A Blue Night

A really short story

Note: this post originally appeared on my substack.

He felt like shit that night. He didn’t quite know why.

He thought it might be because of an interaction he had earlier that day. He went to the store and bought some food. The cashier rang him up and he paid. Then the cashier told him to have a good day. He didn’t hear what the cashier said, so he just nodded his head slightly and left. Only once he was out the door did he realize that the cashier had wished him a good day. He felt like an asshole for not saying “thanks” or “you too.” Now there was someone out there in the world that thought he was a jerk. He really didn’t mean it. He was never rude to someone on purpose.

Well, that’s one theory for why he might have felt like shit that night.

Maybe it was because he was tired of all the artificial aspects of modern life. The glow of his computer screen lit up the dark room. There wasn’t a single thing in that room that was real. All of it was unnatural. Maybe he was tired of all the artificial stimuli he was taking in. Maybe he wanted to be able to criticize modern technology without being seen as a Luddite.

This is all just speculation, of course. The human mind is complex. There could be a handful of causes for his mood that night. Or, there could be none. Maybe he was just feeling bad because he was feeling bad, and there was no deeper reason to it.