First Thing's First

The first thing he did, before he even got out of bed, was wiggle the mouse a little and push the button on top of his monitor. Otherwise, he'd go outside or something and nothing would get done. Then he lay back down for a little bit, and closed his eyes, and slept for another thirty-five minutes.

When he got out of bed, wearing only his boxers, he went into the kitchen to make some eggs. His roommate was gone for church. He refused to let himself shower, for fear that doing so would be a magical catalyst, the result of which would be that he'd suddenly have plans for the rest of the day. He did relent on brushing his teeth after the eggs though. This he could not deny himself.

He sat down at the desk, still in boxer shorts, his skin feeling grimy and filmy. A patina in cold sweat.

He opened up Word.

He pulled up his email to find the assignment. He flicked over to Chrome and read an article on Slashdot. Halfway through the article, he flicked back to his email. Facebook had three messages for him. One from an old highschool crush who seemed intent on catching up with him. His wording would have to be very precise. He googled pickup artistry, and read up a bit.

He checked his email, and had to search for the instructor's name, and then the class. He saved the word document as "irishlitmidterm.doc". It was saved to his desktop. He opened the prompt.

The girl, from high school, and he had been talking for about fifteen minutes now. As he talked, he browsed pinterest. He found an interesting thing about homemade smoke grenades and began researching homemade munitions. He felt a thrill, as if the government were watching him in person, live, right now, through the keyhole in his door.

The sun came in through the blinds. He tried to focus on the prompt, but he kept thinking about making some explosives for the girl, though the two concepts really didn't fit together. He began to read an article about fractals, but then he started looking at pictures of fractals online. There was a really cool Youtube video that he couldn't explain, but it had to do with fractals and was really, really cool. On Tvtropes he found a neat page about Infinite Jest, which he hadn't yet finished, or really, even, actually started (he was thirteen pages in). But still, it was interesting and inspired him to look for the book, but he didn't.

This essay was very important.

He found the prompt and opened it. He read it three times. Then it read it three more times. Finally he started reading Penny Arcade and Slashdot in rapid response. An article, a strip, an article, a strip.

After a while, he sighed to himself, and felt a great terror writhing up from deep within himself, fueled and fed by the sunshine that seemed to pass over and around and through him, but never to strike him. He dug around for his stash, packed a bowl, and lit it, and began to type something about the Irish lament and its role in big house novels or something. He wasn't exactly sure.