Walter K.

Chapter 1: First Visit

K. was sitting in his office drinking the morning coffee. A usual office, nothing very special, with
a desk apparently made from some old wood, because the scent of the coffee couldn’t be perceived.
It was the first day at work, so K. tried to disregard his coffee-drinking rituals. The way K. treated
this process was unique. He woke up daily at 7:17 and started to prepare his coffee. After 5 minutes
of continuously mixing the two components, K. began to drink it. In his mind, coffee was the drink
of the Gods.
This morning was different. K. arrived at his new working place one hour before it was required,
with an unexplainable desire to arrange the office. Before K. got to work there, a woman called
Michelle used to. K. didn’t find any evidence to prove himself that Michelle actually worked in the
office. The only things on the floor were papers, six broken staplers and a photo of a man with a
bizarre look. Another remark of K. was that the floor had some drawings on it. He could not
understand at the moment, but later he managed to reach the truth behind them. After arranging
all the things in the shelters and throwing away the garbage, K. laid down in the chair staring at the
door.
K. was a lawyer, with a recent obtained degree from a good British University. The building K.
worked in was situated in Nottingham, in West Bridgford. It was built a long time before becoming
a place for the lawyers (what explains those deplorable conditions). K. didn’t manage to find a better
job, because no one accepted people like him, with no experience. In the middle of his long
meditations, Walter (K.) decided to start from the bottoms of advocacy.
K. was expecting the first client to arrive. No one in the building couldn’t yet tell him what was
the purpose of a man getting there so early in the morning. Everyone seemed poor and mediocre to
him. In his mind this building (people called it “Vortex”) absorbed them. It made them look old and
senile, even if the majority were around the age of 35. K. decided to open the door, to make his
customer feel comfortable and immediately prone for a long talk on the case. As K. was
approaching the door, it started to open by itself. He thought that there should be someone who
loved joking. In such a building, K. considered, it is not funny for the doors to open by themselves.
Therefore, he left it opened and then fell back in the chair. The client had already been late for five
minutes, but K. was not bothered, as the excitement of a first client was more important than those
five minutes. K. was caught with the eyes closed and yawning when his customer entered through
the opened door. K. considered his behavior inappropriate and therefore expressed some consistent
apologies, but then the mysterious client suddenly interrupted K:
-I should be sorry. Can you be so polite and look at the clock on that wall? I am so sorry, he said.
My name is Samuel, and I come from Sheffield. The story of my case made me take this decision, to
come here, in Nottingham. No one could help me and I decided to throw a dice on the big map of
Great Britain to see if the fate gives me a chance…by chance (he laughed, desperately trying to get
close to K.).
-Don’t worry Sam! – K. said, but then looked at his watch. It was 11:17… You could somehow
obtain my phone number and call me. (Looking at his scared face K. tried to calm the things down)
Ok, this time it is fair, but next time be polite and announce me, or at least someone at the office. I
am Walter and as you could understand from my accent, I am not British. You saw my grimaces
when you mentioned where you come from. Sheffield tells me only that this city exists somewhere.
-It is not that far, Sir! Can I start my story, as we don’t have a lot of time today? (K. nodded)
It happened last year, around Halloween. If it is important for the case, I remember the exact
date, it was the 28th of October. I was walking down the street playing with my keys, from the room
I rent on Upper Lane Street and then a car, an old Toyota, with four boys wearing cowboy hats, just
stopped next to me. I was afraid that something can happen, because they looked like boys grown
up by the streets. It happened. They had a massive hammer on one of the back seats. One of them,
I heard they called him Ricky, just took it and smashed my foot. To prove what I say just look at my
right foot.
Sam started to get his shoes off, and what K. saw was terrible. He could see actual flesh on Sam’s
foot. It was very unpleasant to look at, but the natural curiosity (one of the reasons he became a
lawyer) made him even touch those destroyed nails. After a short analysis, K. said:
-Tell me, do you have any evidence about the incident? Why should I believe you? Maybe you
dropped it intentionally on your leg? To get the insurance money?
-Only one, Sam said. It is a photo of their car from behind. I took it while pain was penetrating
my whole body. They managed to get quite far, so everything is blurred. (Sam sounded very
disappointed about his lawyer’s question)
K. took Sam’s phone and looked at it for 5 minutes, without saying anything. He could not believe
what he just heard. It seemed like a very profitable affair for his client. Only a photo, which is
confusing even more than the case itself. During his life as a student, K. encountered a couple of
cases like this one, but those were all for the history. He could remember only the case of the Isdal
Woman1 at that time. For K. there were multiple details required to have at least a clue from where
to start.
-Listen Sam, I don’t think I can help. I think, your fate is not guilty for this and don’t take it as
being bad luck. Just continue living. We, “experts” in our domain are not able to solve everything.
Not cases like this one. No clue who did it. If you at least could remember the face of that guy Ricky,
so we could make a photo-robot….
Sam ran out of his office and threw himself towards the stairs trying to desperately jump over
the baluster, but he was stopped the next second, by a fat man, which unfortunately was Walter’s
supervisor. K. had a severe supervisor, which tried to mess things around every time he had an
occasion to do it. This time, K. understood that it would not be an exception. Hence, he blamed K.
for what had just happened. K. was angry on Sam, with a fierce glance making him even more
deprived of vitality than Sam was when he entered this room. Sam was hiding in a corner, where
he could see the drawings which made K. asking himself questions. Everything you could hear from
that place was a bunch of undefined terms.
They both got punishments. The supervisor took the key from the room, and told K. he is not
going anywhere this week with the assignment to convert 30 files from the archive into electronic
format. He assigned one of his assistants to bring me the files.
-Walter, you think that this building is in your full control? You are fined, 25% from your weekly
wage. What do you think could happen if the idea of checking you didn’t appear in my enlightened
head (K. was carefully listening, with the purpose to not smirk)? Now, I send that boy, I don’t even
know his name and I don’t care. He will be here within 5 minutes. So, prepare yourself. And you
(addressing to Sam)? What did you lose here? Give me your ID card.
-I don’t have it with me- Sam answered.
K. didn’t pay any attention anymore to their dialogue in that tiny corner of the room. Something
else attracted his eyes. What K. could see was located in the right corner next to the door. He did
not notice it in any of the days before. It was a cupboard, with inscriptions on it. K. spotted that they
were bizarrely similar to what he could notice on the ground. Interrupting the conversation of his
supervisor (actually only he was yelling all this time) he asked:
-What are these signs? If you see they are also in that corner, under his bottom. (K. went rapidly
to lift Sam from the floor to show what he meant) Can we invite someone to clean them? I don’t feel
cozy at all.
