On the eighth day, the monitor, despite being smashed, still came on. When he saw it, he screamed. Gripping the handle of a wooden bat, he now moved much slower, holding it with delicacy.
He lifted his hands high above his head and brought the bat down with a crash upon the computer, denting it down the middle and shutting off the monitor for good. Unsatisfied, he swung a second time, and then a third. Sweating, breathing tightly and heavily, he finally let go of the bat. It clattered quietly to the floor.
It still wasn’t enough. He went to his basement, gathering logs for his fireplace. Carrying the logs across the floor, he cried out as a sharp pain shot through his foot. He’d stepped on a shard of glass from the broken monitor. The logs fell from his hands and rolled across the floor. He grasped at the wounded foot and collapsed onto the couch to nurse it.
Now that he looked at it, it wasn’t actually that bad, nor was it bleeding too heavily. The sharp stab of pain went away. He wiped the blood away with a tissue until the scab hardened.
This time careful to step around the shards of glass, he re-gathered the logs and lit another fire in the fireplace. He gathered each and every piece and flung it into the fire, watching with sadistic joy as all the pieces slowly melted. He kept the fire going for hours upon end until, at last, it was all nothing more than ash.