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Milan Reflects — Description

"The more you know, the earlier you go crazy..." Milan muttered to himself as he dropped a pill of aspirin into his glass of flat beer. He’d been grappling with a lingering headache for some time now, despite his relentless efforts to leave no room for thought in his daily routines, consumed as he was by the pursuit of wealth and stability.
Lately, however, those quiet moments before and after work had become an increasingly bothersome headspace for unwelcome reflection. The jaded eyes of a dog like Milan had seen too much—perhaps more than he should have—and at times, he couldn’t help but feel like just another puppet in the grotesque theater of a world he despised.
"Hate the game, not the player." The phrase was tossed around often in the circles he moved in, where few animals possessed the stomach to create the vile kind of entertainment the world so viciously consumed.
His thoughts drifted to a small-time actress he’d been dealing with. Her name escaped him, and quite frankly, he didn’t care to remember it. To Milan, she was just another easily bent rookie, a pawn doomed to be used up or found dead in a dumpster sooner or later. Will it be homicide or suicide? In the end, it’s all the same.
Yet, there was something unsettling about a creature so naive and innocent navigating carelessly among the dregs of the underworld. That kind of carefree naivety struck a nerve in Milan—it reminded him too much of the young dog he used to be, before it was stripped away forever in a single moment of forgotten words and the swift flick of a pocketknife.
Still, she was in it willingly—for the money, of course. In this line of work, the more you’re willing to pile your burden onto someone else’s back, the better you live, and supposedly, the softer you sleep. She might not belong here, but she’s one of the reasons Milan has a comfy bed to lie in and a warm blanket to crawl under—unlike the animals he passes on his daily walks who sleep like wild beasts on cardboard boxes with empty bottles for pillows.
If only that warm blanket could shield him from the thoughts of ending up like them.
How else would Milan have escaped his dead-end job as a taxi driver in a collapsing socialist regime? He’d clawed his way up, from the underworld’s murky depths to the "legitimate" position of a movie director. Along the way, shady deals were struck, and heads were left intact—or crushed—for the sake of survival. "If you don’t have the stomach to do it, someone else surely will..." That’s how the world spins.
The pill had long since dissolved, and the beer sat still in the glass. The heavy bell toll of an old wall clock suddenly broke Milan's trance, jolting him back to his senses. His tired eyes darted around the room before locking onto the rusty hands of the clock. Thirty minutes had slipped by as if they were nothing.
Perhaps it was time to wash the thoughts away with some aspirin and get the cameras rolling once again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQrKSmmObYc