Short Story: Texting

He takes a deep breath while leaning back on the wall next to the window in his office. Vacantly he stares at the sunshine outside, with hands in his pockets. “When I see you, read your text, feel your words, or hear your voice, I get this strange nerve-racking feeling” he said calmly looking down at his heart.

She sits up straight in her chair and gazed at his chest too. With worried expressions she hastily inquired what he meant.

He sighed and continued, “I feel like my heart grows actual limbs like an octopus, which cut open my chest like blades and wiggle out. You can’t imagine the ache. They restlessly move towards you, as if you are the target of these colorful ferocious tentacles”

She busted into laughter, and then he had to quickly add with a grave impression, “It’s not funny…. It’s rather irritating when you know it is REAL. It takes me a lot of trouble to ignore the sensation. This octopus-heart just keeps growing bigger and stronger”

At this point her face instantly turned from amusing to awfully grim, she replied almost in a whisper, “I know. I feel it too…”

“You do?” he asked like a 5 year old kid, who has no idea how his crazy imagination made any sense.

She forced a Mona Lisa smile and answered with a pensive look, “I feel it like a living rope around my waist, so alive that I react to it. I feel when you tug me to yourself with your thoughts, and see me squirm. You smile satisfactorily when you watch all of my efforts to wriggle out of its grasp, go wasted.”

She looked up at him to seek affirmation of her interpretations. Where he only lowered his eyes and started to grin broadly.

He sent back the text, “He knows.”

She replied from a thousand miles away, “She knows.”

The short break ended as they got out of the beautiful scene. Then they placed their cell-phones aside and got back to their hectic daily routines.