We were sitting at a lab classroom table, working on our final year school assignments. The weather was sunny and bright. The sky was clear, and the sun tantalised us from outside the windows, shining warmth onto our hands. There were four of us overall: myself, and my three friends from class. We sat in complete silence, alone in the classroom, and with the exception of the odd question being asked, we didn’t talk to each other at all, preferring to focus all our attention on the work, so that we might finally get it finished. And we were making great progress, too – well, most of us were, anyway. There was one of us who, no matter how hard he tried, could not focus on the assignment. That one was of course me, and I spent almost the entire duration of our study session staring at a blinking cursor, having written only a single line – the commented line, containing my name.

My most fatal flaw was that I found everything around me more interesting than my assignment. Regardless of how many times I told myself that it was important, I simply could not resist the tempting intricacies of the three lights above the numpad of my keyboard, or the stand that held my monitor, letting me adjust it to be a little bit higher, or a little bit lower. When my mind needed me to focus most, I noticed the most mundane things around me: tiny divots in the wooden surface of our table; the specific holes in the grill of my PC which were blocked by dust; every curve in the cable of my computer mouse, as it stretched from the mouse all the way to the USB port, which I also noticed was a bit loose from constant use. For the first time in my life, I was beginning to realise just how magnificent and beautiful the little things around us could be; and I had no doubt that the moment our assignment was submitted, that fascination would disappear.

There were four thumbtacks next to my computer, left by some other student. They had colourful plastic tops: one was white, another red, and the last two were blue. 

After a while of sitting there without doing any work, I picked up the white one and began fidgeting with it. I pushed the pointed tip into the skin on my hand, but not hard enough to cause any pain or get close to breaking the skin. It was simply a sensation to distract me even further from the work I didn’t want to be doing. I stared into the distance, getting lost in thought.

‘Hey, Adam?’

It was my friend Octavia, sitting to my left. I snapped out of my daze and looked at her.

‘Yeah?’

‘Could you have a look at this line here?’ – she pointed at a line on her screen – ‘I think it should be fine, but I’m not sure.’

She made room for me to move in closer. I rolled my seat in front of her computer.

‘Which one?’

‘That one, there,’ she repeated, confirming the line.

I leaned in closer to the screen to take a better look at the code in front of me. I read the line she specified, but the instant I started looking at the monospaced letters, my head went blank again. I tried reading a bit around it, scrolling up and down, but still, nothing helped. Resigned, I leaned back in my chair.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I just have no idea. My head’s not in it today.’

‘That’s okay,’ she comforted me, and we resumed our places at our respective desks. ‘How’s yours going, anyway?’

I gave her a hopeless look, which worried her.

‘How much have you gotten done?’ she asked.

This time, I yielded the way for her to move closer. She only needed to move an inch to see the desolate blinking cursor on an empty document.

‘Nothing at all?’ she asked, shocked.

‘My head’s just not in it today,’ I repeated.

‘Adam, that’s not good. You know the assignment’s due in three days, right?’

‘Yeah, I know…’

‘Are you going to ask for another extension? You asked for one before, right? Do you think he’ll give you one again?’

‘No, I wasn’t considering an extension… I just…’

‘I mean most of us are already finished ours, we’re just double checking through, but you haven’t even started yours…’

Ah!

I gasped under my breath, too quietly for Octavia to hear. Her words were causing the subdued stress I’d been trying to avoid by procrastination to build up to the surface. When the tension built up, I lost track of what I was doing with my hands, and I pressed the tack in hard enough to break the skin, sending a sharp, lucid jolt of pain all through my hand.

With our conversation going nowhere, and Octavia realising I was too helpless to dedicate any more time to, she simply rolled back to her desk and continued working on her project. 

I began to worry that the tiny hole I created would draw blood, and quickly rushed to cover my left hand with my right, massaging the spot where I pushed the pin, placing the thumbtack on the desk along the way. When the sting subsided a little, my thoughts returned to what Octavia had said. It was difficult to admit, but it was true: I was running out of time very quickly to start working on my project. The sudden shot of pain almost made that fact clearer to me than I’d seen it before, and I wondered if perhaps I could use that jolt to finally kickstart the work I’d been putting off for so long. 

I rolled in closer to the table. When my first glance at the empty file gave me the same feeling of dread I’d known for the past few hours, I knew I would need a different approach. I decided I would look through our class notes, hoping to find some inspiration there.

I scrolled through the notes for about five minutes, still holding one hand in the other. I occasionally checked the spot I’d pricked, seeing if it was drawing blood, but to my surprise, nothing ever came. Even stranger still, though I certainly felt the place I’d pushed in the tack, the skin surrounding that point hadn’t even turned any more red: the colour was still flush with the rest of my hand. Perhaps I hadn’t hurt myself as deeply as I’d feared, I thought. 

After enough time had passed and I was confident I wouldn’t start bleeding, I started to ease the attention I gave to my wound. I no longer massaged it constantly, and although I kept my right hand close, I didn’t wrap it around my left anymore, trying to be more relaxed as I focussed on our class material.

A few seconds passed, and I even felt that I was beginning to engage with the material, when something else managed to distract me. 

Between my legs, I felt a cool draft of air running through my hands. It was subtle, but with my fragile attention span, it was enough to disrupt my study – and when it did, I felt annoyed, so I addressed it.

I looked at each of the windows next to our desk. The beautiful sun reminded me of the life I was missing in the outside world once again, but once I focussed on the windows, I saw that each one of them was closed. I looked around to see if there were any open doors, but they were all shut too.

I figured I must have imagined it, and tried returning to studying. I fell back into the same posture I had before: sitting on the edge of my chair, leaned in, legs apart and arms resting on my thighs with my hands dangling between them. I scanned the monitor before me for the place left off, when that same draft blew between my hands. This time I decided to try to ignore it, rubbing my hands together to warm them from the cool air.

