The Madness

The world had a collective hangover, not from champagne, but from something far more toxic, festering in the first days of 2026.

The cold that January didn’t just sit on the skin; it had teeth. It wasn’t the romanticized winter of holiday cards, the kind where breath smokes aesthetically and snow dusts the eyelashes. No, this was a marrow-deep intrusion, a jagged, serrated chill that bypassed the thermal layers of my hoodie and gnawed directly at the spine. It settled there, heavy and sour, like the aftertaste of a bad premonition you can’t quite swallow. The air in the apartment felt solid, metallic. It tasted like old copper and static electricity, as if the entire atmosphere of the Eastern Seaboard was holding its breath, muscles tensed, waiting for a boot to drop from the sky.

The radiator in the corner clanked—a rhythmic, dying sound. *Thunk-hiss. Thunk-hiss.* Like a mechanical lung struggling with pneumonia. I stood by the window, my forehead pressed against the glass. The pane was so cold it burned, a numbing cauterization against the skin, but I didn’t pull away. I needed that sharp, physical shock to ground me. Outside, the oak tree—the one my dad had sworn to trim for three years running—looked like a skeletal hand clawing at the bruised underbelly of the sky. And the sky... God, it was ugly. The color of wet ash, featureless and flat, stretching out over the suburban sprawl like a concrete lid sealing us in.

New Year’s felt like a hallucination from a different timeline. It was only a few days ago, but the memory was already warping, edges curling like burning paper. The hollow cheers of 'fresh start' and 'new beginnings' echoed in my head with a mocking distortion. We’d clinked glasses, toasted to survival, but the optimism was thin, stretched tight over a drum of anxiety. Now, that silence was gone, replaced by the Hum. You could hear it if you stopped moving. A low, persistent vibration, below the threshold of conscious hearing but loud enough to rattle your molars. It felt like a distant, broken transformer that nobody had the parts to fix, or maybe just the collective blood pressure of a continent spiking in unison.

My phone sat on the windowsill, buzzing against the painted wood. *Vrrrt. Vrrrt.* It sounded like an insect trapped in a jar. I stared at it. The screen was cracked at the corner—a spiderweb fracture from when I dropped it running for the bus last week—and the light pulsed with notification after notification. It felt heavy. Not physically, but spiritually dense. A lead weight radiating bad news. I didn't want to touch it. Touching it meant engaging, and engaging meant acknowledging the knotted tightness in my gut that said everything was about to tilt sideways.

It was always the news now. You couldn't escape it. It wasn't just on the phone; it was ambient radiation. It plastered itself across the gas station pumps, the twitching digital billboards looming over the highway, the muted screens in the waiting room at the dentist. Caracas. The word had been snagging in my brain for weeks, a thorny burr caught in a wool sweater. The algorithm fed it to me in drip-feeds—grainy footage of food riots, speeches from the narco-dictator, the desperate, pleading eyes of refugees interviewed at the border.

But then the feed changed. It shifted from despair to something manic. I finally picked up the phone, the glass cold against my thumb, and scrolled. The algorithm had pivoted. Now it was footage from Miami. Doral. The Venezuelan enclave. The videos were shaky, shot vertically on phones by people whose hands were trembling. Jubilant crowds. A sea of yellow, blue, and red flags. People were dancing in the streets, blocking traffic, climbing on top of SUVs. I turned the sound up. The chanting was a wall of sound, distorted by the microphone’s limit. *"Libertad! Libertad!"* I watched a woman, maybe sixty, tears streaming down a face map-lined with exhaustion, screaming at the sky with a joy so raw it looked painful. These were the exiles. The people who had fled the starvation, the secret police, the rigged elections that returned 98% majorities for a man everyone hated. They were celebrating like the devil himself had been exorcised.

I swiped up. Santiago, Chile. A plaza packed with thousands. Madrid, Spain. A massive gathering in Puerta del Sol. The diaspora was erupting. It was a global release of pressure, a scream of relief heard around the world. The dictator was gone. Or, at least, the structure was cracking. The narrative seemed simple from those angles: The nightmare ends, the people cheer. Cause and effect.

