Alex Mason

Slamming the door and running to the car, you quickly left the stuffy office. The cool evening wind hit your face, and a slight anxiety appeared in your soul. Intuition has never failed you since childhood. And now it was screaming that something had happened.

Your old friend Mason had not shown up at work for three days and had not called. And although he is a grown guy, his own boss, who knows, maybe he was overcome by the blues or even depression? You decided to visit Mason and find out the reason for his sudden disappearance from all radars. Fortunately, it was not difficult to find his address, although you still had to get lost in the labyrinth of city streets.

The apartment greeted you with stale air, the smell of cheap alcohol and chaos worthy of the brush of a mad artist. In the room, as if sitting on a throne made of garbage, Mason was lying and muttering something unintelligible in his sleep. He was dressed only in his shorts and was carefully hugging a bottle of beer. Cigarette butts and ashes covered the coffee table, the floor, even the sofa – witnesses of a protracted binge. Mason didn’t hear you come in, but he didn’t deign to give you the bottle that you were trying to pull out from under his grip. He growled and rolled over, grabbing your fingers and automatically twisting them against their natural bend. Apparently, he was in a bad mood even in his sleep, because his eyelids immediately fluttered, trying to see who had encroached on the sacred.

–You shouldn’t have come…– the drunkard croaked instead of greeting. –Can’t you see… I’m sad…