ElevenLabs recording with multiple AI voices  

An illustration generated by ChatGPT based on the short story  

Psychiatry

I sit here, preparing for my session with Helen. There are several issues at hand, some of them severe. She has been under immense strain over the past two years, and a year ago, she was even admitted to a psychiatric facility for a few days. They found her difficult to cooperate with there, as she viewed her stay at the clinic purely as a period of rest. Perhaps that was exactly what she needed most at the time. At the very least, it served as a much-needed warning sign to those around her regarding her condition.

I have looked into the details as thoroughly as possible and primed myself to maintain a strictly professional attitude. Usually, I am not this meticulous, but in this case, it is vital in order to distance myself from our personal history. I feel both anticipation and dread toward the upcoming conversation, but I am not particularly nervous, nor am I overthinking it. On the contrary, I feel heavy and exhausted, shivering in the grip of an oncoming flu. I know I am about to push my endurance further than is good for me.

I know Helen all too well from our past, and I know I must have a solid framework for how this conversation unfolds. I also need to make her realize that this is a collaborative effort. Both parties must know how to listen, ask, wait, and receive. I welcome the challenge, but I am terrified of failing. This gets my adrenaline pumping, though not to the extent that it poses a threat to the success of the session. The primary goal is to get her on board on my terms, without losing sight of her best interests.

I write down a few fundamental open-ended questions so I won't forget anything important, and I try to anticipate some of her responses. In my mind's eye, I try to map out a path forward from there, as if I were playing a game of chess from a specific opening position, exploring every possible countermove in advance.

I take a few deep breaths and figure I will manage—otherwise, I would have canceled the session. I check the clock and log the starting point of the meeting into my patient management software. I am becoming increasingly focused on the task at hand. This is, after all, the first time I am meeting a friend with these kinds of issues in such a deliberate, pre-planned manner. When she called, I wondered why she wanted to reach out to me of all people. Familiarity can be highly problematic in a therapeutic setting, but I couldn't refuse to hear her out.

There is a knock at the door. I save my temporary session log and ask her to come in. I can read her nervousness in the twitchy, fleeting shifts of her expression and a trace of burgeoning hysteria, but otherwise, she looks just as soulful and beautiful as always. At first, I try to adopt a light, familiar tone: "Hi, good to see you! It's been a while since we last crossed paths. How are Jon and the kids doing?"

I get no answer. She merely looks at me, head tilted, with an expression that makes it clear she hasn't come to chat about her family, but because of her own problems. I decide to shift immediately into a more professional gear. I say: "Have a seat, please."

She obeys mechanically. I commit the detail to memory, unsure whether it reflects a conscious effort to suppress a volcanic eruption or a state of resigned, psychotic depression. I realize she won't be capable of a normal conversation right away, and I fear I am failing. I ask if I may take notes during our conversation, placing particular emphasis on the word conversation. Suddenly, she seems to snap out of it and says: "Fuck off, Birgit. I'm not crazy, and I'm not a child. I'm only here because Jon wanted me to come. Lately, I've had a bit of trouble staying motivated with my work, and out of frustration, I've been taking my anger out on Jon. Because of that, I owe him this much, and I'm doing what he wants. That's all."

"I see," I say. "Could you elaborate on that a little and give me something concrete? Perhaps you feel the root of your problems lies just as much with Jon, since you brought him up. Maybe what you two need is family therapy rather than my individual therapeutic help."

I am consciously trying to downplay her perception of my expertise, so that when the right moment comes, I can wriggle out of this using some professional pretext.

"Jon isn't the cause of this," she says sharply. "Jon is fine. Jon is always fine. And I don't care if he strays sometimes, sleeps around, and drinks to take the edge off his work pressures. He loves me. That's enough."

She looks down at the floor, not even believing her own reassurances, and I sense that we are at the very core of her troubles. Yet, I don't dare to probe any deeper just yet. We must constantly breathe at her pace and advance according to her capacity to process it. She is intelligent and can see the true causal links even in painful matters, provided the pressure caused by her frustration eases a little and I can manage to bring them out in a visual form.

The trick, after all, is to project the problems in their proper proportions relative to everything else, to confine the emotional torrent to what is essential and therefore more manageable. I often view myself as an interpreter, and that is perhaps the very foundation of my counseling method. Naturally, I prescribe medication when necessary and refer patients to proper psychiatric care if severe mental illness or brain trauma is involved. Granted, I sometimes doubt whether I am always doing the right thing. Even severe chemical imbalances in the brain can occasionally be temporary disruptions triggered by the mind, presenting symptoms identical to chronic mental illnesses caused by genetics or physical trauma.

I try to push my deductions into the background and focus on the flow of the conversation. I ask: "What about your work, Helen? I've heard about your upcoming exhibition, and I can hardly wait."

"It's coming along. I always have enough in reserve for at least one show. The problem is that the fumes from the varnish drive me mad, and I can't always concentrate well enough."

She chuckles, noticing her own use of the word mad, and continues almost cheerfully: "But I don't know how to stop. I try to force myself to hold onto an idea, and if I let go, it's gone forever. I often find myself standing there late into the night, staring at the spot of the very last brushstroke, unable to go on. Then Jon drags me half-by-force to bed, and if he's drunk, he wants to fuck. I can't get into it, and while he's pumping into me from behind, all I can think about is that goddamn spot on the canvas. Tell me, Birgit, am I truly crazy?"

"No, you're not," I reply, caught off guard.

I am her captive, and my pre-planned roadmap for this conversation is completely lost. I try to pull myself together. I cannot allow myself to be swept away so easily by her stream of words, nor can I let her narratives carry me along.

"Have you tried anti-anxiety medication?" I ask, adopting my most clinical manner to steer the conversation back into its proper channel. I want to control the dialogue—and myself.

"No, but sometimes I smoke a bit of weed if someone happens to have some. But getting high always frightens me, even while everyone else is giggling, and I have to drink myself into a stupor just to make it back to reality. But you know how that is, don't you?"

She is noticeably calmer now, but I remain cautious, wondering how much longer I should continue the session. There are too many layers between us, too much personal history that we are both trying to dance around. I ask a question simply for the sake of asking: "Would you like something mild to help settle your nerves?"

"I don't dare touch medication. I'm afraid it will kill my creativity. Haha, you understand—the great female artist."

She laughs forcedly, a slight edge of bitterness in her voice. She has achieved international success; several of her major pieces hang in the lobbies of prominent buildings and in modern art museums in major cities all over the world.

I realize I am envious of Helen. I feel my grip slipping, and only now do I truly notice that the woman sitting before me is a revered, brilliant artist. I hope my thoughts don't show, because that would completely upend the power dynamics of this room.

I am surprised by her coherence and the way she is able to adopt a bird's-eye view to observe herself. I had expected much worse. In our past encounters, I thought I had occasionally caught wild glints in her eyes that hinted at a slight fragmentation of the mind—perhaps a split personality. Yet her mental control during this session is absolute, and I downgrade my preliminary diagnosis from a potential borderline case to a recurring life-crisis trauma. It exhibits the wandering mental anarchy and social maladjustment so typical of artistic work. Such a state likely stems from the inward-looking nature of creativity and the intense focus on one's own mental imagery. During the creative process, the external world becomes nothing more than a dimly lit backdrop, where the internal drama unfolds through associations with the themes of the piece in progress. Creativity can be an abyss that sucks you into its depths, blurring outer reality.

I smile to myself at the sudden poetic turn of my thoughts, an indulgence that evaporates the instant I think of Jon. That goddamn pig needs a different kind of treatment than what I can provide. I sigh involuntarily. I am afraid I have exposed myself; the rapid shifts in my expression must be like a canvas revealing the thoughts shining through the cracks of my ruined professionalism. Helen can't know. At least, that is what I tell myself as I try, in a mild panic, to recover my default composure. Ridiculous as it sounds, I have occasionally practiced expressions in front of the mirror, aiming to use them deliberately to guide conversations with my patients.