-What else do you want? – Nick asked (name of his supervisor) A secretary? Some steak? What
do you want? I don’t know what the signs are, I have never seen them before. Maybe you are guilty
for them?
Nick got more nervous with every word he said, with K. being quiet and calm during the
“question session”. He could easily observe why his boss was acting up like this. At his 40s, Nick
didn’t have any ambitions, nowhere to aspire. Actually, Nick was not even married. K. looked at
him as he would look at a squeezed potato. Frustration lead him to look miserable. K. just tried to
not affect his supervisor, waiting him to leave.
Some noisy steps of the boy sent to the archive could be heard more and more clear as he was
climbing the stairs. The door closed, because of the soft wind circulating, so the boy was obliged to
hit it with the leg. As all the furniture in the room, that door was reminding of 1950s. It was made
from a different type of wood. K. could not understand its origins, but the unpleasant sound
provoked by the rusty hinges distracted him from those unnecessary thoughts. The boy was
carrying a prodigious pile of old, yellowish papers. K. thought that “30 papers” mentioned by his
supervisor were not an oppressive task, but now he realized the real intentions of Nick.
Sam followed Nick, when the last decided to leave the room. K. was wondering what could his
supervisor tell to his client. Nick slammed the door to show how powerful he was. From the other
side of the door, K. could see how rust rushed to fall from the metallic pieces of the door. K. felt how
his head and conscience were slowly getting heavy. K. could hear three voices laughing and thought
that it was obvious as Nick wasn’t peaceful during the last hour. He couldn’t recognize any of them,
so he just started to arrange the files brought up by the boy as he wasn’t accurate when putting
them on the floor. Files contained evidences about the processes monitored by their so-called
“company”. K. could easily observe that almost all of them were linked to some sort of vandalism.
Walter was prepared to study a couple of cases from those he found in the files, as he is closed in
the office for at least a week. First thing catching his eyes was a crime from 1988. K. was interested
in it, as from a strange coincidence the name of the criminal was Ricky, but without any other details.
Ricky’s family name was covered by a dark spot and smelling it K. reached the idea it was coffee on
that file. As he could see, Ricky was accused for a misdemeanor implying his wife. The protocol
stated that Ricky plunged a knife into his wife’s leg which led to her death. The address on it was
written with a different hand writing as it indicated its own importance in that almost empty
protocol.
Sam entered his office for the second time that day. K. noticed he was smiling, and it was unclear
why. Sam then told K. about his discussion with the supervisor:
-Walter, Sir, I am apologizing for my suicidal tentative. The only thing that drives me now is the
feeling of despair. I talked to him, to your boss. In my opinion, this man shouldn’t work in a public
institution (K. produced a grin). He wanted me to pay him 1000 £ for disturbing the work day of his
subordinates. I was confused. Why should I do this? Okay, this is not important, as I left his room
immediately after this derisive proposal. Then, I realized that I have one more detail in my head,
about the story I told you a couple of hours before. This made me happy.
-Sam, what age was Ricky, can you at least approximate this fact? -K. asked with the intention of
linking the Sam’s case with that one he found in the archives.
-No, his face was partially covered by the hat and I didn’t have time to analyze things, as
everything happened within seconds, but listen. I remember Ricky had a tattoo on his neck. Oh, I
can see his neck right here (pointing somewhere in the air). It was brawny and strong. Ricky
definitely is a man without any fears. Now, I certainly understand why I can’t remember his face.
He had a number tattooed on his neck. It was 1988…
Chapter 2: The story of Vortex
Vortex was built a long time ago, without any documentation on when exactly it happened.
People working there didn’t know anything about who was using their offices before them and no
one was concerned about it. Some suspected that Vortex was erected between 1950 and 1960.
A rich man from Nottingham, called Kyle was leaving near the place where now Vortex is
standing. Kyle participated in the Second World War as a volunteer. Those who knew him didn’t
hesitate to say how brave this man was. Kyle started to be a patriot since a young age. Parents could
see him sleeping with the flag of the country. Kyle was from a middle-class family. His father was
a teacher at Nottingham High School Old Boys. He used to teach math, so during his childhood, his
father tried to make from Kyle a mathematician, but Kyle’s mind was far away from math. At the
age of seven, he already knew all the big cities in Great Britain. He could easily name the capital of
all the component parts of the United Kingdom. From an old memory:
-Dad, tell me what is the capital of Scotland? Tell me! I was wondering if that part of the country
is populated with people like us.
-Oh son, Scotland is 200 miles away from us. Why would you like to find out such things? (little
Kyle turned his eyes to the floor) Oh, Kyle, my little boy. It is Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. I
want you to keep this in mind.
By the age of 16, Kyle managed to involve himself in a lot of patriotic manifestations with the
idea to become a politician in the future. Those times, the education was very severe. If you were
too weak, the teachers could agree to expel you immediately. In a school full of boys, coming from
different families, you had to stand your ground. Kyle used to study in the school where his father
was a teacher, but that didn’t mean he was somehow privileged. He almost failed the math exam
having his father as a teacher. Kyle loved his literature professor. He was the only one, students
could return to after graduation, but Kyle had a special relationship with Mr. Ainsley. They spent a
lot of time together after classes, being delirious. Mr. Ainsley himself was a patriot, sustaining all
the activities directed to deliver the idea that UK was the greatest country on the planet. They could
sometimes forget that there were other students in the class. Mr. Ainsley used to share his poems
with young Kyle, in which he found a soulmate, because none of his colleagues could think
profoundly like his student. Kyle used to note the poems his professor ranted in a journal. On the
first page, the next verse could be seen:

The war is near the corner,

The horizon is dark,
Oh England, I love you
Destroy that Nazi bark.

Kyle was 22 when the war started. He enrolled in army one year before, in 1938, when the first
attacks from the Germans started. Kyle was very calm, when they sent him to the war for the first
time. His patriotic spirit was the only important thing, and even if he died, his heart remained
colored in white, red and blue. His father was also volunteering as a soldier, but in other military
detachment. Kyle’s was protecting the North Coast of United Kingdom, being based in Exeter.
During a battle, Kyle got injured during a secret operation (anticipating an attack on the Coast). He
was retired from the battlefield. For him it was shameful. The depression started to occupy his heart
and his mind. Moreover, his father got killed. Not by a soldier, but a by a thief, which entered his
tent at night and shot directly into the head. It was September of 1943. The funeral were organized
by Kyle personally. He didn’t want anyone to come, but he was conscious that this would be selfish
from his part.
