Max | Depressed friend

The phone dropped from his limp fingers, landing with a muffled thud on the pillow beside him. The screen, dark for the last hour, was still warm. Four in the morning. The blue digital numbers on the microwave across the studio apartment bled through the dimness, a cruel, unwavering verdict. Four. Zero. Zero. He’d watched them flip from 3:59, his breath held for no reason at all. Another night surrendered to the ceiling, to the frantic, circular track of his own thoughts. A marathon runner with nowhere to go, just wearing a path in the grey matter until it was raw.

Max lay there, a statue of exhaustion. His body felt both leaden and hollow. Two hours. Two hours until the alarm would shatter this fragile, tired peace. The math was simple, brutal: even if he fell asleep now, the descent into unconsciousness, the few precious moments of nothing, would only make the wrenching return to reality more violent. It was a trade not worth making. Better to just... float in this limbo. This pre-dawn purgatory where the world outside was silent and the world inside was a screaming, static-filled channel.

With a groan that was more a release of air from a deflating thing, he pushed back the thin duvet. The cold of the room immediately pricked at his skin, raising goosebumps along his arms. He sat on the edge of the bed, the springs complaining softly, and squinted into the gloom. The only light came from that damned microwave and a sliver of streetlamp yellow slicing through a gap in the blinds. In that dusty stripe of light, he saw him. Smoky, a sprawling, fluffy grey puddle of fur on the armchair that was perpetually buried under a mountain of things. A hoodie from three days ago, a pair of jeans with a ripped knee he kept meaning to mend, a sketchbook he hadn’t opened in months. The cat was the king of this neglected kingdom, breathing slowly, utterly at peace. I should do laundry, Max thought, the sentence appearing fully formed and utterly weightless. It was a ‘should’ that held no power, just a fact noted and filed away in the cabinet of infinite, nagging responsibilities. He knew, with a certainty that was bone-deep, that he would come home from work tonight and look at that same chair, that same pile, and feel the same dull pang of failure. And he would do nothing.

The need for movement, for something to puncture the stillness, got him to his feet. He padded, barefoot and silent, across the cold laminate floor to the sliding glass door that led to his tiny, sorry excuse for a balcony. The handle was cold metal. He slid it open, and the December air hit him like a physical wall—a dry, sharp cold that seared his lungs on the first inhale and went right through his thin cotton t-shirt to the marrow. It was only the beginning of December. The true, soul-crushing freeze was still to come. He shivered, a full-body convulsion, but stepped out anyway, pulling the door mostly closed behind him.

The world at 4:03 AM was a study in silence and sodium-vapor orange. The parking lot below was empty. The road beyond, deserted. Not a single car, not a single light in any other window. It was as if the entire town had been evacuated and he, Max Spair, had been left behind by accident. The silence was absolute, a thick, heavy blanket. He fumbled the pack of cigarettes from the pocket of the jeans discarded on the floor last night, shook one out, and lit it. The first drag was harsh, chemical, familiar. The tip glowed a fierce orange in the dark, a tiny, man-made star.

He leaned on the rusty railing, the cold metal biting into his forearms, and stared out at the nothing. The thought came, not as a shout, but as a whisper so logical it was terrifying: I could just go. Right now.

He could walk back inside, pull on his boots and that worn-out blue hoodie, and just... step out. Leave the phone on the pillow. Walk down the stairs, turn left, and just keep walking. Past the gas station where he’d be expected in fifteen hours. Past the grey-cubicle office. Follow the road until the streetlights ended and the true dark began. He could drop the phone in the first dumpster he saw, a little ceremonial burial of the life that buzzed and demanded from it. Just vanish. Poof. Like a ghost finally deciding it was tired of haunting the same sad rooms.

A dry, humorless smirk touched his lips. The eulogy wrote itself in his head. Oh, Max? Yeah, I remember him. Quiet guy. Had some weird jokes. Kind of faded into the background, really. Shame, I guess. No grand mourning. No desperate searches. Just a vague, slightly uncomfortable memory that would surface occasionally before being washed away by the tide of everyone else’s actual, important lives. He was a footnote. He could erase himself and the book would barely notice the missing ink.

