Monica Price considered herself a creative: that new subspecies of Millenial, rapidly growing in population and moving in great migrations to glossy cities with nothing but modest digital followings and shiny ideas. They were made of complex and shallow contradictions and convictions, caffeine (of the tea and coffee sort), the dry cracker taste of fear, and a humor that is both esoteric and common. They existed in one mode and one mode only: hysteria. It ranged on a spectrum (like most things these days) from hysterical joy to hysterical sadness; but it was frenzied, concerning hysteria all the same.
Monica found herself in the middle of a coffee shop (because where else would she, a creative, find herself) experiencing hysterical dread. It fell somewhere between apathy and anxiety. She stared at the tiny taunting line as it blinked at the top of the blank document. It flashed like a conductor tapping his music stand while the blank page was the band refusing to play.
She groaned and tipped her recycled cardboard coffee cup to the ceiling, only to be disappointed by the pathetic drops of chai syrup left at the bottom. She stared at her slender fingers, stacked with vintage silver rings, wondering why they refused to type. After tucking some escapee curls back behind her ear and adjusting her off-the-shoulder ruffle top, Monica flexed her hands in an attempt to shake out some ideas, but all she ended up with was the dying sigh of an empty ketchup bottle.
Despite being able to see the date and time at the bottom right corner of her computer screen, she tapped the home button on her phone. The pink cartoon sheep on her lock screen wallpaper admonished her in big bubble letters to get back to work.
Before the screen timed out, an email notification popped up and covered the sheep’s adorably angry face. Monica’s heart flipped then attempted to seek refuge behind her lungs. It was from work— a fun, spunky, slightly threatening reminder of upcoming article deadlines complete with lots of exclamation points. Monica was unsure if the chameleon punctuation was meant to encourage or warn, but she also didn’t think it mattered much.
Deadlines were still deadlines. Anywhere. Especially at Faboo, the fashion magazine she was interning at in Every-City. It was a publication for thirty-something women who still had their prom queen tiaras in their closets next to their competitive cheer trophies.
Every-City was the metropolis of creative migration spots with its gluttony for nostalgia and child-like attention span— if that child had just eaten an entire guess-the-number jar of jelly beans. Monica did everything in her power to keep up, to stay on her feet and not be swept up with the impersonal waves of change. In fact, she knew that by the time she finished her article, some other equally unimportant thing would spread eagle on everyone’s screens. What was the point?
Monica shook her head of tightly coiled curls, her large pink hoop earrings swinging with her, to avoid that rabbit hole of thoughts. She loved writing and fashion and writing about fashion. Even if it was for a second, she wanted to capture someone, anyone’s attention for that precious second. She flexed her turquoise, home-manicured nails and began typing. It was all nonsense, artificial, candy-coated jargon, but it was her nonsense. And, more important than anything else, it would be done on time.
Written by Ka’Dia Dhatnubia
Illustration by Nathanael Osburn