What a Stupid Life

One Tuesday in March, at twenty past eleven at night, Axel was sitting on his kitchen floor.

Two metres away lay a half-eaten slice of pizza. The rest was on the table beside a glass of water and a phone playing a video of some lad laughing his head off as he shoved a goat into a car.

Axel didn’t move for four minutes.

His heart was going like mad and right then he didn’t even know where he was.

Only one thought in his head: “what a stupid life…”

That thought came to him every night before bed, when he put his phone face down on the bedside table and realised what he’d done with his day.

He’d been doing the same thing for four years.

Eight hours a day behind a reception desk, smiling at people he was never going to see again and didn’t much fancy seeing again either. A rented flat that ate half his wages and where not even the colour of the walls was his. His mates, in a group chat that hadn’t made a sound in three weeks.

And the nights on the sofa, watching people living the fucking dream: on a beach, in a camper van, in a little cottage with a garden… or having one hell of a party.

But really they all had the same dead-eyed look as him.

Who the fuck is happy these days?

He asked himself that sometimes, phone in hand, and the answer was nobody he knew. Then he swiped to the next video.

“It can’t go on like this.”

He got to his feet, grabbed the phone off the table and unlocked it.

He wrote three messages.

To Bruno, who’d been cutting his hair for years:

Mate, sorry it’s so late. I need a haircut. Tomorrow if you can.

To the landlord, the flat’s actual owner:

Good evening. I’m not renewing. I’m out on the 1st, and keep the deposit for the trouble.

And to Don Ernesto, the hotel manager:

Hi. I’m handing in my notice with immediate effect. Sorry. Thanks for everything.

All three in four minutes. Then he locked the phone, put it down next to the slice of pizza and sat there a good while with his mind blank.

Bruno answered twenty minutes later: tomorrow at half four, gorgeous.

He chucked the pizza in the bin, switched his phone off and went to bed.

The next morning he woke without an alarm and drank a glass of water standing in the kitchen. He considered switching his phone on, then decided he didn’t want any calls or messages that might change his mind.

That was when it hit him that he didn’t actually have anything. He’d been paying rent for years but deep down none of it belonged to him.

Almost everything he owned was in plain sight: the pile of clothes on the chair next to the bed, the photos stuck on the wall and a little stack of brightly coloured boxes.

There were nine brand-new board games, birthday presents from his parents. He’d never played a single one.

He peeled the photos off one by one. A hundred and seventy-nine pictures that looked like they came from a life a long way off. They were the only thing he had that really mattered.

He squared them into a stack and put a rubber band from the kitchen drawer round it.

He left the flat and went straight to Decathlon.

He grabbed a hundred-and-twenty-euro tent, a three-season sleeping bag, a gas canister for the stove his dad had given him, a steel water bottle, a head torch, a few hiking bits and bobs that caught his eye and a whopping great rucksack.

He noticed how ultra mega happy he was getting, buying all that stuff.

By half one he was back in his room, with a monster of a rucksack and a bag full of gear.

He sat on the bed looking at the mountain of colourful boxes. He didn’t want to throw them out or leave them for the landlord, but he couldn’t think who to give them to either. Well, someone would come to mind.

He switched his phone on to face the avalanche of missed calls and messages.

Not a single call.

Three messages:

Manolo flat: “Ok, we’ll call the tenancy finished. Works out perfect actually, I was just about to tell you I want to stick the flat on Airbnb. Leave the keys on the table when you go.”

Ernesto boss: “Ok, we’ll consider your contract terminated as of today, voluntary resignation. You can keep the uniform.”

Mum: “Morning handsome, how’s everything?”

He deleted the two stupid conversations and opened his mum’s.

“Hi Mum, so… I’ve quit my job and I’m going travelling.” He stared at it and deleted it letter by letter. He wrote “All gooood mumsy, I’ll ring you tomorrow” and deleted that too.

