Did I want to get stuck in an elevator? Hell no, I did not want to sit for an hour in the confined space of a rusty box. I wanted to get to work faster today so that I could return home earlier, but apparently, the Universe experienced a malfunction. And it is not just today. It is always happening like this.

When you are late for something it creates the impression that the Earth starts rotating slower. You cannot catch any transportation, and if it arrives, the bus gets stuck in traffic, the subway breaks down or skips your stop. In general, the Universe uses any means possible to delay you so that you will be late by as much as possible. But I do not want to be late. I am trying with all my “might” not to be late. I want it very, very much, and where exactly did this whole “conspire to make it happen” thing get lost?

And wanting things is always a whole complicated business. You want to cross a street, and this small, shabby, useless-to-nobody street suddenly turns into the main highway of the entire city. Cars are driving one after another, some buses appear, trucks materialize, and once a whole line of ultra-heavy duty tractor-trailers carrying military equipment drove past me. I will not even start talking about finding a parking spot. There is always one when you do not need it, but the moment you need one, everybody has apparently arrived home.

And all of this is not even about wanting something very strongly. When you start wanting something very, very strongly, then you can forget about it altogether.

For example, I really, really need to use the bathroom, and, naturally, I have to get to the sixth floor. You run to the stairs and realize that lifting your leg to the height of a step will increase your intra-abdominal pressure so much that no valves, already holding on by their last bit of strength, will be able to cope anymore.

And the elevator? At this very moment, the elevator is always occupied. A whole bunch of people are in a hurry to go up to the eighth floor, or another bunch wants to go down to the garage, where the first bunch is waiting for the elevator. Someone is trying to move a grand piano somewhere, and a grand piano is a tricky thing. By analogy with the Bloater Drive1, a grand piano always bloats up at precisely the wrong moment. You can get it into the elevator, but once inside, it starts expanding, and getting it back out becomes impossible.

Some couple in love cannot say goodbye to each other. He walked her home, and now they have to part for what seems an eternity, several hours in all actuality. They are kissing each other right in the doorway of the elevator that has just arrived. It is impossible to get out of the elevator and let it go down to me on the first floor, and going down by the stairs is not an option either, because on the floor below, some lady is seeing her guests off and suddenly remembers that she forgot to give them a little bag of treats for Aunt Sarah who could not attend the gathering.

In horror, she shouts, “Wait! Hold the elevator! I’ll be quick!” and rushes to her apartment to collect the little jars into which she will put, like in Noah’s Ark, a pair of every kind of treat.

And all this time, already using my hands to help my sphincters gradually giving up their fight, I will be standing downstairs, waiting for this dumb elevator that everybody needs right this moment.

On the one hand, the Universe is helping to fulfill my wish. After all, my main wish is to “go,” so the Universe is trying it’s best to make this wish come true as quickly as possible. But, you see, I want to “go” specifically in the place designated for this purpose. And the Universe keeps sending all these crazy people with grand pianos, arks of little jars, love and all the rest of its vastness.

By the way, where are all these people when you actually need them?

Where were they today? When I was calling for help and banging on the closed doors of that very elevator that everybody needs so much.

In the morning, I quickly ran through the shops and, loaded with my purchases, decided to take the elevator to my floor. And what happened? I spent an hour hanging between the first and second floors. Not one single person, none of those bastards I mentioned above, needed the elevator.

Eventually, I had to call 911. At least the firefighters did not let me down. They arrived in five minutes and switched off the electricity to the elevator shaft. I spent another 20 minutes sitting in complete darkness until the firefighters discovered that some “genius” on the fifth floor had shoved a piece of wire into the elevator doors.

I got ready for work in a hurry, wearing different socks. The Earth had not simply slowed down. It had started spinning in the opposite direction.

And here I am, sitting at work, with a reprimand and wearing different socks, writing this on my phone because guess what? I came here for a meeting just to find out that the servers are down ...

What a load of crap, this Coelho!

“When you want something, all the Universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

—Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

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So, thank you for the mention.

5:30 a.m.

He opened his eyes. The ceiling was white. The room was dark. The temperature was 19 degrees Celsius, as prescribed by the sleep optimization protocol.

Heart rate: 58 beats per minute.
Blood oxygen saturation: 98 percent.
Sleep quality: 94.7 percent.

The chip already evaluated his physical condition and adjusted his morning schedule accordingly. He rose from the bed without hesitation. He adjusted the book he read before falling asleep so it would be parallel to the edge of the night table. He placed his feet to the floor and straightened the pillow. He made the bed making sure the corners were in perfect alignment. The bed looked pristine as if nobody ever touched it before.

5:32 am

Thirty push-ups, forty squats, twenty abdominal crunches. A two-minute plank. The sequence was displayed directly in his visual field.

The chip determined that no adjustment of the morning exercise routine was needed.

His muscles responded efficiently and his breathing remained controlled. At the end, his pulse was elevated to the optimal level for the next stage of his morning.

5:42 am

He urinated, washed his hands, and stood in front of the sink. The water temperature was adjusted automatically. He wet his toothbrush, applied approximately a pea-sized amount of toothpaste, and began brushing.

Two minutes.

The chip divided the time into four thirty-second intervals, each assigned to a different section of his teeth.

At 5:44, he rinsed his mouth.

Dental hygiene compliance: 100 percent.

He washed his face, cleaned his ears, and inspected his skin for abnormalities in the mirror. Nothing required attention. His facial hair was to regulation length, requiring no shave.

5:47 am

Shower. Twenty minutes, divided into a precise sequence.

He wet his hair and applied shampoo. Massaged the scalp for thirty seconds. Rinsed. Applied conditioner. While waiting for the manufacturer suggested interval, he washed his face and neck. Then his shoulders, chest, abdomen, arms, legs, and feet. Each section received the precisely appropriate amount of attention monitored by the chip. The water temperature remained constant. He rinsed in the reverse order, ensuring that no residue remained. A self-examination for testicular cancer revealed no abnormalities.

At 6:07, he stepped out.

He dried himself, applied deodorant, and inspected his reflection. His appearance met all established standards. He dressed in clean underwear, a white shirt, dark trousers, and polished shoes. The clothing that had been suggested the previous evening by the chip. It took into the account the weather, his assignments for the day, and the expected duration of outdoor activity.

6:12 am

Two boiled eggs, whole-grain toast, Greek yogurt, and half a grapefruit. He almost added cream to the coffee but the chip advised against it. Coffee – black. The meal provided the precise balance of protein, carbohydrates, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals required for his projected workload. He ate at a steady pace, chewing thoroughly.

The chip monitored his nutritional intake and adjusted his lunch recommendation accordingly.

He rinsed the dishes and placed them in the dishwasher. The kitchen was clean. The refrigerator contained exactly what he needed for the coming week with no expired products, unnecessary purchases, or unfamiliar objects.

6:25 am

His visual field filled with the day’s schedule. Three meetings, one surveillance assignment and a fitness assessment. Tentatively: two hours of administrative work.

He reviewed the information without emotion. The chip highlighted relevant details and reinforced the priorities established by his superiors.

6:29 am

He stood by the door.

Wallet. ID. Keys. Communication device. Personal weapon.

All present.

At 6:30 precisely, he left his apartment.

The chip communicated with the building’s security system registering his departure. The elevator arrived before he reached it. His vehicle was waiting in the designated space, engine running, environmental controls adjusted.

He entered, fastened his seat belt, and looked in the rear-view mirror.

At 6:31, the monitor lit up:

GOOD MORNING, AGENT. YOUR FIRST ASSIGNMENT THE ROUTE HAS BEEN UPDATED.

He acknowledged the information and started driving.

11:32 am

Her arm had gone completely numb, which was a little strange because everything else was working perfectly, but she had to wake up anyway. She opened her eyes and immediately tried to swat away the message that had appeared before them. Her arm wouldn’t obey her, actually it did but all she felt was tingling.

Wouldn’t it be great if this could be a weapon? If you could accumulate pins and needles and shoot them at someone.

She shook her arm, grabbed the blanket, and pulled it over her head closing her eyes again. The chip insistently displayed information indicating that the optimal wake up time passed four and a half hours ago. She had missed it, like most of the messages from this device.

According to the chip, she had reached the age when people began to develop routines, acquire matching furniture, and started worrying about their retirement plans. She had none of those problems. Well, she had all of them, but she had already found seventeen reasons why retirement plans were a scam, three ways to improve the furniture industry, and a revolutionary method of organizing society based on the behavior of ants. The ants were not complying and still under investigation.

She sat on the edge of her bed. The room looked as though it had been burglarized by someone who knew exactly what they were looking for but at the same time couldn’t remember what it was.

She stared at a sock on the floor.

Why was there only one sock? Where was its partner? Did socks actually disappear in washing machines or maybe they migrated through secrete passages to another… dimension? While thinking over this new development she ignored another message suggesting an exercise routine. Did socks say goodbye to each other before every wash? They hugged and swore never to let go, tearfully confessing their love.

“Never let go!”

And then they were torn apart. One traveled to another dimension, while the other remained behind to drag out a miserable existence in trash. Why didn’t we wash single socks to give them a chance to reunite?

She needed to write that down.

She reached for her phone on the nightstand, but it wasn’t there. The bedside table had a glass of water, three blue pens, a flashlight, a half-eaten chocolate bar, and a mug containing what might once have been tea. Another reminder about morning exercise appeared. She stretched, then reached for the table and grabbed the unfinished chocolate bar. After examining it from all sides, she didn’t hesitate to bite into it.

She left the bed unmade, the blanket twisted around one leg, almost causing her to fall. She spotted a note on the floor:

BUY MILK.

Beneath that, in smaller letters:

WHAT IS JOJOBA MILK? DO THEY MILK LITTLE JOJOBAS TO GET IT?

She got up and looked at a book. Interesting. It was perfectly parallel to the edge of the nightstand. She moved it out of alignment, which reminded her that she wanted to invent a better alarm clock. One that didn’t wake people up but convinced them that being awake would be a much better idea. Could it use subliminal messages? Would that be legal? Could it be used on politicians? Would that be unethical? Probably not.

Could something be done with this chip that kept sending suggestions about healthy lifestyle adjustments?

She carefully stepped over a box of screws next to a pair of boots that were too big to be hers.

She walked past a chair that had disappeared under a pile of clothes. All were perfectly wearable, yet completely mismatched. Moved couple of stones on the table a small collection she picked up during childhood holidays. She remembered where each stone had come from. She couldn’t remember where she had put her keys.

The whiteboard by the window contained equations, a drawing of a cat, a recipe for pancakes, and a detailed diagram of a human brain with the caption:

THIS THING NEEDS A BETTER INTERFACE.

She headed toward the bathroom, then stopped.

The sock.

She picked it up, looked at it suspiciously, and put it in the laundry basket.

There. Problem solved.

She turned on the faucet, wondering when fish get thirsty. But then she turned around and, ignoring the chip’s message about tooth-brushing efficiency, walked back to the whiteboard. She read the message again, pointing to each word with her toothbrush.

THIS THING NEEDS A BETTER INTERFACE.

The chip registered an increased heart rate and voluntary breath-holding.

The prompt:

Salem and Hemlock

Character Development Prompt

This is a prompt intended to help develop and get to know your new character or maybe a certain favorite one that you can’t get out of your head…

Read more

3 months ago · 9 likes · Salem Eddine

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Don’t bother checking AI detector its says 100% AI generated, I checked it myself.

Your houseplant is weird. Your relationship with it is weirder.

Day One

Finally, I found a charmingly delightful little place.

Quite spacious. The window provides an excellent view of the green grass and a meadow with a small pond fed by a spring. The sound of the running water, hurrying to feed the pond, is remarkably stimulating. I can see myself meditating and thinking here.

I believe this will become my favorite place for contemplation, especially in the mornings. I can watch nature and enjoy my morning drink.

I only wish my ward would appreciate this beautiful view as much as I do and finally stop being sick.

It has become rather yellow and looks distinctly unhealthy. Its whole appearance has become rather wilted.

I must find some kind of remedy. We have been together for some time now and I have even begun to consider it something of a friend.

Day Two

My ward is still sick.

I have tried encouraging it to drink more.

It refuses.

I do not understand this behavior.

Water is essential to life, especially to its life. Everything I have learned about this life-form suggests that water should make it feel better.

My ward, apparently, disagrees.

I have decided to tolerate this behavior for the time being, but perhaps I should consider some other forms of nourishment. After all, it has a strange structure that resembles the flytrap plants I once saw at a store.

Day Five

It is raining today. The rain is pouring straight down, so the window is closed, and I have been studying the environment.

There are many interesting creatures here.

Birds. I have noticed at least five different kinds. Their singing is very beautiful, especially in the early mornings, when the sun just rises above the edge of the forest.

I think I have spotted a squirrel’s nest in one of the nearby trees. What busy creatures squirrels are!

Once, I saw a rabbit.

One of the birds was particularly annoying yesterday. It spent twenty minutes staring at me through the window and saying something in those impossible-sounding chirps.

I stared back.

It left.

I consider this a victory.

Strangely enough, however, my sickly-looking friend seemed to react to that annoyance differently. It even straightened up a little and moved closer to the window. Its mouth, as I have decided to call that structure, changed shape, and I thought I heard it attempting to produce sounds that imitated the intolerable bird.

Although my ward, for some reason I rather like calling it that, continues to behave strangely, I am still trying my best to make it better.

It has become even more wilted. Its limbs hang almost constantly, and its uppermost part is usually bent forward. Perhaps this is a symptom of whatever illness it has.

I have decided that it needs better food.

I wonder whether I can somehow communicate that I am doing my best to help it.

Day Six

Progress.

My ward finally gave me some hope. We shared a drink today.

Unfortunately, it was not particularly pleasant.

I believe it was some sort of bitter medicine. I did not enjoy it, but, interestingly, my friend seemed to.

I have no idea why it thought I needed it.

I tolerated it because it seemed pleased afterward. Sometimes one has to humor the sick.

But I think we are forming a bond. Its mouth changed shape a little, and I believe it was pleased.

Day Eight

My ward touched me today.

One of its limbs reached out and ran along my side. At first, I thought it was an accidental touch, but then it returned to the top of my side and moved downward again.

That mouth structure was making sounds and changing its appearance. I think I saw some white structures inside it.

I believe we are connecting.

I think I need to give it a name.

We shall see.

Day Fourteen

We are developing a routine.

Now the touches have become our regular greetings. Every morning, while I enjoy the beginning of a new day by the window, his limb touches me and runs along my side.

I swear he makes sounds while he does it, and I am certain these are sounds of pleasure.

To tell the truth, I sometimes hear other sounds from it. No, strike that. From him.

He has become a part of my life. He is no longer merely a ward, but something resembling a friend.

I have heard him make other sounds, too. It is not a hallucination. I swear it is not.

The sounds are different, and their frequency changes significantly. Sometimes it rises, sometimes it falls. I still need to establish a baseline, because I am considering constructing a table to classify the sounds.

Otherwise, his condition has not changed much. He is still mostly yellowish, and I have noticed no new growth.

I must think about his nutrition.

Day Seventeen

I have decided to use our morning routine as the baseline for my table of observed sound frequencies.

The sounds have a moderate-to-low frequency and a steady volume, although the volume occasionally drops. The pauses are comfortable, with a regular rhythm.

I believe this will make a good baseline.

Most of the other sounds I observe are different. Their frequency and volume are often higher, sometimes becoming almost sharp, rough, and rapid. The sounds are harsh, and their frequency rises.

At other times, the sounds lose their usual variation in frequency and become quiet.

Once or twice, I have observed an entire period of highly variable frequency. There were abrupt breaks in the pitch, and the sounds trembled and broke unpredictably. It was fascinating: abrupt pitch breaks, pulses, and sudden spikes in loudness.

Another instance was equally interesting. It consisted of repeated bursts in which the pitch rose and fell dramatically. The bursts were loud and separated by sharp pauses.

I am organizing my observations to determine how these changes in frequency relate to changes in the surrounding environment.

Addendum: Something happened this evening that concerned me.

He was banging his limbs against the kitchen counter and making a great many abrupt, high-frequency sounds. The force was considerable enough to shake me.

I felt frightened.

Then everything changed.

He touched me softly and continued opening his mouth, producing sounds without any measurable fundamental frequency.

Later, I heard those variable patterns again, with abrupt breaks in pitch.

I am not sure what to make of these observations.

Day Twenty-One1

He does use his mouth for nourishment. I observed this morning.

After our routine greeting, one of his limbs picked something up from the tabletop and pushed it into his mouth. He repeated the action with what appeared to be a form of plant life. I believe it was a baby tomato.

This is obviously very concerning.

Even more concerning was what happened afterward. He leaned toward me and pressed his mouth against me, moving it again without producing any measurable fundamental frequency.

I think he was pleased.

I am beginning to suspect that his mouth serves several purposes beyond nourishment.

Day Twenty-Seven

I am... I do not know what happened.

Nothing had given me any warning.

And then, suddenly, it was evening.

He produced a very loud, high-pitched sound, followed by several more. He began thrashing about, his limbs grabbing everything around him and throwing it aside.

He was clawing at himself. One of his erratically moving limbs struck me with such force that I fell to the floor.

I tried to cover myself. Perhaps I even hoped to become invisible.

He paid no attention to me.

He continued this madness, making a multitude of sounds and behaving like a monster, until he fell to the floor beside me. For a moment, he lay there, motionless. He pushed me aside, sending me crashing against the cabinets, then dragged himself away by pushing against the floor with his limbs.

He left me lying there.

Later, I heard some of the most horrifying sounds unlike anything I had ever observed.

First came a long, piercing sound. Its frequency rose steadily, then fell, only to rise again. The pattern repeated itself with remarkable persistence, growing louder as it approached. I could not determine what produced it, but the sound seemed to fill the entire house, vibrating through the walls and making the window tremble.

Through this came other sounds near by. It was difficult to distinguish one from another. Their frequencies overlapped, rose abruptly, and dropped without warning. Some were loud and sharp, consisting of short bursts separated by almost nonexistent pauses. Others were lower, steadier, but no less urgent. Occasionally, one would rise above the others, producing a sudden spike in volume and frequency, only to disappear beneath the next burst.

There were rapid heavy impacts. A succession of irregular noises that seemed to move from one part of the house to another.

I tried to organize the sounds into recognizable patterns, but they refused to cooperate. The sounds interrupted one another, and the pauses between them were too short to be reassuring.

Then I heard him.

His voice was buried beneath the other sounds, broken and faint. There were sudden changes in volume, fragments of sound, and long intervals during which I heard nothing at all. But it was him I was sure…

I wanted to believe he was speaking to me.

The sounds grew louder. Something scraped across the floor.

Then the piercing sound returned.

It rose and fell in its peculiar, repetitive pattern, and gradually receded into the distance.

The sounds disappeared.

The house became quiet again.

Nothing.

I did nothing.

I was frightened. I think I broke something when I fell and was struck again. I cannot feel half of myself.

I cannot do anything.

...

I have lost track of time. I do not know what day it is.

I think I am dying.

No help has come for me. I am still lying on the kitchen floor. My paralysis is progressing, and I can no longer feel more than half of myself.

I have no water or nourishment.

I am afraid of this slow, painless death. I want to feel again. I want the sun to reach me. I want to look at the meadow through the window.

I am so frightened.

I am alone, and I am afraid.

...

I am beginning to understand something.

Perhaps I was not the one taking care of him…he was using me to gain strength, to grow. I was merely something he needed, something he could take from.

Have I created this monster?

No, not created it. But I enabled him. I gave him the strength and power to make him what he has become.

I am responsible for this.

I wish I had known.

I am turning yellow myself. The light has changed. No, the light is the same. It is reaching the floor differently now. I cannot tell why.

I am very tired.

I think I will sleep now.

...

I do not have much time left.

I cannot...

It is the end.

Oh, I am terrified.

Help.

The swollen wooden door opened only after the second push.

Lena stepped into the little house, leaning against the doorframe of the tiny kitchen. She was exhausted from the journey and overwhelmed by memories.

She had loved her uncle, her only close relative, and even now she was devastated by his death. She closed her eyes, trying to remember him as he once was, not as the jaundiced, thin body bent by disease that he had become.

He had always been a fighter, and even in his final moments, he had kept fighting, using his last bit of strength to reach the emergency button. The ambulance had come and taken him to the hospital, but his body had already endured too much. His long battle with cancer had weakened his body so much that it could not survive the heart attack.

She wanted to remember him as he had been. Strong as a mighty oak.

Her daughter slipped past her and disappeared into the little room.

A moment later, she called out.

“Oh, Mom!”

Lena looked up.

“Look at that ugly flower on the floor. Eww! I think it’s dead.”

The actual Prompt:

𖥸 Where trauma meets fiction 𖥸

HELL-oween 𖤐 Oct 3rd

Plant with benefits…

Read more

a month ago · 13 likes · 4 comments · Beastly 𖤐 Being

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Buy me coffee

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Then someone you love is about to leave you. Fortunately, you’re the most powerful witch your family has seen in generations but the absolute worst at controlling it.

I don’t know if It actually matches the prompt and fits the Halloweeny wibe.. but here:

It was the emptiness that first made him suspicious. The house was silent but at the same time tense, as if everything was in its place but something had gone against his will.

He checked the security spells. Everything was there. Everything was working properly and not a single trap had devoured anyone who wasn’t supposed to be there. The silent guards were also standing at their posts as usual.

But the feeling of emptiness didn’t go away. Not only in the house. There was emptiness in his heart too.

She left.

She was gone.

But why? She had everything she wanted. He had even given her the codes to all the traps and security spells.

The codes!

The treasury was empty.

He wanted to sit in his favorite chair but it was gone too.

She was gone and she took the treasury and his chair.

She was gone!

Not dead. Not kidnapped by a demon. (He went to check the lab. All the smelly creatures were there.)

Not even taken by another man.

She had run away with a woman.

She had opened her cage in the dungeon and they had escaped together!

With a woman!

The whole experiment was gone now!

Vile creatures. After so many attempts to find the right specimen!

Virgin, my ass!

She was gone! The experiment was ruined! Did she even realize how hard it was to find a virgin nowadays?

Money gone.

My chair!

It’s antique!

Just the delivery cost a fortune and then those morons almost chipped it during assembly!

She didn’t take them. All three statues were still standing sorrowfully in the alcoves.

But the chair was gone.

Great.

The goblet was gone too.

At least she left the ice.

He hit himself on the forehead.

He gave her all the keys and even the keys to activate the spells himself! Himself!

What a moron! With his own hands, he had given her all his protective spells.

Stupid idiot in love!

But it couldn’t have been a game. She loved him too. He couldn’t have been wrong.

Maybe she had fallen under some kind of spell?

He carefully spread his hands and looked into the web of lines, following every one of them. He checked everything, even the tiny little tracking knots scattered in the corners.

Nothing.

There was no foreign trace.

Nothing.

He looked into her chambers. All was gone except for his anniversary gift. The stupid blue bird was puffing out its feathers, spreading its tail and screaming hysterically at its own reflection.

But there was love!

There had definitely been love, not just sex. Feelings. They had both been there together. She wanted him. She desired him.

He couldn’t have imagined all of it!

Or could he? Had he somehow put some kind of spell on her without realizing it, and had it simply reached its expiration date?

