The Unmaking of Brad Monroe Episode 1: Routine Man
The wind had started to carry edge again.
Not sharp, not yet, but enough to turn breaths into steam and push leaves in circles across cracked pavement.
The city smelled different now, less of sweat, more of stone and dust and old, tired metal cooling at dusk. It was the kind of cold that clung to joints and radio towers. The kind that made people close up early, walk faster, and speak less.
Brad Monroe didn’t mind it.
The cold kept people inside, which meant the streets were quieter.
Fewer distractions.
Fewer decisions.
He moved along the sidewalk with the kind of rhythm that only comes from repetition, boots scuffing fallen leaves, hands buried in coat pockets.
The fabric of his sleeves had begun to pill near the elbows.
He kept meaning to fix it, but “meaning to” had a way of expiring unused in Brad’s world.
Seventeen minutes and forty seconds. That was the walk to work, give or take the crosswalk at Kent Avenue. If the light was green, he shaved off seven seconds. If the pigeons had relocated to the alley by the old bank, he lost twelve.
Today, it balanced.
The sky was the color of wet cotton.
Light drizzle flecked the shoulders of his jacket.
Streetlamps blinked on before anyone realized they’d needed them. Their glow puddled in oily reflections near storm drains.
He passed the boarded-up barbershop, the closed hot dog stand with its umbrella stripped to skeleton spokes, and the stoop where Ms. Bellamy sat when the sun was out. She wasn’t there today. The cold had taken her indoors, where her lungs didn’t have to fight.
Brad paused just long enough to pick up a discarded paper cup and toss it into the nearest bin. He didn’t believe in littering. Or maybe he just didn’t like clutter. Either way, the result was the same.
The city wasn’t cruel. It was apathetic.
It didn’t care if you lived or died, so long as you didn’t inconvenience anyone on the way out.
Brad liked that kind of honesty.
It meant you could move unnoticed.
It meant no one expected anything from you, and you didn’t have to give more than you wanted to.
He worked nights in a records facility that didn’t advertise its existence.
The front door was unmarked. Inside, climate-controlled aisles held miles of boxed documentation, names, numbers, evidence of choices made and forgotten.
His job was simple: log deliveries, move crates, refile anything tagged for correction.
He wore gloves.
No one told him to.
It just felt respectful.
Sometimes the files buzzed when he touched them.
Like static.
He learned not to mention it.
***
That night, on his walk home, the temperature had dropped another few degrees. Just enough that his fingertips went red if he left them out too long.
Street vendors had vanished.
Shop windows fogged over.
Brad turned the final corner before his apartment when he noticed someone standing at the curb; still, like the cold didn’t touch her.
She wore a coat too thin for the season.
Black, long, and clean.
Her hands hung at her sides, unmoving.
A few feet away, a city bus hissed past, its tires spitting wet grit onto the sidewalk.
She did not flinch.
Brad passed within a few steps.
Her face was angled slightly toward him, though her gaze didn’t seem fixed on anything in particular.
Pale.
Not sickly, but unnaturally even-toned.
Eyes dark and still.
Their shoulders nearly brushed.
Brad offered a polite nod.
No smile.
Just a moment of acknowledgment.
She did not respond.
He kept walking.
Just a woman on a frosty night, waiting for someone, maybe?
Not his business.
***
Inside, the apartment was ten degrees warmer than the street and still smelled faintly of black tea and radiator steam.
He flipped the light switch twice before it caught.
His routine resumed: kettle on, boots off, secondhand blanket folded across the couch for later.
The radio was on low, tuned to a station that only played piano covers of songs he couldn’t name.
Outside, the city moved in its half-sleep shuffle, soft engines, distant arguments muffled by glass and brick.
Brad did not notice the shape lingering beneath the streetlamp across from his building.
Still watching...
Still measuring...
— It does not end here.
Comments