He wrote “Hi Mum, all good. Actually they’ve given me some holiday at the hotel so I’m off up north for a few days. We’ll talk in the next few days and I’ll tell you properly, love youuu!” and sent it.

He fried himself a couple of eggs for lunch and, while he ate, got through a load of videos with tips on sleeping in a tent.

At four he put his shoes on and went to the loo before heading out.

While he was having a piss, he got to thinking how well thought out it all is. A dinky little porcelain loo. The pipes. The water that takes away the shit and the wee of a whole city and gives it back clean to a river. “We humans have got absolutely everything sorted,” he told himself. “And my life’s still fucking shit.”

He looked in the mirror before he went and pushed his hair out of his face. It was brushing his shoulders now. The bloke in the mirror looked happy and relaxed, and that afternoon he was. What the mirror didn’t show was the emptiness that settled in the pit of his stomach every night. Axel hoped leaving would make it go away.

He went out into the street with fifteen minutes to spare, because he wasn’t one of those people who turn up late.

The whole street side of the salon was glass, so from outside you could see everything: Bruno sweeping up the last customer’s hair and Clara arranging the dye bottles on the shelf by colour, which for some reason always ended up in a mess.

Six metres long by four wide, two chairs, a wash basin and the shelf. Bruno had panelled the walls in wood himself one August, with boards off a pallet, and you could tell in two places. And seven plant pots hung from the ceiling, which Axel counted every time he walked in because every time there was one more.

He went in and both of them turned round.

“Axel, mate! I was waiting for you.”

“Well, here I am.” And to her: “Hiya, Clara.”

“Sit down and let’s crack on.”

He sat down facing the mirror while Bruno draped the cape over him, gave the chair handle two turns and started at the back of his neck.

Clara finished with the bottles and went to balance the till. Axel was still looking in the mirror when he saw one of them wobbling behind his own reflection.

It was one of the dyes on the top shelf, a dark violet one, and it was wobbling slowly, like someone had given it a push. Axel narrowed his eyes. By the time he tried to get a proper look it was still, and so were the ones next to it, and there was nobody on that side of the salon.

He let it go. There’s a lot of traffic on that street and shelves vibrate.

Bruno took his time with the cut, chatting about this and that while Axel said just enough to keep him going. He trimmed the back and around the ears, leaving the fringe loose, just how Axel liked it. Quite a mound of hair was gathering on the floor.

And while Bruno was shaking out the cape, the violet bottle moved again. This time Axel was looking right at it.

Right next to the bottles, walking along the shelf without a care in the world, there was a little mouse.

Bruno carried on with what he was doing. Clara had her back to them, at the till. The little mouse got to the end of the shelf, stopped and lifted its head, and Axel could’ve sworn it looked at him and not at the wall.

Then it was gone.

He didn’t say anything. He kept it to himself, same as he’d kept the pizza to himself, except this one made him laugh.

“Cheers, mate. It’s perfect,” he said, getting up out of the chair.

“No worries, gorgeous.” Bruno shook the cape out two more times than it needed. “And don’t leave it another eight months before you come back, yeah? You looked like a hedge.”

Clara came back from the till and leaned on the back of the other chair.

“Here, what are you up to on Saturday? There’s a plant market on in the park and I don’t want to go on my own.”

Axel stood there for a second with his wallet open in his hand.

“I’ll let you know.”

“That’s a no,” said Bruno, without looking up from the broom.

“That’s a maybe,” said Clara.

“Oi, and what about tonight?” said Axel, paying his mate for the cut. “Shall I do dinner at mine and then we play something? I’ve got a bit of news for you.”

“Newwwwws!” said Clara, with a wink. “Have you finally bagged yourself a girlfriend?”

“Haha… no chance! Come round tonight and I’ll tell you properly.”

“Sorted, mate! We’ll be there!” said Bruno, running his hand over the fresh cut.

“The mysterious Axel,” Clara added. “See you at yours. We’ll head over as soon as we’re done.”

Axel stepped out of the salon, cool air on the back of his neck, happy as Larry.