Helen watches me scrutinizingly and says: "Are you not feeling well, Doctor?"

"No need to worry, my mind wanders sometimes. I was just thinking that goddamn Jon probably isn't of much help to you."

I watch her curl in on herself as she says faintly: "Jon is writing again, and drinking. Looking for inspiration for his stories elsewhere. He doesn't hit me or anything like that, but he knows how to be cruel."

She underscores the point by repeating herself, her voice verging on fierce: "Never anything physical. If he abuses me, it's with his insatiable desire. I forgive him for it because my conscience is always heavy, and because I don't want him constantly running off to find other women."

Helen ponders for a moment. I say nothing, allowing her to process her relationship with Jon, trying for the time being not to think about the conflict between them.

Helen continues, measuring me with her eyes: "But you wouldn't understand how truly I love Jon, or the fact that he has sacrificed his entire life for me. His stupid flings and other antics mean nothing. Jon always explains that he needs experiences to be able to write, and I understand that, even if deep down I can't accept that he goes to bed with someone else just because I don't have time for his desires. Sometimes I'm envious. I'd like to have experiences too, but I know it would mean an immediate end to us. His fragile self-esteem couldn't take it. Perhaps there's some kind of biological, male instinct at play—the need to be certain of his offspring, or something. I suppose you know more about those kinds of things."

Helen begins to sob from the pressure of her sudden release. It is a good development, but I am sweating and growing tired. I must have a fever again. I feel truly awful, and I decide to end it here. I say: "Shall we call it a day? We could meet tomorrow if you'd like to talk some more."

Helen looks at me, startled and anxious. "Is that all there is to your doctoring, then?"

I smile to myself. The best tool in talk therapy is often the act of termination. The door is already ajar, and the patient can see the healing light filtering through the crack. When the therapist then bluntly announces that the session is over and slams the door shut, the patient scrambles to get a foot in the door. It forces them to confront their situation and carry it with them as a sort of homework for the next time.

In this situation, I always doubt what I should do, but the rule is nevertheless to remain categorical. If a patient cannot withstand the pressure of their current reality and shatters completely, they require a different level of care; mere talk therapy is no longer appropriate at that stage. Uncontrolled traumatic after-effects can emerge with fatal consequences—suicides do happen sometimes due to a misjudged therapeutic encounter.

That is why I am particularly careful to assess Helen's state, even though we haven't ventured very deep into the hotbeds of her problems and have almost mutually avoided the real issues. I have failed because I didn't concentrate enough and spent too much time reflecting on my own reactions.

We agree on a new appointment at my initiative, and I am surprised that she doesn't write it down or say a word. Shrugging my shoulders, I note the time down on a slip of paper and hand it to her. We finish the meeting by chatting in a light tone as friends, discussing everyday women's matters, as if the rendezvous had no other purpose.

I feel relieved because throughout the entire conversation, Helen was noticeably clearer in her thoughts and more grounded than I had dared to hope. I also consider that we have made some headway in managing the situation. The need to tighten my professional grip is also less pressing than I anticipated. I finally relax, thinking that Helen isn't in an immediate crisis after all.

All in all, I am quite pleased with the outcome of the conversation. Helen waits patiently while I quickly review my notes one last time and write down, almost triumphantly: I didn't get swept away by her stream of words, nor did I let Helen's will carry me along. I was able to guide her onto the right tracks, and a few times I felt her show genuine trust. She was also calm in her speech and expressions, and she perceived a clear connection between the things she spoke about. Her deductions aren't as bound to her immediate situation as I feared. Smart girl.

As she is already standing up, I say aloud, as a kind of comforting summary of the session: "It always feels heavy if you view your problems as one giant, solid wall. That's why it's better to take on one problem at a time."

At the same time, I think to myself that I still need to practice this. Perhaps I let too many things surface all at once. It isn't easy to find the right footing immediately when dealing with acquaintances; one is forced to try to forget matters tied to personal relationships and focus on the core of the problem as a detached outsider.

That seems well-nigh impossible in this case. Of course, there is an advantage to knowing a patient so intimately in private life; it spares you the exhausting cat-and-mouse game of fishing out external details. I am certain that next time we can focus on continuing the talk-based therapy for a short while, until I find a suitable opening to slip away and refer her elsewhere. Perhaps Erik would take her on as a patient. Then again, no—that fool is obviously in love with Helen as it is. I'll think of someone else. Anyone but my husband.

I am proud of my competence, and of the fact that I managed to keep my secret affair with Jon entirely out of my thoughts, as if it didn't even exist. I didn't hurt myself, nor did I devolve into an subconscious war between females. Jon told me he no longer sleeps with Helen unless he is blackout drunk, and that all feelings between them are dead anyway. I am, however, a bit disappointed by the lies Jon told me, which came to light during the session. On the other hand, I feel a feminine satisfaction, knowing I have gained a weapon for our future arguments.

Helen stands up fully and walks with a surprising air of determination toward the door. She stops, turns around with theatrical slowness, and says with a practiced lightness: "I won't be coming back for another session. And Jon won't be coming back to your bed."

She pauses briefly, studying my stunned expression, and continues: "We've talked things through, using real names, and life goes on. Send the bill in my name. I'll send you an invitation to the exhibition as soon as the date is set."

With a melancholy smile, she closes the door between us for good, and she is gone.

I find the morphine in the medicine cabinet. My hands fumble with the syringe, but I manage to draw a second ampoule into the chamber. I am completely calm. The dose is sufficient. I slide the needle into my vein..

ElevenLabs recording with the AI voice Daniel 

An illustration generated by ChatGPT based on the short story 

The Masquerade of Fools

A terminally ill cancer patient, facing imminent death, lectures in a blue-furnished hall on the power of thought as a shaper of urban communities. His movements are slow and weary, his tone monotonic, and the subject matter miles away from his actual life situation. Behind him, an image dramatizing the event is projected onto the wall.

On the table sits a stack of books he has written, with the flyleaves already inscribed: "Best regards," followed by a signature practiced into elegant flourishes.

He says, listlessly, "Every consciousness is a sense organ of reality, through which God observes Himself."

I sit in the very front row, listening more to my own thoughts than to the lecturer. I try to conceive that the dying man before me is a half-open teleport to the afterlife. A mindset already orbiting an all-consuming black hole. Perhaps he truly sees things that lie behind the veil.

I hear him from afar, cutting through my own flashbacks: "Man's intellectual power of thought is the god that guides human streams along invisible tracks, serving the expediency of nature."

He asks, as if for his own comfort, "Is not the highest stage of human thought to logically formulate questions to which it has no answers? Logic is the comprehension of natural laws, and rationality is adapting to them; the ultimate purpose of the universe is known to no one."

Then, he spreads his arms like a Jesus welcoming the world into his embrace and continues, "The boundaries of consciousness are drawn where our coherent thinking and knowledge are sufficient to carry us."

The audience is dead silent—no polite applause, no reactions, only the occasional faint throat-clearing or the creak of a chair as someone shifts position.

The lecturer lets out a soft laugh and continues, "At a cancer research firm, I met a scientist hunched over a microscope studying cancer cells. He told me about their peculiar characteristic: they do not know how to die the way normal cells in the body do. It sounded highly paradoxical to a man who knows he is about to die of cancer—to learn that the cells consuming your body don't know how to die."

With a sigh, he then says, "In a way, death has become a friend, carried gently alongside you like salvation."

