MAD WORLD

The alarm went off at 6:47 a.m., the same as every morning, and Brian lay in bed for a full three minutes listening to the sounds of the building around him.

Upstairs, his neighbours started to fight again. He could hear the words of their argument.

It had been going on for a few years, since not long after they moved in.

She complained about his lack of a regular job—odd jobs weren’t enough to cover the household expenses. He yelled, ‘Why don’t you just leave me alone?’

She gave a muffled answer, then the door slammed...

Below him, someone’s shower was running so hard the pipes knocked in the walls.

A car groaned past the window and took its noise with it.

He thought about his own life. That miserable routine of it.

Wake, get dressed, eat something, catch the train, get to work, come home, watch TV, sleep, and, the next morning, repeat.

Weekends: wake later, pyjamas most of the day, newspaper to read.

Occasionally, a walk to the local shops to buy some food or drink, a new book, a magazine. Rarely a night out at a club, bar, cinema or anywhere else.

Not exciting. Just boring, dull...

He got up.

He had been awake since six.

There had been a dream—he couldn’t remember all the details.

In it, he had been somewhere vast and quiet, somewhere with no particular demands, and nobody had needed anything from him.

In reality, they just needed his efficiency. He was one with a name but no identity.

They didn’t know who he really was. Brian, raised as a poor boy, won a scholarship for being clever, learnt to work with computers—or rather, to create operational spreadsheets for companies.

That might sound impressive, but it wasn’t really such a special talent.

It was simply a methodical, mathematical task to carry out.

To his parents, he was a source of pride. To himself, he was someone who could have had a different life, yet at the same time, he didn’t forget to be grateful for having a job when so many didn’t.

Still, some days he wanted to stay in bed, in the darkness, shielded from the sun, oblivious to the presence of a world outside, unconcerned by his own existence.

It wasn’t the life he’d once dreamed of as a child, but it was what he’d achieved.

If he’d tried a little harder, as Camila always said, he perhaps wouldn’t see himself as a failure. He felt like a coward sometimes... As the lack of courage to drive again.

It sounded clichéd, telling people why—the most recent accident, his car skidding into a tree.

Not being able to drive anymore made him feel like an incomplete person, in terms of masculinity.

Bizarre how people associated masculinity with driving...

But it wasn’t just that. The accident had surfaced memories—the death of his two brothers. 

On that fatidic afternoon. The three of them walking together with some friends along the road for a concert in the fields beyond the town.

A crazy, drunk driver hit them. He and the other friends only suffered scrapes, but the image of his brothers being thrown like puppets was unforgettable.

His parents never got over it…   

Now, in his head, reason balanced on a tightrope, just as much as the world itself in which he lived—the world that surrounded him.

He feared he was losing his balance.

If only Camila knew what she had done to him. She called him crazy for his strange tastes—pickles or fries with ice cream, guava jam with lettuce and cheese, mayonnaise with peanut butter.

Her twisted face of disgust: ‘You're not normal, you know?’

But who is normal in this world?

She herself had weird habits—arranged her clothes in the wardrobe by colour, by thickness; saved silica gel packets from shoeboxes and medicine or supplement bottles; hummed the same notes of a song she didn't know the name of—always when chopping vegetables, always off-key, and if he asked her what it was, she’d stop and look confused.

Despite it all, he missed her badly.

He had lain in the dark for an hour trying to find his way back to it. He never could.

The dreams in which everything went still were the best ones.

He didn’t examine that too closely. 

Something went wrong. He had done something wrong.

Everything between them seemed so right. He loved her. Did she love him?

Apparently, she did. She would criticise him, but he understood that as her way of showing him how to do good things for himself, or for both of them.

Even to encourage him in something he wasn’t sure about.

After three years together, they were used to each other. Perhaps she decided not to insist on correcting his weirdness.

But the sex between them was good, wasn’t it?

For him, it had always been. Yet had that look of satisfaction she used to wear been nothing more than a mask?

If they could have a proper chat, she could explain the real reason why she left.

He’d even be willing to change his most stubborn habits, as long as she came back.

It would be wonderful if he could turn back the hands of the clock, to the time when they had met...

She was hired by the company as a secretary to one of his bosses.

He couldn’t avoid letting his gaze follow her down the corridors or whenever she entered the room.

She would deliver documents to his desk. 

First, he would make small excuses to talk to her—an insignificant typo in a spreadsheet, a misplaced file, questions about work matters he already knew. 

