Frequencies

The jealousy is a stone in my gut. I move through the morning on autopilot, a ghost in my own kitchen. I turn on the radio for the anchor of the news, for a reality outside my own chaotic skull.

But the broadcast fractures.

A news segment cuts abruptly to rap, raw, urgent verses that don't belong in this daytime slot.

I freeze. Listen.

The first track is a direct address, a bullet of words:

Thirteen years old, pockets full of white
They give him product, say he’ll be alright
Stand on corners where the cops don’t see
Move the weight, make the money, think you’re free
But the boss man knows your mama’s name
Knows your sister, plays a different game
You think you’re hustling but you’re being used
Another body in the pipeline, another kid abused

The beat drops. The news returns, then shatters into another track:

Fourteen, fifteen, running on the street
They promise you protection, promise you can eat
Just deliver packages, just do what they say
But the packages get bigger and the debt won’t go away
Your family’s in trouble, they know where you sleep
So you keep running, keep selling, diving deep
Into a hole you can’t climb out, into a trap
Another minor in the system, another life in the gap

I am at the kitchen table, mesmerized. This isn't random. The timing, the content, each track dissects the machinery of exploitation. It’s a question posed in the air.

Is this for me?

Handsome Man. The Whole. They are sounding me out.

I pick up my phone. My fingers move without conscious thought:

"Scientifically, there's a molecule for every person. Everyone is traumatized. Chemistry could process what therapy can't. I've tried everything they prescribe. The only thing that works when the pressure gets too high is to get drunk and eat too much. Both legal. Both inadequate.

"The illegality of other substances is just population control. Oppression disguised as protection. In a sane society, we'd study the entire chemical spectrum. Everyone could find their compound, their dosage. It would end trafficking and most mental illness in one stroke.

"The reason this isn't done? To keep power concentrated. That's the real psychiatric pathology, the one that's ruining the world. And most people are both its victims and its accomplices."

I hit send. The broadcast continues. Another track shifts the focus:

They call it oldest profession, try to make it sound clean
But look behind the curtain, see what’s really being seen
Bodies bought and sold, consent that isn’t free
Someone making profit off of somebody’s need
Desperation packaged, marketed as choice
While the vulnerable are silenced, stripped of their voice
Not talking about freedom, talking about exploitation
Another human system built on desperation

I type again, my response a hammer on the same theme:

"No one has the right to exploit another's life. The crime isn't the act, it's the coercion. The systemic removal of alternatives. If bodies weren't commodified, if survival didn't require submission, the whole architecture would collapse. But that would require seeing people as people, not resources. It's the same sickness. The same refusal to cure the disease while punishing the symptoms."

Send.

The final track makes my heart stutter:

Six months in the wilderness, off the grid completely
Major trials coming, organized crime being treated
Need to disappear while the system does its work
Question is: you ready? Can you leave everything, go dark?
No phones, no contact, just survival in the woods
Away from all the networks, away from all that’s understood
Come with me if you’re ready, if you think you can commit
Six months of nothing, six months off the grid

I don't hesitate.

"Yes."

The news anchor returns, his voice flustered, almost embarrassed:

"We apologize for today's irregular programming. It appears our broadcast has served more as a megaphone than a news service. We'll return to our standard format tomorrow."

Silence.

I sit with my phone. Did I just have a conversation with the void? Or with the most lucid part of my own mind?

The kill. The murder. It sits in me, an unassimilable fact. Did it happen? Does the book's claim make it true? Does my amnesia make it false?

I need to see the house.

Outside, the village is postcard, perfect in the morning light. I move through it like a ghost retracing the steps of a crime I can't remember.

First, the house where I saw Handsome Man emerge weeks ago, the military jacket making me think soldier. I walk past. Nothing. It's just a house.

Then, toward the boss's residence. The man I am supposed to have killed.

A construction worker watches me from a low wall. His gaze feels intentional—positioned surveillance. As I pass below, his voice cuts the air:

"Ah, so she really wants to die."

I look up. His face is a mask. Statement? Threat? Warning? I can't tell if the words were spoken or if my mind is writing the script for my paranoia.

I approach the house. I try to look casual, like I belong, checking under a flowerpot for a key. My hands perform the motion. Nothing.

Movement beyond the gate. People in the courtyard. Adrenaline floods my system before my mind can form the word danger.

I turn. Walk away fast, my retreat feeling less like a choice and more like a flight reflex.

Home is no sanctuary. The murder haunts me with its ambiguity. I need the truth. I need the colony ruins, the physical place to trigger the hidden memory.

I call Handsome Man. One ring. Hang up. What am I asking him?

Back outside, heading for the abandoned building by the river, the place of the summer colony, the felled maritime pines.

55 appears from a side street. His face assembles a friendly expression.

"How are you?"

"Fine. You?"

"Going to my father's for three days. See how things settle."

We begin to part. He turns back, as if remembering protocol, and extends his hand.

My mind is on the house, the kill, the radio. My hand, moving automatically, misses his and grasps his forearm instead. Awkward. A breach.

His expression flickers. Then he is gone.

I continue toward the wreck. But then

A man. At the intersection. The same one who spoke with Handsome Man months ago. Our eyes lock across the distance.

He doesn't speak. Doesn't gesture. Just holds my gaze.

And I understand, whether the understanding is his or mine, that I must turn back. That the ruin holds something I am not ready to face.

I reverse course. Walk home with the swift, unthinking pace of a hunted animal.

On my couch, hours dissolve. The morning replays in a loop, each event a quantum particle, both real and imagined:

The radio rap: broadcast or hallucination?

My texts: sent or composed?

The worker's warning: spoken or projected?

The man's look: signal or coincidence?

Everything exists in a state of superposition.

The jealousy is a stone. The murder, a ghost. The village breathes outside my window, performing its daily play, while I sit at its center, unable to distinguish the mission from the madness, the recovered memory from the necessary fiction.

Megaera. The Fury.

I became her. Or I needed a story where I became her, to give form to a rage that had no other language.

The light fades. The fragments accumulate. The truth remains just out of reach, obscured by the very mind that seeks it.