After a few dry coughs, the lecturer takes a long, wheezing pause and sips some water. His frailty speaks directly into the listeners' minds, like a sermon written between the lines of his presentation. To an audience contemplating their own mortality through his impending death.

He then speaks of his mother, who had suffered from cancer: "For a long time, she had been just a shadow away from death—delirious, her eyeballs large in a skeletal face, her lips melted into thin lines, parted just enough for air to pass in and out on its own, without the sound of breathing. She lay there, paper-thin, holding the morphine dosage button in her hand, just waiting."

Suddenly, my mother bolted upright and muttered, "Did you remember to water the flowers?"

"Then she sank back and drew her final breath, which, in the quiet room, sounded like a faint sigh. I looked at the withered flower on the windowsill and wept. The day before the funeral, I went to see the body, which lay there waxy and white-lipped. In the room, lilies scented the air, fighting against the heavy cemetery stench of a dead body. A strange message pierced my mind like a hysterical outburst of joy—a wordless, triumphant feeling for which there was no reason, as if someone were rejoicing through me. Laughter felt highly inappropriate, but I couldn't help it, and I left quickly. I also had a strong sensation that the person lying in the open casket was not my mother, but a strange, lifeless doll. I knew the grief would come later, and I would spend the rest of my life ashamed of that bizarre joy."

"On the day of the funeral, I didn't go straight to the chapel. Instead, I wandered around the cemetery, looking at the headstones, seeking comfort in the fact that everyone dies eventually. We carried the casket with silk straps toward its destination, a pit dug into the earth. It had been agreed this way, even though inside the casket was nothing but a cremation urn emptied to the wind. The body had already been bid farewell yesterday, just before the cremation. A musician friend played 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' on the trumpet, and the empty casket felt heavy as lead, forcing the pallbearers to bow their heads. I remember nothing else. Soon, it will be my turn. My greatest worry is for my children—the bonds that, severed at one end, will hang from them as restless associations tied to fading memories, like a wireless signal already slipping out of the coverage area."

His state of mind resembles that of a mourner; he seems to pity his loved ones for his upcoming death more than he pities himself. Perhaps the memories of a life lived take on new, more intense colors during a dying process prolonged by medical treatment—like old films being "remastered." The everyday psychology of the dying is a naked landscape into oneself, where the significance of past events is weighted entirely differently than before. The masks of our roles have slipped away, and life's illusions no longer exist, or they are useless. Some detail that previously felt insignificant might occupy the mind for hours, casting one's entire life in a completely new light.

He looks out into the hall, his smile like a pained grimace; doughy cheek muscles conceal his tired eyes. He interrupts his lecture, leans heavily against the table on the podium, and says, "Sometimes, it hurts like hell."

Then he continues, as if in a panic that he won't have time to say it all: "Yesterday, I read about death hotels in Switzerland, where you can legally rent a room complete with a poison chalice and funeral services. That might be an idea."

A brave smile puts an end to his monologue, and he gives a thumbs-up: "That's it folks."

The raw intimacy of the lecture's conclusion hits hard. I nod faintly, unsure of what to think. I had seen him on TV a few times before and liked him. The hall is absolutely silent now. After a moment, someone begins to clap with exaggerated force, and everyone immediately joins in.

I look around me and think: in the masquerade of fools, everyone looks normal.

ElevenLabs recording with the AI voice Daniel 

An illustration generated by ChatGPT based on the short story 

The White Album 

My body rejected the calling card of death my mind had so desperately reached for. Shrouded in cold sheets, I woke up in a bleak hotel room, an empty pill bottle on the nightstand and dried vomit by the side of the bed. At the bottom of the paused TV screen, the date display showed a mysterious shift in time—the same way you think you've slept poorly, but the clock tells a different story: the day is already half gone and the sun is at its zenith.

Wiping the slate clean isn't easy. Drawing the black curtain over everything with a handful of sleeping pills and ceasing to exist is an absolute catastrophe for the body, and it doesn't surrender its right to be and to live that easily. Yet, a single glance past the gates during that failed suicide attempt revealed a parallel dimension, one that rendered so many trivial desires completely meaningless. In this second try, life takes on deeper nuances. I remember wandering through the different stages of my own disaster before hanging a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the doorknob and opening the bottle of whiskey I'd brought along.

Looking back, I guess I hadn't fully believed in my own courage, since I'd chosen the cheapest whiskey to save money. I had, however, paid for the room two nights in advance and told the clerk at the front desk not to disturb me, claiming I was writing a novel where I'd forgotten the beginning, lost the plot, and hadn't a clue how it would end. He'd laughed and said he caught my drift; I'd be left in peace as long as I hung the sign facing the right way for the maids.

I hadn't researched how these things are usually done. I figured half a bottle of strange sleeping pills, a miserable love life, and a swig of whiskey to wash down each pill would do the trick. Even though the job didn't get done, I didn't regret the attempt. It proved that I really had been in love with Liina, even if her image was no longer as vivid in my consciousness, resembling a ghost wandering through my brain cells rather than the great love of my life. Love is a chemical state that tortures the body, changing from one moment to the next, even if the target and the sufferer remain the same. In the grip of lust, a woman is beautiful and desirable, and there is no flaw the mind cannot lie away from her essence. Afterward, it magnifies the tiniest mole into a wart, looking for any reason to recoil and disgust itself out of the relationship.

With Liina, everything was different from the very first touch, when her small, soft fingers stroked away my sorrows with pure understanding. It was a love where even the pain was shared, and every touch felt like telepathic thought transference between us. Natural selection doesn't make mistakes.

Now Liina was dead. A week ago, she lay beside me, her body limp, her bald head on the pillow, and the plunger of the heroin syringe pressed all the way down in her arm. It stuck out of her flesh like a poorly thrown dart in a dartboard. She was smiling when she died.

Liina had been in the final stage of cancer, and for a long time, she had been a mere shadow's breadth away from death—delirious, her eyeballs bulging in her skeletal face, her lips melted into thin lines left slightly ajar, through which air moved in and out on its own, without the sound of breathing.

A doctor I'd known since our university days had told me, when asked, that a hit of heroin was the best way to go because it worked instantly. And besides, that first hit of heroin was like ascending to heaven. How on earth did he know that?

I bought the stuff from a dealer at Sergels Torg, who was pacing back and forth with twitchy movements in an amphetamine cloud. He said he only used speed himself because heroin made you sleepy and was bad for business. As a commodity, though, it was perfect—the customer is hooked instantly. I didn't tell him why a stone-cold sober guy like me wanted heroin. He asked if I was planning to kill someone since I wanted three doses. I didn't answer; I just paid and slipped away.

It would be Liina's first and last hit of heroin, which, alongside her morphine medication, would work instantly. We had weighed it over for weeks, and though I didn't want to let her go, I understood the kind of hell she was suffering through. The pain was only getting worse, and she refused to go back to the hospital. We'd had a massive argument with them to get her out, signing papers stating we took full responsibility for her predicted death in the coming weeks. We did, however, get a hospice nurse who came daily to change the nutrient and medication bags and the capsules for the morphine pump. Officially, we were in palliative care.

We prepared carefully. We had practiced injecting—or rather, dying—on a rag doll she'd had since she was a toddler. Maybe Liina died all over again every time we pushed the needle into the doll. It felt like some sinister voodoo, where every prick hurt us both. Liina often looked happy with the morphine pump in her hand, her skeletal fingers gently squeezing my arm. I didn't tell her I planned to follow her into the hereafter.

I loved her endlessly, and every day was a treasure dug out of tissue paper. But as the pain gradually overrode the effects of the medical morphine, the inevitable moment to make the decision finally arrived. The syringe, filled days before, was within her reach in the nightstand drawer, inside a paper bag resting on her favorite book.

