The traffic had jammed to a complete standstill, even though it was Sunday and Vix had been caught on the top deck of a bus for more than ninety minutes, slowly freezing in the still, confined air.
Everything went slower than usual today, but the people he observed outside the bus window had seemed more relaxed and easy-minded, even happier than usual, and Vix had - like many times before - wondered whether it was really true that it was down to all the simple things in life to make it safely through the day.
It certainly seemed a hell of a lot more agreeable than being bombarded with the whirlwinds of information and those wild and sometimes quite scary, experiences that seemed to fill his own days.
Maybe it was this information in itself that kept him from experiencing such carefree days as others seemed to enjoy today?
Then again, he couldn't be sure that all his insecurities and all this weirdness didn't fill everyone's life, but that some were better built to handle it than others? Or at least hide their internal noise more successfully.
He finally made it to the station, escaped the claustrophobic bus, and got on the train.
There were no paranoid, stern-looking old ladies clutching their handbags on the train today. And no agro-looking blokes trying to stare him down or forcing him to turn his attention in the direction of the train window, where he would desperately try to stay fixed on his own reflection in the window or the dancing cables on the tunnel wall outside.
No. Today, the world seemed almost to smile at him.
At least it had stopped screaming at him just for a moment.
But, in all this positivity, something had been bothering him ever since he got up that morning.
Now that he was on his way out to the Village it surfaced again.
It was a strange mix. A feeling of melancholy mixed with a feeling of relief of some sort. Not that he wasn't used to strange mixes when it came to emotions, but this one was different from the usual chaotic turmoil of fear, desperation, anger and a dozen other - usually quite contradictory - feelings.
This special mixture felt more real, even like something he imagined other people could have felt. People who had no trouble with telling one feeling from another. Real people.
Anyway, he didn't want to go too far into it, especially on a day like today, when he felt so much at ease with the world around him.
He got off at the station and started walking down Mortal Road.
He thought about how much he liked this road. It was such an easy road for him to relate to, with all its to-the-point little shops and buildings. There was nothing unnecessary here, and that felt like such a great relief.
He got to the coffee shop, walked over to the counter and ordered his usual. Then he walked over to the window table and sat down. Surely Mr. Friend would be here any minute now.
More often than not it would be the other way around, that Vix would be the one to enter last, only to get a tiny sarcastic remark about timing.
He didn't really bother. It somehow felt right that Mr. Friend as the older, and far more sharply dressed gentleman of the two should give him a little heat for being late.
But not today.
He drank his coffee while looking out the window, just letting his thoughts wander. There had been some great Sundays during this time. It was as though he couldn't remember exactly how his life had been before Mr. Friend showed up in it.
Still, their friendship had changed somehow over the last few months. Or had it been years? Not that he cared that much for time anymore with all the new weirdness taking place concerning reality going all wobbly on him and Vix being hurled through freaky tunnels and all.
But he couldn't help but think that although Mr. Friend had started out seeming a very wise old man, someone with a lot of answers, and Vix' obvious superior when it came down to general wisdom - the more Vix got to know him, the more he felt like challenging his opinions.
Of course he would never admit to any feeling of inferiority to Mr. Friend's face from the start, but still, all his recent protests to Mr. Friend's matter-of-fact explanations of history had become less straining. It was almost like before he had to file his protests to Mr. Friend's opinions and at the same time convince himself of the validity of his own protests, but that recently he had just opened his mouth and 'talked back' with whatever he felt like saying, simply expressing his own beliefs and opinions as he got them.
This made him feel good. Even thinking about it made him feel good.
Of course Vix had already forgotten how their last conversation ended.
He couldn’t get away from the notion that talking to Mr. Friend was almost as if he had really been talking to himself, but that he had badly needed to say it all out loud instead of keeping this dialogue inside.
This is how well they knew eachother.
“What a great thing to have happened to me, meeting Mr. Friend”, he thought, as he sipped the remains of lukewarm coffee in the cup.
He realized he'd been sitting here for quite a while already.
Strange. This was very unlike Mr. Friend.
He ordered another cup of coffee.
"Whatever", he thought "it’ll give me more time to figure out what to hit the old bastard with when he eventually shows up."
He reckoned he should tell Mr. Friend about the 'weather photoblog' he stumbled across the other night. It was a project initiated by some artists where they'd invited people to take photos related to the weather at whatever spot they lived on the planet.
They had been set up in couples, where each had to post one photo a day over a period of a few weeks. This meant that they could only communicate through pictures - pictures of the weather. This would make for great conversation with Mr. Friend. Him, with his preoccupation with the weather.
Then maybe this would please him and make him feel all right about himself and go all 'what did I tell you' on Vix?
The smug fool.
And then Vix would hit him and tear him down again with some bland celebrity-news, or some new statistics on the global rise of entertainment-consumption.
This would surely make the old man go mad and get all agitated about the world again.
Only he would have to show up first.
Vix could feel the hollow sensation from earlier swell up in his chest. If someone would've asked him to guess, he'd say it was some kind of sorrow.
Not that he was an expert.
After the fourth cup of coffee and the dusk creeping in outside the window, Vix got up and decided to leave the coffee-shop.
He felt very sad now.
At least he was sure about that now.
He walked slowly along Mortal Road, across the bridge and down to the river.
The evening sky had the most wonderful colours all across.
At the river bank he sat down on a bench.
He was alone, and everything around him was beautiful.
Vix started crying.
He couldn't remember the last time he had cried. It must have been when he was still a child. The salty taste in his mouth made him feel real, and inside himself.
It was endlessly sad, but in a strange way also kind of warming. He tried to smile through his tears, but was overcome by another wave of grief.
Something had ended today - something that had made him very happy as it went on. He knew this now.
He had been left alone once again.
The moon shone when he walked back from the bus stop.
He got inside, didn't bother to take his coat off but walked straight over to his desk, opened the computer and logged in to the blog.
Then he wrote:
Today I may have lost a friend that I cared more for than I ever knew. It makes me very sad.
Then he posted the track "Tunglskin" by Mental Overdrive.
He googled the foreign-sounding track title, and found that it was Icelandic for 'Moonshine'. Then he found a picture of the full moon and put it in the post.
This felt appropriate.
He continued staring blankly at the screen when he was done.
His eyes were sore from crying and he badly needed some sleep, but he didn't want to lie down and get overcome with these emotions in the dark.
When he had googled the song, he had also found this competition by the artist’s label. They announced that anyone who managed to decode a 'backwards' message hidden on one of the tracks from the same artist's new album would be granted a lifetime free subscription to the label's output in the future.
He thought this was a nice gesture more than a good deal; of course, he could just download all their tracks for free from one of the torrent services if he wanted to.
But he gave them points for trying to engage him, though, and he badly needed something to steer his brain into more logical waters this evening.
He downloaded the whole album in question and opened every single track in his free audio editor. Then he reversed all of them, and put them in a playlist from the first till the last track.
After more than one hour listening to backwards music on headphones, he suddenly spotted a pitched-down voice deep in the mix on the last track of the album.
The tune was called "End", and the voice repeated:
Nude mosaic.
Fist evil.
No way.
It was a very strange message, or combination of messages, he thought. But then listening to a whole album backwards wasn't exactly mainstream culture either.
He quickly wrote an email to the label with his answer to the competition, then he downloaded the album artwork, inverted and flipped it in Photoshop, and uploaded it to the blog.
Usually he didn't like double posts, but today he decided he didn't really care much about such silly details or stubborn principles.
Then Vix fell asleep in the chair.
With his coat still on.
And one less friend in the world.
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