TRAUMA

My thoughts begin to spiral, their velocity increasing until centrifugal force threatens to tear coherence apart. I need an anchor. Someone to help me assemble the scattered bits into a pattern, to distinguish signal from noise, truth from a meticulously constructed fiction.

The landlord.

Once before, I had summoned him through focused intention, a collapse of probability into presence. I close my eyes and concentrate, picturing his face with a precision that borders on invocation. I need to see you. I need explanations. I repeat the thought until it achieves density, until it feels inevitable.

The bell above his garage rings. I bolt outside.

"Can I ask you something?"

He waits, a patient silhouette against the workshop light.

"I think I'm being used. For crimes. The attacks, all of them, everywhere. They use me."

His face arranges itself into a question. "How old are you? Some of the attacks you're talking about happened before you were born."

I fall silent, my mind frantically flipping through dates, nip/tucking reality into a shape that maintains a fragile, derailing coherence.

I adjust my approach. "But am I a human being?"

"Who is human, nowadays?"

The answer hits like a philosophical feint. He continues before I can process it. "Many people are suffering, have severe diseases. You're fine. In good health, thank God."

"But last year, the hospital, the escapes, all that hustle"

"That's nothing."

"I have to leave."

"Why don't you relax? Find hobbies. Go to the church youth center."

The absurdity of the suggestion short-circuits my response. We part ways.

Then, the rain arrives with percussive insistence. I retrieve my yellow raincoat, a splash of primary color in the gloom, and walk toward the pastry shop.

The barman, an old friend of Handsome Man's whose network I'm still mapping, sees me enter. He begins preparation before I speak. A ginger tea materializes on the counter.

"Better than coffee," he suggests.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Whatever you want. I'm here to serve."

People enter in a sequence, a choreographed parade of familiar faces. Each one greets me identically: "Bonsoir."

A French salutation in a village where French holds no obvious function. The uniformity is chilling.

When we're alone again, I voice the question that keeps bobbing to the surface, a buoy that will not stay submerged. "Am I a human being?"

His answer vibrates at the same ambiguous frequency as the landlord's, neither confirmation nor denial, just a linguistic territory where certainty cannot gain a foothold.

"Time to close," he says.

I finish the tea and collect the two pastries I purchased but did not consume, I had wanted company, not sugar. Outside, the rain continues its relentless percussion.

I move toward the center, pass 14's shop, and turn left to climb toward home. But fear hits me like a physical barrier, an invisible wall my nervous system refuses to penetrate. I reverse course and walk into 14's.

Inside: a fest. Clients clustered around bottles and small plates. I recognize one, a summer encounter, a memory of flirting compliments.

He's in work clothes. A paramedic uniform. His name tag reads: TRAUMA.

I join them. Music plays from a smartphone, songs from the past, from a youth that existed before everything became complicated.

The paramedic extends the phone toward me. "Here, you press it."

I select a track and immediately regret the gesture, another simple action that might carry untold weight.

Eventually, they disperse. I remain while 14 closes up, processing payment for today's purchase plus the debt he had previously refused.

He finds an envelope from a drawer, extracts banknotes folded carefully inside a napkin, selects one, and returns my change.

The rain intensifies. He offers me a ride.

In the car, the radio activates on its own. A song from the past emerges. A message from Handsome Man. 14 notices my sharp attention, a silent acknowledgment of the connection.

"Want to drive around before going home?"

We pass the ruins of the summer colony, another one of my unsolved memories.

"I must have been there," I say, the pieces clicking into a terrible place. "They always told me I'd been somewhere else, another village, another region. But I recognize that building. The cut pines from the newspaper. It was a bad place. Children were mistreated there."

"They always presented it as a showcase facility," he replies, his tone neutral.

As we drive the serpentine village roads, I decide to confess. "Someone in the village is exploiting my neurodivergence."

"Any idea who?"

"No."

We arrive beneath my building. He greets me, his hand moving to take mine, but terror detonates in my chest. I flee from the car.

At home, I text Handsome Man to determine his location. The uneaten pastries, I’d thought he might come by. He responds: birthday party.

I begin dismantling the house. Again. Every drawer, every shelf, every accumulated object that holds the energy of a configuration I no longer occupy. Purging. Cleaning. Discarding. My thoughts whirl in a centrifuge while my hands work on elimination.

I empty a cupboard and lift my eyes to a high corner.

The stuffed rabbit, my sister-in-law's creation, soft fabric sewn with care—was sitting on a shelf, surrounded by boxes of lightbulbs I have no memory of purchasing. No memory of placing the rabbit there, either.

A flashback: my twenty-year-old black and white cat returning home with a live rabbit kit in her mouth. A small, terrified creature. I freed it.

I text Handsome Man: "The cat brought me a rabbit and I freed it."

His response is immediate: "Bravo."

And then, clarity arrives in an explosion.

14.

The exploiter. The network coordinator. The old customer who always appeared when I walked into his shop, he wasn't there for the products. He was there for me.

I sink into bed. A single refrain circles through my consciousness as sleep pulls me under:

...Someone saw them return,

Holding hands...