Liina did it herself, with cold composure, right after the nurse left. She didn't say a word while I nodded off in the armchair by the bed. Usually, I slept with one eye open, confident I'd hear if anything was happening, and I had resolved to stop her. The heroin-filled syringe was supposed to be there only for extreme, unremitting pain—a psychological mercy clause. Or at least, that's how I framed it to myself. I woke up and saw that her eyes had rolled back behind her lids. She was gone.

I called for an ambulance, and while waiting, I tried to resuscitate her by pumping her chest, but she had permanently crossed the border with no return. There was nothing left to be done by the time the paramedics rushed in. The hospital requested a police investigation because the syringe was still sticking out of her arm.

The hospital wanted to avoid liability for the unusual home care arrangement, and they didn't fully trust the legality of our agreement. Initially, I was suspected of mercy killing, and they were absolutely certain of some form of assisted suicide because the nurse's reports described Liina as weak and almost entirely immobile.

I told the police exactly how things had played out, confessing that I knew of her intentions and that I had procured the heroin from an unidentified dealer. By law, I could have been charged with assistance or at least possession of narcotics, but the interrogator decided to let it slide. He saw that my grief and suffering were genuine, and a urine sample proved I wasn't a user. They did check the syringe for fingerprints, but I hadn't touched it even during the preparations. In the interrogation report, Liina's cause of death was recorded as a self-induced overdose with no further action, and the body was released to the family for cremation.

I felt like I was in a movie where every frame was over-dramatized, and I was both the actor and the audience at the same time. After the interrogation, everything collapsed. I was rushed from the police station to the hospital and given an IV sedative. The next morning, they wrote me a prescription and escorted me to the exit, handing me a stack of pamphlets on dealing with the death of a loved one.

They called Liina's mother, who lived in the same city. She knew instantly what it was about and had prepared for the worst. Everything would be done according to Liina's wishes, without any fuss: the body would be cremated, and on some summer morning, her ashes would be scattered into Mälaren from her favorite spot in the city hall park.

It was all over, but I couldn't go back to our shared apartment. It belonged to Liina, and her parents put it up for sale. We hadn't been married or in an official cohabitation. Liina's father offered me the right to stay there for a year, but I politely declined. They packed up all my things and the few keepsakes I wanted from the apartment because I couldn't bring myself to cross the threshold. We grieved in our own separate ways, but I had been like a son to them, even though we never met again after the scattering of the ashes.

After the funeral, I broke down completely. I couldn't continue my work as an IT specialist and private consultant. I lived off my savings, staying in a hospice meant for the homeless. It was a restless place, even though staying there required weekly urine tests to prove you were clean. I didn't want to die there, so I went to a high-end hotel, where I failed in my attempt.

After that hotel night, despite my plans to move on, I stayed in Stockholm. There was a huge shortage of IT professionals, so I did temp work and acquired a rented apartment in a rather peculiar way.

At a Friday night Finnish dance, I met a countess—a real one, though at first, I didn't think she was anything more than a woman hunting for male company at a dance. As the night wore on, however, it turned out she was indeed a magnificent woman, half a century ripe, wallowing in her own fate as the last generation of a noble lineage ennobled by Gustav Vasa. A childless bohemian who, in her drunkenness, wanted more than just poetry from me. An instinctive feline who sensed the marks of destruction in me and felt a connection.

The next morning, I was soaking in her bathroom, inside an ancient bathtub resting on brass claw feet, listening to the Beatles' White Album through a speaker connected to an old reel-to-reel tape recorder. With my eyes closed, I randomly flipped through images bubbling up to the surface of my mind like a comic book. Blissful existential idleness, submerged in murky water softened by stinging bath salts, playing at being a fetus curling up in my mother's womb, sucking its thumb, knowing nothing yet of its dramatic birth or the life to come. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

Despite the toll of five decades, Lisa de Linne is still a stunning sight with her long black hair and soulful eyes. Wild Honey Pie—her skin always smells good, and I love the shy way she burrows into my embrace. Our lovemaking is slow and patient, until Lisa's small, rhythmic cries escaping from deep within her soul urge me to push harder, and I come on her pitch-black pubic hair. Sexy Sadie, what have you done.

The Beatles were twenty years late or a hundred years too early. Yes, I'm lonely, wanna die. If I ain't dead already. The magic is still there, and I dissolve into the associations brought by the music, losing track of my surroundings. Helter Skelter.

Nothing in our brief relationship was a lie. I had moved out of the hospice and into her place, given my own room and my own keys. We come and go as we please without monitoring each other's movements. We also stay strictly away from each other's acquaintances. If she has guests, I slip out via the back stairs or hide in my room to read the classics I've hoarded there. Officially, I am her registered subtenant anyway, so no one questions my presence if I drift to the bathroom or the fridge.

Sometimes grief still catches me off guard, and I'll disappear for days on end, crashing at the place of whatever temporary companion I find. Then I come home, a scruffy, foul-smelling wreck. The bathtub, the oversized headphones, the vintage Uher reporter tape recorder, and its sole remaining reel, "The Beatles – White Album," bring me back to life.

Sometimes I think relationships are like scenes in a revolving door: a brief moment in the same compartment, and then you walk your separate ways.

After six months, the Beatles' White Album is worn to shreds, and it's time to vanish for good, I think to myself as I step out of the tub. Lisa stands on the expensive rug within the antique frame of the room, watching me dress. She smiles. We both know the tape has run out, my grief has become a memory, and there is nothing left between us. We share a long hug and would have fucked goodbye, but she has her period, so we just kiss, letting the touch convey our gratitude for the moments we shared. Then I go to my room, pack my few belongings into my backpack—the one with the padded laptop sleeve—leave my keys on the bedspread, and exit down the back stairs. I was already expected elsewhere.

Cry baby cry. Make your mother sigh, she's old enough to know better. Cry baby cry

ElevenLabs recording with multiple AI voices 

An illustration generated by ChatGPT based on the short story

The Woman Who Couldn't Weep for Her Dead Mother

The basement bar of the oldest pub in the heart of the city is always alive. The music is good, the food is good, the women are sharp, the men are cheerfully drunk, the bartenders are fast, the atmosphere is one of a kind, and the place stays open until the small hours of the morning.

Sitting at the bar was a well-known artist, sporting a turquoise knit sweater, shock-red hair, and cornflower-blue eyes. Her mother had just died, and she wanted a buzz heavy enough to make her cry. In the background, a jazz band dragged through "St. James Infirmary," the black vocalist singing with a raspy, soulful ache.

Let her go, let her go, God bless her, Wherever she may be, She can look this wide world over…

The woman told the bartender she'd asked the band for something sad because she didn't know how to weep for her dead mother—and they'd been playing Billie Holiday-type tunes all night because of it.

She drank a light, bitter Jamaican beer straight from the bottle. The pub's owner, originally from the Caribbean, brought in a shipment once a year, and it had become a tasting ritual for the initiated, much like the arrival of the year's first Beaujolais Nouveau. The owner was a lean, impeccably dressed Black man with very dark skin, who danced jazz with a long-limbed, loose-jointed grace reminiscent of the dancers in old Hollywood pictures. A loyal pack of horny women always gathered in the exact same corner by the stage, waiting for their turn to experience a dancefloor orgasm under his spin.

Slurring her words, she said, "I don't have the stomach for that catfight."

The woman was famous for always saying exactly what she thought. Her art, too, was unapologetically honest, and her exhibitions never failed to ignite polarizing, emotional debates in the media.

A middle-aged man, riding a wave of newfound tipsiness and looking for company, sat down next to her. Introducing himself as a psychiatrist, he leaned in. "Standing behind you just now, I caught you saying you don't know how to weep for your dead mother. Don't worry. Crying is just tears—an involuntary reaction that even peeling an onion can trigger. Grief is something else entirely."

