It’s cold. It’s dark. The silence feels like it’s breathing.

The theater sits hollow, an ocean of empty, sticky seats and flickering light that doesn’t quite touch the corners. The film plays on, frames of motion that mean nothing, saying everything.

Donnie stares, unfocused. The images blur together, melting into the static hum of his own thoughts. Something heavy presses against his chest, invisible but unbearable.

“When does it stop?” he murmurs, the words trembling out of him like a secret he never meant to share.

And when the first tear falls, it isn’t sadness. Rather, the quiet realization that maybe the world was never supposed to make sense at all.

Tears of disillusion.