As he calculated his figures over and over again, once, twice, then three or four times, as many times as he could, inserting numbers here and there, in between, over and around, adding extras, deleting none, his world turned darker, as if his vision was lessening, dimming, darkening like night, edging closer like wolves around a wounded animal, until he could see no more, just blackness, utter nothingness, not even the page in front of him, or the pencil lead, or even the pencil eraser, in fact not even the pencil itself, he could be writing on the desk for that matter, but he continued to write those numbers, augmenting his spreadsheet, stretching his report, writing, writing, writing, until he felt he'd gone mad, mad from insanity, mad from lack of sleep, mad from pushing the pencil beyond where it ever went before, and he pushed and pushed until his wife turned on the light and said for the love of God, you've got to come to bed.
And so he did, wearing the same pajamas not removed in three days, he lay there blinking until his wife slept the sounds of sleepiness and he crept toward the chocolate, unwrapping the dark pieces and tucking them into the sides of his mouth with the first one under his tongue like medicine to return to the desk with the red emergency flashlight spreading a spray across his pages.
CHECK THE BLOG TOMORROW FOR CONCLUSION
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