Theo decided he hated the office somewhere around 9:38 p.m.
Not in a dramatic, desk-flipping way. Just a quiet, bone-deep certainty that settled between his shoulders and never quite left. The kind that came from staring at the same spreadsheet for hours while the overhead lights hummed and the air-conditioning ran too cold, as if the building itself was trying to preserve everyone inside it.
The last email of the night blinked onto his screen. Another polite reprimand disguised as "feedback." Another reminder that his hours weren't enough, his pace wasn't enough, his effort, somehow, still wasn't enough.
Theo closed his eyes and counted to five.
When he opened them, the office was nearly empty. Rows of desks stretched out like abandoned islands, monitors dark, chairs pushed in with varying degrees of care. Somewhere down the hall, a printer whined, lonely and insistent.
He shut down his computer and stood, joints popping in protest. His reflection stared back at him from the darkened screen: tie loosened, shirt wrinkled, hair flattened on one side from where he'd rested his head against his hand hours ago.
"Thriving," he muttered.
The elevator ride down felt longer than it should have. The mirrored walls showed him every angle of his own exhaustion. He rolled his shoulders, trying to shake it off, but the weight stayed.
Outside, the city had moved on without him. Neon lights buzzed. Cars hissed past on wet pavement. Somewhere, laughter spilled out of a bar doorway before the door slammed shut again.
Theo shoved his hands into his coat pockets and started walking.
He didn't want to go home. That was the problem. Home wasn't a place anymore...it was just where the quiet waited.
His phone vibrated.
He almost ignored it. Almost.
Instead, he pulled it out and froze.
Mom
The message was old. Weeks old. He knew that. He'd read it a dozen times already. But his thumb hovered anyway, and then he tapped it open.
You've been working too hard again, haven't you?
When things get heavy, you should bake. Remember? You always felt better when your hands were busy.
Next time you visit, we'll bake together. I'll let you do the measuring this time. (Smiley Face)
Theo swallowed.
She'd sent it on a Sunday afternoon. The kind of day that smelled like flour and warm kitchens and sunlight through windows. The kind of day he hadn't had in years.
He hadn't replied.
He stood there on the sidewalk longer than necessary, the noise of the city started to blur into background static. His chest felt tight, not quite painful, just… suffocating.
"Bake," the word echoed in his head quietly.
It wasn't a bad idea. Hell, It wasn't even a big idea. It was small and manageable, and didn't require him to be good at anything.
Theo turned toward the convenience store on the corner.
The bread mix was on the lowest shelf, tucked between boxed brownies and instant pancakes. The packaging was aggressively cheerful, promising Fresh Bread in Minutes! with a picture that looked nothing like bread he had ever seen in his life.
"Photoshop really does magic," still Theo picked it up and turned it over.
Instant bread.
No kneading.
No proofing.
No failure, presumably.
"Mom would hate you," he told the box, while extending a pointed finger at it with his other hand.
He bought it anyway.
The walk home felt different. Shorter, somehow. The box felt warm under his arm, could've been warmth from the store lights or maybe just his emotions getting to him. This whole idea of baking brought him some internal joy he never thought about doing it on his own, but he needed something to taking him away from the droll of his day to day grind.
His apartment building loomed at the end of the block, concrete and tired. One of the hallway lights flickered as he unlocked the door, bathing everything in an uneven yellow glow.
Inside, his apartment greeted him the way it always did: silently.
A single room. Narrow kitchen. Couch that had seen better years. The air smelled faintly of detergent and old takeout containers he kept meaning to throw away.
Theo kicked off his shoes and set the bread mix on the counter.
For a moment, he just stood there.
The loneliness never felt sharp to him, It was just...there....and he had grown to live with it. It wasn't any worse than that, dull, constant, like a low-grade ache he'd learned to live with. The walls didn't echo. The silence didn't respond.
He rolled up his sleeves.
"Okay," he said to no one. "Let's do this."
Theo reread the instructions on the box for the third time.
Add water. Stir. Bake.
That was it. No kneading instructions, no resting times, no vague warnings about humidity or temperature. His mother would've scoffed at it.
"Bread that doesn't fight back isn't real bread," she used to say.
Theo snorted quietly, giving a quite laugh while he poured the water in anyway.
The dough immediately looked wrong.
Too wet. Or too dry. Somehow both.
He poked it with a finger. It stuck, stretching like it was reluctant to let go. He frowned, dusted a little more flour in, and stirred again. It still looked wrong, but in a different way now.
"Well...close enough," he exclaimed out loud while shrugging his shoulders. The whole point was to relief some stress not add to it, so he wouldn't let how it looked get to him.
The oven clicked as he turned the knob, the familiar hiss of gas filling the small kitchen. The smell from the neighboring apartment drifted in again, sharp, chemical, almost rotten. Theo grimaced and cracked the window wider.
Seriously, what are they doing in there? he thought to himself
He waved the air with one hand, the other holding the cheap metal pan. When he slid the dough inside, it slumped slightly, as if disappointed in him.
Theo stared at it for a moment.
"…You'll be fine...maybe."
He set the timer and leaned back against the counter, arms crossed. The apartment felt warmer now, the cold loneliness softened by heat and the quiet presence of something cooking. His shoulders relaxed inch by inch.
He checked his phone again.
His message to his mother still sat unsent.
He typed, erased, typed again.
I tried baking.
Pause.
It's hasn't exploding yet.
He smiled to himself and finally hit send.
The timer ticked away. Theo's head felt fuzzy, the kind of pleasant haze that came after pushing too hard for too long. His legs felt heavy. Sitting down wouldn't hurt, he decided. Just for a minute.
He sank onto the couch.
The warmth grew thicker. The air felt heavier, like breathing through cloth. Theo frowned, adjusting his position.
"That's… not normal," he muttered.
The smell in the room had changed. Not burnt. Not food. Something else. Something dull and wrong. He squinted toward the kitchen.
Did I leave something on?
He stood up, and then immediately sat back down.
The room tilted. Not dramatically. Just enough to be annoying.
"Oh come on," Theo groaned. "Seriously...Now?"
He rubbed his eyes, convinced this was just exhaustion playing tricks on him. He'd pulled all-nighters before. Hallucinations weren't normal, but dizziness? Sure. He stood again, slower this time, one hand braced against the wall.
The oven timer went off.
The sound felt distant. Muffled.
Theo took a step toward the kitchen and promptly walked into the doorframe.
"…Ow."
He blinked, stunned more by the audacity of the wall than the pain.
"Okay," he said aloud, slurring just slightly. "Something's wrong."
His thoughts felt thick, sluggish, like they were wading through syrup. He reached for his phone, fumbled it, caught it on the second try.
Gas leak, a distant part of his brain supplied, very calmly.
You should open the windows. Turn off the oven. Leave.
Theo stared at the phone screen, which had gone dim.
He shuffled toward the oven, every step a negotiation. The hiss was louder now, unmistakable.
He reached for the knob on the oven, fingers clumsy, missing it once, twice.
The world swayed.
"This is… so dumb," Theo muttered, laughing weakly. "Mom will kill me if she finds out I made instant bread."
The thought struck him as really funny. Hilarious, even.
However...He never actually turned the oven off.
BOOM.
The world detonated.
Sound collapsed into pressure. Heat slammed through him like a wall. For a single, horrifying instant, Theo whole word was just pain, white-hot and totally encompassing, ripping through bone and nerve, air crushed from his lungs as light burned behind his eyes.
"Oh—s"
The thought didn't finish.
The floor surged up, or he fell, or everything simply met at once. Pain shattered and vanished.
And then...
Nothing.
No darkness.
No falling.
Just release.