He's standing over me while I load in another sheet of thick, fibrous paper. The ribbon is cued up perfectly. Red on the bottom, black on top. The carrier tension feeds the ribbon across the centre and the letter keys strike the paper causing meaning, getting it out. One after another. Staccato literary gunshots and I am dead, my red blood colouring the ink for the next story, if not the next life.
I begin to make a list. If I ignore him and begin to count he fades, dissolving in the crush of the things my brain chooses to surround him with, burying him alive. Drowning him out.
I can't hit the keys with my left index finger though. I've bled through all the bandages. I need a stitch or two, maybe a break. Maybe a transcriptionist, like Violet Evergarden, someone to wish for the ghosts of the past instead of the breathing, living men of the present. An auto memory doll able to craft a better letter than I could if only for the right training. Since that won't happen I will persevere, forgetting about my injury and letting my finger push and bloom against the keys until the entire ribbon is blood red instead of just the lower edge and as I pick up speed the paper begins to spread scarlet from white. Day to night. A pool, no, a lake of me.
Princess-
Be quiet and let me think, I order him.