The cool air eased when I rubbed my hands, then returned immediately when I relaxed them again. Slowly, despite my mental note to not do so, I started to pay attention to the cool air: just how it was flowing, and from where. I realised then that it was only really my right hand that was experiencing the blowing sensation, and just then, for no particular reason, a strange thought came to me.

I turned my attention completely to my hands. I looked at them, locating the spot where I had pricked myself with the thumbtack, and moved my right hand over it. Then, I moved it away. I only needed to repeat this test once more to confirm what I had strangely suspected: the draft, the blowing air, was coming from the small hole in my hand.

It was certainly odd. The experience was not something that I could recall feeling before, though when I tried to recount all the other times I had been hurt, I realised that I had great trouble. Perhaps some times when I was a child, sure, but those memories were too shrouded to remember. After a few moments, I concluded that I could not really say if it was truly all that odd, or if it was what was supposed to happen when one pricked a hole in their skin.

I pressed my thumb over the hole to cover it. The draft was not particularly strong, but I could still feel some small pressure where the opening was. When I felt the pressure build up for a few seconds, I lifted the thumb, letting the air come out again. I played like that for a while: putting my thumb over the hole, then uncovering it, and so on. It felt so odd, so unusual to me, that I could not focus on anything other than the hole in my skin.

After a few repetitions of the motion, I noticed something when I was lifting my thumb from the hole. With the release of the faint pressure, there was this massaging feeling that spread across the top of my hand, originating at the hole and weakening as it reached my fingers. It felt relaxing, soothing, and after some time, I began to cover and uncover the hole in search of that feeling: that pulse that released, sending calm all over my hand.

With every repetition, however, the feeling that it created became a little bit less, and after only a little while, I could barely sense any change at all, and that frightened me. The removal of my analgesic to the stress surrounding the assignment threatened to return me to my previous state of duress. My final few repetitions of the covering became quite frantic, as I hoped to bring back the original relief I experienced when I first discovered the hole in my hand. When that failed to work, my panic increased, and in a brisk impulsive motion, I grabbed the white thumbtack from the desk before me, and pricked another hole in my hand, right next to the first one.

The pain it caused was sudden, and I immediately felt regret for my rashness. I threw the thumbtack back onto the desk again, this time farther away, attempting to roll it back to the place I took it from. When I got rid of the implement, I tended to my hand, massaging it the same way I did the first time.

The residual pain was not nearly as persistent this time round. I only massaged for a couple seconds before it completely subsided, and the only thing I could feel was the air that blew from that hole. I wondered if it was because I had gotten used to it from the first time, but didn’t bother myself with the considerations for too long. The pressure from this new hole was strong again, and I returned to my procedure of covering and uncovering it, letting the relaxation it gave take over my muscles like a drug.

But much like the pain, this pressure also faded more quickly than it had from the first hole. I was only given a few seconds of relief, before the method stopped working completely. I tried to be more lucid, but knew that I craved that relaxed feeling more than anything else, so I reached across my desk with my right hand to pick up the white thumbtack. This time, I stopped myself from acting on impulse. As I brought the sharp point closer to my skin, I took a moment to acknowledge my actions. I considered it carefully. 

But what was there to consider, really? I thought. After all, I knew what it was I wanted to do. I knew the feeling I craved, and it was only a single prick away; a mere few centimetres, and I could have it. 

The pleasure from the last was slipping away quickly, the world was becoming a little more real around me. I pushed the pin into my skin.

I did not bother putting the thumbtack away this time. I knew this new pain would fade quickly, the new pressure too, and I created another hole right next to the last. I kept pricking my hand, making holes all across it, chasing the pressure from each one and the relief it gave. When there were enough of them, even the simple feeling of the air escaping my body was enough to bring me joy, and the more I realised that, the more holes I wanted to create. With each new point, I became more of a puddle of bliss, and I sank lower and lower in my chair from the calm it brought me.

At one point, something changed. After one of the pricks, I felt a strange feeling, a jolt that travelled all over my body. With this sudden sensation, it was as if every bit of me was being activated, and the pleasure from the pricks was spreading to every muscle in my body. With this new inclusion of my entirety, I felt another level of relaxation take over me, and I sank even lower in my chair. 

But after a few moments, this new feeling began to overwhelm me, and I started getting worried.

I could feel that with the escape of all tension from my muscles, they started feeling numb. The sensation at my extremities was the first to go: I lost track of my feet very quickly, then my legs soon followed. When I tried lifting myself in the chair, I couldn’t muster the strength. I tried looking over at my hands to see if I was even touching the chair, when another sight dazed me even further.

Both my hands and arms looked slightly deformed. As I pushed my palms into the seat of the chair, my fingers became a little bit wider, as did my hand. When I pushed even harder, I saw that my forearm would bend about halfway through, below where my elbow was. It was as if my whole arm had become like jelly, and could no longer support my weight when I tried to lift myself.

The more I tried, the weaker my arms became, bending more and more. My hands became wider and almost completely flat. I kept sliding farther and farther down the chair, and soon my head was on the seat, my legs having slipped off completely.

I gave lifting myself one last attempt, but couldn’t even move my arms anymore. The final thing I felt was my face, the air slipping from it, through my chest and out of the holes I created on my left hand. After that, the air stopped, and I was left a thin film of human, my torso on the chair, my hands dangling from both sides, my legs folded like a pile of fabric on the floor.

I could no longer move my neck, and was stuck facing upwards. I could still see Octavia from the corner of my eye.

After a few moments, Octavia turned to look at me. When she didn’t find me at head height, she looked down, finding the puddle I had become.

‘Guys,’ she said, puzzled, ‘I think Adam deflated himself.’

5.II.24