Despite the feeling of impending doom that overtakes me every December, the night it all began started the same way so many others in my life did: once the nicotine rush to my head subsided, and I realised that the streetlamp above was now on. It inconveniently blocked my view of the night sky, blinding me in the process. I tilted my head to the side, almost instinctively by then, to try and get a better look, knowing full-well that it would be in vain: even in this quieter, darker part of town, taken aback from the financial centres where no one truly sleeps nowadays, the streetlamps and buildings shined so bright that the light from them bounced back from the ground and up into the air, “whitening” out the view of the stars from below. I never understood why we felt the need to make the lightbulbs here shine so bright that you couldn’t see the stars above you, almost like you were walking on the very surface of the Sun.

It used to be so different back home.

I exhaled, slowly, as to make sure to catch the glimpse of every second that the nicotine held on to my brain, pulsating and letting go within moments after each drag. It felt almost euphoric, to forget that the trackpad has already registered the start of my shift and just let my mind drift. It was unavoidable to be reminded, though, that every time, I have an entire night and at least three addresses to visit before dawn to deliver packages to, complemented by a ticking clock linked with my identity chip – one that, if runs out, will penalise me with a direct transfer out of my bank account. And still, I drifted off – I never start the shift without having a cig, the only one I have every night. On the clock or not, I would have my ritual.

I’m sorry, that is not how you introduce yourself, especially when you just drop your story on somebody’s lap out of nowhere, the way I’m doing with you right now. If you haven’t guessed by now, I work as a courier. My name- actually, let’s just refer to me as Courier for the entirety of this story, if you don’t mind. I can’t disclose everything to you, at least not now, but you are entitled to know a few other things. I’m in the first half of my twenties, on the other end of the country, hundreds – if not thousands – of miles away from my parents, and probably around tenfold that number away from my actual birthplace. I am also a dropout (from uni, not school). And it’s not that I’m stupid or not cut out for it, at least I don’t think so. The only reason why they kicked me out is obviously because I’m too smart for them and was attempting to enlighten my lecturers on the subject of why my terminology is way simpler and better than the one we have been taught this whole time. Per se, a simple example: why would you say “advanced” capital when you can just call it “starting”? Why call it “Todorov’s Theory of Analysis” when you can just say “a circle story”? I thought it clever to express myself in a simpler language. My department disagreed, evidently.

An overwatch drone flew above me then, just near the rooftops, causing a gust of wind to swoosh down, kicking up dust and dirt into the air.

In the grand scheme of things, that first night – or rather, that little bit right here with a cigarette – does not have much relevance to the story I wish to tell, to be honest with you. I just thought it’d be a nice scene to kick us off in a friendly manner. And besides, it really did happen, though I’m not certain, when exactly – a lot of my shifts start the exact same way. The story that I wish to tell takes place on the five days I worked leading up to Christmas, 202X, in the city the name of which, like I said, I’m not allowed to say. See for yourself – Xxxxxx.

It’s there, isn’t it? The black bar?

I know, they are annoying. Unfortunately, all my communications are monitored, and some details are clearly in someone’s interest to be left out – these things are literally being censored as I am jotting them down – so I’ll just have to write around this somehow, see how far I can possibly push this. At least, I’ll try to. Please don’t ask me, how I know this – it’s irrelevant, and unsafe, to disclose, after all that’s happened recently. For the sake of an overdue simplicity, I shall just get on with it.
To be frank, I’m not a fan of this – I wish I had the time to introduce myself properly, or hell, at least tell you my real name. But unfortunately, there is not much time left. I must also warn you; I’m retelling all of these from memory, and I don’t remember everything in a perfect order – it’s all rather blurry after the first night. The mornings, though, are clear, so hopefully they’ll provide you a reference point in my narrative – but, like I said, after some time on a job like this, the nights just seem to mix into one never-ending slog. But you, even if I don’t know who you are – you deserve to have something to go off from, and so I promise I will do my best to be as clear in my narrative as possible.

All that’s left, then, is to start at the beginning.

The Night It All Began
8:22 pm
It was the night of Saturday to Sunday, December xx^th to xx^th, and the first address I had to visit was a small dormitory district on the southwestern outskirts of the city, somewhat like the one where I live. In many respects, I find them most incomprehensible during night-time. At first glance, it looks like a simple, if not isolated, dark patch on a much brighter, blooming, canvas of a city. Like a liver destroyed with alcohol – you’ve ever seen one? They are gross. However, give it another try (to the district, that is, not alcohol) and simply walk a little deeper, keeping your eyes and ears on the look, and you just might discover the tiniest details containing details that would make your head spin from the possible stories behind them. At one point, I’ve heard water dripping from a pipeline that is stuck to the brick wall of one of the buildings (there was no rain for a bit, weirdly enough). Then, the pipe creeks. Maybe it’s a cat. A simple grey one, carefully stepping on top of it. Perhaps this cat lives in one of the apartments around here. Its owner then is probably up, desperate to find out where has their cat gone. Maybe its owner is somewhere in their early twenties and lives on their own, like me. Maybe. Maybe their owner is a lonely girl that, just like me, has come from North-West of the country, or perhaps from somewhere a little more North-East. Maybe I know her from somewhere – perhaps even my childhood – or at least has a familiar face. Maybe I’m bringing her a package tonight, and she might even recognize me.

Or, maybe, it’s just the wind.

Anyway, the address which I was assigned to deliver a small package, as light as air and wrapped in a brownish paper, was in the end of the street where I got off from the overground at, apparently. Yet on arriving there, I found no such apartment anywhere, which I thought could have been a prank. It happened a couple of times; someone with a lot of time but no real consideration for others orders a dud delivery, just to waste everyone’s time, I guess? Anyway, this was not it that night: someone told me that I should go through the alleyway, to the other side. I can’t recall, who it was who did, but I did say “thank you”. Mum taught me always to say “thank you” if people are kind to me, however little it may be.

I’m not the biggest fan of alleyways. They always appeared weird and cold to me, and given how much self-navigating we couriers have to do, it was probably my least favourite part of the routine. Sure, you may ask, “what if you get a car, or a bike?” To that, I can only say what if, indeed. Not that I’m scared of them – I’m not particularly afraid of anything, at least that’s what my mum used to say – they are just… cold and dark. I don’t like it like that. A fair follow-up question would be, “why would you work nightshift then?,” and the answer is twofold. First, it’s not exactly my choice: while our company does have a dayshift, I never get it assigned to me. I think the boss knows that this is ‘shit-detail’ and so only reserves the nicer, daytime delivers, to more regular employees. Me, comparatively, well, I am stuck on a semi-freelance contract (think gig-economy of the last two decades, but with minimal requirements), so I only do eight hours a shift but they are all for night-time delivers for people we call ‘owls.’ Half the time, it’s some poor sod doing a pre-graveyard shift (nowadays, I think those run until 10 in the evening), but sometimes, people just accidentally click an ‘after dark’ delivery option. Second, and probably more important, I really don’t mind that – night-time cities are very bright and colourful, contradicting the ‘night-time’ implication. At least the Capital is; that’s why I love it as much as I do, that’s why I came here to begin with.

While walking down the alley, I wasn’t really listening nor looking around for details, but as I’ve approached a turn, I started hearing weird, coughing sounds, the source of which I’ve discovered after passing the corner. In front of me, ten meters away or so, underneath the streetlamp, stood a not quite yet man of an average height, dressed in a regular waiter’s black-and-white uniform. Under his eyes, somewhat hidden by his long, bright-brown hair, two dark-blue circles could be barely seen – not exactly a rare sight amongst those in the grave shifts (not that this phrase has any relevance nowadays) at the service industry. He was struggling to breathe through his blocked-up nose, coughing from the smoke of the cigarette coming from his mouth, alone in the entire alley. An uncomfortable feeling bubbled in my head, so I did not want to disturb him from his thoughts, which by the sheer fact of their existence seemed to envelop the entire air around him with heaviness and gloom. I began turning, slowly, to maybe find a way around, but he had noticed me by then. Raising his eyes up at me, he stopped coughing, frozen in surprise. In fact, he stopped making any sounds at all. To be honest, I felt somewhat uncomfortable.

“And who the hell are you?”, he asked, coughing and giving me a gloomy look.

“Courier”, I confessed, still standing at the same point, as if any next move of mine would be my last.

“Ah, of course, one of midnight-delivery-boys,” he said in a single breath, “How are you people not automated yet?” he mumbled something, turning around and breathing in more smoke from his cigarette. I wasn’t entirely sure though, what to do at that situation, so I just stood there, staring at him. I know I had a pending order to deliver, but I couldn’t leave him alone like that.

“It may be none of my business,” I started, walking up to him, “but are you okay?”
He raised his eyes at me, brushing his hair off forcefully.

“Is this some kind of a joke?” gloom of his face shifting to annoyance.

“No”, I replied honestly, making him drop to the cigarette down and grab me by the collar of my jacket as I almost dropped my bag.

“I think you should just go on your way, yeah?” he looked at me, his sadness turning into fury.

“Alright then”, I replied, still unclear of what exactly was going on. He, satisfied with my answer, let go and sighed.

“Learn to leave people alone, man,” he stepped on top of his cigarette, putting out the flame, “Money’s money, I get that, but don’t bugger other people in the process, would you?”, he turned away from me, heading towards the red backdoor of the restaurant he worked in, mumbling something like “what an idiot,” and more that I could make out in the sound of the closing door that left me behind, one on one with the silence of this dark alleyway and distant sounds of lit up streets just ahead of me.

I brushed ashes off my father’s jacket, checked that the package is intact and, quietly, headed towards the streetlamp on the sidewalk in the end of the alley, mulling over the overtly-hostile reaction and possible reasons for it.

8:30 pm
I quickly made my way out of that damp and dark alleyway into the light of the T-junction. The street to the left of me ended here, so I started looking for the house number ten. Confusingly, it was not the tenth number clockwise.

A few streetlights were illuminating their yellowish glow on the empty sidewalk which I took, with one of them clearly being broken, as it cackled on and off. This distracted me from counting, demanding my attention but not helping with navigation. As the cackling carried on, I slowly breathed in, deeply, trying to get myself focused. Once you concentrate hard enough in a place like the Capital during the night, you’d hear all sorts of ambient sounds that you normally wouldn’t hear even in a countryside: barely visible clouds of steam could be heard coming up from a lonely sewer hatch in the middle of the road, making the air somehow more tense; somewhere not too far from me, in a similar district, I’d assume, a police siren went off, making me wonder, what could’ve possible happened that late at night that police would have to turn their siren on – nothing ever happens in districts like this one; a dark red house of brick at the right corner of the street was clearly seeing its last days, judging by the lack of any light inside and slow, sluggish movement of bricks over one another.

Then suddenly, a rusty pipeline squeaked loudly, just like before. I turned to the sound somewhere just next to me. A simple grey cat, carefully sitting down on the edge of a flat rooftop, admired me from above with an unspeakable patience, as if calculating my next move. I’ve gazed at it, confused at first, wondering what its next move will be, and then it hit me. The realisation that this whole time it wasn’t wind, it wasn’t a misheard sound somewhere far back, it wasn’t just empty space;

I was right!, for once, and the proof was right in front of me, even if it didn’t complete my theory.

The final assurance came flooding in when I shifted my eyes towards the door of the same building; what do you know, it was number 10.

I probably seem like a very indecisive and absent-minded person to you by now, but believe me when I say that when I’m determined to do something, my hesitation and any room for distraction disappears completely. Granted, I was so overtaken by joy that I raced up the final floor in a minute, through a door that almost certainly should not have opened under a single push, finding myself out of breath. Seeing as how I still had to go up the roof and potentially chase the animal around, I carefully placed my bag on the floor next to the hand-rails, along with my good faith in people, that nobody would stole a heavy bag full of random postage, and made my way up to the roof. The cat was just sitting there in front of the fire door as I opened it, as if expecting me. It was looking at me, carefully studying every part of my, quite frankly, painfully ordinary persona, and showed no resistance as I picked it up in my hands, quietly purring. And it’s not like I’m good with animals, I think I’m pretty horrible. Even my dad never allowed me to have a pet, so this one moment was fairly remarkable, all in all.

I went back to my bag and put the cat down, looking for the right package. I needed apartment 12, and how lucky was I to find it just one floor underneath me. I wanted to pick the cat up as well, but I thought on it and decided to give the package first before I present the cat as well, just so I don’t get too ahead of myself. I put the bag on my shoulder to look more formal and, stepped up to the door and, before knocking, gazed back at my newly found companion, who now sat peacefully behind me with that same patiently waiting look at its eyes. Getting the silent approval, I knocked on the door and stood there, waiting for it to open.

I was welcomed by a girl, around my age. She was slightly shorter than me, slender yet wide shoulders covered with a loosened orange t-shirt peeking under a baggy burgundy hoodie with the one of the Capital universities’ name on it, clearly a size too big for her. Unremarkable blue sweatpants with some sort of a brand logo I didn’t recognize and a really, really nice pair of slippers in a design of a reindeer on her feet completed the finals season look all too familiar to me. Her washed yet somewhat messy hair was wrapped in a lazy ponytail behind, matching the yellow outline of her glasses. In her right arm, she was holding a can with a simple sign ‘Carbonated Red Wine. Now with lower alcohol %!’. I’ve seen a few of those around the city in hands of young people like me, and I must say, they weren’t too bad for the price, but remained intoxicating despite lower alcohol content very much. Her dazed, somewhat drowsy look spoke for itself on that matter, as well as a dim light of a working desk in a small, studio apartment, where I spotted another can with what seemed like “latte” written on its label. I quickly focused back on her just not to appear rude, and on the second glance, she even seemed somewhat familiar to me.

“Can I help you?” she said, dreamily.

“Ms. Grant?” I asked politely, with the package visible in my hands.

“Oh, yes! Present!” she suddenly snapped, shaking her head frantically as if shaking the sleep off. “Sorry, yes,” she laughed melodically, “I’m having sort of a long night. Is this for me?” I nodded, handing her the envelope and a small tablet with a digital pen attached to it. “Where’s… Ah, see it!” she laughed again, finding the pen and signing the form underneath of it. “Sorry, Literature makes letters swim sometimes. Thanks a lot.” She smiled at me, about to close the door.

“Wait,” I stopped her, clearly catching the girl by surprise. I quickly turned around to pick up the cat and turned back to face her. “Is this, by any chance, your cat?”

