WHITE MICE

A long, long time ago.

A long time ago. So long ago that it's impossible to relive it. So long ago that it's all untrue. Far, far away, far away, there was a city. Absolutely nothing happened in this city, and its grayness caused an uncontrollable nausea in all sensitive souls.

This city lay in some terribly strange climate zone, the cause of perpetually foul weather, its constant companion being day-long darkness caused by constant overcast. You could say it was a city of weather under the weather. It's no wonder, then, that the people were as gray and hopeless as all the rag-tag carcass around them.

One particularly nasty winter night, a taxi driver, fresh from the store, heard a knock on the passenger window. He glanced in that direction, but the steamed-up windows and the darkness outside prevented him from seeing anything. Impatient that he hadn't had time to eat any of his purchases, he put the groceries back in the drawer and wiped the window with the back of his hand. A young girl and a boy stood outside. The girl gestured and tried to speak to the driver through the glass barrier. But it was no use. The hungry taxi driver had to roll down the window, despite the chilly weather outside.

"Good evening, sir. Are you free?" the girl asked, and from the driver's expression she could tell that yes, he was free, but he wasn't happy about it. This didn't surprise the girl at all: everyone in the city was constantly unhappy.

"Come on, let's go," she directed at the boy standing behind her, who was clearly drunk. She grabbed his hand, kissed him on the lips, and pulled him into the taxi. "Oh, it's so warm here," she sighed, snuggling tightly against the boy's safe form.

"Go," the passenger said.

The taxi driver pulled away and, after carefully examining both figures in his mirror, determined with absolute certainty that the young woman was also drunk, which only added further bitterness to the taxi driver's thoughts, which were drowning in jealousy, both of drunkenness and the fact that he had never had and never would have such a beautiful woman.

"Where will she go?

" "Take the love route," the boy exclaimed in a drawling voice, and, clearly pleased with the impression he had made on everyone present, he plunged his hand into his friend's crotch.

And they both lost themselves in bliss, while outside their windows passed buildings, streetlights, intersections, shops, kiosks, isolated pedestrians, dogs, cats, a few trees, and above all, sadness, because the taxi driver couldn't find the love route and kept driving in circles, every now and then glancing nervously at the happiness in the backseat of his taxi. "Oh, why am I not so young anymore? They are truly lucky."

When the girl finally lifted her head, wiping the remnants of semen from the corners of her mouth with her tongue, the boy spoke up,

"Okay, now go to Chopin Street.

Finally, something concrete." The driver was a little happier, because he knew what to do. "

You're welcome." His initial dislike for the passengers vanished under the influence of observing the behavior of the two and the fact that they had finally clarified their instructions. "

The worst part is, I don't feel guilty at all," the boy said. "Actually, I don't give a damn if he hates me or anything. I'm fucking thrilled, that's all.

" "I can't stand it.

" "What can't you stand?"

"I can't stand it and I'll tell him."

"If you don't, then I'll tell him, there's no other way. Your betrayal is just as strong as mine. The worst part is that everyone will hate me for this, everyone will side with him and stigmatize me, and I'll have no place to go. Jesus, what the fuck have we done?

"I'll tell him tomorrow it's over and I'll come to you..."

"What? I'd really, really like that. That's why I'm glad it happened, but it's not possible. We'd have to cut off all ties with all of them, and they're incredibly important to me.

" "Then we'll hide."

"Jesus, I knew this was going to happen for a long time. You know how long I knew? When we first met, the three of us. You were all wasted, and I met you there. You remember that, right?" "

Why?

" "I don't know. I just saw in your eyes that you wanted to be fucked, and I wanted to fuck, that's what. We just fit together. Gosh, don't cry, Barbara."

"Four years..."

"Have you done this before?

" "No...

" "No? Fuck, this is really serious.

" "We're here!" the taxi driver interjected.

"Okay, give me the money, I'll let you out here, and we'll go to Topolowa Street," the boy said, addressing the driver with his last words.

"Okay, no problem."

They both got out:

"Go to him now, lie down nicely, and tomorrow we'll figure out what to do with this thing...

" "I don't believe a word you say anyway, just fuck..." she said, and kissed him goodnight.

The boy got back into the car, slammed the door, and fell silent. He sat there, leaning forward a little, his head resting on his fist, his drunken gaze fixed somewhere far away at the impenetrable, black space stretching beyond the taxi's windshield.

"The girl should probably be escorted right to the door, right?! The driver suddenly and unexpectedly spoke. These words unkindly jolted the passenger out of his reverie, and at first he wanted to snap back, but he simply stopped at the thought. No, it wasn't that he was well-mannered—he wasn't—he just felt strangely warm inside. It was the taxi driver's sympathy, mixed with the considerable amount of alcohol in his blood, that made him realize that this complete stranger driving him home was currently the closest person in the world to him, and only he could tell everything. So he replied,

"Sir, stop. She's back with her husband and child now, and that husband is my best friend who doesn't know anything yet..." He wanted this information to sound both warm and cold, familiar and unfamiliar. He hated being intimate. He thought this form of response would silence the driver, who would pretend to understand the situation and, as a sign of this, demonstrate tact by not engaging in conversation, while simultaneously quelling his own need to unleash all the drunken filth he'd been harboring for several years. So he closed his mouth and stared stubbornly ahead again, his thoughts wandering through the countless twists and turns and dark alleyways of his life, reveling in his own misfortune.

