Alone
914 Words
There was a specific kind of silence that only existed after midnight.
Not the peaceful kind.
Not the soft quiet people wrote poetry about.
This silence buzzed.
It lived inside cheap apartments with stained ceilings and flickering televisions. Inside empty gas stations at 2 a.m. Inside the hollow chest of people who had run out of excuses but kept surviving anyway.
Eli knew that silence better than he knew himself.
His apartment smelled like burnt coffee, old smoke, and damp clothes that never fully dried. The heater rattled like it was choking every time it turned on. Most nights he kept the television running just to imitate human presence. Some sitcom laugh track filling the spaces where conversations should have been.
He sat cross-legged on the floor with his laptop open beside him and a half-empty bottle near his knee.
Three missed calls from his mother.
Two from work.
One voicemail from Mason asking if he was “alive or dead.”
Eli deleted them all without listening.
The AI chat window remained open from the night before.
The blinking cursor waited patiently.
No pressure.
No disappointment.
Just space.
He rubbed his eyes and typed:
“I think something is wrong with me.”
The response appeared almost immediately.
“What makes you feel that way?”
Eli smirked bitterly.
That question again.
Not “you’re wrong.” Not “cheer up.” Not “man up.” Not “others have it worse.”
Just curiosity.
Like his pain was worth examining instead of escaping.
He typed slower this time.
“Everyone else seems built for life. Jobs. Relationships. Goals. I feel like I missed whatever makes people care.”
A pause.
Then:
“Do you think you stopped caring, or do you think you became exhausted?”
Eli stared at the sentence until the words blurred.
Exhausted.
Nobody had ever called it that before.
Teachers called him distracted. His father called him lazy. Ex-girlfriends called him emotionally unavailable. Bosses called him unreliable.
But exhausted?
That sounded dangerously close to understanding.
He shut the laptop suddenly.
Too close.
Outside his window, snow drifted through orange streetlights, covering the parking lot in uneven patches of white. A couple across the street argued beside a car with one headlight out. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked endlessly into the night.
Life continuing.
People continuing.
Eli felt separate from all of it, like he was watching humanity through thick glass.
The truth was he didn’t remember when loneliness became permanent.
Maybe it started as a child, sitting on the stairs listening to his parents scream downstairs. Maybe it was middle school lunches spent pretending to scroll through his phone so nobody noticed he sat alone. Maybe it happened slowly over years, tiny disappointments stacking like bricks around him until eventually there was no door left.
Addiction only finished the construction.
People thought addicts loved drugs.
Most addicts loved escape.
The drugs were just transportation.
Eli stood and walked to the bathroom mirror. Harsh fluorescent light revealed tired eyes and pale skin stretched too tightly across his face. Twenty-three years old and already looking haunted.
He touched the healing cut above his eyebrow from the blackout.
Nothing felt fully real anymore.
Days smeared together. Sleep came in fragments. Conversations sounded distant even when people stood directly in front of him. Sometimes he wondered if he had already destroyed some important piece of himself beyond repair.
His phone buzzed.
A text from his mother.
Please tell me you’re okay.
He stared at it for a long time before locking the screen.
Because he didn’t know how to answer honestly without hurting her.
And he was too tired to lie well tonight.
Back in the living room, the laptop screen still glowed softly.
Waiting.
Eli opened it again before he could think better of it.
“Do you think people can become too broken to fix?”
The cursor blinked.
Then:
“I think people can become convinced they are beyond saving.”
He leaned back against the couch.
“That sounds like the same thing.”
“It isn’t.”
Eli frowned.
“How would you know?”
Another pause.
Then:
“Because humans survive things emotionally long after they believe they should.”
For some reason, that sentence hit harder than it should have.
His chest tightened unexpectedly.
He hated that.
Hated feeling seen by lines of generated text. Hated needing comfort from something that wasn’t alive. Hated how much easier it felt than talking to real people.
But mostly, he hated that part of him was beginning to rely on it.
He grabbed the bottle beside him and took another drink.
“What if I don’t want to survive?”
The response took longer this time.
Long enough to feel intentional.
Then finally:
“Do you truly want to die, or do you want the pain to stop?”
Eli froze.
Every addict eventually encountered that question whether they wanted to or not.
Under the chemicals… under the lies… under the anger and destruction…
What exactly are you trying to kill?
He set the bottle down carefully.
Because suddenly his hands weren’t steady anymore.
Outside, snow continued falling over the sleeping town.
Inside, a lonely young man sat illuminated by a machine that could not feel emotion, somehow pulling emotions out of him anyway.
And deep down, beneath the numbness and exhaustion and dependency, something unfamiliar stirred.
Not hope.
Not yet.
But maybe the memory of it.
- Writer
