I Don't Know Why I'm Typing This

"It is like bug, an addiction. You are becoming attached to things that a normal, natural animal should never be joined with," said Todham, parking the car in perfect three-point technique next to the loony bin.

Jenkins, who had shoved his fist into the CRT earlier in the evening, disagreed hotly. "The screen deserved to be smashed for the kind of information it was providing me," he declared. "I don't see why I must be forced like a child to visit with doctors and the like."

"You're bleeding all over the place," said Todham. "Look, you've even ruined my sunset-marmalade cushioning."

"Hah," laughed Jenkins. "Sunset-marmalade is not a real color."

This struck a nerve with Todham. He could take a lot of thrashing, having been trained through early childhood, nurseries, kindergarten and the lot--he had withstood years of mockery in grade school, and then the flagellation that made up his years in Devonshire Grammar. In university, he had watched as all the girls took other men, and then the couples had grouped, and called him names like "Most Capable of Spending Lonely Nights With a Vagina (His Own)" or "That Guy Who Added Me On Facebook But Who I Then Didn't Add In Return". But he had never been insulted about his inability to see color.

"I will not accept this," said Todham.

"You can't see colors," said Jenkins, meanly. "You don't know what a rainbow is--it's just a sort of semi-doughnut to you. And you, of all people, take me to the mental institute?"

Todham grabbed Jenkins and dragged him out of the car. The CRT made a horrid, grating sound, releasing sparks from the friction on the gravelly path. As he staggered slowly up, lights burst out around them, leading to the front door which creaked open now, leaking a sliver of divinity at an obtuse angle.

"Todham," said Jenkins, "you and father used to call your mother a nerd. Imagine that. Imagine the low of depravity to which you must have sunk to do something like that."

"She was a nerd!" cried Todham, his calves burning with his burden. Jenkins' words should have cut like swordfish, but instead they cut like bottle-nosed dolphins, and he was the baby seal they were flinging about like a volleyball. He swallowed, and coughed, now determined more than ever to end his misery.

With renewed strength he trudged up the path. Finally, they were there, at the opening of the door. Todham took the knob in his hand, and flung it open, instantly blanketing them in white light. He strained with a final squeeze of muscle, and swung Jenkins into the asylum, then he pulled the knob towards him and shut the door.

On his way home that night he was killed inside his car when a couple he'd known in university rammed their SUV straight up his behind. As the small Honda hurtled down the slope at the side of the road, smashing into trees and flung about by rocks, he noticed through the windscreen at opportune moments that at least the SUV was fine, and that his murderers were singing happy Christmas songs with their two children as they drove away.