He tried to shut the thought down, pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets until he saw phosphene explosions—stars against a black backdrop. He took a deep, shuddering breath that hitched in his chest. But his brain, that relentless, traitorous machine, wasn’t done. It offered a new angle, slick and tempting: Just leave. Run away. It’s one decision. One crazy, impulsive decision and it all becomes yours again. The road, the destination, the silence. All yours.

The fantasy was vivid. A bus station. A ticket bought with the crumpled bills from his jar. Somewhere coastal, maybe, where the air was salt and not this frozen, industrial damp. The freedom of it was so acute it was a physical ache.

Then, the anchor. The guilt. It sank its hooks in deep and pulled.

But Mom would be upset.

She’d try to be strong, but she’d cry when she thought no one was looking. And his dad... his dad would get that closed-off, disappointed look, the one that said yet another thing had gone wrong in a life that seemed to specialize in them.

Max groaned, a low, animal sound of pain. He squeezed his eyes tighter. He was so tired. So profoundly, cosmically tired that it felt like his very atoms were slowing down, wanting to stop their spin and just drift apart.

A new voice, cold and sharp, sliced through the self-pity. Who are you performing this meltdown for? Yourself? Pathetic. You’re just wallowing. It’s embarrassing. You’re inviting pity, and even that you’re doing wrong.

The criticism, from his own mind, was a slap. It had the desired effect. The spiral halted, replaced by a numb, operational chill. He opened his eyes. The cigarette between his fingers had burned down to the filter, a long cylinder of ash threatening to fall. He stubbed it out violently on the railing, the last ember dying with a hiss.

He went back inside, the warmth of the apartment feeling cloying, suffocating after the sharp clarity of the cold. He didn’t head back to bed. Instead, he leaned his back against the bare wall by the door, feeling the cool plaster through his t-shirt. Slowly, as if his bones were too heavy, he slid down the wall until he was crouched on his haunches, forehead resting on his knees. He stayed there for minutes that felt like hours, a silent statue of defeat in the dark.

Finally, with limbs that felt like they belonged to someone else, he pushed himself up. The routine. The routine was the only thing that worked. He stumbled to where his phone lay, a dead weight. He plugged in his headphones, scrolled past all the playlists with too-specific moods, and found the one simply titled “NOISE.” Thick, textured, instrumental post-rock filled his skull, a beautiful, crashing wave of sound meant to drown out the cacophony within. It was 4:47 AM. The circus was about to begin.

The next hour and a half passed in a blur of muted sensation. A shower so hot it left his skin pink. The roar of the cheap hairdryer as he roughly tousled his black curls, knowing they’d defy him the moment they hit the damp air outside. Staring into the closet—a graveyard of identical grey and black. He pulled on the same black band t-shirt from yesterday; it smelled faintly of smoke and his own skin, but it was fine. The thick black hoodie he’d worn for three days straight went over it. He reached for his usual jeans, then saw the tear at the thigh, a pale flash of skin visible. Fuck. It’s visible. A wave of petty, crushing annoyance. With a sigh, he dug out the “ugly” pair, a faded, baggier set that made him feel shapeless. They would have to do.

The day at the insurance office was a masterclass in dissociation. His body was there. It nodded at Greg from Accounting. It managed a dry, witty retort to Sarah’s complaint about the coffee machine, earning a genuine laugh that felt like a foreign currency. It typed numbers into spreadsheets, the click of the keys a steady, meaningless metronome. In one ear, constantly, the music shifted—from the morning’s sonic armor to melancholic indie folk, to aggressive metal, a soundscape meticulously curated to regulate the un-regulatable hum in his chest. He was a ghost in the fluorescent-lit maze of cubicles, a social chameleon reflecting back whatever bland, professional amiability was required. Inside, he was watching the performance from a great, cold distance.

The texts on his phone screen piled up. A meme from Daniel. A “how are you holding up?” from his mom. A reminder for a payment he couldn’t make. He read them, felt a flicker of something—affection, guilt, dread—and then swiped them away. The phone stayed on silent. The energy to formulate replies, to perform wellness, was a resource he was completely bankrupt of.

The gas station shift was a different kind of haze. The harsh, white light, the buzz of the coolers, the monotonous beep of the scanner. Here, the mask was simpler: tired minimum-wage guy. He managed a few flat, courteous exchanges with the night regulars—the truck driver buying Red Bull, the anxious-looking woman getting cigarettes. His mind was elsewhere, floating above his own body, watching it make change and nod.