“Ah!” She gasped, dropping the envelope to the floor. “Casey, how I’ve missed you!” Instantaneously, she took the cat up in her hands, cuddling her as close and hard as possible. “Wait here!” She disappeared in the dark of the room to get something and quickly returned with her “wallet” open – as signified by a dim light inside her arm, where our registry chips were implanted – extending out her hand to me. “Please, take this as a tip for rescuing my cat. I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.” She smiled, half-drunk and half-happily as I’ve accepted the reward, shaking her hand, as the chip inside my arm buzzed ever so slightly, confirming our transaction. Her hand felt warm and welcoming, like a fresher student on course to change the world with her ideas and ambitions feels on her first day of class; kind of how I felt on my first day of class, those xxxx years ago that may as well have been a shadow of another life. Yet as the feeling lingered on my skin, and I desperately tried to hold on to it, I realised that I didn’t pull my hand away, and she was too polite to say anything about it. As such, we were now suspended in time, just standing there awkwardly. “Well, good night then.”

“Sorry, but one more thing,” I’ve interrupted her again. I knew that I was to prove myself right, it would’ve been now, “Have we met before? It’s just that, you look familiar, and I thought- Maybe up in xxxxxxxxxx?” she paused briefly, bursting into laughter again, this time catching me by surprise.

“Oh, good sir,” she carried on laughing, brushing the tear off, “I may be not entirely sober, but I am very sure I’ve never seen you before,” and with that, she disappeared into the room, shutting the door closed.

I always hated being proven wrong, but that wasn’t the case this time. After all, I did assume this scenario, too, just like I always do; failure, despite what all the most wonderful, cheerful, positive people you know may say, is a probability that at least sometimes must be reckoned with as perfectly possible. It helps me, personally, not to be hard on myself; yet all things considered, it is always equally as disappointing to find out the thing you didn’t want to be the case truthful as it is to find out that Santa Claus coming over on the Christmas Eve was actually your dad in a costume this whole time, even if you found the fake beard and a red suit stashed away in the corner of your home’s supply closet just a week earlier.

As I’ve stepped outside, the night fell on me with quietness and calm. The cackling streetlamp from earlier had finally popped, turning off completely, the steam has stopped going up from, the sewer and the bricks decided to take a break from their constant movement. Even the wind was gone now, as if everything had turned against me on purpose. There was nothing to focus on, nothing to distract myself with, and nothing to let my thoughts drift off to. I quickly checked my bag, only to realise that my phone – and hence, my music player – was out of charge. I was one on one with the terrible, silent violence of a dark street.

Thankfully, to my salvation, not too far from me, I’ve spotted the underground sign. I immediately headed to it, trying to drown the silence in my heavy steps.

I never quite figured out, why silence seemed to inspire as violent and extreme as a reaction in me as it did – I only ever figured out how to describe it. Imagine being lost in sea; you don’t have a boat or anything else with you apart from a lifejacket that you’re wearing. You can’t sink, yet you have no clue if the help is coming to get you or not, or even if anybody knows you are here to begin with. Your only two options are to either get rid of the jacket and let the water consume you or to just let yourself drift for as long as needed. I detested silence, and constantly sought ways to avoid it. Which is why it’s probably pointless to describe just how relived I was to step down and hear the sound of a train, passing by somewhere under me.

8:57 pm
To clarify, I do not suffer from panic attacks, I simply can’t stand silence. I think it has something to do with how I slept really poorly when I was a kid and often would wake up through the night, but wouldn’t cry as I was too shy (or so my mum claims). She often exaggerates, but she has the best intentions, so I think you can trust her on that one if you don’t want to trust me. 

The platform was completely empty, as the end of most shifts was still about an hour away, yet it felt alive as ever. Wind had nowhere to run in here, so it was ever trapped in-between the white ceramic walls of the station, playfully shuffling around forgotten valuables and random bits and pieces of trash that got reflected in the mentioned ceramics along with yellow lights. The Capital was hardly a clean city, but what can you do having so many people in one place? My mum would often say that the best way to find beauty is to look for it in the most unexpected, conditionally unlikely places. I remember my dad always made a joke that that’s how he’s met her. It never failed to make me chuckle, even if sometimes it could come off as mean, especially in retrospect, after… ah, nevermind.

I was getting a bit hungry that night, so I approached the vending machine in the far end, its light heavily dimmed. If I remember right, it was to appear softer in the evenings and not hurt people’s eyes. And I mean, I am no engineer, but it didn’t really make sense to me. You’d think it would be needed to light much more from the inside at night-time, so people see what they are ordering much clearer; as I instead found myself squinting at the screen, trying to figure out what looked at least somewhat appealing. What didn’t help, although I feel bad complaining about this, was that, to conserve energy, the mayor – in complete retaliation against the government’s environmental policies – implemented a city-wide regulation back in 201x that required cutting all energy consumption after a certain point in the day by at least 30% and 50% where possible, so some less busy stations would dim their lights, too. Can’t say how effective it was – no one’s ever asked me to dim the lights at a certain point in the night or what I thought of the measure to begin with – but maybe I am simply not the person they want to be asking, anyhow.

With a bit of effort, I saw a chocolate bar peeking out carefully from the dark depths of the back rows, so I pulled out my small, torn-cloth wallet and got the needed change out. I didn’t want to use the bank account linked to my identity chip; if I spent cash now, it was easier to convince myself that I didn’t spend anything at all. So I did, waiting for a painfully slow, mostly empty machine, to reach into its own depths and get me my well-earned snack. Lazily looking around, I spotted a half-torn page from yesterday’s newspaper – by itself a miracle, since physical circulation was severely cut in the last few years – caught underneath one of my insulated running shoes that I’ve worn every time on delivery nights. The title was obscured, with a coffee stain blocking it out, but its bold, massive letters, made it hard not to connect the dots: the frontpage was covering something about the violence at the border ports down South, this time by means of a yet another ferry set on fire and a clash between the police and an unknown group. A quick glance at the name of the paper revealed it to be one of the more xenophobic right-wing publications in the country, not that they agreed to be labelled as such – they were simply concerned with whether the country could handle all these foreigners coming in. As myself a foreigner, I, of course, believed them. I wondered for a second, what the article had to say underneath the coffee stain, but my eyes quickly drifted to the lower half of the page that was fully occupied by a paid-for-review of the newest smartphone, with the three aging white men – presumably, the head designers of the company behind it – smiling widely, clearly proud of it.

It made me think of a friend back in school who always strove to get the latest technology first, even if it wasn’t due to be released in our hometown anytime earlier than in a few months. He was the richest in the entire class, if not in the entire school, and his dad often took him to the Capital, or at least brought him things from abroad.
I wondered then what happened to him. I cut ties with my classmates shortly after the end of school, as is often happens when people finally move on to a completely new stage of their life. Yet at times like this, when a whiplash from violence coupled with an urge to buy something new and shiny, I find it hard not to think of those who were smart enough to give into those urges. Perhaps it’s more comforting than reading about a few dozen people killed in airstrikes in Xxxxxxxx, on its seventeenth month of xxx, or another hundred women and children buried under rubble in Xxxx as part of an ongoing xxxxxxxx. Those things were generally saved for page 12, sometimes 20, just so that you couldn’t blame anyone but yourself for bothering to look that far.

At that moment, my train whizzed past, slowing down at the station. The vibration provided shook the entire station, and the chocolate bar I awaited so patiently for, after the machine shook for a moment, had fell out and pressed itself against the glass, stopping midway to the bottom.

“Oh, you’re fucking joking,” I sighed in frustration, kicking the machine with all my strength, then again and again, with little to no effect. I looked at the chocolate bar, then at the train that has just opened its doors, and conformably, yet somewhat reluctantly, paced towards the latter.

I don’t usually get to use underground trains outside of work. At best, they are boring this time of the night and always have the wrong temperature, except for one line. At worst, they are crowded and suffocating. And it’s rich, coming from a person whose whole job is navigating around the city! Thankfully, not too long ago, they’ve installed special underground diagrams inside of trains, that glow and show the position of the train you are using on the map – neat, right? Granted, I feel like the number of ads had doubled around those underground maps ever since, but maybe it’s just me. After all, these things come and go so quickly sometimes that they feel like a midday nap’s dream you can’t quite remember. Or in this case, aren’t exactly interested in remembering either.

I sat down in the empty carriage and checked the diagram opposite of me, assuring myself that I was, indeed, on a light-blue line, my favourite one of all. And it wasn’t just for the colour, no, this line was always the least crowded and quickest whenever I used it, yet it connected all the major landmarks of the capital, such as (apologies in advance for how derivative this will sound with replacing all the actual names, I promise the people running the country are more imaginative than this) the Capital South Mall, Capital Central Park, Capital Business District etc., with a small sign (which I believe was trademark, yet I could barely see it sometimes) next to some of them, yet all of them were no use to me that night. Instead, I was headed as far as the suburban area of the city, just above the central park. Admittedly, I wasn’t very practical then, and I usually prefer to be: my order was originally meant to go from the downtown area, into the dormitory district and then into the suburb, but as you’ve guessed it, I took if not a reversed, then, at the very least, a considerably different route. I wouldn’t ever do that, because that’s just dumb and inconvenient, but that night was special: early in the month leading up to Christmas, the Capital hosted a special festival, getting all notable actors, musicians, TV people and other entertainers they could get to come out of theatres and studios into the square near the oldest gallery in the country, where they (primarily musicians) would do something cool or generally entertain people. It’s the last part of the show that interested me: sometime after midnight, they start playing chilled, relaxed pop, or something of similar sorts, as gathered people launch hot air balloons up into the night sky. It’s all very dreamy to watch, much more so to experience, and it really does the job well of making you forget what the state of the world is – even if only for a few minutes. I’ve only seen it once thus far — in my freshman year – missing it in the years afterwards because of studies, or work, or life in general. But I would’ve been free then, kind of, and nothing could’ve stopped me that day from taking part in it as well.

“This is a Xxxxxxxxx Line train to Xxxxxxxx Xxxx. The next station is: Xxxx Park West. Doors will open on the right-hand side.”, said the mechanical female voice through the speakers of the train. I looked at the diagram, not entirely certain of how exactly I’ve managed to miss two stations beforehand. Next to it, an advertisement for a medication has appeared on a digital screen. A small, white vial, filled undoubtedly with pills, with a deep-blue line across the top of it was shown in hands of a smiling young woman in glasses and a hoodie with Capital’s University print on it, just above the name of the medication which I couldn’t quite read out-loud properly. At the very bottom, it clarified that this drug was aimed to boost focus and productivity, and that it was approved by students worldwide.

I chuckled, prolonging it stiffly into a laughter.

9:27 pm
As I was walking up past a few lonely transit staff and vendors on the station, I could already sense the air of “suburbia” outside. This wasn’t necessarily a real, traditional suburb – there was still another zone or two of very clear “urban” landscape after this station. But the accumulation of capital, coupled with vanity of people that you’d expect to meet on these streets, paid off in creating a sense of suburban stillness and peace, even in the middle of a bustling megapolis. I wouldn’t say the place was completely clean, that’d be lying – there was no such thing as a crystal clear, no-need-to-filter, perfect ecological point of the Capital in which you could move in or rent, for a small price with few too many zeroes on the end, like it was advertised in the newspapers and on the TV (certainly not some thirty-something years after the discussion regarding environmental regulations were largely silenced, sometimes with cracks of bones and rubber bullets, by Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxx‘s third term in office). And yet, the air here certainly was lighter and different. Can’t quite grasp, how exactly – but, decisively, different.

The outside wasn’t lit as much as it was back in the dormitory district. A lonely streetlamp just above the entrance to the subway area, or rather few others scarcely scattered around me, helped me realise that I was amidst trees in a small section of the Park. I thought then of how nice it was, to use public transport every day only to always arrive in a safe bubble area of sorts, still in touch with nature and without advertisement billboards or any loud noises permitted. I’m not entirely sure myself, but I think someone told me that this area is off limits for most cars, too, in order to keep the air as “green” as possible, which is why couriers like me get sent in here on foot.

I remember thinking sometimes if this was the new idea of heaven, the idle greenery of it all. Too bad the price of admission isn’t goodness of one heart. Not that was religious at all. It’s not something that captivates me, yet I can see why people turn to it, especially in hard times. I had this one friend in uni, an extreme atheist. He could drag a conversation on for hours on end, as to why there is no God and how much religion is a waste of everyone’s time, energy and even money in certain cases. I didn’t ever really get him, as I found what he was doing just as time consuming instead. He was a good man with strong principles, just a bit too passionate (and maybe, a bit inconsiderate) sometimes about what he said. And yet, with his words ringing in the back of my head, I couldn’t help but feel unease sometimes, wondering just one morbid thing:

What would happen to me if, or rather when, I die?

A bird flapped its wings not too far from me, heading down the stony path out of the park, shaking senses back into me. I took it as a sign, as was the case for the decade since I first started wondering about this – in most inconvenient of times – I should get back to answering that morbid question later.

As I was heading down an empty street, I felt somewhat disappointed. Every house on the street seemed completely the same as the previous one: two floors of walls in deep brown colours of fresh wood, polished so hard that they almost shine, with just a few of them having dimmed orange light peeking through, undoubtedly, expensive windows. I think once, somewhere, I saw a windowsill that cost about five or six thousand Eurodollars – per unit, not for a set. Funny thing is, I was being persuaded to buy that window, for some unknown reason. Perhaps, I looked rich, posh even, albeit you must be pretty blind to apply adjectives such as ‘rich’ or especially ‘posh’ to someone like me. Needless to say, I turned down the offer — I never had a spare five thousand lying around, nor did I ever own an apartment where such an installation could occur. And honestly, I think it’s for the best. My mum always told me that everything is only as good as its scarcity, and I’d assume I could apply the same principle to money, too.

Shortly after passing another of those houses, I’ve realised that there is nothing for me to look out for visually, so instead I decided to listen closely to the sounds around me. I closed my eyes, assured that there would be nothing in front of me on the sidewalk for another hundred or so meters, and embraced the ambience: on the other side of the street, sprinkles from each household blended together into a watery symphony, spinning at a constant speed and creating a very easy to follow pattern; the park on my left, although dark and sleepy, was still blooming with life, as birds (including a really loud owl) were singing each other serenades of various sounds, with grasshoppers creating a background beat. This harmony of sounds from both sides sounded so natural and organic that I almost wished to create a new genre in music, involving just natural sounds coming together in a tranquil, yet upbeat mix at once, hence why you can’t really call it ambient. The only problem is, I lack talent and time to create something as astonishing as this, so all I could do is relax and listen.

Yet suddenly, in the distance, a new sound started emerging. It was something like a muffled humming, the one that they would use in movies to build up pressure on the audience in a particularly tense moment, and it was quickly approaching me. But instead of being smart about this, opening my eyes and seeing what exactly is happening, I let myself get unease and even a bit terrified. It’s kind of the same type of a situation as in childhood, when you honestly believe that if you keep your eyes closed for long enough, the something in the darkness of your room would just go away, simply of how helpless you find yourself to be at the time. With me, however, I’m guessing it was both the thrill of the unknown and the fact that I was afraid to break the magic of the surrounding orchestra from both of my sides, so I shut my eyes even tighter and prepared myself in the anticipation, still walking, but slower than before.

