I think, therefore I am

Prologue

"I think, therefore I am."
- René Descartes

"Please stop, you're scaring him!" Says a woman. She is walking with a boy about 12, who looks like he is terrified.

Natrix looks. Of course they do. 
It's that man again. That old man, who has no name so far, who has been sitting on the sidewalk for a month, and they had never seen him leave so they have no reason to believe he did, and that doesn't make sense but they learned that a lot of things don't make sense in the world, and that this fact is actually the only one that makes sense.
Beside the man, there is a piece of paper for people to read: "I laugh, for life is funny, and for I think, therefore I am."

Natrix knows that once in a while, probably about 2 hours every time, the nameless, homeless, meaningless man breaks into hysterical laughter.
Natrix feels the laughter in their soul, as if a tiny audio device was placed right next to their heart, which sends waves of sound through their chest.

They look at the woman, who is now just looking at the man laughing, pulling the child away while talking to him, probably telling him it was some kind of a street show and that some people are a little wrong in the head.
After a few minutes, the old man becomes silent again, and Natrix realizes they are standing still a few meters away from him, staring.
Staring is a bad thing to do, "it makes you look mad and obsessed," that's what Loo says, but Loo is a very old woman and can't always be trusted of remembering what she has last eaten, let alone teach you important life lessons.
But Loo is the only friend Natrix has, which, they think bitterly, is a bit pathetic for a 16 year old.

But then they walked by, like they always have. Walking by, their speciality, not giving a shit.
This talent gave them some well needed silence, but also made them insanely lonely.
But you can't have it all.

~~~

It was the third night after the incident with the lady.
One of the major downsides of being a loner is having no one to talk to. Loo was not even a choice - she was a sweet lady, but they couldn't burden her with all of their truly heavy stuff.
And so, they found themselves strolling down the street in their PJs.
The cold night breeze plays with their hair. 
They spot the man. It's normal for Natrix to walk like this at night, so that wasn't the first time they saw the man clearly, without teens harassing him or people trying to make him move.
Quite a tourist trap, it was, as the neighborhood became more popular around town as the words of the statue man spread.

They let out a sigh. They walk over to the man, and sit down on the cold sidewalk beside him.
The man doens't seem to give a damn about Natrix's unicorn PJs, as he just sat there, but honestly that's all he ever did.
Natrix prayed to God, any god, that he wouldn't start laughing.

"So the truth is I am a hypocrite," They start, their voice becoming muffled as they bury their face in their arms, as if ashamed of their confession. "I go and tell myself that everything will be alright, and I see people struggling and I say all kinds of corny things because that's what society tells us to do. But the truth is everything isn't alright, which makes me a liar. I don't like liars, maybe that's why I don't like myself very much."

The man doesn't move. Not even a blink.

"You aren't listening. Are you even alive?" When they get no response, they get up and start walking away.

"I think therefore I am." Says the man behind him, causing Natrix to spin around so quickly the almost lost their balance.

"Come back again, Natrix." And then the man started laughing, another one of these weird attacks.

Natrix feels a shiver go down their spine - what is it about that laughter that made him so.. vaunrable?
They cover their ears and run as fast as they could back home, but the laughter echos in their mind, in their soul, and it wouldn't leave them until later that night.
It was only when they almost drifted off to sleep when they realized they never gave the man their name, but the sleep got them by then.

When they woke up, they concluded it was just a dream. A vivid dream, that's all.

They tried not the think about the man who thinks therefore he is.

They wished he wouldn't think.

Let me know what you think in the comments! Am I completely helpless or should I keep writing it?