Anon Darth Vador

Anon Darth Vador

I flustered and fretted. Okay, I sweated and stressed. The words dripped forth like a siphon from an almost empty well. It was genuinely, horrendously tough, but at last the fermentation of my piece de resistance was finished. It swelled brazen and bold, yet triumphant from its laboriously painful birth. My essay shone, shimmering, yet wobbly with fragility.

Carefully, I carried it into the web, placing it inside my secretive dwelling amid the forests and dales of Writing.com. There it stood with pride, its carriage perfect and straight, its lines majestic. The periods were tight, its commas precise and decorative. I went off to work, singing a happy song.

Then out from the darkness crept a black-shrouded phantom, the Darth Vader, the traitor, the scurrilous vulture. He (or was it she?) seized my essay with teeth so sharp, the world’s needles were jealous. That person gnawed and bit; he tore at my words until the shine all ran out, the lines trembled and collided, and their once fortright lines wavered. Alas, poor essay -- its flow caved in and succumbed to the monstrous Anon whose teeth shook the poor paragraphs silly.

Previously, my day had flowed like magic. My courage was staunch as I opened the closet to find my dear piece. But then I saw. There was nothing much left -- only shattered illusions and holes with two stars. No explanation given, no critique, no reason for failure. Why, I wondered. Why? Where had I failed? How was this piece so amiss?

Tears came to me like geisers. My heart cracked into two, and out from my lips crept the most horrid of words. “Anon!” I cried out. Who could that be? Who had destroyed me? Who had shattered my words? And why, why, why?

But the villain was gone, striding off to his den, growling and chortling with glee from the maliciousness of his attack.

I picked up the pieces of my sad little essay, weeping and head-bowed; I barely crawled away to my bed.

Darkness besieged me with nightmares of Anon. Always he laughed as he jabbed, and he crossed out my writings with his bold red pen, stabbing out my pride with two carelessly tossed-out stars.

All through my dreams, I wept again, arising in the morning with the bitter taste of failure.

Some people cheer the dark, evil one. Some listen to his heavy breath as he snorts and blows discord about, but I turn my head to the light.

And I say, forevermore, Anon, may the force NOT be with you.

~~~~~~