The muffled sound continued to increase, as I have expected it to, drawing nearer and nearer to me. And then, at once, it had stopped. Didn’t disappear completely, but became much less audible, just enough for the sprinkles and park ambience to kick back in again with their masterfully crafted piece. With a relief, I breathed out.

And then, the silence shattered into a million pieces with a loud siren going off right next to me.

I jumped, startled, opening my eyes wide open and looking around myself. A police car has just dashed off from near me, disappearing behind a far corner in a matter of seconds. My head felt empty and full at the same time, with thoughts racing one another, causing it to ache. I breathed in loudly, feeling my heart beating at an incredibly high speed.

In. Out.

I collected myself, finding peace with my own surroundings again, assuring myself that it was, indeed, fine.

Out. In.

For a moment, the violence of silence had overwhelmed me, just like in the dormitory district. The sounds of sprinkles, night birds of the park, even grasshoppers, all of them have vanished into the night. I kneeled down, breathing in.

In. Out.

I mean, how bad can a second of silence get, right? The answer to me was my rapidly beating heart and my hands, trembling. I started digging through my bag, frantically looking for the package to check the address on it, or so I told myself. In the deepest corner of my brain, I knew for a fact that I was actually looking for a way to direct my train of thoughts away from this abrupt silence.

Out. In.

In.

In-

 “Young man, are you quite alright?” came from across the street faintly. Looking up, I saw a dark-skinned woman, probably in her thirties, in a light-blue dressing gown, standing in just underneath a porch light above her house’s front door. Her hair, made into a small tail behind her back, revealed her shiny face, upon which a look of genuine concern stood, as if I was the closest person for her in the entire world.

“I… I’m…”, I tried to murmur something coherent back to the best of my ability to, maybe, calm her down, but, non-surprisingly, failed to do so. Her face only grew more concerned, as she raced down her front porch and grabbed me by the arm, dragging along with my bag to her house. “There is… There really is no need”, I tried to protest, but we already went past the hallway into a highly expensive looking kitchen, where she sat me down by the table.

“Nonsense, just wait here, I’ll see what we have in our medkit”, she said, leaving back to the dimmed corridor. Once I got around my bearings, I shook off the feeling of dread from the outside and briefly looked around myself. An empty kitchen was shining its somewhat dimmed light blue light upon me. I was sitting on a highchair at a massive kitchen stand with magnificent black marble corners, with an electric oven built in one of counters. All the furniture around was made out of finely polished white wood that I never could and never would be able to afford – or, to be fair, would want to, it’s a tad too extravagant for my taste. A shiny metallic refrigerator was standing in another corner, quietly humming from the inside. It was soothing., homey even, with a barely audible noise of the working TV somewhere from the second story reaching through to the kitchen. Outside noise was almost completely non-existent here, but I still managed to catch some far crickets and sprinkles.

It felt euphoric, idealistic even. If I could’ve, I’d never want to leave this place. I even forgot that this was not even my home (how rude), at least until the owners of it came bursting into the kitchen.

The lady from earlier had a small green first aid kit in her hands, filled with medications; behind her was a man with short, light-brown, almost blonde. He seemed as if in his mid-forties, not quite old but already obviously not young, slightly older than her. Despite the late hour, he was dressed in finely tailored deep blue trousers (my dad was a tailor once, a long time ago, so noticing things like that sort of came around naturally to me), brown-leathered shoes and a white shirt, which seemed a little too tight for him. Sky-blue tie was hanging around his neck loosely, all the way down to the belt. Unshaved face with a five o’clock shadow showed confusion and concern, but, unlike the lady’s, it also oozed hostility with barely noticeable scent of alcohol, rather than compassion. And I couldn’t possibly blame him for that: nobody likes a stranger invading their property, especially at night and without their concern.

“So, who are you exactly?”, he asked, studying me through his reading glasses.

“Courier”, I answered honestly, overwhelmed with déjà vu. The man shook his head, as if trying to wake up from a bad nap.

“Right, okay. Honey,” he turned to who I assumed to be his wife, with one hand pressed against his temple, “Why do we have a courier in the middle of the night in our home? Did you order more of that balsam you talked about earlier?”

“No, God no! Why would I-”

“Then please, tell me, why is there a courier, in the middle of a bloody night, in our home?!”, he raised his voice slightly, obviously annoyed, facing me again. His eyes had this intimidating look in them, the one that always made me feel uneasy about myself, uncertain as to what I am or what to do. That kind of intimidating look.

“Now, don’t be shouting at our guest”, the lady said, giving man a hug, “He seemed unwell outside, like when you get one of your migraines, so I thought we’d have something for it,” her voice, although incredibly calm, sounded equally as decisive as her husband’s, although certainly much more soothing.

“Christ”, he mumbled, breaking off her gently, turning to the TV in one of the upper corners of the kitchen. It was already tuned on the news channel, which, given overall vibe of the house, for some reason did not appear surprising to me. “Well at least get it over with quickly.”

The lady only nodded in response, despite the fact that her husband was looking away from her in the opposite direction. With ever-present elegance, she opened the first-aid box and started going through all sorts of medical pills, possibly trying to find the simplest one possible for me, paracetamol. That’s just my assumption, I am not too sure – whenever I get headaches or get sick in general, that is one drug that I always take regardless of my condition, and it seemed to work for me thus far. And even though I felt fine, it still hurt to think about these things, or think in general to begin with. Just as I assumed, she produced a small box without a label, extracting a small red pill out of it and handing it over with a glass of water, half-full.

“There, dear, does it feel better?”, said the lady almost too angelically, as I downed the pill and chugging down the water. I, still slightly shook as it took it in my hand, only nodded with a faint smile, which she returned back. “Would you like some tea with that?”

“Oh, yes, um, I-I have to-” I attempted to mutter something coherent back.

“Yes, dear, our guest certainly has to go by now!” the man was starting to lose his temper with me, that was rather evident from the way he spoke.

“…Marking the first year since the Border Vote Riots, the Firefly Festival is mere moments away from starting. The crowd at the XxxxxxxxxSquare had already gathered, matching last year’s in size, anticipating both a show and a political gathering unlike any other in the world. With appearances from both Hot-40 singers and winners of the recent Capital Film Festival Award planned, it is looking to be a hot night of culture and entertainment. However, underpinning the this year’s festival is a very dramatic lead up to the upcoming general elections, which begs the question: will the Blues send in their candidate to make an appearance this year in attempt to secure the re-election despite last year’s border bill controversy, or will hashtag ‘TimeForRed’ rule supreme this time?”, came from the tv as before the man turned the volume off for good with a deep sigh.

“What a joke,” he opened one of the cupboards, reaching for a cup and a plastic bottle with brownish liquid, which he poured in it. His wife gave him a weak glance of shame, but swiftly returned to reorganizing the improvised pill storage, “They don’t even bother to use actual party names anymore, just ‘Blues’, ‘Reds’, ‘Greens’ or whichever fucking colour they think fits. And then people still question, why our politics are turning into such a mess,” he took a gulp of, what I assumed, was iced tea (I’m not an idiot, it could very well be whiskey, yet it wasn’t quite the whiskey-shade of brown), looking back at me as I sat there, pills still in my hand, unsure of what to do. He smirked, leisurely adjusting himself on the kitchen counter. “Do you know why that is?”

“No,” I replied honestly, looking at him.

“Because of people like you,” he made another sip, following it up with pouring more, “Those who don’t know anything about power or responsibility but for some reason are still given a vote, that’s why our country is suffering.” He made a step forward, almost losing balance, approaching me. “You study anything, or just living off the welfare state?”

“Economics, in uni, almost a year and a half,” I half-confessed, half-lied, swallowing what felt like a ball made of stone, “But I dropped out.”

“Ah, of course you dropped out,” he threw his hands up, enough to spill some liquid around the room. At this point, his wife disappeared somewhere, probably to put the box back into wherever she got it from, or perhaps to escape the somewhat scary fire that was starting to burn up in the man’s eyes. “Although if you did Economics, maybe you’re not all lost. Tell me then,” he sat down right next to me in the high stool, leaning against the table, “Who are you voting this year?”

“I haven’t followed the election too much lately,” I confessed – it was hard to care as much as I probably should have without a right to make my voice heard in any tangible way, “But from what I heard, I think that the Red party is leaning too far left, with their policies of nationalizing industries outside of key resources and energy, and raising taxes on the wealthy. Many consider this overpromising, which would not only split the centrist vote, but also, essentially, only entrench those with the money further?” I said, half-unsure, surprised at my own speech, almost as if it wasn’t my own voice. The politician, on the other hand, seemed pleased, if anything.

“Impressive. I’d expect most of the people your age to actually rally behind those commies-”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I suddenly cut him off short. Was I getting too comfortable? “Only reason for this is the fact that they promise free education above anything else, which is just socialist – and it’s not like there is nothing wrong with mixed economy, and it could very well supplement that. In fact, this country has been doing so for the last 80 years. Plus, heavy campaigning on social events, as well as not being particularly specific on the recent attempts to separate our country from the rest of the Xxxxx, do, evidently, work.”

“Holy shit,” the man laughed, “Where have you been all this time? I don’t entirely agree with you, but you surely know your way around. Could’ve canvassed for my campaign office.”

“With all due respect, I wouldn’t,” I said, thinking to myself, just when did I get both so confident and rude, “Your party, on the contrary, seems so preoccupied with its focus on nationalism and ‘others’’ that I don’t feel like immigrants like me are welcomed at all.”

“You, an immigrant? But- your English, your pronunciation, it is so good for someone not born here!”

“Second generation,” I kind of lied, “I prefer to remember my roots.”

“Well then, you’re certainly one of the good ones we actually want in our country,” I pretended not to react to the phrase I heard all to often – I already said too much. The politician paused, thinking his words through. After a moment, he picked up his cup, taking another sip “Why did you drop out?”

“I argued for simpler terminology with my professor. I thought that there are easier ways to say the same things, like ‘advanced capital’, so I drafted up an entire list that I distributed over the campus. It was later on used in a huge percentage of essays, all footnoting me, receiving low scores as a result. Somewhere, somehow, plagiarism got thrown in the mix. And so, I was out” the politician chuckled softly, causing me to stop in my tracks. It was unclear if he was about to shout, or he was finding me genuinely funny. My confidence disappeared, and I again felt like I should’ve been gone by now.

“See, that’s the problem,” he reached over to the other end of the table, where my empty glass stood, wasting no time to pour some brownish liquid and hand the cup to me. It had a funny smell, but I, nonetheless, took it into my hand, hesitant to drink, “Oversimplification. I mean, sure, it is all well and good, accessibility and support for all, and don’t get me wrong – you want people to vote for you, you better be able to explain the most complex issues to even an idiot so long as he holds a right to go to the ballot box. But that’s kind of the entire point,” noticing my hesitation, he gently pushed the cup from underneath to my mouth, almost forcing the drink into me. It had a bitter taste and scorched my throat with a burning sensation, yet I did not attempt to stop him, “To separate the strong-willed and talented who are willing to learn, from those who are expecting everything handed to them on the silver platter, not having a clue, what is it they even want to begin with. Now, if you’d ask me, I have no respect for the latter, but…” he looked at me again, my undoubtedly red cheeks and somewhat drowsy eyes. The liquid tasted like no other alcohol I ever had, but the politician, it seemed, was satisfied with me, as a smile emerged on his face, “But you seem bright enough, with potential, if nothing else. So, here’s a once in a lifetime advice: don’t waste your time on people who are expecting you to give yourself up to them regardless. Even if you don’t mind it, they’ll only drag you down with them, because when the tide rises, they’ll expect you to give up your seat on the boat for them, too. And trust me – the tide will rise. Hell, it already has, and you will logically refuse to give up your well-earned seat. But they won’t listen; they’ll drag you down into the abyss, alongside with them, because if they are not allowed to have it their way, then nobody is.”

Finishing, the man emptied his glass, looked at the bottle, as if deciding whether or not he should have more, but ended up just standing up and making a deep sigh. His wife was also back in the room, despite me completely missing out on the moment when she slipped back in, standing by the counter, admiring her husband silently. Her eyes were filled with spectacle admiration, fixed on the man who now stood up from the table. He approached her, taking her by the waist, as she put her head on his shoulder. Weirdly, her slim figure, seeming almost fragile, appeared like a piece of a puzzle, fitting together perfectly with his enormous shape. A perfect silence established itself over us, with only disturbance being a TV somewhere upstairs still blabbing out news.

“What is it you are delivering in this late hour anyway?” the woman asked me, opening her eyes but keeping her head fixed on the man’s shoulder.

“Oh, uh,” usually, I wouldn’t disclose the nature of a delivery, mostly because in our agencies, the couriers themselves are not told anything but the name and address/‘Customer protection’, as our boss calls it, but for some reason, I saw no reason to hide it from these people, not this once, “I’m looking for… A. Crawford, house 17-”

“Oh, the Crawfords? Anthony and Susanne?” I tried to mask my bafflement to the best of my ability – it was, let’s just say, uncommon, to give out your real name for our packages. A pseudonym was the norm – and recommended – as real names could cause all sorts of issues, “That’s our neighbours. They are out of town, but we can pass it on to them if you want to?” she smiled at me, evidently glad at the prospect of altruism that emerged for her on this fine night. I, however, was again in hesitation. It is one thing to talk about the delivery, but a completely separate one in trusting it to somebody else. Not to mention, it is against the company’s policy to begin with.

“Don’t seem so lost,” the politician tuned in as well, “We won’t look. Well, my wife won’t anyway. Promise,” she laughed, looking at him, and somehow, I suddenly felt comforted enough to trust these people like I knew them for my entire life. I reached into my bag, producing a small box wrapped into brown delivery paper, which the woman took and carried back over to the hall, whilst the man looked at his wristwatch. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get myself ready for the grand appearance. My wife can sign the delivery notice,” as he was turning away into the hallway, he, nonetheless, looked at me again, “Would you like a taxi at all?”

“Yes!” I said, surprised and a little ashamed of how quickly that escaped my own mouth, almost cutting the man off, “Yes.” I repeated. Policy be damned – I was not taking the underground back.

10:22 pm
I would’ve liked to tell you about how nice my ride was to the city centre. How silent yet undeniably professional the driver was, almost impossible to differentiate from the automated taxis that roamed the city at night instead, had not been for his quite breathing in tune with the pleasing hum of the car itself underneath expensive black leather of the seats, and how I, unfortunately, couldn’t make it straight to my destinations because the city was partly blocked off due to the festival. But I won’t, because it doesn’t quite fit – it was that pleasantly unremarkable. Besides, only thing of any importance was me contemplating on how happy I was with my uncharacteristically political outburst back at the previous house, and how bizarrely wonderful it is, to impress people you don’t even know.