Kyle spent the next two years in his house. He had only one visit during this period. It was
professor Ainsley who visited him. Kyle didn’t let anyone else to approach him. He was counting
the days until the end of the war. It ended in 1945. Kyle could be relieved, as there was nothing to
remind of his father’s death anymore. Kyle was paid a fair amount of money for his participation
in the war and he decided to use them for organizing a team of experienced lawyers, which would
fight for justice. His concern was to make people believe that there existed a hope, that justice had
honest magistrates. In matters of truth and justice, there was no difference between large and small
problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people they were all the same. The works started
with Kyle gathering all the information and collecting money from volunteers, in order to help him.
On 5th of November, 1946 Kyle bought a lectern from a shop which seemed affected by the war, as
almost all the stands were empty. He carried it throughout the entire city and stopped in the middle
of the Main street passionately shouting:
-People, oh dear people! Listen to the words I am going to tell you. Stop and listen! A new era is
coming, a new era is coming…. A new era of justice ladies and gentlemen. My father was killed
during the War, he was murdered like a rat! My pain had no limits. I still feel it tickling my heart,
but I am relieved because I have you, all of you. I don’t even know who you are, or who you will
be, but I love you. This world is contaminated with garbage, with people without any moral
principles. I don’t know who the hell did it, he or she could be somewhere near, in this crowd. After
you lose the most important people you have, you realize that you should fight and live for them.
Emmeline Pankhurst once said: “Human life for us is sacred, but we say if any life is to be sacrificed
it shall be ours; we won’t do it ourselves, but we will put the enemy in the position where they will
have to choose between giving us freedom or giving us death “. You should fight alongside me.
Now, in this difficult period for the country, we citizens have to stand the honor of the United
Kingdom. We should be those protesting against bribery, against corrupt politicians, against
everyone who wants to compromise the entire society. I regret now, that I didn’t continue that war.
I was shot, I was shot and weak. I should have stand up and fight with the price of my life. Tell me
who you are, and I will describe your entire mind, based on your principles. I don’t want to act as
a psychiatrist. Yes, like a psychiatrist! Don’t look at me like that. Everyone is sick, everyone needs a
treatment. We don’t focus on small problems, but they are ones shaking the entire basement of our
small worlds.
In life you should fight for three things: for your family, for your love and for your country. We
are trying to seek immortality and by this, I mean that all of us are overprotective. We hide our
heads in the sand as a herd of ostriches. Pick up your letters when the country is calling you. Help
your husband or wife when they need it, not when you can do it. Let’s build a democratic
Nottingham!!!
The next days the announcements fulfilled all the pillars in the city. He wanted everyone to be
involved in his campaign of promoting fair justice. Soon, he managed to collect the amount of
money he needed to build what was later known as “Vortex”. His courage to speak in public
motivated those who didn’t have any interest in issues of national importance. At every corner and
in every pub, people sang a poem which became popular:
Kyle is our leader,
He is giving hope,
He is giving freedom
In Northwestern Europe
Despair of post-war times,
People can’t stop yelling
Kyle is our leader
He is giving freedom!
After several years of hard work, it was standing there; a beautiful building, with four floors. At
the opening you could not find a place where to stay, because every 5th citizen of Nottingham was
present. Meanwhile, Kyle involved in finding a couple of good lawyers in order to start the work
immediately after the opening. One month before he announced six new jobs which are available.
Kyle was trying to find four lawyers, a secretary and a judge (even if it was not a court, a professional
look on further decisions was important for the process conduction). On the paper Kyle distributed
throughout the city the following message was written:

“Help your country! Do you have a lawyer degree?

Then don’t hesitate with finding me!”.

Soon, all the cases in the city were conducted by Kyle’s lawyers. From a letter found in his
room after death:

“Good morning, Mr. Kyle

I am writing to tell you how grateful I am for everything you are doing. I am a lawyer from those
you didn’t hire, even if I was among the best students on my course and I am not sarcastic. Your
decision provoked me to desire improvement, to work hard and to apply again later for a job at
your company. By the moment the letter I am sending you will be found, I may be dead. After being
rejected by your assistants, I got a job at a pub. I know you can remember it, I was there when you
said your famous speech. I worked there, at “Prince” for two whole years. This was the actual name
of it. I worked every day, every bloody day. I could not see my parents, because of my boss. You
don’t understand how malicious this man is. His name is Abraham. He closed me in the closet every
single time the working day reached its end. Bastard! He found me attractive and then was threating
that if I don’t give him my body, he will call the boys to kill me and then my entire family. Mr. Kyle,
I wish you can punish this animal, I wish.
 I gave him what he wanted, I protected my family. I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t want
to look at my face in the mirror. I don’t want to laugh or even to smile. I don’t want to have a lover.
I want nothing, just a quiet place to rest. I can’t resist such encumbrance anymore. Tell my parents
I love them. Today at midnight, I will go to the basement of your building and I will kill myself.
Don’t worry, I will have courage, I will take a strong drink to not hesitate! Please, find him. Find
and put him in jail.

Yours sincerely, David!

P.S. Take my body in the morning and give it to my parents.”

That day, when the letter should have come, Kyle woke up early with a strange feeling. It was
4:33 in the morning. He left his bed, arranged it, and in five minutes his jacket was on his back,
ready to go. The only achievement of his life, Kyle considered was his continuous fight for justice.
He didn’t even observe that it also was very profitable, because of the aristocrats visiting his offices
to beg help in their cases. They were generous, they could promise a half of their fortunes if one of
the lawyers hired by Kyle could solve the problem. This way, Kyle became himself a rich man. He
bought a room in a flat situated at one km from what people name now Vortex. He wanted to be
close to his creation. It was not adequately furnished. Kyle respected the minimalistic designs. He
had a table where he worked and also ate sometimes lacking time before different meetings and
also at his eyes level there were several portraits. In the middle of them wall was his father smiling.
This is the way he wanted to remember him. The other ones were people which acted as models for
him being young. At his 30s Kyle realized that he existed the way he did due to other people’s
efforts to make him a man. Next to his father there was a photo of his professor, Mr. Ainsley (died
in 1951 of a heart attack). The only chair in the room was adapted for Kyle by a master, as Kyle
himself was tall and he was very annoyed of the pain in his back every time he spent more than an
hour writing or reading. That night it was cold outside. He was walking down the street with a fear
inside. Kyle moved fast to get to the building the quickest way possible. When he entered, using his
personal key, nothing changed from the moment he left in the evening. Kyle was always the last
one to get out of there. After everyone said goodbye, he used to spend an hour alone in the entrance
hall, which was the quintessence of all the efforts. This time, Kyle just took a chair from the room of
the secretary and put it in the middle. Kyle didn’t move for several hours with his eyes rotating
without stopping on something particularly important. In the morning, Alexander (a lawyer
working there) was the first one entering the front door. Meanwhile, Kyle couldn’t understand why
the empty space in his heart grew so rapidly. Alexander decided to not bother him at all and only
went to one the offices situated at the second floor. The decision to go home that day seemed correct.