No, I couldn’t have enchanted her. That goes against all the laws.

And he didn’t even know those love spells. He had never worked with them.

He threw the half-empty bottle at the wall.

It didn’t even break.

The wine was expensive and he had enchanted all the bottles so he wouldn’t accidentally break one.

But now...

The bottle bounced back.

This seemed unnecessarily insulting.

He spent the evening staring at the family grimoire, looking for a spell to make her come back.

There were several.

Most involved blood, moonlight, specific parts of unicorns’ groins, and something exotic from a dragon’s behind, which didn’t sound at all pleasant. But all of them had consequences that had been underlined three times by his grandmother.

Well, that old witch knew how to have fun.

A hundred years after reading her journal, he still shuddered remembering some of her stories.

But even she had never touched these spells.

Then he had another idea.

He opened his laptop and took a selfie.

“AI,” he said, “show me what I would look like as a woman.”

The stupid machine! Real live Igor would have been better, but the treasury was empty, so Artificial Igor would have to do. If it wasn’t needed to evaluate the magical data from his experiments, he would have never used it.

After several prompts, he finally found himself looking at something decent.

At least she didn’t have pieces of beard sticking out and didn’t resemble a frog so much.

She was somewhat even pretty.

He stared at the image.

“Well,” he said. “She wanted a woman instead of me! I’ll give her a woman! And then I’ll think of some interesting experiments to conduct!”

Three hours later, he stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror, preparing the transformation potion and the activating spell.

Another sip of wine straight from the bottle for courage, and at the same time weaving his energy into the activation, he emptied the green vial into himself.

It didn’t take long.

A cramp twisted his body. He coughed out smoke, his eyes burst into flames.

He grabbed his bald head with both hands and, feeling something moving on the top of his head, screamed and jumped around, trying to fight off something invisible.

Leaning against the sink, he slowly pulled himself up from the floor and threw a glance at the mirror.

He had successfully transformed himself.

He turned sideways.

Then the other way.

He looked at his face.

Green eyes were looking back at him from the mirror.

He touched his long, curly red hair.

His waist.

His legs.

He looked over his shoulder.

I should probably take out the trash, he thought.

“Huh?”

He checked again.

The bed sheets should probably be changed too.

“Huh.”

How had he even lived in such a pigsty all this time?

And the smell from the lab?

Those demons were always shitting everywhere.

The dungeon with all the skeletoids...

Brrr.

After spending some time with cleaning spells, he drew himself a bath and fully enjoyed it with a couple of glasses of wine.

It turned out drinking from a glass was much more pleasant than pouring wine straight from the bottle into himself.

He sat in front of a mirror, brushing his hair.

He moved his hands to the sides, increasing the size of the mirror.

He had never been particularly narcissistic before.

He had simply never had the opportunity.

By noon, he was in love.

Not metaphorically.

Not in the poetic sense.

He was absolutely, catastrophically, hopelessly in love with himself.

He spent the afternoon making tea and staring at himself in the mirror, running his hands over his body.

His breasts.

His stomach.

The firm buttocks.

The legs he was particularly proud of.

He had completely forgotten about everything else.

“How did women ever get anything done?” he wondered.

He looked at himself again.

“Honestly, How? If you could just enjoy being you?”

He had discovered the greatest magical secret of all:

You didn’t need a love spell.

You just needed a mirror.

The actual prompt:

𖥸 Where trauma meets fiction 𖥸

HELL-oween 𖤐 Oct 2nd

Love Spell…

Read more

a month ago · 10 likes · 6 comments · Beastly 𖤐 Being

Eight

I couldn’t go see Anechka yesterday. Patrick’s calm, all-knowing voice swallowed me whole. His arguments came at me wave after wave, tossing my thoughts around and dragging me under. Sophie, that one hit first, almost knocking the breath out of me. How was it that the mere sound of her name had that effect on me? I was still recovering when images of my wife and friends crashed over me.

I still wanted to find them. To see them. To hold them. To feel my kids pressed against me, hear them say “Dad,” see them, love them more and more. My friends, whom I never said goodbye to, my acquaintances, and my wife. My wife, who put up with everything. Who endured me and all my drunkenness. They were in me. They were all me. Those moments brought memories rising from somewhere deep inside. They were everything I had, everything I had left, and everything I had finally destroyed by myself. Demolished thoroughly, leaving not one stone standing of what we had built together…demolished entirely and for good.

The last wave dragged me along the very bottom, through silt and shells, and threw me breathless on a lonely shore. The uninhabited shore of my existence.

The uninhabited shore of my loneliness, the one I had been so desperate to reach. The one I had swum toward so stubbornly, through currents of alcohol, pushing away every helping hand my family and friends held out to me, only now and then hauling myself onto the rare islands of calm and clarity.

I had wanted so badly to get here, and here I was, alone with a half-empty bottle. Proud and lonely in my fortress of solitude, pouring liquor laced with tears over thoughts of the people I had lost. The ones I had fled from, and the ones I betrayed.

How I longed to hold them close and never let go, not for a moment.

What boys, what dogs, what PhD-holding lightnings could I possibly have been thinking about?

All I thought about was how to get home and lose myself in something mind-numbing.

My hands reached for the bottles. I was trembling with anticipation; my dry throat tightened, pushing saliva through as amber liquid filled the glass, but as I poured myself some rum, I never took a sip. I just blankly stared into the glass, diluting that amber elixir-looking liquid with my tears. It stubbornly refused to turn clear and carry me off to other worlds.

Slowly, the outlines of the things around me blurred, and I remember throwing my head back and howling at the ceiling.

I woke up on the couch, the glass lying on the floor, its elixir spilled across the old parquet. Sunlight was pushing itself through the half-closed blinds, and the TV had frozen, asking some ridiculous question. I managed to get my body into a gravitationally correct position. It’s a good thing I’m the way I am now. Before, I’d probably have needed several attempts, grabbing at a shoulder, then a knee, then wincing with pain as I straightened my back and cracked my neck. Now the whole acrobatic routine took a few seconds at most. I focused on the screen and read: Are you continuing to watch House MD?

House M.D.? I was watching that? For me, that show has always had a fundamental contradiction at its center: a doctor without empathy is not really a doctor, at least not in the human sense of the word. He treats people like diagnostic puzzles, where the patient is secondary to the intellectual grandiosity of the main character, and his contempt for their feelings is presented as part of what makes him even more brilliant. At some point, though, a doctor who can understand the disease but cannot connect with the person suffering from it starts looking less like an exceptional doctor and more like an extremely sophisticated diagnostic machine. And after a couple of episodes, it becomes clear that every medical conundrum will be of autoimmune or neurological origin anyway.

Judging by the things scattered around the screen, I hadn’t been able to help myself and had started arguing with the TV. Not with the soulless TV character, but with his equally soulless real-life incarnation. Patrick. He had cut open an abscess like a cold, sharp, soulless scalpel with no anesthetic and let the rotting insides spill out.

Patrick! Heartless beast! I felt myself getting worked up again. First I wanted a cigarette, then a drink. Then I wanted both, which was usually a good sign that my day was not going somewhere productive. I wiped my face with my hand, trying to brush away the negativity that was starting to wash over me. Then I turned the television off and went to take a shower.

Apparently, I had slept until late morning. I nearly slipped on my phone as I stepped out of the shower. It was lying on the tile floor in front of the toilet, its battery completely dead.

I’m not a big fan of phones, so I don’t stand next to one I’ve just put on the charger, counting the stretched-out, agonizing milliseconds, trying to hurry the electrons along with trembling hands and sharp cries of come on, come on. I made coffee, which boiled over as usual (I really have to buy a coffee machine and forget this Turkish pot like a bad dream), then walked over to the phone, calmly turned it on, and put it back down, stepping toward a window to enjoy my coffee. A couple of minutes later, it exploded with vibrations and all sorts of alert sounds.

I stared at the screen in surprise: seventeen missed calls from Anechka, plus a pile of missed messages from her as well. Without any thought or hesitation, I hit the call-back button at once. The first ring had barely sounded when the phone exploded with questions.

“Did you? Why? I don’t understand, did you?”

“What? Did I what?”

“Didn’t you see the messages?”

“Of course not. As soon as I saw the missed calls and the number of messages, I called.”

“Why?”

Who the fuck does that? You see missed calls and messages, you call first. “What happened?”

“Did you come to my office yesterday?” Huh? Why would she ask that? Anyway, half-truths hide better than half-lies.

“No, I was planning to, but those plans changed. Why?”

“I was supposed to meet Danny yesterday evening, but he never showed.” Now I have to be very careful answering her questions.

“Who?”

“Danny. You remember that story I told you about the veteran?”

“Ah, yeah. The veteran with PTSD who got scared of a dog?”

“No PTSD and not scared of the dog. He experienced sympathetic overload while... never mind. Yes, the veteran. So, I actually found the boy and had some sessions with him, but yesterday he never showed up. His teachers say he was at school and then just vanished.”

“Did you check...” I barely caught myself in time, about to blurt out his safe place behind the library... “His parents?”

“Yeah. They aren’t worried, and neither are the police. Apparently, he’s gone missing for a couple of days before.”

“Well, then maybe there’s nothing to worry about?” While I talked to her, I started dressing in a frenzy, setting the phone down on the couch, then tossing it from hand to hand.

“No, I think something is wrong, and I need your help.”

“Mine?”

“Yes. I need you to meet me and help me get to a certain place. You see, I know where he might be, but for some reason I can’t go there... I’m afraid.” She stopped for a moment, as if gathering the courage, before asking, “Will you come with me?”

Now I was rushing. All the tangle of my guilt and self-pity was washed clean out of my head. I needed to see her. Daniel was missing, and Anechka was afraid. Anechka and afraid in the same sentence? I had never thought anything could scare her, so it meant something bad was happening. Was it Patrick’s doing? Was he actually softening the blow the “typo department” can deliver to a scientist who gets too close? I still hadn’t read the messages. I ran out of the building to an Uber waiting to take me to Daniel’s school. That was where she wanted to meet, and that was where I went. Sitting in the back seat, I took out my phone. For some reason, Anechka thought I had been in her office while she was out? I couldn’t understand why, but I was sure I’d find out soon. She wasn’t the passive-aggressive type. She never held anything in and was as direct as a lightning strike. But why would she think I’d go into her office without her? Maybe she had somehow felt my presence in the hallways? Is she...? Maybe? No, definitely not. I would have felt her out-of-tune frequency many times if she were one of the people we were looking for. I looked at my phone, thinking... Patrick? Was I right? Had I caught him red-handed? What if I really had seen what I thought I saw in his face that day? Should I call him and ask? So he could hand me some undeniable explanation of the truth, after which I’d be able to think of anything but Daniel or Anechka? Buried in my own thoughts and guesses, I reached my destination before I even realized it. At least the driver was a quiet type. He stared at his third phone the whole way, somehow managing to watch the road and the next episode of Person of Interest at the same time. Well, at least it wasn’t House M.D. Anyway, he got the job done, and we didn’t crash, so I had to remember to give him his stars.

Anechka was waiting for me, pacing near the entrance, and the first thing I heard instead of a greeting was:

“Did you?”

“No, I wasn’t in your office yesterday. Why would you even think that?”

“Because I came back and saw that someone had been in my office. Some of the papers were shifted, someone logged into my computer, and I’m not sure what exactly they did, but they definitely printed something. I don’t know what yet, but I will. So I went to security, and we checked the cameras, and what did I see on one of them? You! Standing in the corridor with a stupidly frightened look on your face! So you were there, and you’d better pray I buy whatever dumb excuse you come up with!” Lightning, damn lightning, with a speech pattern of a machine gun. That is what she was. I couldn’t slow her down, but I still tried to steady myself, to have some time to think before I spoke.