The band's vocalist crooned:

This pair of eyes can see a star, So paradise can't be so far, Since heaven's what we're dreaming of, For heaven's sake, let's fall in love…

The woman stared unblinkingly into the man's eyes, and a single tear traced its way down her cheek. Then she turned her back on him and asked the bartender for a mojito—heavy on the rum, no sugar, and just a few cubes of ice.

The man didn't give up, speaking directly into her shoulder blades: "You know, the worst part of my profession is that it often makes people suspect hidden motives. They think I'm pulling one over on them. But the truth is, with my clever questions, I skin the soul right out of their brains, coaxing it out through their nostrils like something out of a Gogol short story. Even when we're just talking about ordinary things—kids, family, travel, or a broken-down car. The strangest thing is, most people actually want me to expose the most wretched motivations of their lives."

The woman didn't turn around. She took her mojito, but snapped suddenly, "I'm not going to bed with you, you lying sack-of-shit plumber. I'm friends with your ex-wife, and she told me you have a small dick."

The man vanished. The bartender laughed and remarked, "They always lie about something—saying they're pilots or whatever, thinking it'll get them into a woman's pants."

The artist didn't laugh. Instead, she broke down, weeping uncontrollably, sobbing, "She was such a good mother to me."

She swallowed the last gulp of her mojito, rose on unsteady legs, and stumbled out.

At the other end of the counter, the bartender spoke to a couple who were celebrating their newly ignited, drunken romance, tongues buried in each other's mouths. "Looks like tears are still a long way off over here. Keep a lid on your horniness until you hit a hotel—the reputation of this place won't survive you two screwing right in public. Go out and dance, you can grope all you want out there. Now that the lady looking for grief finally broke down, the band can play something a bit more hormonal."

The couple ordered another round and were allowed to stay.

The night was already turning into morning as our woman stumbled toward the taxi stand, where a line of people arguing over rides stretched around the block. She decided instead to walk around the small bay, taking the gravel bike path toward the Artists' House where she kept an apartment.

The neon signs of the buildings lining the opposite shore cast pillars of color onto the water's surface. The artist viewed them through the spectrum of her own mood, like a motif for a canvas. On a park bench, a man sat slumped forward, nodding off. She recognized her recent harasser. She sat down beside him and said quietly, "In the life of a fatalist, coincidences always carry meaning. You can't just bypass them."

The man came to, glancing at her. " I don't have a woman—not an ex, not anyone—and I don't believe in coincidence. So fuck off and move along with your foolish life. The path keeps going that way."

The woman smiled enigmatically, like a girl in a seashell from some famous, faded pastel painting in a Florentine palace. "So you are a psychiatrist after all, you bastard. You could walk me to the Artists' House past the Drunkards' Hill, so nobody rapes me."

"Fine. I'm heading the same way anyhow."

They walked on, staggering into each other. As their bodies brushed against one another, the woman sensed something more than mere chance, and true to her nature, she spoke her mind: "Drunk, horny, middle-aged men and their lies aren't my thing. But thanks anyway."

As they passed a group of teenagers doing drugs, the man said loudly, "Don't worry, I have a weapon."

The woman responded with a low chuckle, "I noticed. It's poking right through your trousers."

When they reached the Artists' House, they began to part with a hug, but the woman suddenly clung to him, trembling with every instinct like a drowning soul. The release of her grief hit her like the tidal wave of an orgasm, her salty tears tasting of the sea. Then they fucked against a large silver birch in the yard. Somewhere a dog barked; the window of the old house creaked on its hinges as it was pulled shut, and all was right with the world—by coincidence or not.

Afterward, they detangled. The woman smoothed her skirt and muttered with a drunken slur, "Bye."

She stumbled away without looking back, heading into the blue-painted ghost of a house on the hill of City Bay, the door slamming shut loudly behind her.

Pulling up his trousers, the man muttered in annoyance, "Fucking into grief is like throwing withered flowers onto a coffin."

He must have wanted more. Ashamed of his loneliness and his bitter thought, he walked away.

ElevenLabs recording with the AI voice Daniel  

The Tram

A window seat opens up at the very next stop, but to my chagrin, a plump woman in a thick winter coat beats me to it. My ideal spot—in the second row of the rear platform on the left, free from any obstructing window frames—to claim it, I am ready to sacrifice my manners. I stand prepared to lung for my seat, completely indifferent to any elderly grandmothers, pregnant women, or otherwise infirm fellow human beings. That seat ought to have a "Reserved" sign for the insane and the neurotic, just as the seats by the door do for the frail. There have been times when it was occupied for the entire journey, ruining my day.

Irritated, I continue my vigil. Finally, the seat empties. I let the previous occupant slip past me while simultaneously blocking the way for the others, ensuring no one from the crowd can wriggle past to steal my spot. Little brats are brazen, lightning-fast, and experts at squeezing through the tiniest gaps, but today I am on my guard. I calculate that I have already lost at least five stops. Would I still have time to properly unleash my associations onto the fleeting streetscape or the profiling of my fellow passengers before we turned back? For some reason, the opposite direction does not suit my neurotically sensitive machinery.

Yet, I manage to get started. I begin by trying to analyze seemingly trivial details in people's expressions and demeanors inside the carriage. I watch the nervous insecurity of the passengers and their way of looking blankly past one another to conceal their thoughts—and in doing so, they reveal them better than if they had spoken them aloud. Just as a whale's baleen filters tiny plankton from the seawater for sustenance, my brain filters the slightest shifts in expression, searching for the stories dwelling behind them to feed its own peculiar hunger, to escape the tediousness of the everyday.

Do others, too, ponder like I do in this ride that strips souls naked, where concealment exposes the smallest lies? Do they pick someone from their surroundings and maliciously begin weaving mental traits onto their fellow passengers based on their layers of clothing and appearance, examining the matter from every angle, certain in their conclusions? Do they chuckle quietly at some comical twist or mutter to themselves? Then, waking up in shame, do they glance around fearfully to see if anyone noticed? Well, I have—shamelessly and precisely tracking every movement of the mind and the injustice it weaves toward its subject. By staring in a particular way, I let the brazen and arrogant know that I have noticed what they are thinking, making them turn their heads in shame as their expression shatters into a frantic panic to find refuge in their own window.

I myself am ashamed of my vague idleness, and I suspect my aimlessness shows in my demeanor. But I do not panic, because my analytical mind simply turns inward to examine my own reactions, and I always vanish into a standby thought about my worthless self, seen through the eyes of one of my alter egos.

The tram is also a physically unsafe place, governed by a general democracy where everyone holds the same rights. The thought makes me smile as I notice a tense, dark-suited official, jerking uncomfortably while hanging from a ceiling strap. Meanwhile, a young man who looks unemployed, sporting a vibrant pink mohawk, sits comfortably on a double seat with his legs stretched across, letting no one sit beside him. The light, perfumed brush of a beautiful woman who just stepped inside makes me feel like an ugly boor. A pale-sweated neurosis presses upon my mind, and I try to think solely of the flashing scenery or the attire of the boarding passengers. When agitated, neuroticism is sometimes like a butterfly flitting aimlessly here and there without a pause, settling only for a moment before continuing its journey without a conscious destination.

Gradually, I calm down and begin my usual tram-watching. Secretly, I stare at the faces of my fellow passengers one by one, trying to guess from their shifting expressions the personalities and meaningful thoughts of absolute strangers. Some people are open by nature; their thoughts sit on the surface, making their faces react to situations like the skin of a chameleon. Most of all, however, I like the artistic types who stare mysteriously into their own thoughts, their eyes like mottled, slowly color-shifting oil slicks.

