Animated Digits

Ten forty-seven.

Refresh. No.

Refresh again.

That's not right.

Put the phone down.

Pick the phone up.

Walk to the kitchen.

Forget why I went.

Come back. Refresh. ...what the fuck?

It moved again.

I watched six digits

turn into a living animal.

Every time I thought it settled down

the bastard

kicked the cage.

11:13.

I'm supposed to be sleeping.

11:14. Absolutely not sleeping.

The number keeps moving.

I haven't moved at all.

Same chair, same drink,

same stupid shadow on the wall.

The number keeps moving.

Every refresh rearranges the room.

Nothing happened— except something is happening.

Now I'm negotiating with myself:

Don't check for ten minutes.

Seven seconds.

Refresh. Okay.

That one doesn't count.

Put it face down.

Twenty seconds. Motherfucker.

There should be a ceremony for this.

A trumpet. A witness.

Somebody handing me a ridiculous oversized check.

Instead I'm barefoot in the kitchen

at midnight

watching arithmetic misbehave.

There it goes again.

I don't know what number I'm waiting for.

That's becoming the problem.

Every answer invents another question before I've even got one solved.

A hundred felt impossible right up until it looked small.

Ten thousand looked enormous for approximately four minutes.

So what exactly am I watching now?

Refresh.

Higher.

Refresh. Higher. Refresh— Don't.

...fuck it.

Now I'm laughing.

Not celebrating.

Not crying.

Just laughing because apparently my brain has already decided

this isn't enough either.

That's fucking incredible. You spend forever asking for movement.

Then movement arrives and five minutes later

you're yelling:

FASTER.

The number keeps moving.

So does the number I want.

Maybe that's ambition. Maybe that's insanity.

At 12:06 I genuinely do not care.

Phone down. Lights off.

Three steps toward bed.

Stop. Turn around. Look at the screen from across the room.

...son of a bitch.