“I was there, yes, but I never went into your office. I was going to take you to lunch, but then plans changed, and I had to go fix them.”

“Fix them? What is that? Your plans are broken pipes? You expect me to believe that? That’s your story?”

“Well, yeah. Think about it. If I was dumb enough to get caught on one camera, do you think I’d suddenly develop the brain capacity to dodge the others? Am I on any of them?” She stopped pacing and looked at me.

“No. But then who was in my office?”

Probably Patrick. Son of a bitch, I really did catch him red-handed. But I didn’t say that out loud. I just shrugged and twisted my face into a look of total bewilderment. She continued, gradually picking up her usual rate of machine-gun fire.

“You wouldn’t have seen me anyway. I was visiting the veteran I told you about before.”

“Oh? How was he?”

“I have no idea! I didn’t see him. Can you imagine? He’s in rehab, and it’s closed to visitors. Rehab! I tried everything. I talked to the doctors, I jumped all over the administrators. Nothing. I wasn’t allowed to see him. And then I went to see Danny, and he’s missing too!”

“What happened to Danie...Danny?” I almost called him Daniel, but I should not know his actual name.

“Nobody knows. Actually, nobody cares. I talked to the teachers, called his parents, even went to the police station. Nothing. But I had an idea. He once told me about a place he likes to spend time in. So naturally, I went there. It’s behind the local library, there’s a basement entrance, you know the type, like the opening of some run-of-the-mill horror flick, but for some reason he felt safe there. I went behind the library.” She paused for a moment, drank out of her water bottle, and continued, “Stopped by the door... I couldn’t open it, and I need you.”

“Well, I’m not exactly a burglar. I don’t know how to pick locks. I could break one, maybe, but I’m no Hercules, you know.”

“No, the door is open. I just... I don’t know. I got scared. I felt such a wave of fear coming to that door that I just jumped back and covered myself as best I could. I was shaking. I couldn’t... I just ran away. I couldn’t. I... I need someone to back me up.”

Seven| [Table of Contents] |

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines art as “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.”

If you use a hammer and chisel to make something out of marble, you wouldn’t call it art? You would.

Now instead use another tool, like MS Word, to create a novel. You also call that art.

The artist decides what to make, what material to remove, where to remove it, and when the work is finished. The tools enable the artistic act; they don’t eliminate the artist.

Nowadays, the tools are more elaborate.

AI doesn’t make art, just as a hammer didn’t. AI is a tool, like a stencil. Would you be as upset about the use of a stencil?

What matters is what the person is doing with the tool and how much of the creative decision-making remains theirs.

And let’s face it: if you simply give AI a prompt and accept whatever it produces, it will make something you could have made in MS Paint in the same amount of time.

Have you ever tried saying to AI, “Make me a gorgeous skyline”?

You will get anything but what you actually asked for.

You will have to use prompt after prompt, correcting it, changing things, removing things, adding things, until you get something even remotely close to what you had in mind. And guess what? Every time you make corrections, you have to continue the next day because you ran out of tokens.

AI is a tool that you have to know how to use. Learn to use it properly.

Photoshop included AI tools for professionals. And I remember an art teacher who used to say that Photoshop creations weren’t art.

Even without AI capabilities, Photoshop’s Pencil Tool is far easier and definitely more forgiving than a physical pencil: undo, erase without damaging the paper, change brush size, zoom in, stabilize, layers, colors, opacity. Pretty sophisticated tool.

And now there’s Generative Fill or Expand, whatever the name is. But even if you don’t use it, there are those who would tell you this is not real art because you have too many advantages over a “real artist” and use less effort creating.

Same with prompts and AI. Is it easier? Hell yeah. But it’s still your creation. I’m not sure whether it’s copyrightable or not, but it’s still a creation made using a tool, and if it expresses an idea or provokes emotion, then it’s art.

I am not defending AI art. I am trying to separate the artist from the tool.

AI is a tool, like a sophisticated hammer. The artist is the person using it. The tool doesn’t become the artist simply because it has become much more sophisticated.

Think about it this way.

If I tell a human illustrator what I want and he produces it, nobody says, “You didn’t create anything because you didn’t draw it yourself.”

The illustrator is the tool through which my idea becomes an image.

That illustrator was my AI. He followed my prompts and created the image I asked for. The only difference is that it took much longer and became considerably more expensive. And if I didn’t like the result, I couldn’t simply tell him, “No, try again,” fifty times in one afternoon.

Or take my boss.

She comes to me and says, “I need a short review of this book for a presentation.”

I write it. Maybe put in a few jokes and connect the book to some story from my life. My boss reads it at the presentation. People clap politely. Nobody asks who wrote the speech.

So what was I in that beautiful equation?

When you tell AI, “Write me a story about such and such,” it will write you a story. And it will be a pretty shitty story. The language will be there, but the ideas or connections are going to be a mess because it can’t make decisions. It can’t talk to a character in its machine head and realize that he would never do whatever you’re trying to make him do in a scene. It can never on its own realize that that particular name doesn’t fit a character.

What the story should be, what needs to change, what stays, what gets thrown away, what the characters should sound like, where the joke belongs, when the result is finally good enough: these decisions it can’t make.

The more sophisticated the tool becomes, the easier it is to confuse the tool with the person using it.

But a hammer didn’t make the sculpture.

Photoshop didn’t make the photograph.

MS Word didn’t write the novel.

And AI doesn’t make the artistic decisions simply because it is capable of producing an image or a piece of text.

It is a tool.

I posted a note the other day (nobody read it, but I still found a typo that changed a sentence, and spent an hour trying to decide whether to fix it or not. Can a machine do that?

Overall, artists are some of the most amazing people...

You can use your balls as a brush or projectile, paint from your ass onto a canvas after an enema, or just duct-tape a banana to a wall and call it art...

But God forbid you touched a keyboard to give directions to an AI. They will eat you alive.

So “Puck” by Mirjam Duizendstra is not art because she used AI?

But nailing your scrotum to the pavement of Red Square is art because only nails, scrotum, and hammer were used.

Tools change. The art is what the artist does with them.

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Seven

The corridor was clean and dusty at the same time. It smelled of synthetic lemon, the universal perfume of schools, hospitals, and places where somebody else was responsible for cleaning the floor. A couple of people were there, but it wasn’t that crowded. I had taken the metro straight here, my pocket burning with the weight of Anna’s business card. I knew that today she was in her office in that old university building with the name of someone and the word Hall after it. So I was walking down that concrete artery where students shuffled like well-behaved cogs in a machine, but here it was called tradition. Make a second turn to the left, go up the stairs to the third floor.

I turned a corner near the biology department, my eyes scanning the office numbers, when my breath caught in my throat.

Down the hall, standing with his back to me, was a mountain of a man. Even under a dark coat, those shoulders were unmistakable, a silhouette that took up half the width of the corridor, Patrick.

What the hell was he doing here? He was supposed to be at his apartment, waiting for me to show up with my report. Instead, here he was, loitering outside the very offices I was trying to reach. Obviously looking for me. Somehow he knew what I planned to do, and now he is preparing one of his appearing-out-of-nothing-with-a-cup-of-something-steaming-in-his-hands tricks.

My instinct screamed at me to go back, and I considered turning around. Patrick hadn’t seen me yet. It would be easy. If I slipped backward into the stairwell, I could disappear before he ever knew I’d disobeyed his direct order. It was the perfect moment to fade out, to play the Invisible Man. How did Daniel say it? “If the world doesn’t see you, it can’t scare you.”

I took a half-step back, but then, as if sensing the shift in the air, Patrick moved.

He scanned the corridor before locking onto me. I braced myself for the lazy, knowing smirk, the heavy hand on the shoulder, the condescending joke about me taking a detour. Our eyes met, and for the briefest moment something passed across his face. For a fraction of a millisecond, Patrick’s face did something I had never seen it do before. His eyes widened slightly, a sharp flash of genuine surprise breaking through his composure. His jaw tightened, and a shadow of cold irritation crossed his features, not the mock-disappointment, but the raw, defensive discomfort of a man who had just been caught in a place he shouldn’t be.

The mask slid back on so fast I almost doubted I’d seen it. The familiar, easy grin stretched across his face, but it was too wide, too rehearsed. I’m not Dr. Cal Lightman, but in these fractions of a second, I knew that he didn’t want to see me here. He was just as trapped as I was.

He walked toward me, his heavy steps echoing in the hall. When he spoke, he was his usual unfazed self again. His voice had the usual calm natural cadence accompanied by his typical smile and mock question marks in his gaze.

“Ah, what a coincidence. I was just... checking the wine cooler to fix us a little drink for our debriefing, and here you are.”

He was his usual self again, or was he ever different? Is it my nicotine-deprived paranoia that saw all this wink-wink pupil dilation, jaw tightening, Lie-to-Me nonsense? Best defense is the offense, so I just plainly went on with: “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you, of course. I am an Observer.” Patrick never explained himself. He was a man of bottoms-up philosophies and grand, cryptic metaphors; he didn’t do mundane administrative excuses. “But even an Observer gets lost sometimes, especially in these old corridors made with no general plan in mind.”

And that was probably what I saw. He was just irritated that this awful architecture did not permit him his usual appearing act. So, as casually as I could muster, I told him I was just heading out for a bite before our meeting and thought I’d invite a friend.

Patrick finally got a steaming cup in his hand. We were in a small university café occupying a rectangular room on the ground floor of the old building. A long counter with a cash register, coffee machines, a refrigerated display case, and a few shelves holding packaged snacks occupied one of the walls. There were about ten small rectangular tables scattered around the room, each with two or four simple chairs. A few students sat near the windows with their laptops and books. Most customers never sat; they just bought their coffee and left.

We sat at one of the tables with dark laminate tops and metal edges. Although the rows of fluorescent lights excluded shadows, it felt somehow private.

I was waiting for Patrick to start his interrogation, remembering his hunting stance when he first heard about the boy. I thought the questions would come immediately, but he was silent. Patrick enjoyed his coffee and seemed to enjoy the atmosphere of the place. Slightly tilting his head and studying one of the fans, he listened carefully to the low noise from the coffee machine or refrigeration units, conversations, chairs scraping against the floor, or the occasional clatter of dishes. I also decided not to rush into battle and took a sip of coffee. Strange.

Nothing matches, nothing is decorative, and nothing appears to have been designed as a whole, but the coffee was surprisingly good.

I took another sip and turned my head to look once again at the woman with the hairnet who had served us coffee.

“So what do you think? Is the boy’s frequency out of tune?”

What is this constant mind game? “Did you have to wait until I looked away to keep watching me, or does your brain already do everything automatically?” I waited for an answer, but Patrick did not react at all, so I continued, “Okay, yes, I think he is a typo.”

“Even though he did not register his out-of-tune frequency anywhere?”

I thought for a second and then answered yes.

With that, I told Patrick everything I found out and felt when I met the boy and talked to him. I tried to exercise professional detachment, presenting the facts, but at the same time described what I experienced during the conversation, did not forget to mention the veteran’s symptoms, and the fact that the boy was lonely, that the world was pushing him out. Patrick listened attentively without interrupting, but with every new fact, the lines on his face became more pronounced. In the quiet hum of the café, Patrick was holding a cup of coffee. It wasn’t steaming anymore, his gaze heavy and analytical.

“Let’s not talk about the obvious. No red flags. No anomalies. If he were a genuine interdimensional typo, his ‘barcode’ would be screaming. But the system is quiet. There is no disturbance, but, as always, mistakes happen.”

“So it’s for us to decide?”

“Well, the system is involved, but I’m not convinced it needs to be.”

“What else do you need? He is being pushed out, he is alone, and I felt his frequency. It was a compressed lump of terror that completely hijacked my own body.”