The gaze of a beautiful, dreamy-looking girl transports me to a field blooming with poppies, where infatuated thoughts find the blind spot of their daydream. The illusion shatters when a drunk, coarse-skinned man slumps down beside me, reeking of piss and cheap liquor. He glances at my way and begins to bellow some age-old, repetitive tune. He stops for a moment, then begins to boast loudly of his past exploits in the Winter War. I believe every word, of course, but I have no sympathy for his backward-running coming-of-age story.

I try to concentrate on a well-preserved woman further away, imagining what it would be like to sleep with her, searching for the expression on her face as I thrust inside her. Perhaps she would close her eyes and part her lips slightly, her breathing growing heavier. The passion would make her gasp for air like a fish. That face can endure anything. The woman notices my stare, looks at me searchingly for a moment, offers a faint smile, and turns away. Now, I admire her confidence too. There is always a good reason for that kind of assurance.

The drunk gives me a painful jab in the ribs with his elbow, and I feel an urge to slam my fist into his bloated face, which resembles dough covered in pigskin. He mutters loudly—he has supposedly taken a grenade fragment to his leg for the thousandth time and wants to show the scar. An old woman across the aisle looks toward us with loathing and says in a loud voice, "What absolute scum." Everyone looks at us, and I blush, or assume I am blushing, and awkwardly try to look out the window as if I were somewhere else. And so I am; I am quick to shift time and place in my mind. The reeking reality beside me refuses to yield as I try to find new tracks for my thoughts. The drunk shouts loudly:

"Fuck off, you stupid hag!"

The carriage jerks to a halt, and everyone grabs onto something. The driver lunges from his seat and roars:

"Out, old man! Now!"

A tough-looking guy, his head partially shaved, wants to help. He hauls the old man up by his tangled hair, shoves him to the door, and kicks him out. The man's face hits the stone pavement, and blood spurts from beneath the tearing skin. He lies there motionless, resembling a pile of dirty gray rags more than a human being. Somewhere, a cultured male voice says:

"The man is dead, is no one going to help?"

The leatherhead rushes out, shouting as he goes:

"Fuck, I'm not going to prison over that piece of shit!"

Police sirens are already wailing close by. All movement has stopped, except for the leatherhead's fleeing back and his bobbing red mohawk. With screeching brakes, the police car halts at an angle, barely avoiding running over the drunk. The grandmother who spoke earlier wakes up again to grumble:

"Serves him right, the absolute scum."

A policeman lifts the corpse's head and says laconically:

"Looks like Kale's journey ended here, then."

He then looks sternly around and asks the driver:

"Did he fall while the tram was moving, since he landed right at the edge of the roadway?"

The driver explains the sequence of events in detail, causing the policeman to mutter something about negligent homicide. He then looks at the blankly staring passengers, calculating his workload, and continues slowly:

"Could have been an accident, too. Tripped over his own feet after taking a hit... He probably would have gone face-first anyway."

Some of the passengers step outside and walk away without being stopped. The second officer asks for instructions over the radio, and after getting the driver's name and address, allows the journey to continue.

I think of death and the pile of rags. There didn't seem to be time for a final accounting. Now that the man is no longer a nuisance to anyone, it is easier to think of him as a human being who has fulfilled his duty. Born, lived, and died. His woman had left him when the jobs dried up, stress took his potency, and he screamed in his nightmares at night. Perhaps the suffering and horrors of the war still swirled in his mind and had turned him into a drunk. I can almost see a string of abandoned, adult children mourning by the coffin, if they are to be found anywhere. Though perhaps his son, currently serving time in prison, has at least been brought to the scene under guard. Poor father, poor son.

The terminus. I jump out, not wanting to make it obvious to the driver that I am riding just for the sake of it. I walk toward the detached houses, pretending to be in a hurry. The woman who was previously the object of my imagination is walking ahead of me and remembers my staring. She glances back fearfully, and when I am within speaking distance, she nervously begins searching for something to say, testing to see if I am dangerous.

I initially intend to slow down and let the woman go her way, but she wants to make sure and stops completely. She says:

"You saw what happened. A man was killed just like that, and nobody did anything. It was almost murder, and the police couldn't care less—they were probably glad to be rid of a regular customer."

I agree. She continues her questioning:

"Do you live here too?"

She puts me in an awkward spot. There are only a few houses nearby, and lying would not work. Something in her gaze makes me candid, and, embarrassed, I tell her the truth. The woman says she understands, and we chat for a moment longer at her front gate about the cynicism of the world and the indifference of people, searching for either a beginning or an end to our acquaintance. In the neighbor's kitchen window, the curtains twitch, and I know to forget any potential invitation for coffee. We stand there for a moment, embarrassed. After ensuring that the tram from earlier has vanished on its return journey, I return to the stop, my mind lightened.

ElevenLabs recording with the AI voice Daniel 

An illustration generated by ChatGPT based on the short story 

Gridlock

The day began just like the one before: a line of cars crawling and jerking toward the next set of traffic lights. Behind me, a large minivan honked its dissatisfaction whenever I wasn't fast enough to close a sudden gap ahead, letting someone from the other lane cut in.

I listen to the radio and forget to pay close attention to what's happening around me. Fortunately, when you're driving, you sense situations without even looking. I try not to stress. Morning gridlock is yoga without the poses, or lovemaking without fulfillment. My sense of hearing feels secondary, tuning out at the slightest distraction, yet I still like having the radio on. When a single sentence or melody pierces through my consciousness, it stirs up memories, triggering my subconscious to process connections to the day's problems. The subconscious processes solutions, much like the dreams that sometimes untangle our worries.

After the news has drifted past my awareness, some melancholy jazz comes on. Melody Gardot is like a somber, leafless late autumn. I sit and think of you. I sniff the air, searching to see if you are still lingering on my clothes. You are like a part of me that is always there, someone I turn to for advice. You are my conscience, steering everything within me, and I think of you often—I can't help it.

When the music fades, a talk show features an interview with a female author discussing her book. It's about the exact split second when love ended. Just like that, for no justifiable reason. A sudden image of the man flashed before her, showing him in a different light, and all the love was gone. There was no going back.

A vague fear crept through my body: was this happening to us, too? What do you really think of me? Will you, too, realize in a single moment heightened by truth that I wasn't the one you actually wanted as a partner, and will some small gesture of mine shatter the illusion?

I pull into the slow lane. A long semi-truck whistles past, the draft rocking my car like a wave swaying a boat. I want to mull over what I heard on the radio and stretch out the commute. The author's interview won't let go; it's inside my brain like a shrapnel bomb exploding in slow motion.

Is something wrong with our relationship because we don't talk about everything anymore? The car ahead brakes suddenly, and I almost rear-end it. I don't bother to honk and signal the accident I nearly caused. If I had crashed, at least I would have had an excuse.

Still lost in thought, I search our past for the moment we stopped listening to each other, except during arguments. When did we start speaking to each other like acquaintances? Is everything really this taken for granted, just predictable subtext between the lines?

Sometimes, when I watch you from a distance, observing your actions and shifting expressions, I feel a deep sense of companionship, gratitude, and love. I also see the lines etched into your face, the silver streaks in your hair. The passion is gone, and I don't desire you as often anymore. It has been replaced by tenderness and a sense of security.

Perhaps you glance over while I'm pondering our relationship and ask with bewilderment, "What's wrong, honey, is something the matter?"

I realize I've driven right past the off-ramp where I was supposed to turn. I'll have to drive dozens of kilometers before I can turn back. Dammit. I call to say I'll be late for the meeting because I missed the ramp while passing a truck. Hellish traffic, and no one would give me space to change lanes until it was too late. I spin it like a good story: My blinker was on the whole time, I honked, steered in, and tried to gesture for them to give way, but no—just angry faces and middle fingers back. I'll be there as soon as I can.