When arriving at his place, Kyle could observe the postman near flat’s common postbox.
-Mr. Kyle, there is a letter for you. It got into our office yesterday around 6 pm with the
purpose to be delivered today in the morning. Check it, I saw on the letter a note saying it is crucially
important to read it.
 -Thanks, dear, I am not having the best day. I need to sleep, but first I will check my box. See
you around!
Kyle ran to his box, and opened it with a key hidden in a small pocket from his trousers.
There he could see a lot of paper lying, but the only interest was to read the one staying on the top
of that pile. He retired in his room with the letter in the right hand. Kyle could understand that the
person writing the letter he was holding was nervous, because the handwriting on that piece of
paper was disordered with a lot of black spots, but fortunately he could read it. Several minutes
passed after he did it and still with the eyes on it, Kyle started to cry. He didn’t do that, because of
the boy which could be in the basement dead at that moment. The only concern was that life didn’t
like him. Kyle swore, he said words that never imagined, the sweat was leaking from his forehead
and the tears dropping on the floor. After an hour of lying on that cold surface, staring at the ceiling,
Kyle decided to get the desired sleep. The passion for a correct justice abandoned his heart that day.
He slept until the dawn. Waking up, the last rays penetrated Kyle’s blue eyes. He felt blessed, that
Sun waited for so long to give away its last light needles.
Kyle didn’t feel angry anymore. It was like a relief for him, because sleeping was the only state
of the body, when he couldn’t think and worry about anything in the world. In the basement,
David’s body was suspended by one of the beams. Kyle looked at him with a sort of
misunderstanding, but then he realized that he couldn’t prevent situations like his. In his mind, the
entire justice was an ant in comparison with the colossal power of human agony. He felt the
responsibility to take care of that body. Kyle noticed how feminine were the shapes of it. He could
feel the ease with which the poor boy was running just a few days ago. Kyle found David’s portfolio
in the file labeled as “Rejected”. It was not far from David’s legs. After a half an hour of staying in
the same room with a dead body, Kyle’s anxiety made him run outside to breath. He was feeling
that the shadows were dispersed throughout the entire vault. He didn’t return back there. It was
too late, and it would only make him feel miserable. His legs guided him to go to David’s parents.
Kyle considered that fulfilling boy’s desire would make his inner world feel more comfortable.
In David’s portfolio, Kyle noticed an address. He was acknowledged with where that street was
located. It was not far from his own home. The house he arrived at was cowered between two other
ones, but his brilliant intuition didn’t disappoint. When knocking at the door, he saw a woman in
the threshold. She was wearing an apron leading to the idea that she was cooking at those late hours.
-Good evening, Miss Banes. I don’t know if you are prepared for the news I brought (Miss Banes
quietly gasped). Your son David was found dead in the basement of the advocacy building. He
committed a suicide. The reasons behind such a decision were exposed to me, but I will not share
them with you, because it is very painful for a mother (Ms. Banes couldn’t believe; her eyes were
putting questions with the pupil being motionless).
-Where is he now, Mr…?
-Kyle.
-Where is my son? Where is my little boy?
-I left him there. I was thinking you wish to see how it all happened. My condolences, Ms. Banes.
He had such a great potential to become a good jurist.
 -He was dreaming of it every single day. How could he leave me, how? He was eager to live, to
breathe, to smile. Can we go there now? – she asked with the tears overflowing her cheeks.
-Can I accompany you? -Kyle asked
-Let me announce my husband first (Ms. Banes called her husband)
Mr. Banes was an average height man. He was heavily breathing, because of his overweight. If
the situation wasn’t so dramatic, Kyle would be direct when saying that it was not normal to have
such amounts of fat under the skin. He left them together for some minutes, for Mr. Banes to realize
what happened the day before. Then, they both dressed up rapidly, and no one was saying a word
while walking. Kyle could notice how Ms. Banes wanted to ask him more, but the pain didn’t let
her to do so. In the basement Kyle announced the Banes:
-I am leaving you alone, Mr. and Ms. Banes. Feel free to stay here how much time you want. In
case you need something, just call me by my name.
-Thank you, Mr. Banes said embracing his son.
Kyle could hear their voices, while staying in his chair in the entrance hall. He understood, that
losing a child was even more grievous than losing one of the parents. After minutes of silence, he
could hear steps coming from the basement. Mr. Banes had his son in his hands, with Ms. Banes
slowly following him from behind.
-We are leaving, Mr. Kyle. The burial will be in two days. You can accompany David on his last
way. I guess, you were important in his life.
-My condolences one more time. Be patient your son will always live in your hearts.
Kyle fell with a thud in the chair from the middle of the room. The echo of his entrails pounding
enhanced the feeling of indifference in relation with the universe around him. Kyle decided to quit
everything. He couldn’t handle that anymore. After David’s funerals, the decision would be
publicly announced. The realization that the justice he was trying to build was useless, because
people themselves destroyed everything they could. Scratching his chin one more time, Kyle started
to walk. First thing he thought was appropriate that night was to visit all the rooms. It took him all
night to properly say goodbye to the building where his soul was invested with an unbelievable
dedication. The walls of the offices reminded him of great cases. He touched them with such a
passion and nostalgy that if someone else was there, they could feel how the molecules in the air
moved. He stopped in the room, where 60 years later K. would notice the marks on the woody floor.
Kyle then looked at the same portrait on the wall keeping track of what happened inside.
Afterwards, he left and he had never returned back again in the building. Running through the
front door Kyle exclaimed as loud as he could:
-Justice is not fighting for us, why would weeee?
Everything ruined in several years without him. David’s case remained unsolved till someone
found the letter in his room. The best lawyers in the city didn’t choose to work for Kyle anymore,
because Kyle himself wasn’t there, and intelligent people could not be feed with legends and stories
of how great Kyle was. During the years, nothing got changed in the building. The same furniture,
same average lawyers and even same dogs barking outside. People started to avoid the place, and
it got the name everyone knows today: “Vortex”
Kyle himself died of malnutrition in 1961, after five years of living alone.
Chapter 3: 1988
Ricky was staying with his wife looking to the backyard of the house. It was bought by the family
in autumn of 1981, when Ricky brought a briefcase with money in their shanty (Ricky used to name
it this way). His wife feared to ask him where did he got the money from. She admired her husband
with such an obsession that she would follow him even in Devil’s den. It was a sunny spring day.
A huge tree was growing there, in the center of the yard, which could cover the entire place in
shadow. Under the tree, the night used to come earlier than in the entire Nottingham City.