The district I left off on foot wasn’t too far from the _________ Square. With contrast of a dark-blue night sky with white undertones of the streetlights, you could easily see one part standing out in its vibrancy of purple, turquoise and pink, along with upbeat music echoing through the streets, just about reaching me. It was rather tempting, teasing even, and I couldn’t wait to deliver the last package and be over with work for tonight – uncharacteristically early for me, too; normally, I wouldn’t be on the way home until way later in the night, but I just breezed through them this time.

The street was one of the more expensive parts of the city. Not too filled with people, it nonetheless conveyed its liveliness through multiple neon signs of cafes and restaurants, scattered amongst branded shops and 24-hour groceries. Peeking inside through the glass walls, I could see smart-casually dressed couples, groups of friends loudly celebrating something, waiters running short on their orders to the beat of mainly pop instrumental and jazz, as well as, sometimes, lonely owners standing at the counters, going through the recent earnings and counting money, quietly waiting for a customer. A heavenly hub of late-night consumerism.

At one point, I passed by a storefront with a mannequin inside wearing a print t-shirt underneath a dark orange jacket. The print itself was one of a magic eye poster: bursting with colours, reminiscent of those up above the Square where the festival was already going on, going in line pattern across and over one another, conveyed into a white square around it, surrounding it like a wall, hiding in the middle some sort of wonderful image you would need to squirt or look under a specific angle to see. I liked it. There was something mesmerising about it, something pulling me in like a metal would be drawn to a magnet. The pattern, escaping me from one end of the white border to another, the way it carefully blended in with the bursting colour of the jacket on top of the t-shirt, the sheer madness and calmness it conveyed. All this, however, was shattered by two walls in front of me: one literal of a glass display of the closed store, and one of the price tag below, having a zero too many for my wallet to handle.

Maybe some other time, then.

With a slight taste of disappointment in my mouth, I continued down the street, listening to the distant sounds of music, going in sync with the beat of my heart, and watching my half-visible breath escape into the air. I haven’t even noticed how cold that night was – a storm was settling in, and a breeze was stalking the streets, like a harbinger of doom. It being the month in the lead up to Christmas, the weather didn’t quite feel right without any snow (not that it has for the last decade and a bit, at this point), and yet the breeze remained, causing people to tremble like leaves falling off trees and hide away in their tiny little shelters of houses. Some of them may have been sick and under blankets, with heaters on to a maximum and TV turned on in the background as ambience – or a cure – for loneliness. I wondered then if any of my deliveries – not least of all, this final one for that night – were just that, a cure for someone’s solitude; that’d be nice. That would mean I did something good, helped someone out.

I smiled at the thought. I wonder, if the politician would be there at the festival tonight and if I’ll see him speak, after I deliver this last package. I didn’t like the guy, but it would’ve been cool to tick the “hey, I met him in person” box.

A new, distant sound emerged then amongst the music, I’d say a couple of blocks away from me. A police siren – sharp, cutting through the stillness of the air. It was bizarre to hear it so early again tonight, to be honest with you, almost as if it was following me. I couldn’t help but wonder if I did something wrong or, like in that one book by a German writer whose name I could never pronounce right, I would be arrested without a reason and then sentenced to an execution, never knowing what I did or even if I did something. Sometimes you would break a law without even realising it until it came the time to pay the price – all it took was an overwatch drone or a CCTV to record you, and that would be it. Steadily, the siren approached me, creeping through the blocks and neighbourhoods with a constant, piercing vocal tone, that hid itself just under the lull of the festival. But just as abruptly, the siren disappeared somewhere far, cloaked away by the sound of music and night-time hurdle of the city. Maybe they had more important things to do after all than chasing a meaningless courier down in the middle of the night after all.

Suddenly, a car swerved out from the corner of the street in front of me – a white sedan with a blue and yellow lines on it, its sirens quiet and lights turned off. Fearing for a second that it was I who spoke it into existence, I ducked by the nearest alley, hoping the policemen that were rapidly getting out of the car wouldn’t have noticed me, watching them and trying not to make any noises. Most citizens of the Capital knew better than to intervene or linger around whenever a police showed up, so the area around a regular-looking apartment building in front of which the car stopped quickly cleared out.

Only two men emerged out of the car, but unlike the usual patrols, each was wearing a helmet on top of a bulletproof vest, peeking from under their dark coats. It was impossible to see their faces underneath it, but from their gestures, it seemed like they wanted to confirm that they had the right address. After a moment of deliberation, one of the policemen waved to his colleague to get something from the back, and he obliged, producing a bigger than average overwatch drone from the trunk. With a few clicks, it turned on, rising rapidly into the air, only to seemingly stop and return to the window on the fourth floor. The two locked their gaze on the drone for a moment, as if waiting to see if it does anything – nothing followed but a steady hum. That, apparently, was enough: the two policemen, within seconds, approached the door to the building, with the taller of the two unlocking it instantly by raising his wrist to the rusted entrance panel, after which they both disappeared in darkness of the building as the door shut behind them.

I saw a couple of ‘raids’ like this back in the day. Most of the time, it would be an overplayed, overtly dramatic targeting of some poor immigrant who forged their papers to get here, or some dealer with under-the-table drug stash. Not once did I see it during my shifts, however: the police tended to try and make a point with when they carried these assaults out, with an entire brigade piling up indoors and a hefty cordon of cars blocking off the street, always in the middle of the day and usually in more impoverished districts, where they must’ve expected the most unrest to stir. There was an element of spectacle to it, carrying a certain warning and a reminder, so that everyone around could see and take note of who wielded the real power in the city. The fact that something like this was happening in the middle of the night, in one of the wealthier parts of the city, only by two lightly-protected men, was strange and worrying. The spectacle was easy to understand; the silent brutality, not so much.

Suddenly, a loud thud came from inside the building. A single gunshot, followed, then another thud. The drone, which was simply staying still up until that point, suddenly came to life, winding up in a frenzy, its seeker light turning red and moving parallel to something inside the room. The window, left slightly ajar, let a few shouts escape from the inside, followed by another two barely audible shots that flashed in darkness. Suddenly, the drone made a thumping sound, releasing a projectile into the room through the glass of the window, leaving a perfectly round hole in it.

And then, in another instant, it was suddenly all over, and the low hum of the drone was the only thing to reach the street from all the way up there.

Finally, one of the policemen emerged in the window, seemingly assessing the hole made by the drone. A barely noticeable bullet trace could be seen just above his shoulder, grazed through the fabric of his coat. Despite it, he looked unfazed, as if this was a daily occurrence for him. Then again, it was hard to tell with his face completely obscured. I wondered then, if I could see it, would a human being still be there. His colleague passed by behind him, little more than a shape of a shadow, prompting him to follow suit and disappear back inside the apartment. The drone went quiet, descending back into the trunk of the car and folding itself.

Silence reigned once more. It was as if nothing had happened at all.

I decided that was my cue to leave. Whatever was to happen afterwards hardly could’ve been good for me. The clock was ticking, and I wanted to get to the square before long.

10:44 pm
Still slightly shaken from before, I followed my pad’s directions, careful not to get lost or distracted by the holographic billboards with advertisements on them. Fairly quickly, I found my way to the designated house behind one of the crowded restaurants, in the alleyway, not too dissimilar from the one with which my night began. There was a green door at the back, near a small dumpster with a colour to match, and a lamp just above, crackling and flickering its light, evidently not replaced in a while. I checked the addresses on both of the buildings one more time and assured that this was the only entrance for deliveries, pushed the door.

It wouldn’t budge.

Curious, I peeked inside, but all that had greeted me was darkness.

I tried again, to no effect, as you may have expected.

Looking around, I spotted a fire stairwell, going just up along the building up to the very rooftop. The ladder itself was raised above the average person’s height, up to about six, maybe six-and-a-half feet, obviously to prevent naughty teenagers and young adults like me from using it to our own villainous agendas of going up to the roof. I looked at the cheap Pesco electronic watch on my right hand, sighing out in frustration. The festival was, undoubtedly, in its full swing already, and the last thing I would want right now was to miss the closing ceremony of releasing ‘fireflies’ up. True, I could walk at the front of the restaurant, wondering if the person I was looking for would be living in this building, but that hardly seemed appropriate.

So, the ladder was my only choice.

You may think it odd of me, to use the ladder rather than a door, but trust me when I say there is a method to my madness. I did this once in a building on the city’s outskirts, maybe half a year or so ago. The front door was bolted shut, and the doorman (or I assume there was meant to be a doorman, given the little desk positioned right beside the front door on the inside) had gone somewhere. It was my first delivery that night, already running late, tight on schedule to get elsewhere, so after circling the building, I found a ladder low enough to which I could jump to – which I, successfully, did! – and then get to the needed hallway through the roof access. Bottomline, this worked before – why wouldn’t it again?

Aware of fragility of my own fragility, I decided that the best course of action would be to use the dumpster as a supporting platform. However, despite being on wheels and smelling like death itself, it wasn’t able to push it under the ladder – a handbrake, probably. So even if I stood up in my full height on top of it, it would still not be quite enough for me to reach the ladder. I would have had to gain some speed and jump over if I was to carry out the intended deed.

The lid was shaky at best, and my own bag got in a way a couple of times whilst I was positioning myself, but, somehow, after a moment of hesitation, I was ready to spring the short distance between me and the shallow abyss of the alleyway, separating me from the ladder. You might say, “That’s stupid, why are you making it so hard for yourself?”, and, well, you won’t be wrong – it is stupid. But, in my defence, I was almost one of the best school athletes back in my day, and I was really running out of patience at this point, so please don’t colour me stupid prematurely. I must admit though, as I rocked back and forth, to test the ground under my shoes, I began questioning my own decisions.

What if I hit my face and fall down?

What if the ladder breaks?

What if I’ll be technically trespassing by doing this, a passing drone would see me, and that siren from earlier would really be for me?

What if there are better ways of simply delivering the goods?

Why am I suddenly running-

The jump, despite being very short, felt like flying. With gravity, pulling me down, and my own limbs going all over the place in attempt to grab onto something, I almost missed the point in which my hands touched with the cold, cold metallic bar of the ladder. With my hands, still shaking, I pulled myself up and exhaled, victoriously.

Or rather, that’s what I would like to have done.

In reality, I had hit my face against the metal and fell onto my back, staring up into the sky with the flickering light above the entrance at the corner of my eyes.

There was little pain, just disappointment. As silly as it sounds, I really, really thought I could make the jump.

But then, some voices came from behind the door.

I got up, not to add embarrassment to the disappointment, and quickly pulled the delivery cap on my head to hide away the messy and, undoubtedly, dirty hair (as well as to look semi-professional, of course). Just as I finished, a duo of waiters, talking about something, stepped out the door. All seemingly under my age, they stopped when they saw me, growing completely silent.

I have never felt older in my entire life.

“We thought we heard a sound?” finally one of them spoke, the dark-skinned girl with curly hair. By her voice and tone, you could tell she was the leader from them two.

“Must’ve been a cat,” I said, attempting above all to see if they knew I was lying, “I have a delivery here for… Ms Salt?” God, I am not proud of how I said that line. I mumbled it too quickly, obviously desperate to change the subject, like a senior student during his first public speaking. I can tell, they knew that the source of the sound was me…

“Oh man, is it really time?!” the boy, who had light hair and even lighter skin, suddenly lit up, excited, catching me off guard. “You were right ____, the delivery was just running late-”

“So I heard, ______,” the girl cut him off, turning back to me, “Ms. Salt would be me, thank you very much. Do I need to sign anywhere?”

“Just here,” I said, handing her the pad and a touch pen along with her box of a medium size. Something about them two seemed a bit off-putting then, but frankly, I was just happy to get out of explaining the source of the sound further.

With the signature received, I put my pad away in the bag and was about to bid my goodbyes, but the boy was already gone, whilst the girl was simply smiling at me from the half-closed door, with her hand stretched.

“Merci beacoup, a tip for your troubles,” said she, waiting patiently with her palm wide open, where… a physical, crumbled up bank note, laid.

Admittedly, that night as a whole was unusual – but we didn’t normally receive tips in our line of work, our job being the middleman and all, not producing or doing anything too exciting. A dirty job for someone to do, but with very few actually wanting to do it. Hence, the tip was an anomality, an unusual surprise, especially twice within the same night.

But even stranger was receiving an actual bank note as a tip. For close to a decade, the government has been pursuing a policy of phasing out physical money, mostly because it was harder to control otherwise. By now, most shops wouldn’t have change if you tried to pay for anything with it, and the collectors mad enough to chase bank notes, of all things, were willing to pay sometimes ten times the note’s value just to get their hands on them – that is how rare physical currency was starting to become. And yet, here it was – within my reach, as an added bonus for, I hope, job well done.

That’s all I thought as I stretched my hand out back to her, as she put the crumpled up note into the palm of my hand. She pulled away as fast as she extend herself to me, and I instinctively looked up to my watch to check the amount tipped. Seeing nothing there, I realised how stupid I was, so I opened my palm.

Almost 50 Eurodollars, altogether. About twofold the amount I am paid for a single delivery. Certainly, more than the amount of money I had in my wallet right now.

“Hang on, miss, this-”

But the door was already shut.

I was finally left in the loneliness of a damp alleyway and with a bitter taste of unexplained embarrassment in my mouth, as if my whole life depended on impressing these two people I have never seen before. Should’ve just asked the restaurant straight away, I thought.

As I turned around and headed back to the street, there was a sound of popping behind of me, with glass falling to the ground.

I startled, but didn’t turn, for I already knew what the sound was.

My shift, at least for that night, was over.

10:55 pm
The crowd in the square had long lost its individuality and any sort of order.
Every single person in there, had long became a part of the whole body rather than just remaining themselves. The one organism, living together, with the beat of the heart matching the one of the songs playing, the colour of blood being the mixture of neon lights, lasers and fireworks, and one brain, which was non-existent and unnecessary at that one wonderful moment.

I was finally home.

By the time I arrived at the Festival, the big top-40 artists were finishing up their performances. The ones that were on that list of forty people were, in my opinion, targeting just that “top-40” demographic, which would mean more money and profit for them above all else. However, although I didn’t see the soul in their music, if so many other people did, surely there was one. But that’s beside the point.

The Festival felt much bigger than it really was, or so it appeared to be. The square, from the figures I could remember (at absolute random) could host fifty thousand people at the same time, yet with the amount of energy that passed through me as I tried to navigate my way to the drink vendor, it felt like millions of people at once. Not to mention all the screaming and confetti, flying all over the place, which only added to the vibrancy of the place. Glowsticks being lit on my right. A guy with a camera attached to his cap on my left. Live-streaming, probably, for those who couldn’t make it. Oh, how I pitied those.