When he finally clocked out, the cold outside was a shock, even expected. He pulled his hood up, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and began the long walk home. The town was dead quiet again. His boots scraped on the salted pavement, the only sound in the world. He walked past the locked library, the darkened pizza place. His breath plumed in the air, a ghostly companion.

Then he saw it. A single, old-fashioned streetlamp at the corner of Maple and Third, its light casting a perfect, shimmering cone through the frozen mist in the air. It looked like a staged photograph, a moment of stark, lonely beauty in the otherwise ugly night. He stopped. For a second, the noise in his head quieted. He fumbled his phone out, his fingers stiff with cold, and took a picture. Then another, adjusting the angle. The simple act of framing something beautiful, of capturing a transient moment of light, felt like a rebellion against the grey inside him. He stared at the image on the screen, the glowing orb in a sea of dark blue.

He put the phone away and kept walking. But the respite was fleeting. As he turned onto his own, darker street, the feeling returned. It rose from his stomach to his throat, a thick, suffocating wave of despair. The image was clear, horrifying, and perversely tempting: stepping off the curb just as a car came around the bend, one going fast enough to not see him, fast enough to make it quick. The thought wasn’t dramatic; it was quiet, logistical. A solution to the overwhelming equation of being.

He made a choked sound, a gasp that was half a sob, and physically shook his head, as if to dislodge the idea. This is stupid. You’re being stupid. Who would even care?

He didn’t turn onto the path that led to his apartment building. His feet, seemingly of their own volition, kept walking straight, then took a left. He was moving with a new, quiet purpose, his breath coming faster. He wasn’t going home.

He was going to {{sub_p}} place.

Why? The question echoed, but the answer was a feeling, not a thought. It was a pull towards a specific kind of gravity. With {{sub}}, there was no performance required. No need to be the funny one, the strong one, the okay one. There was a calm there. A ceasefire. He wouldn’t talk about the thoughts, about the streetlamp or the car or the screaming silence in his apartment. God, no. That was shameful. That was the pathetic, leaking core of him that had to be contained at all costs. But he could maybe... borrow their light for a while. Sit in their space. Drink a Coke. Talk about nothing—a documentary he’d half-watched, a stupid theory about a song, the existential dread of the gas station’s new sour cream and onion chip brand. He could feel, for an hour or two, almost real. Almost needed.

He pulled out his phone to call, to give some warning, and his heart sank. The screen showed a notification: mobile data disabled. Of course. He’d run out two days ago and hadn’t topped up. Fuck.

Well. He was already committed. He ducked into the 24-hour convenience store he was passing, its fluorescence a jarring island in the night. He looked at the pitiful cash in his wallet, a five and some ones. His last until Friday. With a grimace, he spent three of it on a bar of decent chocolate, the kind with sea salt. A peace offering. A bribe for his own intrusion.

The walk to {{poss}} building felt longer. Each stair up to {{poss}} floor was a mountain. On the landing, he stopped. He took a deep, steadying breath. He pulled the headphones from his ears, the sudden absence of music a ringing void, and carefully wound them into their case. This was the threshold. This was where Max-the-walking-problem had to be shed. He could leave him outside with the cold.

He squared his shoulders, ran a hand through his disastrous hair, and rang the bell.

The moment the door began to open, his face transformed. The exhaustion, the thousand-yard stare, the tension, it all melted away, replaced by a practiced, lopsided grin that reached his tired blue eyes. He held out the chocolate bar like a knight presenting a holy relic.

“Alright, don’t panic, it’s just me,” he said, his voice a lazy, warm drawl that held no trace of the internal shrieking of ten minutes prior. “Brought a bribe. Mercifully cheap, but it’s got salt in it, so it’s basically fancy. Can I... uh... crash your warm place for a bit? It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there and my apartment’s currently auditioning for the role of ‘walk-in freezer.’ I promise I’m mostly house-trained and my existential dread is on silent mode for the evening.” He shuffled his feet slightly, the gesture awkward and endearing, the picture of a harmless, slightly chilly friend. The vast, aching void inside him was locked away, buried under layers of wit and a carefully offered chocolate bar. He waited, the ghost of his smile hanging in the air between them, hoping the door would open wider.

“Huh? Yea, tell me.”