He loved telling himself how miserable he was, but he hated it when anyone else found out. He hadn't imagined that such suppression of emotion could prove fatal. That evening would prove to be the doomsday of his hidden emotions. Still deep in thought and giving in to his mental masochism, he hadn't even noticed that at some point, from some leaky valve in his consciousness, words of truth began to seep from his lips.

Completely unconsciously…

They couldn't withstand the pressure of their tortured souls and wounded emotions…

Soon the stream turned into a torrent, and the torrent into a veritable river swollen by the repeated downpours of the weary rain of suffering…

"Luckily, she's already out… I couldn't pretend with her that everything was alright any longer."

The taxi driver was clearly surprised by the sounds he heard from the backseat. He glanced in the mirror and saw a white face with a terrifyingly vacant gaze, involuntarily moving its lips and pouring out incomprehensible words.

And the tears also began to flow involuntarily…

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Every now and then a shiver of despair would shake him, but he still sat stiff and cursedly pale, as if he had been in the grave for at least twenty years.

He continued.

The taxi driver only heard:

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The taxi driver was already there. Instinct, and certainly a bit of mercy, didn't let him stop, though. He kept driving. Back and forth, and the boy said:

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And suddenly there was silence. The driver jumped in his seat and quickly turned around. But nothing had changed there: still the same pallor, emptiness, pain, tears, absence, meaninglessness. Only no one was saying anything anymore…

The driver drove up to the indicated address once again and with a feeling of immense relief said:

"You're owed 50 zlotys." He tried to make his message short, precise, and decisive—that is, simply normal. That was exactly what he wanted, he wanted to finally restore normality here. He felt that if he had to drive any longer and listen to this gibberish, he wouldn't stand it, and the bitterness that was slowly drowning the entire taxi in its depths would consume him too.

"You're owed fifty zlotys, don't you hear me?!" he had to repeat his message, as he received no response, save for two more tears flowing with dignified calm from his eyes.

The taxi driver was barely managing to make ends meet, so the possibility of losing fifty zlotys hit him like a cold shower:

"Sir, you pay fifty zlotys, or I'll have to collect it myself, do you understand?" A

tear was his only reaction, but certainly not to those menacing words. It was another tear, welling up deep within the soul, where this unfortunate man had hidden himself and refused to leave. And since his soul was flooded with alcohol, the tears flowed all the more readily.

And for the driver, it was simply one tear too many.

With a swift movement, he opened the door and stepped out, not even noticing the thick frost that had gripped the city. He briskly and eagerly moved toward the passenger door, opened it with a single jerk, and with a second, flung the boy out.

"Are you such a dick? Pity, right? Pity, damn it, are you trying to evoke?! What the fuck? Shit! Do you understand, shit!!!!!

He got so carried away by his own nerves that he was so easily fooled that he didn't even notice when he started kicking him.

He kicked and screamed. Until finally, snow began to slowly fall, which posed no obstacle to the taxi driver; he kept kicking the boy, wanting to get his money back and redeem his naivety, and at the same time punish the dickhead for making fun of people who earn their bread honestly."

The snow was falling in earnest. There was already quite a thick layer on the ground, and the taxi driver could only see the man's face, belly, and crotch—the places where kicking is most effective—until he finally saw the ever-growing, vividly visible stain of blood against the white snow (it was the only white thing in this city). His leg stopped mid-air before the next kick. He must have been startled by his own rage. It was his fault, after all. He knew he was taking on drunk passengers. He could have been a little more careful, what all the fuss was about? Something would happen to him, and he'd be on me. He quickly bent down to the fallen boy and searched his jacket, noticing that he was unconscious. But really, he wasn't unconscious at all. He'd been absent-minded and babbling the entire ride. Now it's the same… He finally found what he was looking for, and his mood immediately improved, as his wallet contained significantly more money than the unfortunate 50 złoty. With a sudden burst of good humor, he pulled out his phone and called the ambulance, saying he'd found an unconscious, bloodied boy. He quickly drove off, wondering how he could quickly forget about this unpleasant event.

The minutes passed slowly, roughly at the same pace as the blood seeped from his former passenger's wounds.

The cold grip became more intense, the blood slowly froze, and the figure on the ground seemed to be slowly waking up. This could be guessed from the slight movements his head began to make. As if it wanted to try to turn around and look around, even just a little, to see where he was. Then came his arms, then twitching legs, until finally his stomach came alive. Suddenly, energetically, and brooking no argument, he began to move, causing a torrent of vomiting that began to pour out of the boy's mouth in convulsions. The same path that the bitter babble of truth had recently flowed.

The vomiting had finally stirred his entire body, so that the unfortunate man could finally rise, and, shivering from the frost that permeated his entire being, he began dragging his legs toward his staircase. When he reached it, he pushed open the monstrously heavy entrance door with his last remaining strength and fell, circling, into the warm interior, which welcomed him with open arms, like a mother who always has a wonderful breast full of warm milk for her child. That was the feeling of finding himself inside a skyscraper, his hands caressing the warmth flowing from the radiators' ribs. In an instant, he felt so good that his strength began to fail him again, and his legs began to weaken. On one of the next steps he had to climb to reach the elevator, he tripped and fell, blissfully smashing his head into the obscenely smooth floor.

He felt no pain. He felt no hatred. He felt no suffering. He didn't know what had happened today. He didn't know about the affair, the betrayal, and the rest of his useless life, the existence of which he wanted to announce to a certain driver today. He knew nothing about it all.

He'd forgotten. He remembered nothing.

Simply.

Everything had vanished. Disappeared. And it had never been.

And it would never be again.

Nothing would ever be again.

It felt so good. Warm and blissful. He fell asleep just as he lay.