In the very far off corner, near the police line that separated the crowd from the stores and unfortunate apartment buildings, the street vendors carefully placed their vans and carts, filled with their small assortments, exposed for every potential customer to see, one of which was me. Whilst most of them were selling snacks and drinks, I was looking for one very particular seller. See, there were more than one reason for me to be at the festival. Music was one, of course, but another is this one vendor who supposedly brings out-of-country tobacco. His collection usually included something ‘exotic,’ completely inaccessible to the regular free market, some rolled right on the spot, but I was there for one brand in particular – the Senate, only accessible on the other side of the Wall, and supposedly the best cigarettes you can find in the world. Rather expensive, too, as far as cigarettes go, but that’s why I’ve been saving money for almost a month and a half now. Plus, that tip earlier from tonight was more than generous. Of course, smoking is bad for you. It is one of the worst things a person can do to themselves, and I would never recommend it to anyone. But I was already past the point of no return, so I reasoned I might as well make it the best experience possible.

The tobacco vendor, sitting nearby a cart with the name ‘Old World’s Smoke’ on a foldable chair, was an aging man with bright skin and middle-eastern features to his face. His grey goatee gave him an impression of wisdom, meant to guide the weary travelers in old fairytales to glory, or, in my case, just greater chances of dying earlier.

“Good evening,” I said politely, getting out my wallet, receiving a tired smile back. How long has he been sitting here? “I’ve been searching for this brand-” I quickly extracted an empty, battered down pack of Senate Blue and handed it over to him, “Would you happen to have one of these?” the man carefully, slowly, turned the pack in his hands, probably upon hearing the desperation in my voice. Which, make no mistake, was there – I looked everywhere for these cigarettes for over three or so months now, since the only shop that sold those closed down to open a state-supported market instead, as if there were not enough of those already.

“No, I don’t think I have any of these, sorry,” the man handed the pack back to me, “It is hard to access ______ nowadays, with all trade blockades going on after the invasion of _______. May I interest you in some other of my products, maybe?”

“No, sorry,” I gave a polite, bitter smile back, taking the empty box, “Thank you, nonetheless.”

As I stepped away from the vendor, a feeling of disappointment overwhelmed me. Same as before tonight, I calculated in my head the negative outcome through and through, but I was even more hopeful about this one to be otherwise than I did with that girl from earlier.

Whatever, Myrollboro isn’t that bad anyway.

It was surprisingly hot all around, so I approached a different vendor instead, sitting in a van with snacks and drinks, and bought myself a bottle of sparkling water. Upon doing that, I once again turned around to the purple and blue lights covering the square and the streets around. The crowd was still going wild despite the somewhat late hour, and the performance, it seemed, were finishing up with top-40 and were soon to move into my favourite electronics. I smiled with excitement, stepping into the crowd, with my heart finally opened.

I decided to make my way as close to the scene as possible. Along the way, someone shoved me a neon bracelet and piece of paper with a pencil, probably for the paper lantern part of the evening. I, however, was too entranced to react or even turn down, so I just went along, just as anyone would have in the crowd this big. Finally, I made it to the barricade that was a couple of meters away from the stage, as the final accord of the song played and the crowd went wooing all around me, with which I couldn’t help but join in along (despite not having a single clue, who that performer just now was). As everyone calmed down, however, something unexpected happened, as instead of a dj setup, a man in a dark-blue suit appeared on stage, with blonde hair and a red tie, dangling on his chest. The politician from earlier, who sent me merely a few hours ago to the centre, was now himself standing in front of me.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!”, I didn’t get a chance to appreciate his voice fully before, but it sounded so much more powerful now on stage. “I really hope you are enjoying our annual festival, in the most beautiful city in the world,” the crowd, yet again, went berserk with whoops and hollering. I, too, succumbed to it, “Now, as you know, I myself, a good music lover, really do love this festival myself, but with the upcoming elections, there is a chance that the next government is going to be cutting the budget to keep the festival going for another year, and that’s, in my opinion, unacceptable!”, despite his blatant game of politics right there, in front of us, I somehow found myself somewhat agreeing with his words. I was perfectly of the practice of ‘hype campaigning,’ utilised in festivals in particular to raise support in the last decade or so. Evidently, it was working, “Which is why, just before we fire up our lanterns, I wanted to come out and remind you all, to vote Blue this year, and keep the wonderful traditions of this city and country intact, as they deserve to be!” the man opened his arms, as if welcoming the cheers and ovations from all around himself, soaking it in. A margin of another couple of thousands, if not millions, of votes, was secured.

Suddenly, however, there came something else. A disturbance in the perfect atmosphere opposite of our united body. The mic cut off, as a screech of feedback came through the speakers, causing us to cover our ears. The lights went out for a second, and momentarily, as if by a script, they came back on, glowing in red, with another voice coming through, digitalised and distorted.

“Citizens of the capital, your finest hour finally arrived! For too long have you been treated as objects, mere gains for the system that doesn’t care about anything but monetary value. You have been told, time and time again, that your existence is to be driven by the price tags, that even your life can have a sum put on it,” we stood listening, in awe. As one united body, we dared not to move, not to flinch, “No more, we say! Boycott this event. Block the streets. Disrupt their rhythm. Break the cycle! Globalise the resist-”

Before the speech could be finished, it seems, the technicians regained control, with lights flickering a couple of more times, before returning to normal. The politician, dazed but not entirely lost, checked the mic, and smiled.

“Well, it isn’t a day in the capital without a protest,” we awkwardly laughed in response. Maybe it wasn’t funny, but who cared – the normality was once again reclaimed.

“You know, I really do love it – it’s a great indication of freedom of speech and consciousness that we pride ourselves on, despite what some critics may say, disrupting as it may be sometimes” he chuckled softly, “Still, I’d like to thank our wonderful tech staff and security for being on top of these things – you guys are the beating heart of this country, and you ensure that it all runs smoothly. Round of applause for our staff, everyone!” the crowd erupted with cheers – any acknowledgement of the common man from politicians was a slam dunk, a free get-out-of-jail card.

Then, something else entirely came, something that only I seemed to notice. One of the guards, standing in front of us behind the restraints of a metallic half-gate, just to the side of the stage, stepped away from the crowd in front of him, turning around towards the politician. Nobody else noticed, it seemed, beside me.

He stalked towards the centre, approaching the politician who was still saying something of the typical political blabber. There was innocent enough intent in his movements, something akin to a waiter approaching a customer who is unhappy about their meal in the middle of a banquet. The closer he got to the centre, the more his features revealed themselves to me. He was young, maybe around my age, with dark hair and a light stubble, strongly contrasting with his yellow-green guard vest. The politician, as well as other members of security finally noticed him, but acted weirdly cool about it, as if this was all part of a larger performance.

“Ah, hello, sir!” the man on stage acknowledged the boy standing just below him, “Let me ask you, what party are you-”

But the politician was not able to finish his sentence. The gun reflected with glittering silver in the limelight as it emerged from under his vest.

Three shots to the stomach, point blank range.

Ringing in our ears and the mic feedback mixed together with fear and terror of yelling crowd.

Then, he turned to us, facing the crowd with his black eyes. The spotlight shining directly at his face, clearly highlighted the dark circles under his eyes. He raised his pistol up, as we thought, to shoot in the air, for whatever reason, as the guards began rushing towards him from every direction.

For a moment, there was a strange silence, encapsulating the entirety of the plaza, stretching the mere seconds into hours. In this ever-enveloping air stillness, I could almost make out an enveloped crimson-red banner at the top of the building behind the stage, and a few lit-up fireworks, ready to go off into the sky.

Still somewhat muffled in the ringing, I heard one of the policemen shout ‘get on the ground,’ but that was unnecessary, as the man raised the gun right next to his head. 
His eyes, black but not empty, caught a shimmer of light blinking in them. At that moment, his eyes met mine. A single tear rolled down his face, as one of the guards finally grabbed him from the side.

The fourth shot, the loudest one yet.

The police on the edges of the crowd had already formed a solid circle, keeping us in.

“Everyone calm down!” one of the guards stepped forward, as two more men started to take off the vest from the killed man, as the banner at the top of the building behind them began unfolding downwards, “Somebody get on that building and take that shit off from the-“

“BOMB!”, someone shouted.

Finally, there it was.

The explosion. What all of them really anticipated all along.

Or maybe those were fireworks exploding, going off at the back, but no one really cared about that then.

A frantic confusion, having already enveloped the crowd, turned into chaos. As if forces of nature pushed us away from the corpse of the would-be revolutionary, the people hurried in every direction, knocking me back along with other members of the crowd, the cry of which had come and went as quickly as the bullet fired some seconds ago.

I felt the concrete kiss my face, and the stinging pain of my own blood pouring out into the skin of the square.

I felt something else, likewise warm, sprinkle all over the top of me.

I felt something warm all around me, not daring to look.

At last, as I opened my eyes, I saw a man, lying just next to me. He seemed older, if just a bit. His fair blonde hair, evidently carefully made before the night, now resembled a vocabulary definition of a mess, spread all over his face and whatever remained of his head after someone stepped on it. His eyes, dark blue, had a glass-like feature to them. I wondered if they were the same before, well, this. His mouth, surrounded by a barely grown beard, was half-opened, and just under, a pool of blood was now gathering.

It still ringed in my ears, but I saw people running behind of this man, gathering in groups, trying to make sense of it all. I heard a siren, if not a few of them, closing in all around. The signs of safety, of civilisation still being present, whatever the chaos.

Yet I didn’t feel safe, or civilised, no more or less than I did lying on the street’s concrete, drowning myself in blood of civilians like me and only praying to all powers above that the least of it was mine.

It felt as if another wave went by, of a body being torn apart, a tsunami of individuals being broken in two, a crack appearing inside a perfectly fine wall. The united body of people had finally disappeared, returning them to individuals, despite still being very much around me.

And yet, it felt as if there was nobody else but this man in front of me.

So, I laid there, covered in something warm, and terrified. Alone, but together with that man, against a cold concrete, waiting for the noise both on the outside and the inside to die down.

Him, though, I don’t know what he waited for. Whatever people wait for when they die, I guess.

Somehow, I managed to take my eyes off him, sit up and look behind the stage. A crimson banner with an orange half-sun had unfolded on the building front. The words, chaotically scribbled with black paint on it, ‘The morning has arrived,” couldn’t have seen more distant to me.

After midnight, I think?
I couldn’t remember how I made it back home.

I can’t quite place, if I used the elevator or raced up the stairs of the building. I remember breathing frantically by the time I was at the door, but no sound coming out besides the jingling of the keys in my trembling hand.

I can’t even remember if I turned the light on. I don’t think I did – all I recall then is darkness. What’s certain is that I was back, and a thought of safety briefly jolted through my brain.

I seemingly subconsciously dropped my bag in the hallway, allowing its almost-empty belly to hit the wooden floor of my small apartment. It was dark, like I said, I didn’t turn the light (or did I?), so I don’t think there is any point in describing it. Not yet anyway.

Not bothering to undress, I made it to the bathroom, where all I remember afterwards is the sound of water running in the bathtub. I reckon I also took my clothes off, eventually, trying to ignore the spots where it felt damp or warm, in contrast.

And only then, amidst the cold water, I finally came back to it, as the ash from a cigarette I don’t remember lighting, fell on my knee and made me wince. There was nothing in the dark fog of my bathroom but the scenery from the square, again and again, playing as if on repeat. It’s only ever visited me before after good, successful dates – I’m sure you know yourself how that goes – so the whiplash was considerably less pleasant to undergo.

It is only then, here, that I finally allowed myself to try and cry. Not even thinking about it, I felt the quivering of my lips, half-closed my eyes, rocked back and forth as the cold wave came and went against my back and chest. But nothing came out, except for a single, solitary tear, that felt like a rock being forced out of my own eye. Why couldn’t I even cry for a moment without forcing it on myself?

So I sat there, processing what happened and attempting to escape the silence that embodied itself so fully in my head despite all the noise from the square. It got itself locked away by darkness, which almost as if took a physical form of its own, almost as if it stood there in front of me, in the middle of the bathroom, mocking me, demanding a response. I had nothing to say to it.

My apartment was not like a lively street. There was no sound in here, no ambience, nothing that could be distracting in any way. And that night, that scared me, more than anything.

But then kicked in the sound of waves, small and insignificant, slowly hitting against the bath’s walls. That made me forget again. The fear was averted. There was nobody in front of me.

That’s when, finally, I finally felt safe. My face felt hot and hard from the fruitless attempts of crying, and the bruises on my cheeks and my forehead burnt with terror of it all, but at the very least, I was safe.

Still not turning the light on, I gently dried myself with a towel and crept to my bed. I was afraid of seeing myself in the reflection on accident, so I thought it best to leave the light off.

After all, seeing no evil or the results of it, might just make you believe it doesn’t exist.

My bed felt welcoming. It felt like something I could call home, and I almost immediately closed my eyes as soon as I touched the pillow with my head.

The faint yet alive sounds of the street outside finally allowed itself to enter my room through a half-opened window just above my table.

The noise inside finally stopped, and I, at last, made it off the square, despite everything.

The Morning After
12:37 pm
I’ll let you in a secret: despite their convenience, I dislike cornershops. Not for some deep-rooted psychological reasons, but rather because I never really grown out of that weird 16-year-old-babyface-stage. So more often than not, I get checked for ID even when buying something as innocent as beer. Not that it was the reason for my visit today.

“Hi, um, can I please get a pack of Myrollboro Gold and a pack of gum?” I wondered briefly, how many times I say that on weekly basis in this very spot, staring at green light of the stand with cigarettes right behind the man at the counter.

“Mint flavour?”

“Yes, the usual, please.”

“That’d be 11.50, please. Merry Christmas.” Despite the automated responses, there was familiarity that came with that voice (and lack of an id check) that warmed my heart.

“A bit early for that, Jo. You know well enough I’ll see you before then,” I smiled, relived at the fact that Jo was on duty (he knew me on the first name basis at this point so no need for ID checks), pulling my wrist away from the chip reader, before exiting the store on the corner of the street I lived on.

By the time I was awake, the city has been in a full-swing of its morning routine, which I understood by the fact that even the road workers outside took a break, which they are not allowed at least until they worked for five or so hours.

I guess you can probably tell that I have a very bad sleeping pattern, which wouldn’t be surprising, given my line of work. Plus, the night before… Well, as my mum used to say, ‘yesterday was yesterday,’ I told you about it already. Sorry if it was graphic, or, comparatively, unclear at times, I did my best.

There is, obviously, the fact that I didn’t focus on many things that you probably thought important, but sadly that’s what it is.