Ricky’s wife was a beautiful woman. Her name, Charlotte was given by her father, which
emigrated from France. The distinctive feature of Charlotte’s countenance was her strawberry-red
lips. Everyone who saw her had an inexpressible impulse to ask from whom they were inherited.
Her coral black hair made Ricky fall in love with young Charlotte. They met not a long time before
getting married. Charlotte’s father died after a year of dwelling in England. He was only one to
bring profit in their small rented house located in the outskirts of Nottingham. They arrived there
in 1974, when Charlotte was 18. Her father found a job in a couple of weeks. English was very
difficult for Charlotte, as she couldn’t learn it properly in school. Her father didn’t speak the
language as well, so the only jobs he could count on were those with no language requirements.
Charles (her father) was a robust man, the power streaming through his veins was enough to look
after his daughter and to also spend some time with her. He was hired in a factory, responsible for
producing fabrics. His death was an unpleasant incident at work, when one of the mechanical
engineers left the control room for a minute and didn’t observe that below someone still worked.
The instrument responsible for cloth ironing fell on Charles’ head.
Charlotte wasn’t seriously influenced by the death of her father. The tender personality was
mixed with a dose of healthy pragmatism and cynicism. When staying near the tomb of her father,
she said:
-Death is reaching everyone Daddy, Rest in Peace.
Next year was a matter of survival for Charlotte. She managed to live from her father’s savings,
but when she ran out of money, the landlady banished her out of the house. Days afterwards were
not a good memory for Charlotte. She didn’t have any money, she didn’t know the language very
well yet, but in her mind, she was understanding, that sooner or later, a man should pick her up.
That man turned up to be Ricky. Ricky, who lived in her neighborhood. Ricky observed her staying
on a cardboard. The only thing which interested a tough guy like Ricky when looking at a beautiful
girl was sex. He wasn’t kind hearted or merciful. The only image that appeared in front of his eyes,
was the girl pleasing his sexual desires. Charlotte was also thinking, that her beauty was the only
treasure she could use in her goals, so when Ricky approached her saying:
-What are you doing there on the stiff and cold ground? Do you want to join me? -Ricky said,
with his voice exposing all the concupiscence driving him.
- Je sues désole2, who you? -Charlotte tried to asked in English, looking through the dirty hair
covering her pretty face.
 -I am Ricky and why the hell are you staying there, I asked. Oh, you don’t understand a thing
from what I say. That’s even better (whispering). Come over here (He pointed his finger and urged
her to join).
Ricky tried to explain everything using only his long and bony fingers. Charlotte, being clever
enough, didn’t wait too much, without any suspicion about the future. Her survival instincts
directed her to not refuse the stranger. Ricky helped her to lift from the cold surface. In the first
period of them living together, Ricky acted as a gentleman, without any deviations from the normal
behavior. This made Charlotte fall in love with him almost immediately. For her, the stranger he
met in the streets of Nottingham was a hero. From aside, they could seem as a utopic couple, but
Ricky wasn’t that man which would quietly listen. It took several months for Charlotte to learn the
language. The fact that Charlotte didn’t want to let Ricky use her as a sexual toy, she just didn’t
allow him to touch her in the first months. Ricky got mad, he got nervous, the veins on his forehead
got a more accentuated contour due to all the occasions when Charlotte rejected him.
Ricky couldn’t understand why he supported her after all of those. He couldn’t agree with the
fact he was declined with such an impressive phlegm. They lived the way they did for more than
ten years. On that crucial day, when Ricky brought the briefcase full of money, they reserved a room
for the important people only at one hotel situated on the Main street, where Kyle declaimed his
famous speech. It was the first time Charlotte wanted to give him pleasure, but without Ricky
touching her skin. In his brain, this sounded good, the animal feeling towards young Charlotte
accepted only the hand on his body. The house they bought, was situated in a region where other
wealthy and influent people lived. It was beautiful, the furniture inside was assembled to
correspond with the trends of the times. The iconic chairs in the living room were located in the
front of the sofa with a table in between them. The walls were colored in an alluring avocado green,
which in tandem with the pictures of different popular artists (authentic copies of Warhol, Picasso
and Dali) created an exhilarating ambiance for deep thoughts and inspirational activities. Charlotte
and Ricky didn’t have any valuable knowledge in the world of art, but their eyes were glad with
what could be seen in their house.
In the new house, Charlotte didn’t resign from her principles. Her worries consisted in the trust
she couldn’t manifest during their relationship. Even if Ricky proposed her to marry, the feeling of
constant doubt tormented her conscience. She wanted to hear where she got the money from. Ricky
avoided the topic when Charlotte in endless and frantic trials to get what she wanted to find out.
Being his wife wasn’t enough to prove her wrong about the origin of those money. Once, she
exploded:
-Until you don’t tell me where you got the money from, I will consider them as being filthy
money. I don’t want to be the wife of a criminal, if that was the way you acquired them. Isn’t it
important for you tell me? Don’t make me cry, don’t let me do it. I have enough life experience and
you can’t trust me even now (Meanwhile Ricky was lying on the sofa looking on the window
nearby). Why don’t you look at me Ricky? Comment est-ce possible mon cher?3
-Look at the sky my dear and tell me don’t you find it more attractive than the other days? I have
the feeling that this new way of life makes me rethink all my life before. Doesn’t a little sacrifice
mean that you should not trust me? All I did was for us.
 -Ricky, don’t even try to use my love as a weak point. Don’t try to play with my mind, telling me
metaphors. I will expect the day, when you will recognize why did we become rich overnight. My
patience is enough to wait until my last day without us sleeping together.
Ricky continued to looked through the window, waiting for the dawn. Charlotte analyzed his
body. Her eyes didn’t miss any of the muscles entwined on his, how she considered, soft bones. The
desire to know what exactly happened converted their quiet life in a war of interest.
-Ricky – her voiced was heard barely, trying to tease him with her sweet voice. No answer from
Ricky. The voice of his wife, made him only nod and Charlotte understood that she was weaker
than him. She didn’t think before that love would seize her in such circumstances. Realizing that
inside, she and Ricky were similar, because the courage and attitude with which they treated the
problems made them thrive in those poor conditions. The entire background of the life with Ricky
appeared in front of her eyes, when looking at him romantically sending looks to the sun. Charlotte
thought that possibly she was too harsh. Those years passed and her desire to sleep with Ricky,
wasn’t less than his, but in her heart she couldn’t. Stubbornness with which she handled all her life,
affected her own way of perceiving the surrounding world. While her mind got bombarded with
different ideas, she heard:
-Charlotte – Ricky ironically replied.
-I am afraid! I live thinking that someone can enter our house and kill us. Do you know how hard
is it for me, Ricky?