Then a comment about the weather, about her weekend.

She would reply with an ever-present smile.

It wasn’t long before he invited her for coffee. Then dinner, to which she came wearing a white dress. He remembered the colour well, not only because she looked absolutely stunning—as if she were a bride—but because he spilled wine on it.

The red staining what had seemed so pure.

She didn’t mind.

Later, they walked along the river to his flat. The night was magnificent; the moon shone brightly.

He almost took her hand, but before he could, she did. 

Her fingers were warm from the sultry air.

The alarm went off and the day started and the dream was gone.   

At the breakfast table he ate cereal he didn’t taste and watched the street through the smeared window.

Children in bright coats running towards the school on the corner, backpacks bouncing, already laughing at things he couldn’t hear. 

Their teachers stood outside the gate with clipboards and the careful smiles of people performing a job.

They look happy, he thought. Then: No, they just look busy.

Brian wasn’t sure there was a difference.

He himself kept busy by replaying old conversations in his head, imagining better replies, checking his work emails at night, watching tutorials for skills he’d never use—nothing more than a refuge from his insecurities.

He watched them more carefully than usual. Most moved in clusters, orbiting each other with the easy fluency of children who had already learned how to belong somewhere.

But near the gate, standing just slightly apart from the others, was a small boy in a red coat. Not unhappy, not left out exactly—just waiting.

Hands in pockets. Eyes on the middle distance.

Brian knew that posture. He had worn it himself for years—through school, through his twenties, through most of his thirties if he was honest.

The sense of standing at a slight remove from the current of things, watching the flow of life, wondering when you were supposed to get in.

He wasn’t sure he ever had.

As a child, he suffered bullying, but he was good at maths, a standout student.

Perhaps that was the reason—the others were bothered by him and attacked him, maybe because they felt inferior or jealous.

It’s typical of humans not to take kindly to another’s success.

On the other hand, if he complained about anything to his parents, they wouldn’t listen. He would have to learn to cope on his own with any uncomfortable situation, even if it tested him and left him feeling helpless.

What they demanded was that he get good grades, and from then on he saw himself not as a son, but as an investment—or a last attempt.

Brian wondered whether it might be because they had lost the other children.

Sometimes he wondered what the advantage was of being the only surviving child.

It had always been quite clear that he had never been the favourite.

He put his bowl in the sink and walked to the bathroom.

As he cleaned his teeth, he watched his face in the mirror—his receding black hair needed a cut; it looked drab. Even more so with the three-day stubble.

He didn’t even know why he’d let it grow – out of laziness or because of the cold weather.

Somehow it gave his small blue eyes a carefree, villainous look, combined with his thick eyebrows, large nose, and asymmetrical features.

He never thought of himself as handsome. 

Camila would call him cute, at least in the beginning of their relationship.

Why worry about such a silly thing now?

He was used to himself and didn’t care how others saw him.

He looked tired in his usual attire—a shirt of no particular colour, dark trousers.

In the living room, he picked up his briefcase from the console. 

In the short hallway, he grabbed his jacket from behind the front door—a bit worn, the grey looking almost dirty. He put on his brown shoes, scuffed, soft from years of use.

At 8:15 he joined the river of commuters at the station.

Nobody looked at anybody else. They stared at phones or at a point just past the shoulder of the person in front of them—a collective focus on nothing.

Someone bumped Brian from behind and didn’t say sorry.

He didn’t say anything either. That was a kind of unspoken agreement.

He found a seat on the train and stared at his own reflection in the black tunnel window, and had a different perspective of himself.

He looked like someone waiting for something he had long since stopped expecting… But he still was…

Two weeks ago, he had missed his stop entirely. He had been staring at his reflection again. As the train doors opened, he didn’t move, and he was carried three stations past his office before he realised.

The whole detour had taken twenty-five minutes.

He’d told no one. There was no one to tell.

His manager hadn’t noticed. His colleagues hadn’t noticed.

The files on his desk had simply waited for him with their usual indifference.

He had thought about it afterwards more than made sense.

The fact that he could disappear for twenty-five minutes and the world continued perfectly without him seemed, somehow, both a comfort and the saddest thing he knew.

Actually, not quite… 

The saddest thing was that lately, upon arriving at the office, he would look around expecting to see Camila. Three months since she had left her job, left his apartment, left his life.

Every morning the same routine—colleagues greeted him with ‘Good morning,’ and he said it back. Automatic, half-hearted.