That morning, I didn’t feel particularly hungry; rather, I was out because I still had a part of my job to do. I may deliver goods in the night, but my reports, those are filed in the morning, so the real purpose of my walk was to do just that – report. Thankfully, our office wasn’t too far off.

At the time, I lived in a part of city where both everything and nothing happened. ‘Everything’ because of shady stuff that happened from time to time, like a drug deal being busted, as it usually does in these kinds of districts, suited for nothing but sleeping quarters and below median wage jobs and newly arrived metropolitans who never made enough money to move out like me. The ‘nothing’ part then came from nothing ever being covered on the news about places like that, or nobody ever knowing about anything happening. A purgatory of sorts, embodied with kebab carts, chicken shops and corner stores, the place made for the perfect stranding ground for people flocking into the city, looking up to the sharp skyscrapers of the financial districts or the delicate white edges of the government sector, to dream and aspire – but never quite muster the will, or, again, as in my case, the finances – to leave one day.

Yet out of this neglect, something almost different came out: forgotten by the powers that be, people around here often drafted and painted across the blank walls their own culture, be it in graffities – crude and mesmerising alike – or unique designs of personal business stalls and occasional festivals. It was a paradise for the young and a trap for the elderly, a respite for the creative and the damnation for the dull, and no place in the whole wide world was quite as much of a melting pot of people than this ditched shore was.

Above all, I was just grateful to have a roof above my head at all, cascading housing crises be damned. The East was my home – or, as close to one as I would ever get in the Capital – and I was willing to defend it on that account, at least.

Our office, then … Well, it didn’t really stand out: a three-storey building, covered with dirt and mud, just as any other building around, with only distinct feature being its bold grey colour. In fact, in this season, where poor weather only makes the mud worse, our building was one that had took one of the worse hits, as stains from passing by cars and a few storms that descended on us earlier in the month painted splattered through its attempts at dullness to instead just make it look messy. Yet the sign above, ‘______ Express’, spelt out in dark-blue letters (that, may I assure you, did light up at night), and just the basic radiance of the place, coming through the closed automatic glass doors, made it stand out like a beacon of something truly beautiful and hopeful, at least to me. This time, just off the front of the building, closer to the adjacent alleyway, there also stood a creamy-coloured sedan which I haven’t seen before. There was something familiar about it, and on any other day, I’d think, I would want to steer clear of anything suspicious like that. But hey – it was that part of town, and I was certain then it was one of those days when nothing would happen.

12:50 pm
The lobby interior was barely anything to talk about. It had orange-painted walls, which for the most part held up just fine, but in certain places were evidently falling apart; the only furniture was that of a reception desk, a few sofas near a coffee table and a water cooler in one of the corners, all in all official, but not quite there yet. Upon entering for the first time, one may often assume that the place was under construction, or at least re-planning of sorts (I know I did), but such was the actual entrance hall of ______ Express, Limited.

“Aren’t you early today?” the girl behind the reception desk said, brushing her light-brown fringe to the side as I approached her with my bag.

“What a hilarious and original comment, Miranda,” I parried. She smiled, cheekily, as I began opening my bag, “And aren’t you a little late? Surely your shift ended a few hours back?”

“Doing extra to get that sweet Christmas bonus,” she said leaning against her hand, looking at me, “Plus, Brian’s out of town for another day, so it’s not like anyone’s waiting for me back home.”

“Right,” I mumbled, taking out the touchpad out, “How’s he, anyway? Feels like ages since I saw him.”

“It has, in fact, been ages – it’s almost like you’re avoiding us,” she slyly remarked, “But no, Brian’s fine, although really stressed lately,” she replied enthusiastically, receiving the touchpad. The girl’s grey eyes brazenly lit up once I asked about her boyfriend, “You know, with us moving and what not – bills here, a telephone call there, a new contract to sign elsewhere – you know, the uzh.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I shrugged, looking around at her desk and noticing two- no, three single use cups of coffee from the local branch of an affordable coffee company, tucked in a far corner of the desk, “Which one is it today?”

“What…” she looked up, confused, from the tablet, tracing my sight, “Oh!” she laughed, placing her hands down with her head to the table, “Oh, I’m such a mess. It’s coconut latte, with cream on top. The last two were that, anyway – first one’s espresso, but it’s gross. Wanna try?”

“I’m trying not to drink too much of that nowadays. Maybe a cappucino once in a while.”

“You boring fucking vanilla,” she rolled her eyes, returning to the data on the device, which she began uploading to the computer through a slim uplink cable. I gently smiled back at her.

“How have you been, anyway? Aside from all the work and moving, that is?”

Miranda, in many regards, was one of – if not the – closest friends in the city, at least since when I started working, which also means just when I got booted out of uni. Given the nature of our positions, me being the courier and her being the deliveries overseer/manager/secretary (I’m not sure she herself realised, how many functions her position –whatever the formal title of it was – involved), she was the only one I remained in constant contact with on daily basis. Well, until of late, when our shifts began swapping around the schedules.

“Aw, does someone miss me being their usual handler?” she grimaced. It was my turn to roll the eyes, “Thanks, I’m not too bad. I mean, all things considered, with – again – moving out and what not…” evidently, the girl’s mind has been fully captivated by thoughts of a new apartment, as she began repeating herself. I wouldn’t blame her – this place was like a sinkhole of sorts for her type of people, so it’s natural she was so consumed by the thought of ‘getting out’, “How are you though?” she said, slightly more concerned, leaning in towards me from her leather chair, “I’ve seen the news last night, what happened at the festival. Your tracker showed you being on the square at the time of… Well, the thing.”

“Creepy much?” I tried (in vain) to make a joke to lighten up the mood. Not that I was serious, the ‘fault’ was purely mine: the company’s policy clearly says that before the final delivery is made on the shift, it must bear full access to our location, using our touchpad’s (also known as simply ‘S-Pads’, or smartpads) geolocation service, for security and for safety net, of sorts (of which I might tell you later), reasons, and it is up to the couriers themselves to go ‘off shift’ once they are done, effectively ending their night, “I’m fine, as you can see.”

“Well, physically – maybe, yeah, but you know you don’t have to bottle up what’s here, right?” she pointed at her heads’ temple with a slim finger, nail coloured with an off-colour blue nail polish, tilting her head slightly to the right. From what I could remember, Miranda took psychology in university, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she was practicing on me at that moment. Not that I really minded, “What happened yesterday is horrible, it’s a terrorist act, it’s a…”

“A fucking mess, is what it is,” a harsh voice came from the door. A guy of about my age, but at least a head taller than me, wearing a blue cap and a brown leather jacket similar to mine, was walking up to us. He took his hat off upon approaching the desk, revealing the mess of thick red hair loosely gathered up under it, and cleanly shaved face. He had this bizarre smug aura around him, even when looking concerned or determined, as he was today. His pointy, slightly bent upwards nose didn’t help the case, only adding to the smugness that could be read in his green eyes, “Mornin’, Miranda.” he took out his tablet, handing it over to the girl behind the counter.

“And to you too, Archie. I’ll take it you are one of the few concerned citizens today?”

“Try ‘angry’ for a change,” Archie, throwing his cap up and down, glanced at me for a second, “Did you see the livestream yesterday, or at least the morning news?”

“Well, some of us actually have a life, so the latter,” Miranda shrugged, fixing her hair to the side, “Eight dead and thirty wounded, including civilians, security, and the police, if I remember correctly.”

“A fucking mess, like I said,” Archie leaned against the desk next to me “Everyone in the know realises that the Suns wouldn’t do shit like this. Even that fucking politician is fine!”

“Oh, so that’s why they brought a gun to a festival?” Miranda parried somewhat indifferently, not even looking up at him.

“They had nothing to do with that psycho gunman or the bomb that went off afterward. It just goes completely against their ideas, they don’t carry out attacks on civilians.”

“Yet to be seen, if you’d ask me,” she said, not looking up from the computer screen through which she was checking the contents of the pad, “You can’t deny that the entire thing happened almost in perfect sync.”

“Innocent until proven guilty, if you’d ask me,” he parried, “Come on, you are better than that – people would always look for scapegoats, and the Suns are on the government’s shitlist after that streak of sabotages last year,” he glanced at me for a moment, as if trying to read my thoughts on the situation. I froze, though – this debate was beyond me, at least for now, “Don’t you think… whatever your name is, don’t you think it is simply convenient to find someone to point your finger at when things don’t go as planned?”

“I guess,” I replied, as neutral as possible. I really did not want to get into this conversation, not then and there.

“So you do, right,” he evidently was not satisfied with what I’d said, as he turned back to Miranda, somewhat annoyed, “Anyway, I’ll be in the lounge if needed. Do let me know if any of unscheduled deliveries pop up in the meantime,” he smirked at the girl, heading towards the corridor at the end of the lobby.

“Sure,” Miranda rolled her eyes, gazing back at me and handing me my tablet back.

“What does boss-man think of all this, by the way?” I changed the topic, receiving my S-Pad and putting it in my bag.

“I’d imagine he isn’t too happy – too much attention to freelance firms like ours means more scrutiny and more scrutiny means fewer clients. Don’t quote me on that, though – I haven’t seen him much lately. I’ve been getting instructions via text or post-it notes since mid-November,” she looked at the corridor where Archie had just disappeared, with another door visible, bearing a golden plank on it, “Hell, for all I know, he might have pulled the ‘quiet exit.’”

This was a running sombre joke of sorts in the company. The founder, Mister B_____, being one of the most well-organized and plan-ahead kinds of people, ran the business for almost ten years before suddenly dying in his office due to heart failure a year or so ago. Some speculate it was _______, overdosing on medical drugs and alcohol; others think that he had been poisoned. Ultimately, that mattered little – the circumstances surrounding his death proved to be the least interesting thing about it. Due to his schedule being so carefully set out for almost a month ahead, the company managed to run according to those very plans for another week, thanks to the AI assistant in his computer and the obedient work of the secretary that worked here before – it even turned a profit! – until his body was discovered. Whilst it is weird that nobody would notice for an entire week a disappearance of another person, by the words of few friends the man had, it was rather common for him to drown himself in work, sometimes disappearing for days, weeks, even months, in his office. Naturally, he didn’t have any family left either at that point. The man died alone; in the office of labour he seemingly loved the most. There’s a degree of corporate romanticism in this, but also some very scary undertones – I, for one, can’t imagine a worse fate than is dying and people not even realizing you are gone afterward. Hence, we call it for what it was – a quiet exit.

As for our new boss, weirdly enough, I have never met them – allegedly, ‘him’, but then again, the only person in constant contact, up until now, was Miranda, and, again, supposedly, ‘he’ was B____’s personal secretary to discover the body in the first place.

This whole story stinks, I know, but as the old saying goes, don’t bite the hand that feeds you – I couldn’t exactly play private PI, nor did I want to, as long as they paid my bills.

“Fucking hell, Archie…” she murmured, under her breath, hoping I wouldn’t hear it. Noticing that I did, she glanced up and down a few times, and sighed, “He’s got so much outdated stuff here, I mean- fuck, I don’t even remember ever giving him these orders, unless he didn’t check it in since about May or so…”

“Oh, right.” I really did not know what else to say at this point.

“You wanna take a quick smoke break with me? I’ll just leave this running for now, maybe it’ll get through the junk whilst I’m out. Hopefully, anyway,” she gave me a smile, full of guilt, hoping to find assurance and reaffirmance of her actions.

“Why the hell not,” I returned the smirk.

1:01 pm
The alleyway behind our office was unusually brightly lit by the clouded sun. For a gloomy day, and for a dirty, gloomy alleyway especially, this sort of occurrence seemed like a miracle. Damp plagued the walkways alongside it, running towards a busy street in one direction, where a crowd of people with broken knowledge of the native tongue had set up shop, expanding out into a full-on day market. The other end was a dead-end, full to the brim with metallic garbage containers, ready for collection.

“Christ,” Miranda whispered, closing the door behind her, “Will this alley ever get cleaned up?”

“I quite like it today,” I confessed, unwrapping a fresh pack of Myrollboros, slipping a cigarette in my own mouth and extending my arm to her, offering one as well.

“No, thanks,” she pulled out an elegant black e-cig from the breast pocket of her suit jacket instead, “I quit a month or so ago. Starting off New Year’s resolutions early.”

“Your loss,” I shrugged, lighting the tobacco on the end of the white paper with my lighter and taking in the first couple of drags. Nicotine rushed to my head, and I felt slightly better as we stood for a moment, admiring the grey skies above us.

“You know it’s really bad for you, right?” she asked, taking a puff from her electronic device, the end of which did not burn, but rather lit up with a dim green light.

“Is that the only reason you quit?” I parried, shaking down the ash from the end, “Because it’s bad?”

“Well, yeah, is that not enough?”

“I think it’s not that big a deal.”

“Not that big a deal?” she chuckled, shaking her head. “I feel lucky to get out, personally – after all the studies Brian told me about, I just couldn’t bear it anymore.”

“Well, did Brian tell you that our bodies can handle the chemicals until we’re 25?” another drag, purposefully longer this time. I felt getting invested in the small debate we got going.

“Who even told you that?”

“A pharmacist student I knew from uni, she’s been writing her thesis on it-”

“Julia, really?”

“Yeah, Julia, what about her?”

“You know she’s full of shit, right?” this time, Miranda laughed out loud, with a smug smile stretched across her face, taking another puff. “Julia has been making up facts and forging footnotes in her essays through the entire first year! Not to mention, she was the first in my building to try ___ and what they called ‘Solar Dust’ – she’d find any excuse to do more drugs!”

“But I was talking about the third year.”

“So?”

“So people change, people move on from their old ways,” I took another drag. The nicotine was too good to not get lost in at this point, “She must have been caught a few times by her third year!”

“I think you’re being overly optimistic,” Miranda shrugged, taking out a different capsule from the same breast pocket and replacing with it the previous one at the top of the e-cigarette, “People don’t really change, not at their core, no matter how long and how much happens to them,” she stopped talking for a moment, realising what she just said, “Sorry, too deep. My point is, whatever Julia said, there is no reason not to switch – I can only see the benefits, as opposed to those death-sticks.”

“Such as?”

“Such as not giving me at least three forms of cancer by the time I’m forty-four? Such as not fucking up my fertility? Come on, they put that on the package.”

“I mean, okay, but how can you know that this,” I pointed directly at her device, purposefully with a hand that held my cigarette, “Is safer?”

“I-” clearly about to say something, Miranda froze, thinking about her next words more carefully than this debate entailed. I was just trying to have fun, but for her, this is most obviously becoming a moral crusade of sorts. The light on her device went in and out, changing colour to green. It was quite pleasing to watch, “Okay, fair enough, maybe there are not enough studies. But even if there are side effects of it, they perfect these models every year. Have cigarettes changed at all?”