“Yeah, but he is not. I don’t think he is being pushed out, quite the opposite. Those who are being pushed out don’t want to be. They seek normalcy, they want to fit in. Daniel is actively choosing isolation as a defense mechanism. He pushes himself out. He wants to be invisible and not be seen, unlike others.” Patrick paused, sipping his coffee, and then, calmly looking into my eyes, added, “Unlike Sophie.”

My heart skipped a beat when I heard that name. Sophie, the girl who desperately wanted to fit into the world that was trying to destroy her. She didn’t hide from it in a basement. I still felt my betrayal and guilt. Patrick was right. Even Swimmer wasn’t hiding; he didn’t care. He just lived as he did, but Daniel does. The Invisible Man. “But when I spoke with Daniel, I felt his terror. It almost hijacked my hardware, causing my chest to clench and my heart to thud like a second heartbeat as my body mirrored his frequency. I felt it. No, I felt his image in me.”

“Exactly!”

“So you believe me?”

“I never said I didn’t. You felt his fear.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.”

“No. You’ve been saying you received it.”

He put the cup down.

“Those aren’t the same thing.”

“Then what was it?”

“Your nervous system responding to his.”

“That’s just another way of saying transfer.”

“No. Transfer means something moved from one system into another. I’m talking about two systems responding to each other. There are studies. Second-hand stress. Your heart rate changes. Your sympathetic system kicks in. But I don’t want to lose you with the science basically your body reacts to somebody else’s distress. Do you know what dispositional empathy is?”

“I know empathy, but I’m not familiar with dispositional empathy.”

“We are all capable of empathy, but dispositional empathy doesn’t depend on the situation. It’s a personality trait. A built-in tendency to understand and feel what others are going through. People with high empathy experience these physiological changes more quickly.”

“Are you saying I have high empathy?”

“Has it always been easy for you to talk to people? Gaining access into, say, a hospital or a school? You naturally connect more easily because you pick up on emotions and respond in a way that makes others feel understood. All of a sudden, conversations are smoother and relationships form faster since others feel safe opening up to you. And frankly, that’s why you are where you are, doing what you do now.”

As he spoke, images of my past life filled my mind of their own accord. The lively get-togethers, the idle chatter, meeting my future wife. I remembered how we sat on a narrow sofa and talked for hours into the night, unable to pull apart. And how silently that warmth slipped away once those long conversations shrank into household necessities, errands, and eventually the quiet silence of a roomy house where sleeping on the living room sofa was easier than talking.

“So, you are saying that I felt Daniel’s fear because I’m an extrovert and not because of any transfer that occurred?”

“You watched Daniel. His breathing changed. His posture changed. His face changed. His entire body was telling you danger before he ever said a word. Your brain doesn’t sit there politely waiting for an explanation. It reads the signal and prepares the body.”

“Fine. I’m a fine-tuned instrument, but what about the veteran?”

Patrick smiled. “But he is too. He is a ‘fine-tuned’ instrument, only configured differently.”

He sipped his coffee as if waiting for me to make a guess. I decided to keep my thoughts to myself, and he continued. “All those years in the service. No PTSD on his chart, but a permanent tripwire in his head. He was taught to notice danger, so he is constantly scanning for it. You might call it hypervigilance.”

“He sees the boy’s reaction and his spidey senses are tingling, and he goes through full sympathetic overload? There is a problem with that. He is not only trained to notice danger but also to react to it. Instead, he is sobbing on the ground and thinks he’s fourteen and terrified of a dog.”

Patrick’s smile disappeared.

“That’s because you’re imagining the wrong kind of response. The one you learned from movies. Threat appears, soldier reacts, gun comes up, problem gets solved. That’s training. It isn’t the whole nervous system.”

“Then what is it?”

“Fight is only one option. Flight is another. Freeze. Collapse. Sometimes the system doesn’t give you a choice at all.”

“He wasn’t freezing. He was sobbing.”

Patrick put the cup down again.

“Your sympathetic nervous system can push you into extreme arousal, but the body doesn’t promise you a heroic response at the end of it. If the threat is overwhelming, or the system has been running too hard for too long, you can get disorganized. You can shake. Hyperventilate. Sweat. Your heart races. Your attention narrows. You become hypersensitive to sounds and movement. You can become confused. You can feel detached from what’s happening around you.”

“But he thought he was fourteen.”

“That’s the part you keep treating as evidence for Daniel.”

“It sounds like evidence.”

“It sounds like a memory.”

I stared at him.

Patrick leaned back. “I know you like benches but unlike you, I don’t just sit somewhere and speculate. I observe. I went to see him, you know. I even sat at his bedside and asked a few questions. I talked to his doctor, and we agreed that thiamine should be added to the fluids. He’ll probably start him on a short-course of an oral benzodiazepine, like a small dose of Librium or Valium.”

He didn’t have to add to the sentence. I knew exactly what he meant. This regimen is too familiar to anyone who woke up with a whiskey shake, struggling to button a shirt.

“Alcohol suppresses the central nervous system. If somebody has been drinking heavily for long enough, the brain adapts to that. Take the alcohol away, and the brakes don’t come back immediately. It’s like the accelerator gets stuck down. The nervous system rebounds. Heart rate goes up. Blood pressure goes up. Tremor. Sweating. Anxiety. Agitation. Hyperarousal.”

There had been mornings when I woke up already afraid. Not afraid of anything. Nothing had happened. My body simply woke up before the rest of me and announced that we were in danger. My hands would tremble and the shirt would stick to my back. Every little sound in the apartment seemed too sharp. Sometimes I could hear my own pulse. Sometimes I would stand in the kitchen unable to decide whether I was sick, dying, or simply losing my mind.

A drink would fix it.

Not make me happy.

Not even drunk.

Just normal.

Patrick continued.

“And then there’s the dog.”

My eyes went back to him.

“You said he thought he was fourteen.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what trauma does to memory?”

“It distorts it.”

“Sometimes. More importantly, it can make old threat associations very powerful. A smell. A sound. A shape. A movement. Something can activate an old response before the conscious mind has worked out what it is responding to.”

“Some of his childhood memory was triggered?”

“Maybe.”

“You see. Maybe there was a dog. Maybe there was something that reminded him of one. Maybe he was confused. Maybe withdrawal contributed. Maybe combat memories contributed. Maybe several things happened at once.”

Patrick spread his hands.

“That’s the point. There are explanations. Perfectly normal explanations. And as the greatest book about doctors once put it: hoofbeats outside are not necessarily zebras.”

Six| [Table of Contents] | Eight

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Soviets believed in the strength of the community and did not much care for your personal comfort or your mental health. That’s probably why our school bathrooms had squat toilets that were basically just holes in the floor attached to plumbing. No stalls. Nothing.

Whoever designed those bathrooms clearly believed in collective life with all his heart and figured privacy was some kind of Western bourgeois decadence, or even worse, a provocation. Still, I’ll give it this: it was an upgrade from kindergarten, where the setup was identical, except the holes faced each other, girls on one side, boys on the other.

So if you’re feeling proud of yourself for how progressive gender-neutral bathrooms are, don’t get too excited. The Soviets beat you to it by about seventy years. Accidental, but still a victory.

Anyway, at school it was just four holes in the floor in a row, no stalls, no privacy, just good old Soviet communal cohesion. I could even say camaraderie, but naturally, nobody did any actual business in there if they could help it, because doing so meant squatting like a proud eagle perched on a cliff, wide-eyed, watching everyone else in the room while they watched you.

So one day I was sprinting down an empty hallway toward that same bathroom. I’d gotten myself excused from a math test because my bladder was about to explode after three cups of watery compote (a kind of boiled fruit drink, standard issue at every Soviet school cafeteria) they’d served us at lunch.

Still going full speed, I ran in, shot past the sinks, and froze.

There was our principal.

Squatting in that exact same proud eagle pose, a roll of toilet paper in one hand, his pants bunched in the other. Teachers technically had their own private lounge, but I guess the urge hit too hard and too fast for him to make it down two flights of stairs.

I just stood there, frozen.

That image is burned into my brain for life. Bare old-man buttocks, pants bunched around his knees. I swear, if I’d been gay, that sight alone would’ve set me straight, instantly.

He fixed me with his unblinking hawk’s stare and, with his iron but noticeably strained voice, barked, “What are you doing here?”

That voice had the full weight of the Soviet Ministry of Education behind it, and it scared me so badly my bladder actually seemed to grow heavier. I felt drops of pee starting to come out.

So I stepped up onto the hole next to his, dropped my pants, and let go, all while staring straight into my principal’s eyes.

Then I bolted out of there so fast I nearly fell in the hallway.

I made it partway down the corridor, too rattled to go back to class, and stood there with my forehead against a window when I heard someone call my last name.

I turned around slowly.

It was him again.

I felt like I needed to pee some more.

He looked me up and down and, drawing on every inch of his height and authority, reprimanded me.

Not for what had just happened.

For not greeting a senior teacher properly, and for not washing my hands.

To this day, I still say a formal hello the second I see anyone who resembles an authority figure, and pay close attention to personal hygiene.

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“Do I love dogs?” he asked, and when I said yes, he took me to a Korean barbecue. I immediately understood that he was the one I had been waiting for. But the story told to us leaves out everything except the romance itself, and the story we hear tells only about the place where they met. In reality, trains get delayed, someone has a headache, and has to be at work in the morning.

Sunsets are beautiful, yet you’re standing next to a trash can, trying not to step in anything. None of this goes down in history, but it exists right alongside first kisses and the butterflies fluttering in our chests.

I call this Refracted Romance. Romance that has passed through the prism of reality. What comes out in the end may not resemble the romance we imagined, but perhaps it is more interesting precisely because it endured its collision with reality.

Welcome to the world of Refracted Romance, .

Please feel free to roam around, enjoy yourself, and maybe share some of your own stories along the way.

Hope, Chocolate and Midnight's Children

The First Kiss

The Devil's Cellar

The Sketch of Beauty

The Poetry Noose

How I Met Pavel

The Dump

A Two-Question Bouquet

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Six

I sat on a park bench, or rather, on some twisting conceptual model of a bench that ergonomically embraced my behind while being utterly unforgiving to my spine, forcing me to lean forward and abandon the defensive architectural marvel altogether. As I struggled to find a comfortable position, I kept trying to concentrate on the business card in my hand.

Anna Melnitz, PhD, in bold blue letters.

I wanted a cigarette so badly I could feel a primal, phantom cough forming somewhere deep in my lungs. My pockets were empty, which was ironic, because in my “before” life I remembered smoking constantly.

You know the kind of smoker who panics when there are only three cigarettes left in the pack and immediately decides to make those three cigarettes last as long as humanly possible. Meticulously calculates the smoking frequency and checks the intervals between cigarettes against an analog clock. Thinks sadly about all those non-nicotine-containing hours. And at the exact moment when absolutely certain that calculations are correct and certain that this can be endured, calmly takes out a cigarette and lights it, completely destroying every one of your calculations.

You take a drag and think, What the fuck? That kind of smoker. That was me.

I remembered those long, deep drags, exhaling a wall of gray smoke that slowly filled the room and blurred my vision until everything else disappeared. It reminded me of that old song:

“The clock face is almost hidden by smoke,

Sticky with sweat, blowing smoke to the ceiling.

И мне не спится.”(1)1

Then again, I had already drunk myself out of existence once.

It was strange. I had smoked for years, so why was this the first time since waking up in that white room that the craving had actually found me? Was it because I needed to think?

Anechka, with her unstoppable enthusiasm and her “lightning” personality, had effectively detonated every one of my plans.

It should have been simple. I should have gone straight to Patrick, handed him the information, and let the Observer handle the rest. He would verify the frequency, prepare the elixir, and find the boy a “new home” in a “new world” where his fear wouldn’t manifest itself in others.