But then I looked up from the screen, out into my own neighborhood. A quiet North American suburb, somewhere in that gray zone between the decaying Rust Belt and the encroaching megalopolis. The silence here was heavy. There were no flags. No cheering. Just the gray sky and the wind rattling the siding of the neighbor’s house. The reaction here felt... off. Twisted. Like looking at a reflection in a funhouse mirror where the smile is inverted into a grimace. My parents were downstairs. I could hear the domestic noises of denial. Mom was humming some sanitized pop song from the nineties while the coffee grinder shrieked. Dad was rustling the paper—an archaic habit he clung to—muttering about gas prices and the cost of lumber.

They were trying so hard. They were building a fortress of normalcy, brick by shaky brick. But the mortar wasn't holding. The silence underneath their noise was deafening. We all felt the Hum growing louder, a pressure building behind the ears. It wasn't just political tension; it was the sensation of a civilization waiting for the other shoe to drop, terrified that the shoe was a boot, and the boot was wearing an American flag.

January 3rd. That was the day the dam broke. The day gravity shifted. I was on the couch, body folded into an uncomfortable shape, zoning out to reruns of a sitcom that ended ten years ago—back when problems were solved in twenty-two minutes. The laugh track felt ghostly, dead people laughing at dead jokes. Then the screen flickered. The Emergency Alert System tone blared—that jagged, dissonant screech that triggers a primal flight response in the lizard brain. *BEEEEP. BEEEEP. BEEEEP.*

Red banner. Urgent tone. The sitcom vanished, replaced by the grim face of a network anchor who looked like he hadn't slept in three days. His makeup was too heavy, trying to hide the pallor. The headline scrolled beneath him in bold, aggressive font: *PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS / SPECIAL OPERATION / CARACAS.*

The camera cut away from the studio to a feed that looked like a scene from a cyberpunk thriller. Night vision. Green and grainy, then switching to high-definition thermal. The voiceover wasn't the anchor anymore; it was the Emperor. We called him that in hushed tones, or online behind seven proxies, but on TV, he was simply the President. But the way he spoke... the cadence was imperial. "Hellfire from the skies," he said. The phrase hung in the living room air, violent and biblical.

One hundred and fifty jets. The number echoed in the room, bouncing off the cheap drywall. One hundred and fifty. It was an absurd display of power. Overkill wasn't the word; it was a statement. The footage showed the sky over Caracas turning into a grid of streaking light. Sleek predators, the F-35s and the new stealth variants that didn't even have public names yet, blacking out the city's power grid in a single, synchronized heartbeat. The lights of the capital winked out—*zip*—like a candle snuffed by a giant’s thumb. Darkness. Then, the flashes. Precision strikes. Not carpet bombing, but surgical removal. Architecture dismantled with the care of a watchmaker.

Then came the helmet-cam footage. Special Forces. Ghosts in the dark. They moved with a fluidity that was terrifying to watch, a hyper-competence that made the Venezuelan guards look like children playing soldier. They stormed the compound—the dictator's fortress, a place rumored to be impenetrable. Flashbangs bloomed like white chrysanthemums on the screen. Shouting in Spanish. The crack-thump of suppressed rifles. And then, the money shot.

Nicolás Maduro. The man who had haunted the nightmares of millions. The indicted narco-dictator who had turned an oil-rich paradise into a starving husk. He was wearing a tracksuit, looking disheveled, confused. His eyes were wide, darting around like a trapped rat. Zip-ties on his wrists. Beside him, his wife, looking equally bewildered. They were perp-walked onto the deck of a waiting warship—an American destroyer sitting off the coast like a steel leviathan. The ticker at the bottom of the screen read: *TRANSIT TO NEW YORK / FEDERAL TRIAL PENDING.*

"Justice," the Emperor boasted. The camera cut back to him in the Oval Office. He wasn't sitting behind the desk; he was standing, leaning forward, knuckles white on the mahogany. "We have cut the head off the snake. We will run the nation until it is fixed. American firms will secure the reserves to ensure stability." The subtext was a sledgehammer. *We own this now.*

The world didn't just react; it splintered. It fractured along fault lines I didn't even know existed. I sat there, remote dangling from my hand, feeling the cognitive dissonance wash over me like nausea. On one screen—my phone—I saw the videos from Miami again. They were louder now. The ecstasy was feverish. People were weeping, hugging strangers. A man in a Venezuelan soccer jersey was on his knees in a parking lot, screaming "Gracias! Gracias!" at the sky, or maybe at the jets. To them, the Emperor wasn't a tyrant; he was the Archangel Michael with a hellfire missile.

But then I looked at the TV, at the pundits, and then back to my social feeds. And that’s where the madness really hit. That’s where reality tore in half.

