Processing from the Inside

Third Place in the "Invalid Item"  Contest

Here we go again. I know that look in her eyes. She's been sat there for hours just staring at me, inhaling cigarettes and blowing smoke at me. I'm bored. I look around and decide to wake my office companion. She hates him. He's always jumping about trying to give unwanted advice; she could do with some though. There he goes, waving his little arms about, those beady eyes glaring at her. That surprised her; I can see her hitting the keyboard now. She's managed to shut down the prancing paper clip. Alone again.

Wait, she's actually going to write something! Sometimes this is torture; she comes out with some rubbish at times. Let's see, another story about a cat. This girl has got imagination. She's stopped again, right in the middle of the word 'hungry', I dislike that intensely, she usually forgets to finish it. Ah, the automatic save is coming, I can feel it. Let me see, where am I going to put this one? Hmm, 'A Cat called Harry', 'Cats are Cute', 'Cats and Me', 'Cats and Dogs', 'My Cat', Recycle Bin…
I'll stick it at the letter T, first phrase is 'The cat purred loudly'. If I had eyes, I'd be rolling them.

I think I'll give her some formatting practice, while she's engrossed in her story. I surreptitiously (my built in dictionary is cool) change the format of all the paragraphs, shoving multiple line spaces everywhere. I think she's noticed something. She's fiddling about with my buttons. NO, NOT THAT ONE! She's managed to change all the text into wingdings 3 now. It's very pretty.

She thinks she needs help, I can feel her pressing my question mark. Oh she's searching for 'Fonts'. This is going to be fun. I start up the search bar and jump into the World Wide Web before she can stop me. It's too late now. I roam around for a while, looking at things. I'd love to bring something back with me as a keepsake, but she's got a good anti-virus. I spend a good fifteen minutes looking around, and then I decide to come back. No results found, I display. She isn't to know I didn't really search.

I feel pity and I put everything back into Times New Roman. She's gives me a strange look, shrugs, then continues her story. She wants to put the title in bold italics. I find the result interesting, so I change everything into bold italics. She selects the text and changes it back. I wait until she starts writing again, then I put the whole lot back into bold italics. I think she's frustrated.

She's just minimised me. I'm not sure what she's doing, I can't see very well from this position. I can hear her typing away at something. I just heard a ding, she's downloaded something. What is this Open Office* thing? I can feel her opening the control panel. She's going into add/remove programs. She's back. As she points to the cross in the corner, she smiles at me and says, "Adieu Word".


*Open Office is a free word processing program

Word count 525