[Shortstory] A Madman's Guide to Modern Society

detta är en novell jag påbörjade för en uppgift i engelska 7 innan jag tog studenten. planerar att fortsätta skriva på den och kände för att lägga upp en första bit här eftersom jag minns hur härliga och supportive ni på mugglis är. det är inte en fanfiction, och därför kändes det mest passande att lägga den här.




A Madman’s Guide to Modern Society

Being back in civilisation after all this time just feels odd. It’s like I can remember what it was like before everything happened, and although everything is different now I’m simply trying to replicate what it used to be like. At first I believed it would all go back to normal if I just pretended for a while, like all the pieces would fall back in place by themselves, but most pieces are still missing and I’m growing impatient.


At first, when I came back to Kiev, I was the talk of the town (or talk of the nation rather). I was the returned madman of Chernobyl; how could you not talk about me? Journalist turned nutcase turned survivalist turned recovered citizen… “Recovered”, hmph. Do they even try to cover up the fact that they just got tired of the story? It’s all show and tell when you know the crazy guy in the newspaper — but as soon as the reporters grew tired, so did my friends. Look, I’m sure you’re dying to know why I was in the papers and all that, but we’ll get to that soon. I promise, just let me warm up a bit first.

So, let me explain what I’m doing here… When I returned to Kiev I was admitted to a mental hospital, and I had to go see a headshrinker. This shrink, Dr. Melnyk, told me to write a survivor’s guide. He told me to find some kind of positive angle to my experience. I’m gonna be honest with you; it’s really fucking hard to find a positive angle to going insane and being stuck in a ghost town for eight months. I don’t know if it was the psychosis, the starvation, or the especially cold autumn, but there was just something about my trip that didn’t make it a five-star-review. Sorry Yelp.

So, I know that Dr. Melnyk probably had the more standard kind of survivor’s guide in mind when he assigned me this “rehabilitating exercise” (as he likes to call it), but I’m not gonna tell you how to fight a two-headed deer with a stick. I’m sure there’s a wikiHow on that either way, if that’s what you’re looking for. Surviving on your own in an abandoned town comes weirdly natural in a way. That’s what our survivor’s instinct is for. It’s scary at first but after a while you just learn to cope, you don’t think about how to do things, you just do them. As long as I was stuck there, alone, it worked. I didn’t need anyone but myself. You know what’s worse than being alone? Feeling alone even when you’re surrounded by other people. That’s what’s really killing me.

As mentioned, I used to be a journalist. I went to Chernobyl to write a story about my first-hand experience with the ghost town. I was supposed to stay there for about a week or so, and summarize it in just one article. It was an interesting scoop, something that other magazines couldn’t offer. But I went, and I stayed a week. Then I stayed one more. I started to document all the mutated flora and fauna that I encountered, and I soon became obsessed. Weeks turned to months, and I soon lost track of time. I spent most of my time living in the Pripyat amusement park. Though abandoned and crumbling, some of the little sheds and huts were quite habitable. With all the heavy rain in the area, I was grateful to have a roof over my head most of the time. This became my world, my life. Going back wasn’t an option, it didn’t even cross my mind. I felt like it was my quest to find something. I was waiting for some kind of breakthrough. Nothing I had was good enough to come back with. I hadn’t completed my story. But maybe this is my story? This “survivor’s guide” I’m writing. “A madman’s guide to modern society” by Misha Boyko.

I feel extremely unqualified to teach other people how to get by in this puzzling world, but I guess no one is really qualified. We’re all struggling, aren’t we? I think that the main reason why people find me, and crazy people in general, so interesting is because we’re just like them. We’re humans, we’re all the same — until we’re not anymore. Something snaps, and that’s what fascinates them. It’s such a fine line between being normal and being insane. I didn’t even know how crazy I had become until I was brought back into society. I crossed that fine line without even realizing.

Now, you might wonder what the fuck’s wrong with me. I seem quite normal right? Except for that third arm that’s growing out of my stomach. Just kidding, there’s no extra arm. Jokes aside, I’m not considered a threat to myself or society, so that’s cool. I just have to take a couple of xans a day and talk to my shrink once a week to “maintain stabilized”, and that’s honestly just standard American housewife stuff. Nothing out of the ordinary. So then again — what’s wrong with me, exactly?

Well, I feel things. Weird things. I live in a decent flat with quite a lot of space and a pretty good view from the balcony. While this isn’t heaven, it still sounds like quite the step up from sleeping in a rusty ticket booth in a radioactive wasteland, doesn’t it? But when I moved back into my apartment, I didn’t come home. I felt trapped, suffocated. I still do. The air is too dry, the radiators too warm, the refrigerator too loud, the wallpapers too bright… I’ve started sleeping on my balcony, even when it’s raining. I miss the world I built in Pripyat. This life I have in Kiev… It’s not my life anymore. Everything feels wrong, and I can’t even explain why. I feel like I’m going back in evolution. It feels unnatural, like I was never supposed to come back here. Maybe I wasn’t…

I only live on the second floor of my apartment complex, so sleeping on my balcony attracts attention. A lot of attention. I’m bundled up in my duvet on my tiny fenced safe-haven. The fabric is damp against my pale skin. The city is slowly waking up beneath me as I indulge in my toxic morning routine of cheap cigarettes and black coffee. Now you might expect me to go on a rant about how coffee is the only thing I really craved during my radioactive vacation. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I won’t. I don’t really like coffee that much, and cigarettes aren’t especially enjoyable either. What I do enjoy about this ritual is how it almost causes my body to replicate the heartracing and raspy breathing of being stuck in the wasteland. It’s truly delightful to feel the panic of slowly dying.

I know you can sense the sarcasm, but what you can’t sense is the core of… sincerity. I can’t express these thoughts without feeling insane, hence the sarcastic undertone. I truly do miss that panic and fear. I almost think about it like getting stabbed. When you get stabbed it hurts like shit, but you need to leave the knife in the wound to not bleed out. When I returned to Kiev, I pulled the knife out. And now I’m bleeding out.