The Lone Writman

He felt sad almost every day of his life. The only times he didn't were when he was writing. Then, he could project that sadness onto others, thereby making his own life seem triumphant in comparison.

Lurking in the shadows, with only the light from his monitor providing any sort of visual stimulation, lonely and miserable and wishing it could all be over, he hunched his shoulders, hung his head, and let his fingers go to work.

The roommates upstairs provided sufficient human contact abilities, but more often than not they presented the alternative to the life he'd been slapped with. A life of intense solitude for a man craving anything but. A life of clinging from one outside source of companionship to the next. A life full of desire, unfulfilled in every sense.

But, when he wrote, he wasn't himself. He became the guy who told the girl he loved her. He became the wholloping success with the job he loved and the family with the sedan and SUV and the plasma-screen TV. He became the barroom brawler, the champion sexual beast, the charismatic life-force that drew everyone and anyone he'd ever want to meet.

He couldn't write forever, though. Eventually, he'd have to stop and return to being the sad, lonely little wannabe writer who lived in a windowless bedroom in the basement of a 3-bedroom house, sharing said bedroom with a smelly dog and a mysterious odor.