Boogie: Everything For Sale

Boogie didn’t answer. He stared into the amber liquid. Outside, a man in a gray suit got out of a black car. No license plate. He walked like gravity was a suggestion.

He’d started with the usual: a watch his father left him, a gold ring from a woman who stopped calling. Then the less usual: his grandfather’s cavalry saber, a signed baseball from a player nobody remembered. Last week, he’d sold the echo of his own laugh—some hipster paid fifty bucks for the recording, said he wanted to sample it for a lo-fi beat. everything for sale boogie

A speaker crackled. The man in gray’s voice slid through: “You sold your loneliness, friend. But loneliness is the glue. It holds the rest together. Without it? You’re just a collection of parts. A man-shaped balloon with no weight.” Boogie didn’t answer

On the 365th morning, he woke up alone in a white room. No doors. No windows. Just a mirror on the ceiling showing his own hollow-eyed face. No license plate

“Your loneliness.”