But now?

Now I realized I missed the smoke.

For some reason, staring into those shifting gray folds had always helped my brain find the answers it needed. Not always the right answers, but the ones I needed to survive the moment.

Patrick insisted that Anechka wasn’t in danger. The worst she would face, he said, was being laughed at by her colleagues or perhaps a bruised reputation because of her “soul-swap” theories.

But I didn’t believe for a second that this world was that harmless.

I had seen the machinery of standardization at work. I was sort of part of it and it didn’t like parts that didn’t fit.

And yet, why had I assumed she needed protecting?

Even if I told Patrick about her, and let’s be honest, I couldn’t hide anything from him, what would it matter? She met the boy before I did although Patrick had specifically told me to find him before she did. But still so what? I looked again at her name in bold blue letters.

And then I realized something.

She wasn’t just a scientist anymore.

She was the boy’s counselor.

If she knew the boy, and with her usual enthusiasm had already thrown herself into the whole thing, then how exactly were we supposed to send the boy to a new world without making her start digging into the whole story with that same relentless determination? My mind started spiraling into all sorts of scenarios.

Wait! Stop!

“Why?” is always the most important question.

Why would she dig?

If nobody reacted to the transferred, why would she suddenly be any different?

No.

This was definitely paranoia.

This was exactly why I needed cigarettes. To see through the smoke and concentrate on what was real. Then, at least, the only thing I would have to be paranoid about was lung cancer.

I exhaled and pulled out my phone.

It immediately began vibrating in time with Harry Potter’s Hedwig’s Theme, the ringtone I had chosen without a moment’s hesitation to announce calls from Patrick.

It was so unexpected that I nearly threw the phone away like a poisonous snake the moment it started vibrating and making noise.

I stared at the screen for a moment before answering.

“Where are you?”

“Oh? The all-knowing Observer doesn’t know where I am?”

There was a brief silence. Then Patrick’s voice changed into the tone people use when they ask to hear the bad news before the good ones.

“What happened?” he asked with a sigh of disapproval.

“Eh, nothing. What? Why?”

“Elementary, my dear Watson. You always use your “humorous attacks” as a defense mechanism. So what happened? Did you find the boy?”

“Yes. I found the boy.”

“But?”

“You amaze me, Holmes.” I was already thinking that perhaps I should change the ringtone. “There is a little thing. Anna knows the boy. She spoke to him before.”

There was another pause, just a fraction too long.

“Well, that’s actually not that important now.”

He said it too slowly, as though he were turning the information over from different angles, like someone with one of those break-apart puzzles, feeling for the first step.

That bothered me.

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Come here. We’ll go over everything you found out. I’ll take care of her later.”

Her? That “her” stuck with me.

Not it.

Not this.

Not the situation.

Her.

And somehow, the “I” bothered me too.

I’ll take care of her.

I felt something tighten in my stomach.

“Okay. Where do you want to meet?”

“Come to my place.”

“Sure. An hour, hour and a half. I’ll get something to eat on the way.”

I hung up.

I looked at the business card still lying in my hand.

Anna Melnitz, PhD.

I wasn’t going to Patrick.

Not yet.

His words, or the lack of them, had made me want to see Anechka first.

Five| [Table of Contents] | Seven

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Five

The kids left quickly after class, leaving Daniel sitting patiently at his desk, finishing his drawing. Dark, wide strokes covered most of the page, and somewhere in the middle, two eyes seemed to stare right out of the darkness. I leaned over, trying to understand him, to sense any distortion in the frequencies around him, but all I could see were those eyes.

I coughed lightly to get his attention. When he looked up, I still didn’t feel anything out of sync with this world. For a second I thought I saw a flicker of fear in his eyes, but in the same moment he lowered his gaze. His whole state could be described in two words: compressed lump. Even if there were any hidden frequencies, his tightness wouldn’t allow them to come out. All his emotions and thoughts remained inside his clearly outlined perimeter, and I would have to try very hard to get inside.

“Hi. Are you Daniel? Your teacher should have told you that I wanted to speak with you.” He raised his head for a second, blinked a few times before answering, his fingers gripping the edge of the drawing. Shoulders hunched, knees pressed together, spine curved as if he could fold in on himself. His eyes scanning for danger in every shadow.

“Yes.” His gaze darted back to the paper, refusing to meet mine.

Great, what next? No, I knew exactly how to talk to kids. There’s no secret about it. You speak to them the same way you speak to adults. Respectfully, but without unnecessary familiarity and certainly without any superiority. But how do you pull information out of a person who is curled up like a hedgehog, quills raised in anticipation of attack? Still looking at the drawing, I decided that better is the enemy of good and, without inventing anything clever, just went straight for it.

“I wanted to speak to you about your work. The dog that you drew before and,” I pointed at the drawing in front of him, “you keep drawing.” He tensed.

“Ms. M spoke to me about it.”

“Ms. M?”

“A counselor.”

“Oh? And what did she think about it?”

“She said it was ‘interesting.’” Throughout the conversation he seemed to be concentrating on the drawing, but he pronounced the word “interesting” with a specific hesitant intonation, the tone of a concerned school counselor.

I laughed a little when I imagined the counselor receiving this assignment. His gaze jumped to me. “Are you a counselor?” I felt him tighten even more; the quills almost vibrated. No, I was wrong, they weren’t metaphorical quills. I actually felt the vibration. The room seemed to shrink around us.

“Oh God, no. I’m visiting for a college fair. But I saw the picture and was impressed, so I just wanted to take a look at the artist. Maybe suggest a couple of things.”

He looked at me. Tightness coiled in his shoulders, and instantly, mine mirrored it. My chest clenched. My jaw locked. My heart thudded so loud I could almost hear it in my ears. Goosebumps prickled down my spine. Sweat pooled at my neck. My fingers itched, curling without thought. I wanted to check the door behind me. My stomach hollowed, then twisted. And in that moment, I realized I was feeling what he felt.

He tilted his head, studying me. There was a faint shift in his body, as if he were about to shut down, and I had an impulse to mimic it, my hand twitched unconsciously, mirroring his hesitation.

“You don’t… look like someone who cares about the drawing. You’re looking at… the dog. Not how I drew it.” The pauses in his speech became longer. I could see fear growing inside him, and somehow, mirroring it, the same anxiety stirred in me. I felt the faint pull of his tension in my own neck. My pulse jumped and my hands tensed. I caught myself mimicking his micro-shift, an instinct I didn’t control.

He seemed ready to stop the conversation, but I needed to keep it going. I pointed at the drawn eyes.

“To tell you the truth, it kind of makes me uncomfortable. I never fully got over the fear of dogs I had, and this one… I definitely met this one in my childhood.”

Time stopped. His eyes widened, then narrowed, not in suspicion but in something more complicated. Recognition, maybe.

“Fear?” he whispered. He glanced down at the paper, then quickly closed the sketchbook, sliding it half under the table. I felt a slight release when he asked,

“You… met it?”

“Ah,” I murmured softly, lowering my voice. “Right now I feel a bit of pain in my left butt cheek, right where that monster bit me.”

He let out a short, surprised breath, almost a laugh, and I felt my chest loosen. The tight hum in my veins faded to a gentle thrum. My pulse slowed. My palms cooled. The air didn’t feel so thick. I could finally breathe in and out without forcing it.

I was actually feeling what he did. Why? Was it empathy, or something deeper, a resonance I didn’t fully understand? My own fear had nothing to do with the dog, yet there it was, moving through me like a second heartbeat.

A small, wary smile tugged at his lips.

“You’re serious?” He studied my face for any trace of a joke, curiosity slowly taking over inside him.

“Absolutely,” I nodded, letting my own smile soften the tension. “When I was young a dog bit me. It wasn’t bad enough to leave a visible scar, but I still feel it sometimes. Like a scar, but inside.” Our shoulders relaxed after these words and for the first time in the conversation, I could feel my heartbeat slow.

“Are you afraid of dogs?” He asked it with a mix of curiosity and tentative hope. The hedgehog finally showed his face.

“Yes, but shhh!” I put a finger to my lips. “Don’t tell that to my other fears. They might get jealous.”

“Fears?”

“Yep. I have a whole collection of them. You know, they say fear is actually good. It’s a higher function of your brain. You’re supposed to feel it. If you had no fear, that would mean your brain wasn’t functioning.” I sank into the chair, letting the lesson land without pressing it.

“I like what one of my teachers once said: ‘Fear itself is a sense, just like smell, touch, or taste, and it should be treated as such.’”

The boy looked at me with wide eyes. All that anxiousness that had pulsed like electricity just moments ago now only a memory. There wasn’t a drop of tension left between us now, only interest and questions.

“What if there is too much fear?” he asked. “I think it’s like with other senses. Sometimes a smell can make you nauseous or a sound can make your head hurt. Fear can also overtake you. But you learn to control it. I usually think of something good, a safe place where I feel relaxed. You can try that too.”

He leaned forward slightly, absorbing the words. His arms uncrossed, hands folded on the desk.

“A safe place… I have one. Behind the library there’s an old basement. Nobody goes there anymore. I like to read. It’s the only place where I’m… not scared of anything.”

“What are you reading right now?” He flushed slightly, eyes brightening.

“The Invisible Man. I like how he’s invisible.... nobody notices him. Nobody can… mess with him.”

Something! That was something. I felt it — weak, singular, but there. It appeared for a millisecond when he opened up just enough to let me feel him. Not his fear, but him — the pain of loneliness and the inward pressure around that cocoon. For a fraction of a moment it was there. Strange that he embraces it. Alone in a basement, reading about a madman intoxicated by his own invisible power, a power that ultimately destroys him. Yet this is what made him open up: the thought of being alone. And the more he opened, the more I could feel his frequency.

“I don’t want to spoil the ending,” I said, “but Griffin isn’t exactly a great role model.”

The boy smiled.

“I know. But if the world doesn’t see you, it can’t scare you.”

That was unexpected. He didn’t go to his hideout to be alone, he went there so the world couldn’t see him. So it couldn’t scare him. He isn’t lonely because the world is pushing him out. He seeks loneliness himself, that way the world can’t frighten him. Is he even in-between then?

“Do you often go to your place?” I noticed the way he looked at me shift slightly, more guarded.

“Sorry. Did I say something wrong?” Daniel shrugged uncertainly.

“It just sounded like Ms. M.”

“Ah. I’m sorry. I guess all adults start to sound like school counselors at some point.”

“Ms. M isn’t our school counselor.”

“Oh?” I was genuinely surprised.

“Yeah. She’s a counselor, but not from school. I have her card.” Daniel bent down to his backpack and pulled a business card from a side pocket. In bold blue letters it read:

Anna Melnitz, PhD

Four| [Table of Contents] | Six

Tips?

So here I am in a small, dark, semi basement flower shop on the Russian Jewish border of Midwood, where an old Jewish man has been running the place for many years. Snatch comes to mind. “What do I know about diamonds?” I don’t know much about flowers, but I’m not a boxing promoter, so I always buy them in this shop.

The old Jewish man makes the bouquets, and I have to say that nowhere else can you get exactly what you want by answering just two questions. To make a bouquet, this old man needs to know who it is for and the reason. So whenever I walk in, I say something like, “For my beloved, for the holiday,” or “For my beloved, just because.”

His old eyes, framed by wrinkles, with some complicated spark buried deep inside, study you carefully, almost evaluating, while at the same time his hands are already moving, pulling flowers out of their baskets with quick, precise gestures. Then he disappears for a moment into the back and returns with the finished bouquet.

Sometimes it comes wrapped in elegant mesh, almost festive. Sometimes in an ordinary cellophane sleeve. As if the wrapping also depends not on fashion but on meaning.

