#akaky

A pause. He doesn't. He hates being alone. He never wants to be alone again. He loves that he has an entire friendgroup now; and at least one that he knows will stick with him no matter what. Everyone else... They look at him like he's a fuse about to blow at any point. A predator about to pounce given the slightest chance. He does not enjoy being alone. But it feels like most of the time, others do not enjoy being around him. "I, um, I don't!! I get to listen to birdsongs if they're around and sometimes animals come by if I'm alone and that's great!" It is a resounding eight out of ten.

27:  Coat  An Illustration of Gogol’s “The Overcoat” Bureaucrat Akaky Akakievitch works as a copyist in a large government agency, with little internal life, and is incapable of making alterations to copies.  After finding that his tattered overcoat is irreparable, he puts himself on a tight budget to afford a newly tailored one.  His new coat brings him great joy and fulfilment, almost as though he has a new lover.  He even makes a mistake in his copy.  But one day his coat is stolen.  Distraught he goes immediately to the top of the bureaucracy, a general, who immediately berates Akaky for jumping rank in the chain-of-command, and interrogates him as a criminal.  Distraught, Akaky spills into the street, bereft of his coat and finding no help in the bureaucracy that he so long has been a part of.  He catches a fever in the cold and dies.  The general feels pangs of guilt at treating Akaky so coldly, and soon hears that a corpse is stalking the streets, snatching people’s coats from their backs.  Soon the corpse takes the general’s coat, and is never seen again.