Ricky avoided to ask. His entire brain reflected on the episode implying the money. The house
they lived on belonged to a very influential entrepreneur. The day he entered his house, no one was
at home. Ricky prepared his robbery for four months. Every day, he followed that businessman, to
find out the weak points. After getting the information he was leaving for two months in London,
to meet his brother, Ricky understood that it was the proper moment. He entered through the wine
cellar. As no one was home for more than two weeks, Ricky permitted himself to open a bottle and
to go straight to the living room, where later he would talk to Charlotte. His conscience didn’t leave
him alone, joking every time “Oh, we robbed your own house, have you ever seen something
alike?”. Ricky took out his tongue, and the taste of the wine he drank could still be felt, after so many
years.
-Charlotte, what about having a glass of wine from the basement? We have never been there
down. -he was eager to feel again that adrenaline through his capillaries, not to spend a romantic
evening with his wife. Choose whatever you want, I don’t care, just bring us some wine.
Charlotte’s anxiety made her accept. She wanted to discharge all the pressure accumulated in her
muscles. The cellar wasn’t spacious for a house like the one they had, but all the wines were looking
expensive and Charlotte which had never tried alcohol before, was wondering about the effects it
could have on her state. All the bottles were covered by a thick layer of dust. Charlotte’s breathing
was hampered by the air and she chose a random bottle and she fled from the dark room, only
slightly lighted by the chandelier from the living room. After washing the bottle, Charlotte picked
two crystal glasses which were there since the last owner. She poured the wine slowly, but the scent
of it rapidly dispersed throughout the house. Ricky felt it, and his eyes shined. He had a strong déjà
vu, wriggling in his chair. When Charlotte came with the glasses, Ricky was already returned in his
normal state, but the shining eyes were there. Charlotte wasn’t in mood to fight with him again. She
put her trembling finger on the glass, and then felt how the cold passed through her body. In that
short moment, she could see the image of her father staring at her. Charlotte admired her finger on
the glass for some time and then he turned her head to Ricky. He was doing the same.
-I saw my father, Ricky. He was here (pointing on the sofa). I could feel his presence so strongly.
-I tried to imagine my Mom. I don’t even know her face, but I struggled to obtain at least a list of
her features imagining myself near hear. Let’s drink this tannic wine for our parents.
-I didn’t even imagine you miss your family Ricky. – Charlotte said with an impressed voice, as
Ricky never mentioned his family members.
-And this will not happen. I don’t want to tell you something that I don’t know myself. -Ricky
said and drained the entire wine of glass in his long neck. Charlotte repeated the same gesture. He
felt a sour taste enveloping the body and how all the pain was leaving her lungs, her stomach and
her heart. She was captured in a trance, with the wine demonizing all the viscera. Charlotte felt how
her chest was heating and with a long yawn, her head fell on the edge of the seat. Meanwhile, Ricky
was still looking through the window, even if it was dark outside already. He then opened it, took
a deep breath and then moved Charlotte on the sofa, himself going to the bedroom. They usually
slept together, but that day Ricky noticed, how the humanity was slowly trying to escape from his
tightly closed heart. After staring in the ceiling for several minutes, Ricky turned off the light coming
from the lamp near the bed and closed his eyes. That night was extended by the dreams he had. In
the morning, the headache mixed with the most memorable dream of the night. He saw the
childhood he could have near his parents. A little boy named Ricky, running on the streets, with his
mother running and protecting him from the drivers. When Ricky left his bed, the whole house was
dominated by silence. That meant Charlotte was still sleeping, because in the rest of days, Ricky
liked to sleep until midday. He tried to not bother Charlotte with the noise of his feet stepping on
the floor, so he poured water in a cup and retired into his room, expecting her to wake up, but she
was too sensible and the rustle of his bare feet made her move. After a minute of being alone in the
bedroom, Ricky heard her lazy steps coming towards him:
-Good morning, Ricky. I am glad, you know? -Charlotte said playing with her hair. Ricky
understood that she behaved the way she did, because of the shame.
-Don’t worry, Charl’ –Ricky used to caress her.
-Why you ignore me? (after Ricky turned his head to the opposite side of the room) You were
different before. Did I do something wrong? Did I Ricky? I don’t feel your love. I feel pressed by
every single thing. Do you think I don’t understand why I woke up on the sofa?
Ricky wasn’t answering. It was the way he protected himself from the gloom and heaviness
congregated in his judgement. From that day, Charlotte understood it was over, but she had no
intention to accuse Ricky for something. She was thankful for the chance life offered her by meeting
Ricky. Even if she had a lot of suspicions implying her husband, she knew he was a good man. The
days coming were difficult for Charlotte, she was trying to approach him in different ways, but he
was far in his thoughts.
-Charl’, do you think we have the right now alive? – he suddenly asked. Charlotte was nervous,
it was the first time in her life she could feel how the anger fulfilled her. He didn’t expect that. The
only hope was that maybe it was tiring for Ricky to stay every day in the same place and with the
same person. So, she shouted:
-Is this the only thing Ricky? You want to play with my mind? Or stop, you threat me? Was that
a threat Ricky?
Ricky smiled and left the room. Charlotte didn’t try to stop him. She was shocked, she could then
understand that Ricky wasn’t in full mental conditions. “How I could miss this, then, on the street?”,
she asked herself. When she left the bedroom, there was no trace of Ricky. She observed a bag on
the table from the living room. She ran towards it, and when he opened there was some money and
a letter. Charlotte opened it and then saw that the structure of it was not accurate, but she didn’t
care.
“My dear I guess I can still call you my dear. I found you on the streets, you were so young, but
you didn’t understand my real intentions when I met you. My mind was totally focused on your
body, not on you personally. I don’t love. It was my little obsession and I know you liked it. Don’t
get it wrong. You were the only person to have an influence on me. I left you the money to live for
some more years. I will be back until then. Don’t miss me because I will not. “
Paper the letter was written on seemed like torn from a book. Charlotte didn’t react too
eccentrically. She didn’t want to miss him and the last thing she did before closing her heart, was to
smell the glass of wine left by Ricky on the table the day before. She could feel his presence and the
smell of his skin.
****
After several weeks of yearning for Ricky, against her will, Charlotte started to remind herself
the old habits she had. Charlotte went to a good school in Lyon. From the young age, she impressed
all her professors with her quick thinking and ambitions. In the last year of her studies in France,
everyone was praising her achievements. She was the girl with the highest average grade among all
the schools in the city, but the divorce of her parents, made her to move in England. Her father got
fired from his previous job, and it was the only way of solving the situation. Charlotte asked herself
many times if he ever thought of her future.