He names the price after he finishes the bouquet. The strangest thing is that the price is always exactly what you need it to be, even though he never asks how much you are planning to spend.

Once, while I was there, a respectable looking gentleman ordered a bouquet with the words, “For a lover, for a date.” A couple of weeks later I saw him in the same shop ordering, “For my wife, to apologize.” Both bouquets were quite lavish but completely different. By the way, the second one cost more.

In my case, “wife” and “lover” refer to the same person. I hope that remains true, and my wife always likes the bouquets I buy from the old Jew.

Today, though, the old man is not there. But the rules remain the same.

A middle aged man approaches the counter and says, “For the wife, for my daughter, and for my daughter in law.” No need to clarify anything else. After all, it is March 8. Everything is obvious when women’s equality is celebrated.

The florist, a guy no younger than me, looks at the man in the same way the old man used to. The evaluation takes him a bit longer, but eventually he disappears into the back and returns with three completely different bouquets. One is larger, fairly conservative and strict, clearly for the wife, and two cheerful ones, very different from each other, for the daughter and the daughter in law.

My turn comes. I order as usual, but I am curious where the old Jewish man has gone. With sudden horror I realize I do not even know his name. I stumble over my question and awkwardly ask about the owner.

It turns out he is in the hospital.

Well, I think, he is getting old. He looks at least seventy. But I had not listened carefully enough.

They are discharging his wife. She just gave birth.

Damn.

The salesman smiles and says he finally has a little sister. He already has four brothers.

I stand there in complete disbelief. I had always assumed the old man lived alone. I thank him and step aside to free up the line.

Next comes a very neat, well groomed man who had been on the phone the entire time he was waiting. First with his mother, then with his wife, then his mother again, then his wife again.

He approaches the counter and says he needs bouquets for his wife and his mother.

After a while the florist brings out two completely identical ones.

The man looks puzzled.

“Why are they the same?”

“It’s March 8, not a birthday. On this day all women are equal.”

“But you just gave three different bouquets to that other man.”

“He was buying for his wife, his daughter, and his daughter in law. You are buying for your wife and your mother. Judging by how you spoke with them, if you give them different bouquets each one will decide the other’s is better. Do you need that kind of trouble?”

The man glances at his phone, nods, pays silently, and leaves.

The old Jewish guy would never have explained anything, but I guess the shop is in good hands.

Buy me a coffee

The station was full of people escaping the rain, but the car was not that crowded. Yuriy found a small empty seat and sank into it, pulling out his tablet. The words blurred together as he tried to concentrate, making little sense over the rhythmic clatter of the train. He muttered quietly to himself, “Order. There is no order.” The article lacked it. The station lacked it. The world, as far as he could measure, lacked it. A garbled announcement crackled through the loudspeaker, informing the riders that this particular train, without any prior notice, would be skipping some stops and making others that were usually skipped. Everything was a mess, from people to things to train schedules.

Sometimes he wished the world were mathematics. Clean axioms. Transparent rules. Predictable consequences. Order as the governing force. Not to the point of Zamyatin but close enough to be comforting.

Then, the doors opened, and a completely drenched man entered the car. His fiery red hair was plastered to his scalp, water rolling down his face, and he carried a backpack so vast it seemed to have its own gravitational field. The red-haired man collapsed into the seat next to Yuriy, making him press himself against the handrails in an attempt to distance himself from this new neighbor. Yuriy’s concentration vanished, and his thoughts turned to the seating arrangements. The seats should have been divided. Marked, assigned, bounded. Ordered. Instead, they dissolved into one long surface where bodies negotiated space, pressed into each other without rules or regard for personal space.

The red-haired man, dripping water all over, immediately plunged into his backpack with a kind of frantic purpose. Objects spilled out in a chaotic parade: a bag of toy cars, a Rubik’s cube, playing cards, a box of cornflakes, a tangled ring of keys, and some mysterious metal gear. Yuriy blinked. He tried to focus back on the statistical tables, but the spectacle of a grown man unpacking his entire life onto a subway seat was too mesmerizing.

Each item was carefully examined and placed with almost ritualistic care, like a museum curator assembling a fragile exhibit. Sometimes he shuffled previously placed items to make room for the next, never letting anything feel out of place. Yuriy held his tablet awkwardly, torn between horror and fascination, wondering how anyone could have such a precise obsession with the contents of a backpack while the rest of the world simply carried theirs in random chaos. The care fascinated him, while the chaos inside almost made him vomit. His grandmother, who grew up in a small farming commune, would compare this backpack to a tiny village shop which, according to her, sold everything: “leather, honey, shit, and nails.” He loved his grandmother but despised spending all those summers in the village during his childhood.

The man paused and turned to Yuriy. “Could you hold this for me?” he asked, extending a small vase.

Yuriy stared at it, stunned. A vase. On a subway. Extracted from a backpack as if it were the most natural object in the world. He held it carefully, trying not to drop it, and for a moment not a single thought remained in his mind about labor markets or statistical models.

Finally, the man found what he was looking for: a notebook, a pencil, and a compass. He began returning the items to the backpack, but not in the order they had been taken out. The first objects retrieved ended up at the bottom; the last objects, the notebook, pencil, and compass, went on top.

Curiosity overcame Yuriy. “Why pack them like that? You’re disrupting the sequence,” he asked.

“Order?” the man said. “I maintain order. Someday, I’ll need to return the notebook and compass to their place. If I don’t respect the sequence, how will I know where they belong?”

Yuriy blinked, torn between interest and exasperation. “You mixed up the order of things, or you think if their place is fixed, why should sequence matter?”

“Order is always important!” the red-haired man said. “In your thoughts, in your actions, and in your backpack.”

“So you believe in the commutative property of backpack packing?”

“Oh no, that one only works for math. In reality, the sum changes when you rearrange the terms.”

“What?”

“Reality. It’s far more ordered than any math. Take sickle cell disease.”

Yuriy couldn’t believe what he heard. He was stunned. After all, sickle-cell anemia had nothing to do with inversion. It was a substitution. A single nucleotide mutation. One letter exchanged for another.

GAG became GTG.

Glutamic acid became valine in the sixth position of the β-chain.

Hemoglobin folded differently. Red blood cells warped into crescents. Pain followed. A catastrophic consequence of a microscopic change.

Not inversion. Substitution. Precision mattered.

Before he could answer anything, the red-haired man was already almost out of the doors. He turned when he exited the car, smiled, and said, “Maybe that’s why math is not science but a tool to solve it.” The doors closed, the train began to strain to gain speed, and the man with the backpack stood on the platform smiling and waving goodbye.

Yuriy sat in the accelerating train, staring at the small porcelain vase still resting in his hands, as if it were evidence. A microscopic change with future consequences.

Buy me coffee

I am thinking about that day… I was smoking, sitting on a windowsill, and you were yelling about something I promised but never fulfilled, and you threw your slipper at me, saying that my mind was a dump full of useless and discarded things. I was mad then, but over the years it became clear even to me.

There is so much junk around. Everything is scattered, a frightening systemless mess. Piles of printouts and handwritten notes are stacked everywhere. These are deposits of jokes and funny stories, collected for witty remarks and impromptu cleverness, meant to create the impression of a well-read person with refined sense of humor. There are simply too many of them. They clutter all the space, distract, and make it harder to find anything actually important. Beneath them, the outlines of chests filled with various useless junk can be guessed.

Here is one with medical textbooks, once memorized for yet another test or exam and safely forgotten the moment the grade was received. Many boxes. Unnecessary, like collection of ancient Greek myths, history of Napoleonic wars, with toy soldiers scattered around, once lovingly cast and meticulously painted with attention to historical uniform details. Once needed and interesting. Now it only takes up space, yet getting rid of it is not an easy task.

A classification chart of the animal kingdom hangs on the wall. The protozoa are especially marked, with an arrow and the words “this is you” pointing at an amoeba. Apparently, over all this time, I never evolved. But the chart is only the beginning. The entire wall is covered with insults and phrases. Different handwriting, different grievances gathered on one “wall of lament.” Some of the entries are accompanied by “cave paintings.” Some are crossed out. Crossing them out felt especially good, and putting a cross over the inscription that I would die a virgin felt even better. Of course, it was not crossed by the one who wrote it, but she later added her memory anyway. And here is a poster saying “you are a looser.” That one, you were right, no matter how hard I try, I will never cross out.

I must walk carefully. One wrong step, and a rake handle will deliver yet another reminder to the forehead. They are everywhere, buried under sheets of funny stories that I used to soften the pain from the blows by telling yet another joke about my failures. I stumble, and a handle labeled Boston 1999 strikes my head. I remember Boston. It is the past and it will never repeat. It does not hurt as much and lies on the border of pleasant memories.

There is a wall of lamps giving off a pleasant warm light. The joys. Little lights of first kisses, meetings, cheerful gatherings, spotlight of my wife, birth of my children. There is a small path cluttered with rakes near by that I will not take. It is a dead end with a massive column of flame.

“You” don’t give out soft light. You are the raging fire, giving glare and sparks, not warmth but burns. On the floor around that column lie butterflies with burned wings. Once they fluttered in my stomach, but they flew too close. But I still remember, and although I will never step onto this path again, I will never forget. I will quietly stand in the light of my small joys and sigh thinking of you… It is a pity their light is not visible everywhere, as it is blocked by those huge black cabinets.

They are so massive that they obstruct all the light and cast shadows over the rest of this dump. With every year, day, or whatever other unit of time, another piece of dark furniture appears. I do not want to open them. I do not even want to approach them, because behind every door wait drunken tears or a feeling of all-consuming shame. My cowardice lives in one. Another is occupied by self pity. There are many of them here, but today I need one specific cabinet. It is always slightly open.

Inside, Dropkick Murphys plays, intertwined with Grebenshchikov’s “Glasses” and the clinking of bottles. There is a whole bar filled with “liquid friends,” evenings of losing consciousness, and mornings of waking up in vomit-covered clothes. It is so big that when I fling its doors open, I smash warm and joyful memories, and shards of once-bright lightbulbs scatter across the floor.

How could I open this damn cabinet again? Why can’t I close it once and for all? Even after so much time, the path is not overgrown, the doors not warped, and why do they open just as easily? Why, contrary to everything I know about physics, is it so easy for me to return to the past? How do I close these doors forever?

Today, once again, I will shut these doors, hoping they stay closed. That is it. This is the past, and it must not repeat, because I do not want to break all the lightbulbs and remain in complete darkness. Enough. It is time to seal this whole dump and open a new one.

Все на сегодня. До свидания, Солнышко.

Buy me coffee

They darted through the surf, weaving between the clumsy tourists, chasing something delicious only they could see. Obeying a command from my spinal cord, without thinking for a second, I thrust my arm forward and, to my own surprise, caught one of those quick little fish. Its long, narrow body thrashed in my fist, and still not believing my luck, I hurried to show my wife my catch.

Of course, at the very last moment, I tripped. I fell into the water and splashed my wife, who had been peacefully sunbathing by the shore, with a whole cloud of salty spray. The fish slipped free and vanished into the murky waters of the Gulf of Mexico, leaving me to explain myself to an angry wife whose supposedly waterproof makeup was now running down her face.

After that, I tried many times to catch another one, but I could never again switch off my brain and act on pure hunter’s instinct.

Well, I suppose it’s time to accept that this is how things always happen in my life. Luck, for me, is accidental. I can never achieve anything on purpose. No training, no mental exercises seem to help. Only blind chance ever brings a result. And even when I do catch that luck by the tail, I manage, through clumsiness or simple incompatibility with reality, to let it slip right back into the wild, or I just don’t know what to do with it.

Ladybugs follow me all my life. They land on me everywhere, in any weather. Once, during a snowstorm, I found one hiding inside the collar of my winter coat. But whatever symbol of luck they may be, the luck itself never arrives with them.

