UNDER'touchable

I've had it. So I sit at my ol' UNDERWOOD, rapping my fingers:

QWERTYUIOP.

This salutation to the keyboard begins our correspondence. The [SHIFT] key is a heavy hoist, so I leave the caps on.

The keyboard, shouting, responds:

FORGET THE WORLD! STAY HERE! YOU'RE UNTOUCHABLE HERE. YOU CAN HAVE ANYTHING YOU WANT JUST BY TYPING IT. WHY BE ANYWHERE ELSE?

UNDERWOOD has a point. I consider places where no one can bother me:

• The shower.
• When self-pleasuring.
• When I'm dead.

In the meantime, I've made here my untouchable space. UNDEROOD-untouchable. No one can get to me. The door's closed, devices turned off. Windows, triple-glazed, silence sounds of life on streets below. I could live or die--no one would even know.

I muscle-splint a flexor digitorum, releasing the [SHIFT], and write what comes to mind:

I don't like being bothered. I like unbothered. And being alone. Just me and my thoughts. Thoughts important enough to record? Maybe.

Maybe not. But, why take a chance?

I type, operating this obsidian industrial transcription machine, pacing heartbeats and brainwaves between the end-of-line bells on my right and the strokes of the lever to the left, advancing me to the next line.

It's magic. No one bothers me here. Solitude seductively self-accrues.

Today I'm prolific, my thoughts flowing in black inkprints struck into the give of white paper fibers--like bloody footprints in the snow leading to the killer. Murder needs privacy, whether committing it or recounting it.

The killer began to stalk her, and...

Suddenly, while prologuing the perfect crime, the ink ribbon advances no further.

Here I am, where no one can bother me: I AM BOTHERED. Like a killer caught!

No ink. No thoughts. No words. UNDERWOOD is dead. Just when I thought the conjuring contraption was my anachronistic--and loyal--comrade in my quest to not be bothered, I am heartbroken that it's what--now--bothers me.

"You, too?" I castigate it, scornfully, laboring against the [SHIFT] so that, unmistakably, is typed, "YOU ARE DEAD TO ME!"

But UNDERWOOD cannot hear--no ink!

People have heart transplants. Underwoods can have ribbon transplants. But that means going out.

I leave the room, undress, and turn on the shower. Or worse.