Now it was my turn to stumble. Sure, I liked to argue, but on this point, the amount of available ammunition I had was extremely low, and I swayed my head to the side, trying to come up with a response.

“The filters became better…”

“Yeah right, ‘the filters became better’ my ass,” she shook her head again, evidently pleased with herself, “All of that is a scam to get you more hooked up on false prophesies of no consequences.”

“How much do you pay for it, though?” I suddenly turned back to her, confident yet again.

“Pardon?” she was caught off guard, as she cleared her throat with some vapour coming out it.

“The price, per week? I, for example, don’t even smoke that much, I only need a pack, maybe two, a month. That’s about… what, fifteen, twenty Eurodollars. But how about you?”

“I… Well,” she collected herself, looking highly determined to break out of the deadlock. But that was it: I finally got her, and she knew it. After a few more moments of consideration, she sighed out. “At least 30 a week for pods.”

“Ha!”

“Oh, whatever. Each to their own in the end of the day. If this,” she tapped her device forcefully, “Ensures my survival, I’ll pay a few Yudies more.”

“Hey, I wasn’t the one who decided to be a self-righteous soap-box orator for good – debatable at that! – heath,” I couldn’t help but smile with glee and smugness, as the girl opposite blew the lock of hair upwards in an angry manner, taking another, disappointed puff into the sky, “You started it.”

“Fine, you got me there. Doesn’t mean you won, though.”

“Wasn’t trying to.”

“Yeah yeah, keep telling yourself that, bud,” she rolled her eyes away from me, “Still, I’d rather have this than debate with Archie about politics all day. That fucking boy, I swear…” she took a proper drag this time, for almost ten or so seconds. Perhaps she did wish for a proper cigarette, after all, “His talk of revolution and all that shit, it’s going to get the police on us eventually, or get him killed, or something similar. He can’t keep his mouth shut and his tongue behind his teeth.”

“It’s a free country, no?” I asked meekly. For some reason, I wasn’t as certain of this statement as I wanted to be.

“Even freedom has its boundaries, my dear,” she looked to the ground, taking one final puff before putting the device back into her jacket, “And after what happened last night, you can expect all sorts of nasty, even uncomfortable things to start happening to us.”

“Thought you didn’t follow politics?” I smirked, putting the cigarette out against the wall next to the metal door into our building.

“Oh, don’t even start, I hate it. But I have to think business first, and all the crap that is bound to come soon, well, it’s not good for either you, me or the establishment that is allowing us to make money, so it helps to keep our hand on the pulse,” she stopped for a moment, opening the door, as if lost in thought, “I’ll think of something, don’t worry. Maybe boss will have some ideas on the matter, we’ll see. You coming?”

“No, I actually need to get something to eat first – if I come in tonight, I’ll be back by half-eight or nine-ish, so I’ll say hi to Gregory from you.”

“On no, you’ll have to deal with me, unfortunately. Gotta get that Christmas bonus, remember?” she smiled gently, “Don’t keep me waiting!”

“I’ll do my best,” and with that, she finally shut the door. The conversation, sadly, was over, and I headed towards the well-lit end of the alley, back to the street, thinking of what I would occupy my day with.

1:17 pm
As I was approaching the corner, another guy, just about my age, jolted towards me as if from nowhere. Dressed in our usual uniform (meaning, rather casually but with a company-issued cap) with light-brown hair and unshaved face, he had a somewhat lost look in his hazel eyes.

“There you are! Was looking for you everywhere,” he asked, unsuccessfully hiding the somewhat worried notes of his voice under a plain tone, grabbing me by the hand, “Can I steal you for a moment?” I nodded, to which he merely proceeded to lead me towards the entrance of our office.

Then, there was thunder, and finally, the grey sky broke into a full-on rain.We barely spent any time outside, as we quickly made it inside the creamy sedan in front of the office. So fast it happened, in fact, that I barely even managed to realise that I was out somewhere else. Rather, in my own head, it all seemingly happened in a flash and momentarily, this transition, kind of like spacing out (I’m sorry, I wish I could be more vivid in my descriptions). He sat at the driver’s seat, quietly, water streaming down his well-kept, short brown hair, making it all wet and messy.

“Nice to see you too, Sam,” I kicked up the conversation again, “You look tired,” I observed, trying my hand at small talk. He chuckled dryly in response.

“Isn’t that rich?” he looked at me with a playful smile on his face, putting both of his hands on the wheel. “Name one person in this whole company that doesn’t look tired.” he obviously couldn’t help but use gestures along his speech to stress the points made, as usual.

“Archie, for a change?”

“Ah,” he dropped back, opening the window slightly “Well, Archie is a clown, so he doesn’t count,” he still spoke with an accent, despite spending as much – if not more – time here as me, making his u’s sound like o’s and some y’s sound like e’s. It felt weird, given our shared hometown but my lack of the said accent, making me question who pulled the short straw with their speech pattern. Still, it was funny to listen to, making a laugh escape my mouth, somewhat uncontrollably, “You want a cig?” he asked with one already in his mouth, trying to find a lighter in his jacket.

“I have mine, but the light would be nice,” I’ve realised only then how badly I needed a smoke again. I quickly extracted a new stick from the pack, putting it my mouth. He then finally extended his hand out, offering me the light in his ‘worn-out, fuel-based, wind-proof’ lighter, as he himself called it, “Thanks,” I dropped my window down as well. We then found ourselves in a complete silence, broken only by the rain hitting on the glass and occasional puffs from either side of the car.

“So, what’s up?” it wasn’t the usual question I’d ask him. For all almost ten years we knew each other, it was always his job to be concerned rather than the other way around. Which, given the circumstances, only made this exchange feel even more weird than before.

“Huh? Oh, yeah… It’s nothing” he went back to silence straight afterwards, as if contemplating if the decision he was making by bringing me here was the right one. “I have a favour to ask from you.”

“Somehow I already don’t like it,” I took another drag, looking back at him. He only smiled. Holding the cigarette between his teeth, he reached to the back of his car, bringing his delivery bag to the front.

“I’ll be out of town for a bit,” he began, unzipping it, “For… well, personal reasons, which the police enforced control might hinder and slow me down, hence leaving today,” he took the half-smoked cigarette, somewhat violently throwing it out of the window, “So I need you to deliver this,” he extracted a small box, wrapped in the usual brown delivery paper, “To this address, on the evening of the 24^th.”

“The Christmas Eve?”, I felt how hard my brow got raised, as I took another, bigger drag of the cigarette, “That’s three weeks away – you’ll be gone for that long? Besides, we don’t work on Christmas Eve, do we?”

“You are right, we don’t – which is why I’m asking you personally to do that rather than anybody else in the company,” there was a slight undertone of despair in his voice, kept very well-hidden and far from ‘obvious’, but it felt like there was something unease about his speech, “Look, if I can, I will do my best to return before Christmas, but I can’t guarantee that – things, as you know, are a bit all over the place right now. Besides, I’m not asking you to deliver anything illegal, am I? It’s just something for Lena.”

“You two still a thing then?” I could’ve sworn they were over as far back as when I was booted from uni in my second year, so it was weird to hear that name all over again. I chucked the butt of the cigarette out of the window, opening the pack of gum I always bought alongside the Myrollboros.

“It’s… complicated,” he said after a brief pause, “Can you just do it for me? If you can’t, I’d rather know now.” he stared at me, his arm extended. I realised I couldn’t prolong this moment any longer, and that now it really was just up to me.

“What makes you so sure they’ll close the city?” I evidently irritated him (purely on accident), as he made a huge sigh.

“Because it’s our government we are talking about, and if these talks of revolution that Archie is spouting out are anything to go by, more so than usual, I’d rather not take any chances.”

“Oh, come on, he always talks about revolutions – he can’t help it – how do you-”

 “Please,” he interrupted me, adjusting himself in the seat slightly, “Look, just this once, I can’t tell you the whys or whats. I just need you to get this to her. Can I count on you?”

“No, I just mean-” What do I mean? It wasn’t a complicated question, a mere yes or no, yet I still felt the need to extend my answer into an essay of sorts (purely on accident, again) on mere just basis, “Of course I will, it’s just … Weird”

“Weird?” he chuckled, shaking his head, “I know you are new to the courier job and everything, relatively-speaking, but ‘weird’ how?”

“Because you are not helping by being so vague about it, that’s why, okay?” a déjà vu of sorts skipped through my head, reminding of how unlike me these words escaping my mouth were, especially considering the tone. This happened before somewhere, sometime – this unexpected confrontational stance I took – but I couldn’t remember, when or where. He evidently was taken slightly aback, seemingly frozen in one spot with the box still in his hands, just staring at me, “Sorry. I’ll do it, of course,” I took the box in my hands, putting it into my own bag at my feet.

“No, you are right, I’m not helping the situation, especially considering all that’s happened lately…” he sighed heavily, dropping back into his seat. The rain alone had reigned supreme over the sound around us again, even if slowing down and starting to fade away slowly into nothingness. For a moment, I even thought I began to struggle breathing again.

“You hungry at all?” he broke the silence, coming to my rescue.

“A bit.” I wasn’t, really. I’m a small eater by nature and having a single meal and a couple of snacks during the day is more than enough to keep me going…

“Wanna grab some Lando’s?”

… Lando’s, however, was something else. You, obviously, aren’t local, so you wouldn’t get it, but Lando’s, in essence, were this weird mix between street food, family establishment and lowkey hideaway place you and all your friends knew about.

“The peri-chicken joint?” it may have been a bit early to eat that heftily, “Hell yeah.” but who was I to say no to food?

“Alright, seatbelt on please!”

4:24 pm
I suppose a brief explanation is in order – I get carried away whenever I write/talk about Sam. If I was to keep it short, Sam is my best friend. If I was to keep it long, I’d tell you that we’ve met when we were still kids, just after me and my family came to the country, still figuring out the world, and, by some miracle, he just never left. Every step of the way – and crucially, throughout puberty – he was there with me; a non-judgemental, kind, earnest, reflection of myself. Whenever I didn’t know how to act around a girl, I’d come to him; whenever I wasn’t sure if my application letter sounded good enough, I’d ask him for a secondary opinion; whenever a major life decision – as was moving to the Capital – would arise, his would be the first and final opinion on the matter. For lack of a better way to describe it, Sam represented everything I wanted to be in life: creative, confident, funny, assertive, athletic, ambitious, charming – I can go on forever, which would only make it more miraculous that of all people in his life, he chose me to be his closest friend. I still remember my shock of hearing on results’ day that we were admitted to the same school, as I cursed him out for how unfunny he was and that this was not an okay thing to joke about – he just laughed until I couldn’t help but laugh as well. And even when going went tough, and I was out of school, it was Sam who not only helped me find a new place, but a job, too.

He wasn’t perfect, of course, I don’t want you to get the feeling like I idolised him (I did, but only a little). For one, he was an excellent liar – too excellent, and casual about it to boot. A notorious heartbreaker. A ‘don’t hate the player, hate the game’ kind of guy who would do anything and everything to get things done. A kind of person who would carry the heaviest of burdens around his neck but refuse to share it until the bitter end or only once in a blue moon. A person whose tone would be impossible to read. A false charmer of the most egregious kind. But if you’d ask me, that’s what made our friendship so special: I saw him for what he was, as he never once shied away from just being himself around me – something he often liked to make a point of: convincing as he may have been, he was often wrong, and he would admit it every single time.

So, for better or for worse, I simply wouldn’t be here, in the state that I am, without Sam. And it is with that man specifically that I went to get Lando’s, on that rainy December afternoon.

“…And the- then, get a load of this, – I tell her: ‘Do I know you from somewhere?’, and she goes – ‘Oh, you are the guy!’” my friend began laughing, with bits of chicken burger still in his mouth, almost chocking on it. I followed suite – it was hard not to.

“Fuck, man, that’s funny – I had pretty much the same situation once, but she only laughed at my face and tipped me a few Euros,” I said somewhat timidly, with blush racing to my cheeks. A sound of thunder rocked through the street on the outside, with the beat of rain fulfilling its role in the overall composition.

“Oh damn, so when were you gonna tell me you’re switching to being a callboy?” he snarked, prompting me to blush even more before letting a smile remerging on my face as I gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder, “But for real, for better or worse, that sounds a bit too convenient to me,” he took another bit off the burger he held in his left hand, “You don’t just randomly run into someone and instantly recognise them, especially not on the job”

“I mean, didn’t you?” I pointed out, confused.

“Well duh, but that was because I believed that it might happen,” he slurped on the soda that sat in his cupholder for a while, through a green straw. There was a whole compartment of these in his car, reserved for beverages of all kinds, yet for some reason, I never bothered to take one, “You have to believe in fate and destiny for that to work, you know. If you don’t believe, any evidence of otherwise will just make you angrier. And as far as I’m aware, you are the realists between us?”

“Yeah,” I admitted, taking somewhat of a defeated timid bite of my own wrap, “It’d be depressing to think anything but that everyone makes their own fate.”

“And how’s that working out for you?” he said, somewhat numbing.

“What?” I said, in surprise.

“Sorry. Nevermind,” he turned over to me, his words stumbling and unsure, with apologetic look in his eyes, “I didn’t mean to be that cold, it’s just… Shit, it’s been a stressful couple of weeks, is all”

“I get it, no worries” I said, with defeat in my voice still too apparent. I could argue and debate people just fine. But I couldn’t debate him – no one really could. The rain outside had gotten stronger, “Can I get another cig?”

“Of course,” he said, lending me the pack and pulling one out for himself. He was good like that, letting me have one of his even though I had an entire pack of my own,

“Whatever the case, it could always be worse,” he said, putting the wrapping paper of the burger into the brown bag on the floor in front of him, “After all, we could have always been outside, as a pair of beggars, freezing our assess off and possibly dying of hypothermia”

“Isn’t a courier just that, but forced to move around more?” I smiled, as he chuckled.

“Nah, mate, we are the unsung heroes of this city. After all, who the hell would want to go out into the world and pick their parcels up themselves, eh?”

“I would’ve,” or more appropriately, I do.

“Really?” he took a drag, filling his car with smoke, rolling the window down, “And why would you?”

“I guess, I just wouldn’t want to trouble anybody else with my own affairs. Plus, I like walking.” I followed, rolling down the one on my side.

“That’s barely a factor – you wouldn’t do this job if you didn’t like walking, bozo. But the former…” he paused, staring at me, as ash slowly fell of his cigarette down onto the floor. I said nothing, “I guess that’s somewhat admirable, yet that’s just you. For better or worse, it is definitely not me, and definitely not anybody else in this whole city.” Yet again, I had nothing to add to that. A strong gust of wind then blew inside the car, putting out his cigarette.