One day at the playground with my child, I found an entire patch of four-leaf clovers. I had no idea what to do with them. I took a photo and walked away, sending the news of my discovery to an Irish friend.

And now I’ve missed it again. It was right there, it seemed, close enough to grab, but no. I’m no fisherman. Not at all. It slipped off the hook and sank into the deep, somewhere I just can’t reach. I keep trying to feel for it, to lure it back somehow. Relax, play a cheerful song, lift my mood. But even music refuses to help.

Why is it that the moment I turn on the player, I run straight into R.E.M., with its mandolin trills calmly informing me that “that was just a dream”? Did Peter Buck really torture that freshly bought instrument all those years ago just to tell me, decades later, that it was only a dream? Just an illusion. That everything was always just as lousy, and all the good things were only mirages and self-deception.

I deleted R.E.M. from my playlist.

:)

Read more

I was talking to a friend once who was doing embryology research. He is a very serious mind over everything else kind of guy but he said something that stuck with me.

“We don’t realize how significant it is that a woman has potential to be the whole universe for someone. For the embryo the mother is the universe.”

Now for someone who lives inside of data and microscopes this notion is very poetic, yet it is also true.

From an embryology standpoint, the embryo has no external reference frame. There is no “outside.” No distance. No elsewhere.

Everything that exists (oxygen, nutrients, temperature, control, sound, rhythm) arrives through one system. One environment. One presence.

So for the embryo, the mother isn’t in the universe.

She is the universe.

Every law of physics the embryo knows unfolds inside that expanding closed system:

Gravity is pressure and motion,
Time is heartbeat and circadian chemistry
Safety is blood flow
And danger is cortisol

Even space is defined by her. The embryo cannot even conceive of a boundary beyond the womb. There is no concept of “other.” Only conditions. Only the expanding universe.

And then, at birth, the universe abruptly fractures:

The source of warmth becomes external
The constant rhythm becomes intermittent
The outside suddenly explodes
The Big Bang of new existence

This first Big Bang explains something that is stuck with us forever:

Why separation feels so catastrophic,
Why loss is like a cosmic collapse,
Why safety resides in closeness, warmth, and rhythm rather than ideas.

My friend touched poetry through a clinical lens. He brushed against theology, philosophy, and science, and, in doing so, touched the world itself.

The first God any human knows is not a person, not an idea
- but an environment that sustains without explanation.

Buy me a life :)

Time. I had time now. Time to think, to reflect, and to continue my search. Patrick might think that he explained everything and that I accepted my fate, but he does not yet know what a stubborn idiot he has been lucky enough to meet.

Still, I needed time before continuing the search for my family. Not because I was tired, but because I had been searching the wrong way. Clearly, I was wrong to assume that I could rely on physical memory alone. The world is a process. Places had failed me. Addresses dissolved. Streets led nowhere. Even memories, when treated like coordinates, betrayed me. Maybe the problem was simple. I was trying to arrive instead of trying to understand.

Hospitals remember things differently. There is no emotion, only mechanics. Charts. Protocols. Pathways. I had been trying to do the same. But if memory existed anywhere outside nostalgia and regret, it could not be reduced to diagrams and footnotes alone. I needed the connection. I needed to understand how to find the process that links emotion to mechanics.

I found the hospital library. An almost empty space tucked away like an unwanted past, lost to the present and the future. I found the neuroscience section and pulled a book from the shelf.

Memory: Mechanisms, Encoding, Retrieval.

A crime against language.

I started reading and almost immediately felt my eyelids rebel. Nonfiction had always done this to me. Fiction, at least, respected the reader. It never told you what to think outright. It forced your brain to work, to connect ideas, recall fragments, look for foreshadowing, and build meaning out of absence. This was different. This was passive consumption. Memorize. Repeat. Forget after the exam.

Still, I pushed through. And to my surprise, once I struggled through the first chapters of definitions, something changed. It became engaging. The examples supported the ideas cleanly. The diagrams clarified instead of overwhelming. Somewhere between synaptic plasticity and procedural recall, my brain became fully immersed in the development, encoding, and retrieval of memory.

The idea that certain memories can only be accessed when the brain is in a state similar to the one in which they were formed explained a lot. If my Brego was to find home, I had to be in the same state of mind as when that memory was created. It fit Patrick’s theory of the world as a process. I was reading about memory recall, coming to realization that I was replaying neural patterns with my search when I was interrupted.

“Excuse me.”

Startled, I looked up.

A young woman was standing there, holding a thick book in one hand.

“You took my book,” she said, more surprised than angry.

I glanced down, then back at her.
“Sorry. I did not know it was taken.”

She smiled. “It is my book. I wrote it.” She hesitated, then added, “Nobody ever takes it. I think you are my first.”

“Well then,” I said, “as an honest man, I must propose.”

She nodded, studying me the way people do when they are trying to decide whether a stranger belongs to the story or is just passing through.

“I’m Anna,” she said. “So, what do you propose?”

Something shifted in my mind. This was definitely the beginning of another interesting story.

Thank you, , for reading this part of the story. I know there are almost infinitely many things you could have been doing instead, and the fact that you chose to spend some of that time here means more to me than I can probably put into words.

But this is only one part of the story.

There are still worlds to cross, people to meet, mistakes to discover, and questions that perhaps should never have been asked in the first place.

The In-Between is still waiting.

If you’d like to continue, I’ll see you in the next part

The Scent of Poetry.

←[Chapter Five] | [Table of Contents] | [The Scent of Poetry] →

Buy me time

We walked through the hospital entrance wearing the white coats Patrick had gotten for us. They came with attached IDs.
Mine read: Jamal Smith, Laboratory Technician.
His read: Dr. Simon Grinshtein, Pediatrics.

Neither of us fit the names, but Patrick wasn’t concerned, and neither were the security guards.

I was listening. He was talking.

“Contrary to what you might think, this is not a drug, and you were not dosed with it. This is the base. I think the best way to explain something is hands-on. You have to see it to understand it. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

The elevator stopped at the basement floor, and I obediently followed Patrick out. He walked with purpose but without haste down a long corridor, turning corners with almost no warning, continuing his explanation as we went.

“There are a multitude of worlds out there,” he said. “Separated from one another. Sometimes interacting. Rarely touching. They all resemble each other, yet each is slightly different. From the percentage of oxygen in the air to variations in the gravitational constant.”

He didn’t slow down.

“The machinery involved is enormous. And as I said before, the larger the machine, the more prone it is to errors of all kinds. We deal with,” He paused for a second, and after a moment of thought, continued, “think of it as mismatch repair. Sometimes a person from another world ends up in ours. They don’t belong here, and the system rejects them.”

We stopped at the lab entrance. I swiped us in with my ID. A computer screen showed the location of several blood tubes belonging to a patient.

Patrick moved with professional ease. He drew blood from one of the tubes using a syringe, then added a single drop into a vial containing an amber-colored base. He gently shook it in front of me.

The liquid turned completely colorless.

He looked at me and asked, almost casually,
“Would you fly if you could? Push yourself off and soar into the air?”

The question caught me completely off guard. I didn’t answer.

Fly? Of course I would! That was what alcohol had been for me. My wings. The one thing that lifted me above life. My escape from the miserable gravity of my existence.

“Imagine,” he continued, “having that ability but instead, you live here. With this dreadful gravity. With people constantly pulling you down.”

We walked back toward the elevators one of the few things that helped us escape the gravity of our lives.

***

A girl lay on a hospital bed, fall precautions posted all over the walls around her. She was restrained, asleep. IVs dripped steadily into her veins—sedatives and other medications flowing without pause. Even with all that medicine, her body remained tense.

“You see that little one?” Patrick asked quietly. “She flies. And by God, she is beautiful when she does. I’ve seen it myself. Truly amazing.”

He sat near her with his hand on her arm, looking at her the way one looks at sunrise.

“Early on,” he continued, “she was diagnosed with developmental delay because she was late to walk. You know how they say every child develops at their own pace—and then immediately compare them to standardized charts?”

He smiled faintly.

“She crawled longer than most of the percentiles on those charts but then she flew. One day she simply pushed away from the earth with her little foot and went up.”

“She tells everyone she can do this,” Patrick said, “and everyone around her is convinced she’s delusional. And she can’t perform her dance in front of them. She can’t have distractions. She needs believers. Confidence waves. Instead, she’s constantly bombarded with fear, anger, lies. Oh, and medications. Lots of medications.”

He paused.

“This is her life: hospitals, medications, tears and suffering.”

He glanced at me.

“A butterfly raised by worms will behave like a worm, even if she feels herself to be a butterfly.”

The machines hummed softly around us. “Do you feel anything?” He asked.

“Yes, but I don’t know how to describe it,” I closed my eyes and tried to catch that feeling. Something vibrating, low vibrations that connected with something inside me, making my breathing fall into the same pattern, almost readjusting my own frequency to match hers. To beat in unison but only with her. Everything around felt hostile, pressuring me out. The whole world tried to squeeze me when I was close to her. I stepped back.

Patrick nodded and continued, “This is her life here. Eventually, it’ll break her wings and make her walk,” he said. “That will kill her. Not physically at first. She doesn’t belong in our world of gravity. She deserves to dance.”

He reached into the pocket of his white coat and pulled out a syringe.

“And that’s why we’re here.”

“Wait!” I almost yelled out but in time lowered my voice, “What are you doing?”

He called it a demonstration. He showed me the elixir again—the amber liquid that had turned colorless. All it required was a single drop of blood. Then it had to be introduced into the person. They could drink it. It could be injected. The method didn’t matter. The delivery was irrelevant.

“But? No what will happen to her?”

“She will go into the world that she belongs to. She will not suffer. You felt it. That constant crushing press of this reality. You felt it for a second, she lives with it.”

“What about her parents? Those who care? What?”

“Nobody does.” Patrick didn’t answer right away. He watched the IV drip instead. “Ward of the state since forever. The system pushes out. She is like a pesky grain of sand that cannot be removed, so she is coated in order to not cause irritation. Layer by layer, over months and years, the irritation becomes smooth and that grain is isolated. A pearl is not created because the oyster wants something beautiful. It is created because the oyster wants the pain to stop.” He rolled the syringe between his fingers. “Have you ever thought what happens to the grain when pearl is made?”

He injected the colorless fluid into one of the IV ports.

Time passed. Not much.

Then I heard a sigh of relief from the sleeping girl. I saw her smile. She relaxed, and a peaceful, serene expression illuminated her face.

Her body slowly began to rise from the bed.

And then she disappeared.

Not violently.
Not painfully.

She vanished in an explosion of countless butterflies. Myriads of them, all shapes and colors filling the room, fluttering against the walls, the ceiling, the machines. Light, motion and silence, all at once.

We were long gone before anyone arrived.

***

“She’s in her world now,” Patrick said as we walked. “Flying. Happy. Surrounded by her own kind.”

But he looked sad.

“If she’s happy,” I asked, “why are you sad?”

He stopped and looked at me.

“I’ll never see her fly again. We can’t travel to the other worlds. And I’m sad that we’re taking the wonder out of this one. We do harm in order to do good.”

Then he added, “And you now have your first assignment.”

He pointed toward another building in the distance.

“Your guy will be in the psychiatric ward. Another building, but not far from here. I should make it challenging for you,” he said thoughtfully, “but I won’t.”

He met my eyes.

“You’re looking for a swimmer.”

He smiled just a little.

“Go. Feel him. Give him his freedom. Then take some time off. I’ll meet you later. See one. Do one. Teach one. That’s the only way to learn a craft.”

Patrick placed an amber vial into my hand.

←[Chapter Three] | [Table of Contents] | [Chapter Five] →

Buy me time