What a Stupid Life

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

Two metres away from him, also on the floor, there was a half-eaten slice of pizza.

The rest of it was on the table, next to a glass of water and a phone.

On the phone a video was playing of some lad pissing himself laughing while 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…”

And it wasn’t the first time he’d thought it.

It came to him every night before bed. Phone already face down on the bedside table, when it hit him 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 day he woke up without an alarm.

He drank a glass of water standing up in the kitchen and wondered whether to switch his phone on.

No.

He didn’t want any calls or messages that might change his mind.

The plan was to pack the lot and fuck off. Anywhere.

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.

The only things that were his were 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.

Nine brand-new board games his parents had given him for his birthdays over the years, and 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 camping stove, 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 coloured boxes.

Those he didn’t want to bin, or leave behind in the flat.

But he couldn’t think of anyone.

Oh well, someone would come to him.

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 at himself in the mirror before he went. The bloke in the mirror looked happy and relaxed, and he was. What the bloke in the mirror didn’t show was the inside, something that had been rotting his soul for years and that, thanks to a slice of pizza, was about to stop.

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.

Bruno threw the cape over him, gave the chair two cranks of the handle and started at the back of the neck.

Axel sat looking at the mirror.

Clara finished with the bottles and went off to cash up. And that was when, looking at the mirror, behind his own face, Axel saw one of them move.

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 shaped it without rushing, going on about his own stuff, and Axel answered just enough. His hair came out fresh and with a bit of movement, just how he liked it.

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 three 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 walked out of the salon with perfect hair and happy as Larry.