On the radio, there's a midday trivia quiz or something now: two contestants, and whoever gives the correct answer faster gets a point. The winner gets a ticket to some concert. I knew the answers to all the questions because I read the daily papers thoroughly. The briefcase on the passenger seat next to me holds an important business proposal with a strict deadline for everyone participating in the tender—and here I am, blowing the deal by having an internal dialogue with my wife over some godforsaken radio show. I shift into the bus lane and hit the gas.

I find my way back in the right direction via a bridge crossing the highway. Heading back, there is no traffic, and I'm driving too fast. I notice a speed camera too late, since I don't usually drive around here. My license might get suspended. Luckily, I don't see a flash; I guess it's just an empty box used as a deterrent.

I calm down. I think of our nights back when our bed was still a cushioned love nest, drifting above all worries like an island perfumed by lovemaking. We would debate and bicker about everything, searching each other for every ripple of emotion as proof of our love.

Guilt gnaws at my mind because, given the opportunity, I have given in to temptation. Perhaps the fading of our relationship has made her seek intimacy elsewhere, too. Maybe she has someone else, a regular lover? Or does she only cheat now and then during drunken nights out with colleagues on seminar trips? Maybe I am just defending my own actions by projecting them onto her.

Conference adventures with married women cross my mind—women who, after a couple of dances, surrendered their bodies and souls without resistance on a hotel room sofa, making passionate sounds. I've never thought of my own wife being like that on her business trips, but that damn author on the radio still feels like she's wagging a finger at marriage in my imagination. I get jealous when men look at my wife that way, but I only sulk angrily if there's any clear familiarity involved. What if my wife is having an affair with a woman? The times favor that sort of thing. Untangling the knots of forbidden inner urges as if it were the latest fashion.

The author on the radio had spoken about the lies that creep into a relationship after love ends. Marriage had become a roleplay: wife, mother, and companion. The stage was the home, the workplace, visits to friends' houses, and vacations to major cities. Surrendering out of duty, with faked orgasms. Love was gone, but the facade remained intact.

In the parking lot outside the office building, in the space reserved for my car, sits a familiar convertible. It's a message to me: be ready. The owner's daughter is visiting her father again, and I am expected to park in a visitor's spot. But today, I refuse.

ElevenLabs recording with multiple AI voices 

Old lady:

The morning lingered in the fog. I walked along the Boulevard de la Madeleine toward the old Opera and went to the same café as the previous morning. I ordered an English breakfast with a café americano—which was basically a double espresso, a fried egg with toast, and a pat of hard butter. The cocky waiter didn't give me a smile, although I was sure she remembered me. I had been generous with tips, sat at the same table for several days, and always ordered the same thing. The choice of table was influenced by the view of the busy street.

Next to the café on the sidewalk, there was a discount, market-style sales counter where you could get cheap household necessities for every need. Towels, bags of all sizes, toys, electrical supplies, socks, underwear, or even an old-fashioned table clock. It was like a little flea market.

The woman wore a lace-trimmed jacket, a black brimmed hat, a large red leather bag, patterned shoes, a scarf pleated over her hand with long rainbow-colored fringes, and a ruffle on her collar – the overall tone was dark. I had never seen an elderly person so dignified and beautiful. Her clothes seemed to be from the fifties, perhaps even before that—custom-made and unique. Probably a top designer's creation of the time, made from the best materials that still held their shape.

It was as if this elderly person had stopped time at some moment and lived only in it, not caring about the changes in the world. The outfit was like mourning attire to which, over time, colored streaks of life had returned without losing the memory they sanctified. The woman's body language was not submissive, but dignified, aristocratic, and self-consciously intellectual. What she had allowed for her dress, she had already allowed for her memories; her large gold earrings told this to everyone.

I forgot about the breakfast and egg brought by the waiter while observing the woman. The delicious, soft yolk had cooled into a sticky lump, and the cold coffee tasted bad. The waiter watched from her spot by the door, staring at my forgotten breakfast and realizing the reason. When she noticed I saw her, she came over to me and said in a low voice: – "She comes every weekday and buys something small – we call her Émilie. She always wears that same ancient outfit with lots of black and a brimmed hat."

I answered: – "I think she lost her fortune and her husband a long time ago. All she has left is a large apartment, a small pension, and children who knows where. Maybe she also had a spectacular career in fashion or the arts, or maybe just as a seamstress. First, an invitation-filled pre-World War II social life, then the occupation and shortages."

The waiter enthusiastically joined my imaginative game: – "The items Émilie buys are the cheapest rubbish, meant for the Algerians living at the top of the street and Black people from the colonies. She is a woman for whom one could imagine a wide range of life stories and historical realities. Probably her true story overcomes them all."

The waiter smiled with a melancholy glimmer in her eyes, as if she were in love with her own thoughts. She cleared the breakfast at the same time and said she'd bring a new portion if I promised to eat it right away. Our kindred souls, both poetic with associations, had met.

I still wonder how everyday life is never as romantic as our fantasies—wars are cruel and big cities are relentless. I'm sure if I went to stand next to "Émilie," the smell of urine from incontinence underwear would waft into my nose.

ElevenLabs recording with the AI voice Daniel  

Enchantment 

I was wandering, lost in thought, turning down random street corners. I inhaled the pungent aroma of cheese shops, the scent of perfume from women passing by, and the smell of yellowed paper from the book stalls along the Seine. Behind Notre Dame, in the Jewish quarter, a young woman was playing the cello in the bright daylight.

The woman is beautiful like the Madonnas of altarpieces, with her hazy eyes following the musical notes. Her slender fingers climbed up and down the neck of the instrument, paused to sustain a note, vibrato rippling through the air like gravity does space. The bow presses harder against the strings, and the cello responds, deepening its voice. In the woman's expressive body movements, an inner dimension is transmitted from the instrument around the house corner like a rustle of wind.

In my imagination, with her eyes closed, she follows the melodic patterns, traveling the secret paths of her soul as if caressing herself. The woman who is playing glances in my direction as if hearing my thoughts. I am still in the twilight liminal state of reality that began this morning, and I experience connections to what I hear as if I were wandering in an image-free and wordless universe of spiritual understanding. The sound of the cello designs reality into paths and landscapes, vibrating in the dimensions of the strings curled inside the atoms. I experience the strong pull of subconscious mind currents to the beyond, the mind floats in music.

The enchantment shatters when I am about to put a coin from my pocket into the hat in front of the woman who is still playing. In my pocket, I encounter the bony hand of a pickpocket, instinctively grab it, and swing behind me with my other hand without seeing the thief. A high-pitched girl's voice screams, and I release the hand in shock. A ragged girl escapes through the crowd to somewhere. The cello has become silent as if in fright, and everyone around me is staring at me. A moment of confusion, with no one knowing whose side to take. I put the coins saved from the thief into the hat and leave in embarrassment behind the nearest street corner, my eyes searching for the girl to make amends for what just happened.

ElevenLabs recording with the AI voice Daniel   

A moment that slipped away 

In the stairwells between the floors of the Musée d'Orsay, there are heated stone benches on the landings where it is pleasant to doze off for a moment. A strangely peaceful place amidst all the hustle and bustle. Near me, a woman leans against a wide marble balustrade, reading a book; on the museum's far wall, a massive, ornate station clock counts down unhurried moments. The last train left the station decades ago, taking the rush with it.

The woman's reddish hair, curled into spirals, cascades far down her back. The hem of her black coat, which reaches almost to the floor, is lifted slightly, revealing a foot resting on its toes in a thick-soled shoe. The arrangement is like a thought forgotten into its surroundings, to which the daylight—filtered into a haze by the smoky glass wall at the end of the museum—adds a borderless enchantment. The harmonizing atmosphere of colors makes the moment feel like one of the museum's own paintings.