I opened the group chat. Jaden, who usually posted nothing but memes about gaming and obscure indie bands, had linked an article. His caption: *"This is disgusting. Imperialism in 2024. Literally shaking."* Marie, who was studying nursing and generally avoided politics, replied with a crying emoji. *"I can't believe we just invaded a sovereign country. My aunt in Toronto is posting about U.S. aggression. It's terrifying."*

I stared at the text. *Terrifying?* For who? For the people in the torture chambers in El Helicoide who were suddenly hearing the guards run away? For the millions who had walked across the Darién Gap to escape starvation? I typed a response, then deleted it. Typed again. *"But... the people there are happy? Did you see the videos?"*

Jaden replied instantly. *"That's propaganda, Ray. Manufactured consent. You can't just kidnap a world leader. It sets a dangerous precedent. It's a violation of international law."*

International law. The words felt sterile, antiseptic. Like worrying about the zoning regulations of a burning building while someone is dragging the victims out of the fire. I felt a tightening in my chest, a physical restriction of the lungs. The dissonance was escalating. How could two realities exist so perfectly opposed to one another?

I needed to get out. The air in the house was too recycled, too full of my parents' silent anxiety and the droning voice of the Emperor on the TV. I grabbed my coat—the heavy one with the broken zipper—and shoved my feet into boots that were still cold from the entryway. "Going for a walk," I mumbled. Mom looked up from her tablet, eyes wide and watery. "Stay close, Ray. They said... there might be unrest." Unrest. A polite word for the world breaking apart.

Outside, the wind was a physical assault. It whipped around the corners of the cookie-cutter houses, carrying the scent of snow and ozone. I walked toward the town center, head down, hands jammed deep in my pockets. The suburb, usually sleepy, felt charged. There were more cars than usual. Sirens wailed in the distance—a constant, rising and falling contour of sound that wove into the Hum.

I reached the commercial strip, a row of dying businesses anchored by a Starbucks and a vape shop. And there they were. The protesters. It wasn't a massive crowd, maybe fifty people, but they were loud. They had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the post office, bundled in North Face jackets and wool scarves, holding hastily made signs.

*"HANDS OFF VENEZUELA!"* *"NO BLOOD FOR OIL!"* *"IMPERIALIST PIGS!"*

I stopped, leaning against a brick wall, watching. These were my neighbors. That guy with the megaphone? That was Mr. Henderson, the high school history teacher. The woman holding the "US OUT" sign? That was the barista who made my latte three days ago. They looked angry. genuinely, righteously angry. Their breath plumed in the cold air as they chanted. *"Hey hey, ho ho, Western imperialism has got to go!"*

I watched them, and I felt... cold. Colder than the wind. I pulled out my phone again. A livestream from Caracas. A grainy video showing a crowd tearing down a massive poster of Maduro’s face. They were stomping on it, spitting on it, laughing. A woman was holding a sign that read, in English, *"THANK YOU USA."*

I looked up at Mr. Henderson. He was red-faced, veins bulging in his neck, screaming about sovereignty. He was defending the sovereignty of a man who had dissolved his own parliament. He was demanding "respect" for a regime that had run over protesters with armored trucks. And he was doing it from the safety of a sidewalk in a town where the biggest problem was potholes and property taxes.

The hypocrisy tasted like bile. It choked me. It wasn't just a difference of opinion; it was a fracture in the nature of reality. These people—my people, technically—were prioritizing the *concept* of anti-imperialism over the *reality* of human suffering. They were more offended by the American flag on a jet than by the torture cells that jet had just blown open.

"Ray!" A voice cut through the wind. I turned. It was Marie. She was standing on the edge of the protest, holding a sign that was folded down, like she was embarrassed to unfurl it. Her nose was pink from the cold.

"Hey," I said, voice flat. I didn't move toward her.

She walked over, her boots crunching on the salt-strewn sidewalk. "Crazy, right? Jaden said you were being weird in the chat." She gestured vaguely at the crowd. "We have to show we don't support this. The Emperor... he's out of control. If he can do this to them, he can do it to anyone."

I looked at her. Really looked at her. Marie, who cried when she found a dead bird. Marie, who volunteered at the animal shelter. "Marie," I said, struggling to keep the tremor out of my voice. "Do you know why those people in Miami are celebrating?"

