Thougt in a Jar

She sat rigidly behind her desk. Her dark hair flowing down to her chest, covering most of her fair face with pin-straight locks; it made her almost ghost-like. Her eyes were black, small in size, with a glassy gaze. She had a tiny, sloped nose. Her lips were thin, and they curled toward the end.

Her small features contracted in a monkey fist, listening to the one playlist she had been given years ago, along with her job; in that gray, dreary office, with the small window. An office that was cold; rain or shine, winter or summer, it was all the same.

And on and on the music played, morale-breaking song after morale-breaking song, all she had to do, all she does and all she will ever do is work; filing, archiving and numbering. Her type of work was not conducive to creative thinking; her work, had it been a womb, would be the worst place to sustain a living soul, to nourish it, to feed it, to care for it. Her job was unlike any other job around her. She was the only one sitting behind a desk working with papers and numbers; the rest where all white-clad, administering drugs to the stupid in a futile attempt to make them intelligent. The stupid filled the place, singing, joking, screaming, laughing themselves silly. As a matter of fact, the stupid weren't that stupid, they mostly feigned stupidity to escape their responsibilities... And all at once, it hit her, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I can't be thinking, I can't", and she buried her face in the next paper she found, confining her thought to where the number at the bottom of that page should go. She looked at the big, depressing clock on the wall, it was nearing midday.

The closer it was to midday, the more stressed she'd become, the more edgy and sharp.

As she sat behind her computer, one with a big screen, a black desktop background and green words. Her keyboard was missing all letters save a few, but it had all the numbers. The cursor moved with her thought. The desktop was empty, there were no menus or files of any sort, thus little, or no cursor motion were ever required. There was just green text and numbers, the text she never typed, touched or comprehended, the numbers she entered on her own.

"It's almost midday," she fussed.

The cursor started moving frantically. "Must. Not. Think". "Cannot. Think". The cursor wouldn't stop. Out of nowhere, files of her thought appeared on the desktop.

Hate.

Alone.

Smyle.

Gray.

Dark.

Happi.

"Stop showing, stop."

Repetitions of her thoughts appeared in files, each file contained, in excruciating detail, everything to know about every single thought; where it came from, how it came to be, why it came to be. And she was starting to lose it. 3 minutes to midday. The cursor wouldn't stop opening each of the files, and pointing at each of her thoughts at that moment, and changing them as she changed her thoughts along.

They sat in the corner watching that screen, it was with frenzied speed and determination that the cursor moved and showed files of its own accord. All in black and green. Thoughts, all in black and green.

One minute till midday.

The cursor was moving so fast, jumping from one thought to another, her forehead broke out in hopeless sweat, she started crying frantically. She held the keyboard and tried to break it on her head so no more thoughts are typed into the big screen. She knows they save them, second by second, they save her thoughts and put them in jars, so one day they can put them in one big pool and drown her in them, drown her in her thoughts, thoughts she knew she wasn't allowed to think in the first place. She was a natural rebel.

Midday.

They were there, the faceless ones clad in white, they shut down her computer and forced her off her chair, she was beginning to regret provoking her mind into thinking. Now pills and electricity. Lots of electricity.

A feeling of tranquil resignation swept over her. She doesn't frantically fight them off anymore, the white-clad ones. She knows if she does they would hammer her head and later giver her a barbecued piece of her mind for keepsake, so next time she nears thought, she would know better.

But little peace of mind did that give her. They still come to get her midday, everyday.

She knows that next time, nay, she is sure, they won't come to get her next time. She knows that she will have lost her mind, all of it, in barbecued pieces and her thoughts will all be in jars, safe and sound until they decide that they must drown her in her own thought. All she has to do until then is work with her numbers, broken keyboard and depressingly black screen. Happi thoughts.

Thoughts.

Wrong she was, again.