ALONE

Benjamin was so, so quiet that, despite of having interacted with a lot of people throughout all his life, nobody really knew him. In a word: he was an enigma: nobody knew what he was thinking and, honestly, nobody cared.

Benjamin spent his days thinking and observing. He observed his family, so close and so eager to destroy itself by any excuse (and there were a lot of excuses between them). He observed his friends, so lost and intoxicated he barely recognized them. He observed a society so demanding and selfish he was more and more disappointed with it.

One day, when he observed his surroundings, he decided he didn't care about them anymore. So, to run away from them, he bought as many books as he could and started piling them in his room. He soon created a tower so big it surpassed people and their buildings. Benjamin, without the need or the desire to say good-bye to the world around him, climbed the tower and sat on the top. There the view was wide and so, so calm. He couldn't hear his family's discussions nor his friend's peer pressure nor society's injustices.

He was so happy he kept piling books as fast as he could.

From time to time he looked down and mocked the world and its people, so immersed in its problems, in its poor and miserable reality, in its monotonous and unsatisfactory life. But that life had nothing to do with him, especially because, thanks to technology, he could buy as many books as he wanted online, and they arrived to his tower's top, where he kept piling them in order to separate himself as much as possible from the world he despised so much.

And he made it: after a long, long time, Benjamin surpassed the clouds and the atmosphere, and reached space, where was only darkness and emptiness, where he was alone with his fears, his worries, his laments and all his mistakes.

Benjamin started to miss the world and its people. He had already forgotten how voices, laughs, screams sounded; how punches and hugs, caresses and insults felt. In a word: he had already forgotten how to live life.

He thought about going back, but how? He was stranded in his tower. There was nothing there. No one could help him.

So Benjamin asked himself if he really was smarter than everybody else because, while they got a job, got married, had kids, got promoted, grew up, live their lives, he locked himself in his room, and he was technically still in there; he never came out, really.

He stuck himself since the beginning.

So, Benjamin only had two choices left:

1. Stay there forever;

2. Fall down.