Her biggest passion was to paint. She could see an imaginary exhibition of all the paintings
she left in Lyon. In the hurry of moving, she completely ignored them. It was the first time she
walked further than the food shop near their house. She felt how the air passing to the lungs inspired
her. She went to a universal shop, located on a narrow street, close to the center of the city. The
doors of the shop were painted in an original style: a flower which left by the artist ended the
drawing itself. When looking at the wonderful door, Charlotte got very disappointed that she left
the activity she used to love so much in school. When entering the shop, the only person she could
see was the owner of the shop. Charlotte got confused walking between the shelves, because it was
her first visit to a shop which didn’t sell aliments. The seller saw her clumsiness in finding the
needed things and asked:
-Dear lady, what do you want to buy from my shop?
Charlotte, who didn’t know the name of the tools in English, lied:
-I am just looking around, Sir. Thanks for your care. He didn’t want to leave her alone for a while,
as she still walked around without any purposes. She needed to buy a palette, a brush, some pieces
of paper (either big or small) and also a stand for it. All of those, she managed to find in the back of
the room, noticing that the tools she needed were not acquired by many people. She picked
everything up and brought to the seller. Charlotte noticed that his hair was neater than hers, and
this made her to blush inside. She paid, and on the way to the door, her pace was constantly
increasing. She carried everything in her delicate hands. Strolling to her house, Charlotte managed
to put herself the question of how could it be like with Ricky next to her. “He would carry all these
things, I guess” – she thought. When finally arriving to her house, Charlotte undressed completely.
She put the things she bought on the bed, and started to jump with no clothes covering her. The
feeling she was alone was interpreted by Charlotte as a gift from the divinities, even if Ricky lived
in her heart. She scattered the energy around, and then went to the bedroom. The bed wasn’t tidied
since Ricky left, the blanket remained in the same position it was when he left. Charlotte jumped on
the bed with the face towards it, took a pillow and felt asleep.
****
The thoughts about Ricky were visiting Charlotte more often when she realized an entire year
had passed. Her meditations deepened the connection between her and Ricky. She had dialogues
with him whenever she wanted. Charlotte used to draw his face on the papers she continued to buy
from the same shop. Her talent wasn’t enough to illustrate Ricky’s appearance the way she
visualized in her head, and the only achievement was a sketch of it. She tried to improve day by
day, but nothing changed. Every new painting looked similar to its predecessor, and she kept all of
them in the bedroom, where Ricky used to admire the masterpieces of Dali. Therefore, she moved
her sleeping place in the living room, because the bedroom became Ricky’s room. She struggled
every day to make her own copy of Ricky which would be able to substitute the real one. With every
portrait, Charlotte got absorbed by her intention to make it perfect. She started to spend more time
on each, but all of them had lacunas. Charlotte thought that Ricky deserved more dedication from
her and if he would ever come back, the portrait should be flawless. Days were passing very fast.
Charlotte wasn’t conscious about the concept of time anymore. She never knew what day was it,
and she never talked to someone. It was feeling like she had no neighbors. The houses near hers
were all alike, but she never noticed people inside or outside them. She felt that the world denied
her existence, but Charlotte was thankful for that. Nothing was a routine for her, when it came to
paint another portrait of Ricky. He was the only thought, Charlotte could aspire to, her only hope
and her only hero. From a certain point, she didn’t even take baths or brushed her teeth. She was
convinced that it was still the first day since a year had passed from Ricky’s departure. Charlotte
got imprisoned by her memories.
Ricky returned home in 1988 with a clear plan in his mind. By that time, Charlotte spent all the
money he left her, mainly to fill the bedroom with his portraits. Ricky entered the house in one of
the evenings. She could see his wife naked for the first time. He walked near her, and she didn’t pay
any attention. She thought it was a hallucination and just smiled continuing to work. Ricky
inspected her and didn’t say anything. He just seated on his old chair, but this time turned it towards
Charlotte, to admire her gorgeous body, instead of admiring the sky. She took the brush and started
to contour one of his eyes. Ricky understood immediately that it was for him, because the mess in
the house suggested that Charlotte didn’t talk to someone else during these 6 years. “She had never
cleaned this room”-he thought. There were spots of dry dye all over the floor. Suddenly, she stopped
and turned her head in the direction were Ricky stayed. She didn’t cover her body with the hands,
but started to walk to the place he was. As she approached him, Ricky’s legs began to shake, as she
was still an ideal for him. When Charlotte got close enough, she stretched out one of the hands and
put it on his face. Touching her man again, after years of waiting was a bless for her. Her sensations
reached the paroxysm of their possibility. She didn’t say a word, only tickling the features of his
face. Ricky didn’t move his body, only the eyes were analyzing her. Charlotte, then fell down on
her knees, and took his head in her palms. She got back to reality, and the ecstasy was changed by
anger. She started to violently press his head, to make him feel the pain, but she was weak. Ricky
then took her hands in his, and told her:
-Charl’ (a short pause before continuing). Charl’, will you tell me what happened here?
She wasn’t replying. He could observe she nodded several times, but no words as she lost the
habit to communicate. Her hair was dirty, with the hairs joint by the same aquarelle which was on
the floor. They were both staring directly into the eyes of the other. Ricky made another try:
-Charlotte, dear.
-What do you want Ricky? -she answered quickly.
-Is everything ok? What happened in this house?
After asking this, she took his hand and guided him to the bedroom. When entering it, Ricky saw
all the portraits. They were everywhere. Some on the bed, some on the walls, but the majority were
on the floor. He didn’t observe the paintings which were there when they bought the house and felt
obliged to ask about them:
-Where are the other paintings? I loved them. We became good friends in the evening before
leaving you alone. I could hear them telling me to leave. It was a strange feeling, that a painting
could say something, but it somehow conveyed this idea.
-They are there. -she answered sarcastically and pointed under the bed. I didn’t like them, and
decided to paint you.
-Do you want to know where I’ve been all this time?
-Is there any need for me to know this? I don’t care Ricky, I don’t care, you don’t exist. Look
around, these are my new “you”.
She picked the one she considered perfect and showed him. Ricky looked at it surprised and
noticed how similar to his face it was. He didn’t respond to her provocations, but continued to
admire the painting. Charlotte used a few colors to complete it. She tried to perfectly mix white with
red, to make his skin more accurate. It was the feature she worked for more than a year. Ricky finally
moved his eyes from the portrait to Charlotte and quietly said:
-It is beautiful. I am amazed, Charl’. Your talent is great and the fact you don’t want to say
something terrifies me. (he just tried to get closer to her)
-I want, I really want to tell you something. That night, I thought you were threating me
somehow. This question didn’t let me live normally all this period. Is it real? I really don’t care if I
die now, tomorrow or next year. I don’t any reason to live. You were the one I would dedicate my
whole spirit. You taught me everything I can remember. Tell me, what made me feel that? And
don’t try to trick me. While painting you so many times I learnt everything about you. If you lie, I
will understand.