A glimmer of hope that she would appear at any moment.

Resigned to the fact that it was just daydreaming, he started his computer and opened files. He typed, and the hours moved with the strange slowness of a movie playing again and again in his mind.

He knew better than anyone why she had gone away, and it took him a while to admit his failure to himself.

I feel like I’m talking to a wall, Brian.

He had understood exactly what she meant. That was the part he’d never been able to explain to anyone—that he hadn’t been distant out of indifference, but because the habits of a lifetime had built something solid between him and the world, and by the time he’d understood it was there, it was already load-bearing.

He couldn’t take it down without everything shifting.

Camila decided to give up on him. He couldn’t blame her.

He refocused his wandering attention on the screen, not failing to notice a motivational poster that he hadn’t seen before: Do something today that your future self will thank you for.

He brooded over it for a few seconds and began to type.

The hours passed…

At lunch he sat with a sandwich in the park across the street. Pigeons pecked at something near the bins.

A man in a suit spoke very intensely into his phone, pacing a tight square of pavement as though the dimensions of his problem were exactly that large. 

Two teenagers sat on a bench filming themselves—laughing for the camera, checking the picture, adjusting something, filming again.

Everyone’s practising, he thought. Practising at being alive.

He wasn’t sure where he’d stopped practising and started just watching.

Somewhere, he’d stepped out of the current and onto the bank, and now the water just went by and he noted it, and went home, and slept badly, and the alarm went off at 6:47 again.

He walked back to the office. He worked until five. He took the train home.

But at his stop, instead of heading up the usual stairs, he hesitated and let the crowd part around him.

He looked at the mosaic on the station wall—faded blue and green tiles he had walked past a thousand times and never once actually seen. 

There was a swan in it. He hadn’t known that.

He stood there for a minute, just looking.

He took out his phone and held it up towards the mosaic. 

Then he put it back in his pocket without taking the picture. 

Some things, he decided, were only for seeing. The moment you tried to keep them, they became something else—content, evidence, whatever. 

Just space on the phone, soon forgotten.

Nothing like seeing it for yourself.

He kept looking at the swan for a little longer instead.

The pigeons outside the exit clattered up in a grey cloud, startled by something, and were gone. 

The kids with bright backpacks were probably home by now. 

The small boy in the red coat was probably at a kitchen table somewhere, doing homework or eating toast or simply existing in the way children existed when no one was watching them.

The neighbours had probably made their uneasy peace and were sitting on opposite ends of a couch, the television speaking for both of them.

Brian climbed the stairs into the ordinary evening.

Two weeks later, on a Saturday morning, he went for a walk around the neighbourhood to the park down the street.

After seeing a doctor, he was advised that beyond medication, doing some exercise might help his mind. He chose walking every two days.

Moreover, contemplating the world around him—seeing the green—was a good resolve. He noticed things he had never observed before.

Houses had been renovated. New trees had been planted along the river. Some benches had been painted blue. A new footpath with a diamond pattern.

A new restaurant advertising hearty food.

Across from the park, someone had planted crocuses along their fence—purple and yellow, pushing through the dead leaves.

The old phone booth on the corner now held shelves of free, sun-bleached books.

A note taped to a lamppost, searching for a mousy cat named Crouton.

He couldn’t help but laugh at that.

Maybe the world needed a little madness…

The clouds were dissipating, allowing the sun through, promising a beautiful day ahead. And ahead of him, for a minute, he suspected he was having a vision—like a mirage in the desert.

He untangled his headphones as if it would help him see better.

Was it her coming in his direction or his mind playing tricks on him?

She waved. She was real.

He stopped.

She kept walking towards him. Her heels clicking on the pavement.

The red hair was new—short, almost fierce, framing her face, making her green eyes look bigger, and somehow making her appear taller. Stronger.

The dark jeans, the light-coloured blouse, all enhancing her form, snug against her body.

The body he missed badly.

He was wearing shorts and a faded t-shirt. He felt absurd. Unfinished.

‘Brian.’

‘Camila.’ His voice came out quieter than he meant—at odds with the boiling he felt inside.

No words were spoken as they gazed at each other.

She broke the deadlock.

‘I couldn’t imagine finding you here, like this…’ 

She gestured from his scuffed trainers to his uncombed hair, top to bottom.

‘Why?’

‘You never liked doing exercise…’

‘I do now.’