“Fuck sake,” he mumbled, closing the window a little bit more, leaving just the bit on top open enough so he could let the smoke escape. Pulling out a lighter, he leaned in closer to it again. As the flame went up in its usual captivating dance, he froze. For a moment, he sat there, staring out of it, as if he had forgotten that he had a lighter in his hand, “Do you ever wish it was different, though?”

“What exactly?”

“I don’t know, everything?” he finally lit the cigarette, pulling the window down slightly more down after realising that it was not enough for the smoke to escape, “Not as trite, as… a whole lot of nothing, as it is now?”

“Not sure I follow. Is the job weighing you down?”

“Not just the job, man, everything,” he took another drag, “I don’t want to come off as pretentious, but I feel like the way I live right now… it’s like being poisoned, day by day, through your own prescriptions. By the worries of money, of how am I meant to carry on living, of what will I do tomorrow, next week, next month, in a year’s time, by the air of the city itself. It’s as if I’m experiencing everything and nothing at once – a life of eternal standby, waiting for something real to happen… Have I lost you yet?”

“Nope,” I still had no idea where he was going with this, so it was hard to lose me – I was listening attentively.

“I just… I feel like I reached the dead-end of sorts. Like, this is it – this is my life – and there is nothing else afterwards. All the lies of marriage, kids, country houses, walks in the woods, fulfillment, retirement, memoirs writing – none of that is there, not even death. And so, the only way to reverse this terrible fate is to turn everything completely on its head, from the fundamentals to the smallest details.”

“So you’d like to have your own personal revolution, basically?” I half-sarcastically asked him.

“You could say that, I guess.”

“Okay, what did you put in these ciggies, because I want some of that good shit you’re smoking.”

“… Oh shut up,” he chuckled, but more so out of politeness as oppose to genuine joy.
The silence had regained its rule once again. Even the rain outside has finally stopped.

“I just don’t have anyone else to turn to with this, sorry to unload it on you like that, and it’s been bugging me more for a while. Maybe some things just aren’t meant to change,” he turned the engine key, causing the car to start-up and exhaust a vrooming sound, “I suppose I should head out. I need to leave tonight if I am to make it in time,” he reached back to the seat behind him, taking his bag and bringing it to the front. Out of it, he pulled out a small paper box, commonly used in our deliveries, wrapped in a beautiful blue paper with a yellow ribbon holding it together, “Promise me you’ll get this delivered. It’s important.”

I hesitated for a moment. In all these years of knowing him, I didn’t recall one time when he was so existential or serious with me, ever. Even in my darkest days (of which there were, I may assure you, plenty), he still remained carefree and cheerful. At this point, in mere few hours, minutes, seconds, it felt like a completely different person was sat next to me.

“___?” at that moment, he called me by my first name, as if pulling me out of the temporary stasis back into the car with him, as rapidly as he appeared a couple of hours back just over the corner.

“Promise,” and yet, he was my friend, and I could not turn him down. A smile full of relief appeared on his face, as he watched me get out of the car, parked outside of my apartment. He leaned over to close the door behind me.

“Thank you, seriously,” he hesitated for a moment, as if thinking of saying something that was either heavy or he should not be saying, “Take care of yourself mate. Give Lena my love.. See you later.”

“No, Sam, I’ll see you later!” I waved at him, as he closed the door. The tires, still wet from the rain, began turning, burning through the concrete, as he turned the car around and went down towards the highway leading out of the city.

Somehow, looking at him driving away, made me sad and uncertain of everything at the same time. Maybe it was the conversation we’ve just had, or the general mood of the day, but something about Samuel, my dearest and closest friend since the day I set foot in this country, didn’t feel right. It suddenly felt like an ocean has been placed between us, a great mountain had been erected, or the ground itself split in two, leaving just space in-between.

Somehow, I suddenly felt awfully alone.

4:49 pm
Back at my flat, nothing seemed to have moved or changed. Sure, I do live alone – how could it – but there was a certain air of stillness to it, unchangeable by time and space. It wasn’t much, a mere single room with a generous bathroom and an abnormal depression in the wall, orienteered for the kitchen stove and a couple of cupboards in one of the corners. I suppose, it was better than nothing. I guess, I could only really complain about the lack of a bedframe, but maybe that’s my fault. Whatever, mattress worked just as well on the floor.

I dropped my bag near the entrance and hanged my jacket on the small hook sticking out of the wall, only taking my phone and cigarettes out. Still having three if not more hours until my shift was to start, I did not need to worry myself with going out anywhere, not that I had or wanted to. I walked to the small but nice desk just under the windowsill, where my only expensive possession – a laptop – rested. Next to it, in a tempting manner, a few academic books and magazines from my uni days were stacked. I probably should throw them out, eventually. They do nothing but collect dust at this point. And still, sometimes, I do miss the days when I actually used them. What a useless memory.

I moved the books away. There was no point going down the memory lane now when I needed to focus. See, I don’t want you to think I’m some lazy type, you know? I didn’t just come back home to waste time, even though I have a complete right to do so. Having booted my laptop up, I went straight for the wordpad. You see, my counsellor, he recommended I should try and focus more. I have this condition, not quite ADHD, which causes me to get so distracted and focus on smaller, insignificant details much closer than I ever would on other, more important things, coupled with a few other symptoms that are not worth talking about. That’s something, I’m sure, you’ve noticed by now, and again – I am so, so sorry about it. I do try to fight it, which brings me back to the wordpad. At first, I was told to start a journal, to record my thoughts after I come back from my shifts, I’m still doing that – in fact, much of what I’ve written in it helped me write down this lengthy story you’re reading right now. On top of that, though, I was now tasked with writing myself a message, about my lifestyle no less. He said it would help me to not only focus, but also reflect upon myself and my surroundings.

And so it was, as I stared into the white blank of the opened window, thinking, what should I write.

Dear me,
I was told we should talk about our lifestyle today. I don’t really do the small talk, not with you out of all people, so let’s get straight into it.
I don’t think it’s anything new for you to hear, but you don’t lead the most exciting life there is. The promises of grandeur and changing the world were tales to be inspired by, but never expect wholeheartedly. You deliver goods for a company that operates god-knows by which ethics, if any at all. But you don’t question that. You never do, because what is the point as long as you are getting paid, right?
When you are not delivering for them, you contemplate and think that your ideas and thoughts can be important, make an impact, make people happier. Despite that, you take no interest in real, not-backseat politics or any kind of activism. You essentially throw those ideas at the wall, only to impress yourself.
When you are not thinking those beyond important thoughts, you seem to just do whatever. The few friends you have-

No, hang on.

The only two friends you have left are Sam and Miranda. Brian doesn’t count, you haven’t seen him since last winter. Miranda is kind and understanding. And yet you also think she can be nosy and annoying. How is that supposed to work?

Well, why wouldn’t it? Can you not both think high of your friends and admit to their faults and weaknesses at the same time?

Sam is a different story. He’s the only consistently challenging aspect to your lifestyle. Someone to look up to. Someone to aspire to be. Maybe he’s not even a friend anymore, but an idol? He’s certainly not on the same level as you are.

Again, can he not be both? A friend is both a support and inspiration, a friend is-

No, he cannot. And with each day, he gets more and more unreachable. Now, even physically.

I have nothing to say to that.

Finally, when you are not just doing whatever with your friends, you just waste time by yourself. You don’t write anything amazing or creative. You don’t try out new things. You barely even go out.

That’s because I don’t have the money to.

If you wanted to, you’d find the money. Find a day job. Get a loan. Borrow from your friends. Something, anything at all.

I don’t want to be a burden to others.

So you become a burden for yourself. You waste yourself by wasting your time. Which is why you most often just go to bed or smoke. And then, after enough time passes, it’s on to another shift at work, delivering goods for a company with no ethics and questionable reputation.
Overall, your lifestyle, for the most part, can be described only as anticlimactic.

No, that doesn’t make any sense.

Your lifestyle, for the most part, can be described only as slow.

Don’t say that.

Uneventful.
Boring.

Stop-

Useless.
Wasteful.

Stop doing that!

Empty.
Meaningless.
A pathetic excuse of a human experience.

I shut the laptop without saving. Maybe trying this that day was not such a great idea.

I sighed, getting out another cigarette out from the pack, using one of the lighters I’ve picked up on the street, allowing the fire to devour it whole. Of course, I also made sure that the window was opened – my landlord doesn’t like me smoking inside, but I do anyway on occasion. No victim, no crime, if you’d ask me. The ashtray on the table was getting full. I should probably empty it sometime soon, too.

God, I really do need to clean my apartment out, don’t I?

You know, one of the most appealing things I find about cigarettes is the smoke. Not how it feels or smells – it’s mostly awful. I like how it looks. Even now, despite only sitting in my room, I could admire something somewhat beautiful and fascinating, going up-up-up my room towards the ceiling above in a steady manner, whirling and escaping, until finally disappearing, even if not entirely. It was satisfying, and it was simple. But most importantly, it made me feel in peace.

I closed my eyes, looking upwards. The nicotine was starting to hit again. I felt myself drift, but I didn’t want to fade out yet, so I looked back at the screen.

For lack of better things to occupy myself, I opened the browser and went to the default news page of my search engine, just for something to do.

The page, as expected, was laced primarily with news about yesterday’s (as Archie has put it) fucking mess. Some headlines focused on the shot politician, with seemingly two camps being split on the matter: certain articles claimed he was in critical condition, others that he was recovering. None refuted that he was shot, though. Funny, you’d almost expect something like the Typewriter or the Daily Mailman to claim otherwise. A couple of others talked about the explosion, which I myself found ridiculous: there was no bomb yesterday, just fireworks… Or was there? I must say, the pictures looked convincing. The building behind the scene, the one upon which that sun flag was hanging off from, had a massive gaping hole in the middle, as if the very inside of it was on fire. But no victims were reported – none directly affected by the explosion, anyway – and a few think-pieces even tried to press the case of a malfunction in the firework machine, which somehow escalated into a critique of modern safety regulations.

There seemed to be no definitive truth to be found, if there was or wasn’t a bomb at the square. The only other time I can recall of something similar happening is back in 20xx, during some big summer festival concert. A fire started backstage, and in ensuing panic, two or three people died, with hundreds wounded. Yet, there were multiple think-pieces written, speculating if this was part of the show, particularly because the stage was not that badly damaged in the end; what didn’t help either was the fact that the musician who was performing, and his entire camp, never clarified what led to the fire, merely stopping at calling the entire enterprise “a tragedy.” Legal reasons, probably, were sound; yet public clarity and panic was not helped, leading to a wide array of conspiracy theories despite the fact that we all saw, fundamentally, what happened. Even without help of virtual and augmented realities, we all still managed to come off as if we saw two very different things happen.

Finally, the trampling. The one from which I crawled (Walked? Ran?) out from. Indeed, as Miranda mentioned, eight dead and thirty injured – a tragedy, but as one article has said, it could’ve been way worse for a crowd of fifty thousand people. Maybe they had a point. What attracted me most, though, is how even in the photos highlighting the blood, the injury and the death, I could still feel the beating neon heart of the city from them. I could still feel the life, the senses, the smells of everything that the streets had to offer on their best, most wonderful days. It didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel like it mattered.

Until I have finally seen it. In one of the pictures, amongst the emergency response units moving around the scene, carrying someone clearly in pain on a stretcher, on almost the side-line, just next to a policeman holding a small rifle in his hands and talking on the radio, a shook expressionless face was visible. Covered in blood, he was just sitting on the sidewalk, with his bag hanging not on his shoulder, but more so on his neck, with knees together and hands put over them. On his dark-blue cap, some blood was sprayed, extending to his face. All the feeling of loss, contempt, terror and helplessness that I knew were inside of him, were reflected with a mere nothingness on his face.

That someone was me. And yet, it still felt like it wasn’t.

I couldn’t recognise myself. The possibility that this could even be me felt distant, almost unreachable. His posture, his look, his… nothingness – it all seemed like whoever was at that picture could just disappear in an instance if you looked too closely. A mere illusion of a man. A mirage for the society to stare and dispel itself in. An emptiness embodied and left on the sidewalk to be captured by the cameras for the sake of getting their article to be the top result of the search throughout the day, until people would move on to happier or more important things.

I felt disgusted. I didn’t want to be that man. I refused to be that man.

I slammed the laptop shut. The cigarette flew out of my hand onto the floor.

“God fucking damn it!” I couldn’t hold back my voice, picking the remains of my cigarette from the floor and putting it into the ashtray. I did not want to think of myself as a person who has dipped so low he would use floor for ashtrays.

I stood up from the desk, walking back and forth across my tiny studio, the image still fresh in my head. Perhaps it was just a bad angle, or a poor timing, but it stuck with me. And still, no matter how the rest of the day – or rather, night – would develop, I promised myself that I will not ever again be that person in the photo.

I finally stopped, closing my eyes. I did not think of anything in particular – I just let my eyes rest for a moment. This day has been too much for now. I deserved a break. I took a quick glance at my wristwatch – just after half-five. I decided I should take a nap. That would’ve certainly made me feel better.

Of course, before that, I should have taken my pills. I knew it was not exactly 6 yet, which would have been the appropriate time, but I needed a nap too badly to sit around and wait.

The tap water ran its cold stream through my fingers, as I held under it a cheap teacup I bought in that market next to our office. With my other hand, I swept through the nearest cupboard, extracting a small transparent-red bottle with my pills.

I should clarify, despite how I talk of them right now, these weren’t prescription drugs. A few months before, I was able to get some ________ from _______, to help with focusing on the job, and found it highly effective. So effective, in fact, that I almost fully gave up coffee, which at first was a staple of many shifts. Sadly, the harsher crackdowns on anything useful ensued, and so it has by now become rather difficult to find. I, of course, have my sources, but you don’t need to know about all that. I guess that’s what my sister meant with her cautions about the adult world.

I swallowed the pills with my eyes closed, not giving them or my sister another second of thought.

With nothing else on my mind, I took my jeans off and hanged them on the chair. Before hitting the pillow, I took out my earphones and plugged them into my phone. You see, I have trouble falling asleep, so I need a special app to ‘guide me’ to it. It’s nothing special, just some background noises. Today, I decided it would be the ‘noises of the countryside.’

With the alarm set for exactly 6:45 pm, I sighed once more, trying to get that awful image from my head, closed my eyes and laid my head down.

The sound of birds singing made me feel like I was back home. In the subtle rustle of the leaves, I could hear my mother calling the whole family to dinner. In-between the soothing running of the river, I almost heard her calling for me. The authenticity of the app has finally overwhelmed me, and I allowed myself to drift.

But piercing this illusion, just outside my window, the beating heart of the city stubbornly echoed in unison, through the sound of cars and loudspeakers, through the chatter of the pedestrians and sirens of government agencies, clearly telling me one thing and one thing only:

It is only here where you belong.

END OF PART 1