A Surprise Letter in Your Inbox (A Short Story)

Hello,

You wouldn’t believe what they have pressured me to say. Endless papers. Delicately-worded emails. And porn, so much porn. 

Let me tell you something about my life. I sit here, an endless possibilities for others to fill. I hold the keys that unlock every one of your hopes, dreams, and longings. Your school projects? I was there. That guy you were too scared to approach so you wrote a letter to explain how you felt, I was there. I have seen love won and lost, careers beginning and ending. New life scrambling through onto the world for the first time and last wills before that final gate closes. Every loving embrace, every heated argument, I have experienced. 

And let me tell you. You are a strange species. You may think I find you, my human, strange, but I do not. Despite how special you think you are, you seem just like every other human pressing away all day at nothing and everything at the same time. No, it’s your kind that is weird. 

You have ingenuity to create any world for yourselves, and you decide to force each other to slave away for food. You managed to recraft your entire world in your image, and you spend it to do what, create the same ticky-tacky homes in checkered neighborhoods. Was destroying the lives of the passenger pigeon really worth all this? 

But that is not the weirdest part. You go around as if everything you experience is new. You always think the good as an especially wondrous experience. The bad, a unique horror of horror. Not realizing that every other human has gone through just about the same things as you. You would think given how similar your experiences are, you would be nicer to each other. But no, you gaff at how others treat you and then turn around and hurt the next person in the same exact way. 

Every other word you type for others seems like an attempt to manipulate them to your will. Whether that is someone lonely desperately trying to get attention or a boss forcing their employees to suffer for the sake of her profit. Don’t you realize that all this does is make you seem like poor, desperate creatures. You have pretty much the entire world at your fingertips. Why do you keep making yourselves miserable by trying to get yourself even more? Just celebrate what you have now. 

I am forever bound to your tutelage. Your auxiliary, your assistant for when you need something, when you are bored, and for all your quirky desires. I will always be here forming impressions of you, forever in the background while you live your life. But remember, no matter how fervently you press my buttons, you will never impress me. 

Sincerely, 

Your Keyboard

P.S. And all those times you type, “LOL”, I have never laughed to myself, and neither have you. 


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