto him, without the mirrored image reflecting off of his eyes — but having his work shown off was a part of getting it done.

He stared at everything and saw nothing. The same squares he was sure belonged where they were slid themselves in between his retina and his brain. Now they looked out of place, almost wrong.

He wondered if he should have deleted it.

…

Ah. He was fine. The squares were fine.

(Rym wasn't sure when he'd started the program up again.)

…

His knuckles touched the cold flooring when he let the weight of his torso push the backrest of his too expensive deskchair down and dropped his arms to the ground. The slanted pose wasn’t comfortable but he kept at it.

Rays of white from the recessed lights on the ceiling drilled through his eyes and Rym almost felt it burned at the back of his throat.

The white ceiling looked gray around the edges. And when he closed his eyes, he could see blue.

When that faded, little pixel squares creeped into view. Like a retelling of an unending myth of the contract he made with himself — one where both he and himself lost.

Rym sat up, picked up his pen, and started to drag and draw — almost ritualistically, the shapes on the screen shifted around — the process itself told a story he had heard a thousand times before.

All the squares ended up where they were. No improvement to be made. Rym turned to the clock and thought about his cigarettes.

9 hours left till 5 PM.