The Hollow Echo

He stood by the window, staring blankly at the city below, a mass of cold, indifferent concrete. The sky above, murky and grey, seemed to press down upon the world, heavy with the weight of a million lives moving in sync, while he drifted—forgotten, detached and aimless.

It had been months since life happened. First, the job—gone in a sweep of corporate downsizing. His name, like many others, had been erased from the company’s records with a cold efficiency that left him gasping for logic and reason. Then came his wife’s departure. She hadn’t even looked him in the eyes when she left, her suitcases in hand. The quiet thud of the door closing behind her was the last real sound in their house.

At first, he reached out to his friends, but he quickly realized the futility. They were too busy, too absorbed in their own lives. Conversations had become awkward; they didn’t know what to say, and he had nothing left to contribute. His phone remained silent.

Eventually, he stopped trying altogether.

Now, his days bled into each other, indistinguishable. He didn’t remember the last time he had left his apartment except for buying alcohol, his only companion in these lonely hours. His bookshelf, once his pride, was now a neglected pile of forgotten words, gathering dust. His record player, with its scratched vinyls, played the same sad tunes—songs of lost love, betrayal, and the slow erosion of hope.

Each evening, the ritual began the same way. A bottle of cheap whiskey was opened, the first gulp burning his throat. By the second glass, the haze would start to form around his mind, dulling the sharp edges of reality. He would then sink into his old leather chair, clutching on to the bottle like a lifeline, as if the liquid inside could fill the void growing inside of him.

The city outside, alive with a pulse that he could no longer feel, seemed like another world. He watched the lights flicker on in apartments across the street, families sitting down to dinner, couples laughing over wine. The sound of their distant lives barely reached him. They were too far, too out of reach. It was as if an invisible barrier separated him from the rest of the world—a barrier he had neither the strength nor desire to cross.

His mind spiraled into existential musings during these hours, trapped in a cycle of questions he had no answer to. What is the point? he asked himself, over and over, like a stuck record. He had once believed in dreams, in the promises life had made him, but they had all faded into the cruel reality of an unforgiving world. No one cared. He was just another man among millions, his story as forgettable as the others. No one was coming to save him.

Some nights, in the deepest throes of his drunken stupor, he would entertain the idea of calling someone—his wife, maybe, or an old friend. But the thought would always evaporate as quickly as it came. What would he say? That he felt like a ghost drifting through the city? That his life, once vibrant and full, was now nothing but a shell of what it had been?

Tonight, the weight of it all felt heavier than usual. He poured another drink, his hand trembling as he raised the glass to his lips. The room around him spun, the walls closing in. He felt himself sinking deeper into the abyss, but this time there was no bottom.

He was falling into nothingness.

He had thought about ending it before—just to escape the endless cycle of disappointment and alienation. But even that felt like too much effort, like he didn’t even deserve the peace it might bring. Instead, he would continue to float through his hollow existence, drifting between the books he no longer read, the music he no longer loved, and the alcohol that numbed the emptiness.

As the night deepened, the sounds of the city grew quieter. The streets outside were deserted now, the once-busy sidewalks empty. He stared out the window, his reflection staring back at him, a hollow man in a hollow world.

He finished the bottle and let it slip from his hand, the glass clinking dully as it rolled across the floor. He slumped back in the chair, his vision blurring, and for a moment, he felt like he might disappear altogether, consumed by the darkness that had taken root inside him. The city, with all its bright lights and busy lives, felt impossibly distant.

For a brief, fleeting moment, he wished someone would reach out, say his name, remind him that he was still here, still real. But no one came. And soon, he didn’t care. The world would go on, indifferent to his absence.

And he? He would remain as he always had been—alone, lost, and forgotten.

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