THE EYE COLLECTOR

CHAPTER 1: Waking up

X awoke to the dull thrum of the city outside his window.Traffic, distant voices, the occasional clatter of something falling—muffled through thin walls, bleeding in like an old radio with bad reception.

For a moment, he didn’t know if he was awake or still trapped inside a dream.But the sour stench of sweat and stale linen told him the truth. The weight of his own existence settled like dust on his chest.

He didn’t move.Just lay there, staring at the cracked ceiling, the sheet twisted around his legs like a restraint.A symbol of the trap he lived in.

He’d long since stopped thinking about the nature of his life, those thoughts had weight, and weight made it harder to breathe. So, instead, he closed his eyes again, not to sleep, but to stretch the illusion that escape was possible, even for a second.

But there was no escape. Morning always came.

When he opened his eyes again, the light spilling through the window was dull and colorless.Clouds covered the sky like wet paper.He didn’t have to check the time.It didn’t matter.

Each day bled into the next. Work. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. Like a record stuck in the same groove.

He threw off the covers and sat on the edge of the bed.The air from the cracked window bit at his skin, but he welcomed it.The cold was proof he still felt something.His body ached, the kind of ache born from curling up against a world that offered no warmth.Once, he’d been stronger. Now, he was the husk of a man: young enough to live, old enough to know it meant nothing.

He was in his early thirties, the age of vitality.But those who bothered to look closer would see the truth.The slumped shoulders.The clenched jaw.The blond hair, once clean and swept back, now tangled and dull.The eyes, washed-out blue, like sky before a storm. Once full of light, now distant. Faded. Like they’d seen too much and still not enough to matter.

His reflection in the mirror confirmed it. Young, but eroded. He dragged a hand through his hair, made it worse. His skin had turned pale, dry concrete-colored, like the sidewalks he walked every day. That tired face belonged to a man who had stopped hoping to fit in.

He didn’t bother fighting it anymore. There was nothing to fight for.People never saw him, not really. He was background, an afterthought. Someone to forget before they even noticed him.

He was invisible.

He had never gotten the words right. Never the timing.When he spoke, people looked through him.He felt like a ghost....a stranger even in his own skin.He didn’t understand the world.And the world made no effort to understand him.

His hands, rough and calloused from years of work no one cared about, moved on autopilot.Grey shirt. Worn jeans. Scuffed boots. It wasn’t dressing it was armoring. No one cared what he wore. No one cared who was inside the clothes.

Breakfast was mechanical.Stale coffee. Half a piece of bread.Not a meal just fuel for a meaningless loop. The taste was irrelevant.He barely noticed it going down.

He wandered to the window. Outside, the sky was the same grey it always was.The people below moved fast, eyes down, colliding without looking.He watched them, separated by glass, and felt no connection.

He was one of them but not with them. Just another figure in the blur.

Sometimes, the ache crept in.The old ache.The need to belong. The hunger to be seen.

But then came the darker thoughts, creeping in like fog under a door. The certainty that no matter how he tried, this life would never change. He would always be a stranger, even to himself.

He didn’t check the clock. Time was meaningless now.Just hours on a conveyor belt, sliding toward nothing.

He laced his boots, fingers trembling. Everything was heavier today.

Just like always.

He stepped outside. His boots hit the pavement with a dull, final thud. No one looked. No one noticed.

X was a ghost. And he couldn’t help but wonder when would something finally break?

But he already knew.

It wouldn’t.