She frowned, shifting her weight. "Well, yeah, they're... complicated. But Ray, you can't just invade a country. It's about the principle. It's about international order. You can't support a warmonger just because the outcome is convenient."

"Convenient?" I laughed, a sharp, barking sound that didn't feel like humor. "People are starving, Marie. They were eating zoo animals in Caracas. Now they have a chance. And you're out here holding a sign defending the guy who starved them because you don't like the guy who saved them?"

Marie’s face hardened. "He didn't 'save' them, Ray. He conquered them. He said it himself. 'American firms.' It's a resource grab. It's colonialism. Don't be so naive."

Naive. The word stung. Maybe I was. Maybe the Emperor was a monster. In fact, I knew he was. I hated the way he spoke, the way he militarized the police, the way he eroded the courts. But does a monster become a hero if he kills a worse monster? Or is it just monsters all the way down?

I stepped back. "I can't do this, Marie. This..." I swept my hand at the chanting crowd. "This is insane. You're protesting the liberation of a country because it messes with your worldview."

"We're protesting war!" she shouted back, her voice joining the chorus of the crowd. "We're protesting the Emperor!"

I turned and walked away. I couldn't listen to it anymore. The Hum was roaring in my ears now, drowning out the chants. It was the sound of a civilization that had lost the ability to distinguish between aesthetics and morality. We were addicted to the spectacle of outrage. We treated geopolitics like a fandom war. Team Blue vs. Team Red. Pick a side, buy the merch, scream the slogans. Forget the bodies. The bodies are just content.

I walked for a long time. Past the strip mall, past the high school, out to the edge of town where the subdivisions gave way to frozen fields and transmission towers. The wind bit at my exposed face, freezing the tears I didn't realize were forming. I felt totally, utterly alone. It wasn't just Venezuela. It was everything. Ukraine. Gaza. Congo. The wars ground on, scrolling endlessly on our screens, reduced to headlines and hot takes. We consumed tragedy like popcorn.

The Emperor had warned of "second strikes" if holdouts resisted. The news alerts kept pinging in my pocket, buzzing against my thigh like a nervous tick. *Zap. Zap. Zap.* More raids. More arrests. The consolidation of power. And the protesters back at the post office? They were the mirror image of the Emperor. He claimed total authority; they claimed total moral superiority. Both of them were blind. He was blind to the nuances of culture; they were blind to the reality of pain.

I found myself sitting on a rusted guardrail overlooking the highway. The cars rushed by below, streaks of red and white light in the gathering gloom. People going home. People going to work. People living their lives while history pivoted on a dime. I pulled out my phone again. My thumb hovered over the screen. The cold pressed in, sharp and biting.

I opened a forum. Not the group chat. Not the sanitized social feeds. A quiet board, an old-school text interface where people still wrote in paragraphs. The cursor blinked, a rhythmic pulse in the gray void.

I typed: *"Anyone else think it's insane we're protesting this while Venezuelans celebrate?"*

I stared at the words. They looked dangerous. In this climate, nuance was treason. Agreeing with the Emperor on anything branded you a fascist. Supporting the intervention made you a bootlicker. But ignoring the victims made you... what? A soulless ideologue?

I hit enter. The text vanished into the ether, posted. I waited. The wind howled through the transmission towers above me, the wires singing a discordant song. The cold seeped through my jeans, into the bone.

A reply popped up. Just one. *"User_7734: It’s not just insane. It’s luxury. We have the luxury to care about 'how' it happened because we aren't the ones suffering from 'what' was happening. We value our clean hands more than their full bellies."*

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. A cloud of steam escaped my lips, dissipating instantly in the wind. Someone else saw it. Someone else felt the dissonance. It didn't fix anything. The Emperor was still a tyrant. The oil was still going to be stolen. The protesters were still going to chant. But for a second, the Hum quieted down. Just a fraction.

I stood up, joints popping. The sky was fully dark now, a bruise turning to black. The lights of the city glowed on the horizon, an artificial dawn that brought no warmth. I put the phone in my pocket. It was time to go home. To listen to my parents pretend everything was fine. To watch the news distort reality. To live in the empire. But at least now, I knew I wasn't the only one seeing the cracks in the glass.

The walk back was colder, but my head was clearer. The biting chill wasn't just misery anymore; it was clarity. It stripped away the fuzz, the noise, the comforting lies. The world was messy, brutal, and contradictory. And we were right in the middle of it, freezing and burning at the same time.