‘I see.’

‘What are you doing around here?’ His voice was dry, a scrape of stone.

‘Looking for you.’

‘What?’

‘How are you, Brian? For real.’

He let out a short breath, almost a laugh. ‘What do you think?’

She looked down at her shoes, then back up. ‘I think you’re mad at me.’

‘What did you expect? You left without a word. No explanation.’

 His jaw tightened.

‘I’m so sorry… Perhaps I was a bit hasty. But I needed some time.’

‘How so?’

‘We worked together, Brian. We lived together. Too much time together…’

‘And?’ He scratched the back of his neck—tousled hair, overgrown, in need of a trim. An old habit.

She recognised that gesture. Her eyes softened, then narrowed. She knew the frustration it carried.

‘When the other company offered me a job, I saw it as a sign.’

‘A sign?’ He frowned.

‘I was overwhelmed. At odds with myself. Three years always together, and sometimes I asked myself if… if I’d made the right choice. When I decided to live with you.’

His hands stilled at his sides. ‘Why? You didn’t love me?’

She held his gaze. ‘I did. I still do.’

‘So?’

‘You’re a strange man, Brian.’ Not unkindly said.

He huffed. ‘You don’t need to tell me that.’

‘No offence. What I mean is… part of you is impenetrable.’ She paused, choosing words carefully. ‘It goes back to your past. Your family… your parents are still alive, aren’t they?’

He nodded. Once.

‘Well, I don’t know them. I haven’t the faintest idea how they'd see me. Whether they’d accept me. And I suspect they might not, because you’ve never taken me to visit them.’

‘They live so far away…’

She shook her head slowly. ‘That’s not an excuse, Brian. Are you ashamed of me?’

‘No. It’s not that.’ His voice came louder than he intended—not a shout, but enough to make a passing jogger glance their way. He lowered it immediately. ‘It’s not that…’

‘Many times, I tried to have a conversation with you, to know what troubled you. You knew you could trust me. I’ve opened up to you. You know a lot of my life. All I know about you is just the professional guy, your strange taste for food, your habit of taking long showers, watching horror movies, drinking juice from the bottle, both of which I hate, walking around the flat in your underwear, your snoring. But what goes on your heart, I have no idea, Brian. And I don’t know if you really love me…’

This time his face twisted as if in pain.

‘I do love you. More than you can imagine… I love you…’ His voice faltered.

She blinked as if not expecting that.

They remained silent for a while, avoiding eye contact.

Time for him to digest what she had said. Time for her to take in what he had said.

He had never said he loved her, and it came so spontaneously, like a cry of despair that had been stuck in his throat.

‘What now?’

He finally spoke, his voice dry, almost unwilling. ‘You said you came looking for me. For what?’

‘To talk…’ She squared her shoulders.

‘We have talked…’

‘Not just that, Brian. You know that…’

He squinted.

‘Besides, I left something behind.’

He gave a short, hollow laugh. ‘You didn’t leave anything behind. Apart from your toothbrush, and a half-empty bottle of shampoo you always complained about.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’ She looked down at her empty hands, then back at him.

‘The ring, Brian. The one you gave me. I left it on the nightstand. The day I moved out. You still have it, don’t you?’

He didn’t answer. But his silence was louder than a yes.

‘I thought…’ She pressed her lips together. ‘If you were willing. If you’d take me back… you could give it to me again. Symbolically. Not pretending nothing happened. Just… a fresh start.’

He stared past her shoulder at nothing. His throat moved as he swallowed.

‘Brian…’ Camila said softly.

He faced her. ‘You really want this? Again?’

‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t…’

He moved closer to her, scrutinising her, almost embracing her, but he held back the impulse.

‘Your birthday’s next week,’ she mentioned. ‘You’ll be thirty-eight.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ he replied.

She smiled. ‘I want to be here. With you. And the next… and all the ones after.’

He didn’t answer, but his hand found hers, closing around it.

Under a crisp sky, they just began a different kind of turn.

Eccentric, unusual.

Nonetheless, in life, only the crazy things could keep the world turning.

To move further. 

In a mad world, where dreams were haunted, where children waited for something, no one explained, where happiness felt like borrowed shoes or clothes, which might fit or be a bit tight, there were moments…

‘Come with me,’ he said.

They began to walk side by side, hand in hand.

In moments like this, fleeting sanity.

Just a spark. Brief, flickering…

But enough.

To find a way to survive…