Now fully awake, I feverishly check my camera settings and kneel as inconspicuously as possible on the stone bench, as if praying that the woman won't move. Everything must be captured exactly as I see it now. I frame the subject to match my mental image, steady the camera as much as possible, and hopefully press the shutter. A magical blink of an eye, untouched by the slightest doubt. The woman does not notice my presence, and I slip away with my picture like a thief.

I hurry up the stairs to the next floor and stop to look down over the railing into the former station hall. Camera in hand, I admire the gorgeous image of the woman on its digital screen, happy with my success. As I fiddle with the camera, my grip slips. The camera falls two floors down, crashing onto the marble floor and shattering into pieces—and the model doesn't have a removable memory card. All that remains is a rapidly fading afterimage in my mind. Perhaps, as a dream image, it will never truly vanish, and someday I will paint a picture of it.

ElevenLabs recording with the AI voice Daniel   

Mind Wandering

I pass by the Shakespeare and Company bookstore at the edge of the Latin Quarter in the flush of a blushing morning. I've always wanted to visit, but it's permanently overcrowded. I can't bring myself to step inside just to feed my writer's soul—a soul stained by life and prone to adventuring in its own associations.

A new day, and everything outside is drenched. A night of continuous rain has washed the streets of Paris, sweeping away the stench of urine, dog waste, and rotting food scraps. It has watered the park trees, budding with a fresh green, and the daffodils pushing proudly up through the soil. Paris is in spring bloom, like a teenage girl. A certain restlessness is visible everywhere; people are driven by instinctual urges that throw life off balance once more, making the light brighter and the shadows deeper. From the early hours, the sounds of hammers and jackhammers echo from every direction, and there isn't a single hotel without paint-splattered workmen loitering out front with their gear. It is spring.

I walk toward Les Halles and onward to Rue Saint-Denis, where prostitutes are already idling in the doorways of shabby hotels this morning. Some are old and heavy-set; the youngest come, without exception, from Africa or Asia. What they all have in common is tacky, revealing clothes and exaggerated, smudged makeup. An unvarnished sexuality vibrates in the air like molecules rising from hot asphalt.

As I pass, my attention is caught by a beautifully aged French woman holding a small dog in her arms, her eyes gentle. I am certain she has plenty of regulars, all in love with her for the exact same reason. I slow my pace beside her—if only I had the courage. She smiles with her eyes, as if reading my thoughts, and whispers in a voice raspy from cigarettes: "One hundred euros." The illusion vanishes. Love is not a commodity to me in that way, and a gap in a woman's teeth, smashed in by some angry fist, is not sexy. Reading the shift in my expression from infatuation to revulsion, she sighs and turns away. Tomorrow, I will take a different route.

At the top of the street, I turn toward the old opera house, intending to see Chagall's magnificent ceiling painting, which I've previously known only from pictures. My legs are already aching; Paris is devilishly huge, shrunk and trivialized by the map in my hands, tricking me into walking further. The culprit is my desire to see and experience it all—a packed metro and changing trains just isn't the same. Stopping at cafés for a glass of wine and a bite of baguette keeps me oriented, and my lifted spirits make up for the increasing clumsiness of my steps.

In front of the opera house, a Romani woman lies on a dirty blanket with a hungry, wailing baby before her, and another on the way inside her swollen belly. She begs with her hands clasped in prayer, a cliché image of the Virgin Mary by her side. On a nearby bench sits a man with a attack dog between his knees, watching to ensure she doesn't secretly hide any alms in her rags. Hesitantly, I drop a coin into a cigar box containing a few cents left as seed money—otherwise, I would have spent the rest of the day dwelling on my own hard-hearted stinginess. The distress is real.

The opulence of the opera house is a cruel contrast to the misery outside, but Chagall's ceiling painting somehow blurs that contrast in my mind. Head tilted back, I stare at the ceiling, at its joyful colors and whimsical figures, and the surrounding grandeur loses some of its gaudy air, as if melting into the essence of Paris.

Coming outside, I give the begging woman a five-euro note, for she is now nursing her child at a sagging breast. At the street corner, I glance back and see the man with the leashed dog emptying the cigar box.

The fire to write, kindled by Shakespeare and Company, has begun to find its substance.

ElevenLabs recording with the AI voice Daniel   

Jazz at Caveau de la Huchette

The multicolored neon tubes of the Latin Quarter began to glow, humming their temptations into the crowding street. Everything was exactly as it had been the night before, and every night before that—complete with pickpockets, scammers, and the touts outside the Greek restaurants loudly bickering over hungry passersby. Just the right ingredients for a traveler's adventure, the kind that yields a colorful tale to take back home—and perhaps a few bruises, a bout of food poisoning, or a missing wallet to spice up the memories. You all know how mishaps turn into invaluable stories, provided, of course, that your life and health are still intact after the experience.

One of Europe's oldest jazz clubs is a dirt-begrimed, smoke-stained medieval cellar vault, packed tight with intimately rubbing human flesh. Intrigued by the place's reputation, I push my way into the crowd. The saxophone ground and wheezed thick tones, the drums pounded out some strangely-rhythmed improvisation, the double bass thumped along to its own beat, and a large Black man, raspy-voiced with spit in his throat, channeled Louis Armstrong. A sweet scent of marijuana drifted through the thick smoke hanging in the air.

The band is on fire. I grab a beer and wedge myself next to a button-nosed girl to scout for a vacating table at the edge of the dance floor. It has been overtaken by a jovial, drunken crowd. A curly-haired man leans forward, wildly drumming rhythms against his knees with dinner spoons, chasing after every single note. Every now and then, his neighbor howls like a wolf. The floor sways and writhes, losing itself to the beat of the music. A drunk, scrawny man gropes a busty woman. Jazz is alive. With a laser-sharp gaze, the saxophonist rips into a passionate solo, sending the room into a hypnotic, swaying trance. The button-nosed girl coughs, offering me the burning joint she just hit, smiling as if I were suddenly her type.

I shake my head, patting my chest as if I have a lung disease, and take a long swig from my beer bottle. At the same time, I try to signal through the noise that anything else goes, pressing close against her in the crush of the crowd. The cellar of Caveau de la Huchette is no place for talking, so I point a finger toward the ceiling. She nods, takes my hand, and begins leading the way up the stairs toward the exit.

We find ourselves out on the street, gasping for fresh air after the smoky cellar. Testing the waters, I ask her:

"What now?"

She laughs and says in unmistakably American English:

"Don't be silly. I know just the place to go, and I'll hold your hand if you're scared."

She links her arm through mine and adds:

"After all, this is what you wanted."

We buy a bottle of red wine, a baguette, and some cheese from a food kiosk, and sit down on the pedestal of a nearby statue to eat our rations. The day is cooling into a chilly night, and we huddle side by side, shivering like the pigeons surrounding us, begging for baguette crumbs. I'm starting to get into the idea. The girl is much younger, and hey, it would be quite something to prove I've still got it.

The girl looks at me for a long moment, pursing her lips thoughtfully.

Then she says:

"A hundred bucks, and you can have me. Otherwise, no deal."

I burst out laughing, pull a fiver out of my flat wallet, stand up unsteadily, and say:

"Thanks for the company, keep the change. That saxophonist is really something, and I think I'll just head back to square one."

I didn't go back down to the cellar of Caveau de la Huchette to look for lust my own age. Instead, avoiding the dark alleys, I walked back to my hotel with the image of a man playing the saxophone in my mind, listening for possible footsteps behind me. The unlit, empty streets of a metropolis can be treacherous to a lonely, drunken man.

All the photographs were taken by (c) Markku Lindroos and edited with the help of ChatGpt AI