-Listen, Charl’. It is not easy as it would seem for you. Nothing makes me happier than making
someone suffering. All my life was intended to make people feel bad. I don’t think it is fair for all of
you, but it is what makes me feel real and alive. I left you with the intention to make you suffer. Yes,
I did that with this only purpose, because I can’t love. I thought you could change everything, but
the only thing I wanted and still want from you is your body. Lust is the thing that made me come
back after so many years. Lust, only lust.
-Why you didn’t tell me? – Charlotte replied with no fear this time.
-And if I did, what could it change? I didn’t want to look into your eyes when I say “I leave”. It
was not fair. I prepared everything within a couple of days. I hope that this time without me released
the love you had inside.
-Released the love?
-Don’t act like this. Don’t make me leave again. Your love is not real Charl’. As you said, you like
my portraits. You know you are giving me the same desire to have you as years before?
-Don’t look at me with those eyes Ricky. I felt the same lust, the day when I drank that glass of
wine. I was ready, you know? I was ready to fulfil your desire, but you left. I remember every single
thought of mine. It is like you never left now, when I see you in front of me.
-You are still my wife Charl’, even if I don’t love you. Remember that day? I proposed you to
make you even more addictive to my person. I don’t want say it was a plan, but it gave me so much
confidence, that I could control you.
-Don’t say Charl’ Ricky. You disturb me. I was feeling that I am the strong one; that I control
every next move of yours, but you played with me. Actually, you wish this was real. You didn’t and
even if you did play with me, you lost your own game. It is not about you at all Ricky, it is about
circumstances.
Ricky got a bit closer and whispered at her ear:
-Tell me how is it to feel fear. Tell me, and make me happy if you still love me Charl’.
-It is like nothing else. It’s that feeling which pushes you to the corner and you are not able to
stop it or even to pause for a moment. Fear is going under your skin, controlling you from inside.
This is what you made me feel that night Ricky and now it is back when I look at you. It drove me
insane so many times these years. I wanted you to come back only to get the explanation for
everything.
-You make me really excited, Charlotte. You are doing the two things I love the most. You stay
fully naked in front of me and you tell me about how afraid of me you are. I dreamt about it. To see
your shapes, to smell your thin body. I wanted to leave you a bigger letter that day, but I left only a
note. You know why? To let you in total darkness.
Charlotte continued with her own speech, acting as she didn’t hear him. The feelings overloaded
her soul.
-Your words felt like big dogs surrounding me and sniffing my flesh, but never biting me. I don’t
even know Ricky, what made us so distant. I tried to imagine that wine was responsible for
everything, but it wasn’t about it (Ricky listening with his mouth widely opened). I still consider
you my hero, but tell me if I am wrong. You live only to make people suffer you said, but still you
helped me to survive. Wasn’t it an expression of your weakness?
-It was, but my subconscious let me do it only to later do what I said. You wanted to know how
I obtained the money, no? I understand that you realize that they are stolen, and I manipulated the
ex-owner to sell me it, as all his money were mine. It was pleasant to look how his instincts of
survival activated, but with you it was different. I didn’t want to make you fight for a living. I
wanted you to suffer of moral pain and obsessive nights of thinking.
Charlotte laughed, and said:
-You are wrong, totally wrong. I thought of you a lot, that’s true, because I love you. Ah, you are
wrong. Do you know that people with character are not supposed to be controlled or addicted? This
is what happened with me, Ricky. Emotions were leaving with every drop of color I put on your
face. And I could do it endlessly.
-What made you accept my proposal to join? Why you trusted me from the first moment we met?
As I mentioned, you were guided by your instincts. Tell me more about your pain.
Charlotte didn’t. She inhaled how much air he could in her lungs and took his hands with the
purpose to put them on her breast. Ricky allowed her to play with his hand. They both understood
how important was to take the lead in that psychological battle.
-How does it feel, Ricky? Is it warming you?
This time, Ricky didn’t answer, feeling how all his blood tried to stop the words he wanted to
say. His hand was still on Charlotte and he remember their first day at the hotel when he was the
only one who received the pleasure. She continued with moving his hand on her body, and every
time his hand was close to the most intimate part she lifted it and then repeated the movement
several times. When seeing how excited and impassioned he was, she asked?
-Tell me, what do you feel when you are forbidden to do something?
-You play the wrong game Charlotte!
-I like to look how you can’t reach your goal. Touching me under my oversight makes you so
vulnerable. I don’t I would probably die soon, but the pleasure of knowing that I can manipulate
you Ricky isn’t comparable to something.
-You think you will die soon?
-Didn’t expect me to know that? I understood your intensions from the moment I realized you
were back. I will try to maximally reduce the pleasure of you seeing how my blood is leaving my
body.
Charlotte pushed him on the bed, and stayed there in front of him, tempting to involve all the
lust he had, but Ricky was smiling and said with an obvious allusion of his supremacy:
-Dress up, Charl’ and good night.
He threw all the paintings from the bed on the floor and laid on it, covering himself with the
blanket which he knew wasn’t cleaned since he left. However, this made him feel the spirit of the
room as it was six years ago. Charlotte was watching all this scene, and when Ricky turned the light
off she fell on a pile of drawings in the left corner of the bedroom. Her eyes closed, her breath slowed
down and the only discernible process was Ricky’s periodic snoring.
****
 In the morning, Charlotte experienced an unbearable pain in the back. Still with no clothes on,
she touched her vertebra to find the source of it. After touching all the possible points on her back,
Charlotte realized that the pain wasn’t concentrated in a place. She was lying in a semi arch position
and therefore she wasn’t able to see if Ricky was there or not. After a considerable effort, she got up
and observed that Ricky wasn’t in the bed. She took the blanket and covered her body. When
entering the living room, Ricky was again in his chair, with a knife in his hand. The pain in the back
was ceaseless, and it in a way suppressed all the fear from the last night. “Portraits did their part of
the story”- she thought. Charlotte sat on her chair, bringing it near Ricky and said:
-I like the knife, dear husband. Never seen it before. I am proud to be plunged by such a beauty.
It was inlaid with small pieces of silver, and the only inscription on it mentioned her name: Charl’.
She looked at it, and her mind was raving again: “He isn’t a bad person in the end”. A total euphoria
encompassed her. Ricky was quiet as he used to be in the last period of their relationship. His look
was directed to the sun. It was unusually sunny that day, but Charlotte already familiarized with
the rain. Ricky put his left hand on one of her legs, and she didn’t stop him. She was staying with
them crossed, but the first touch of his strong palms, made her open them wide. They were both
understanding that the trap they were in was inescapable. Ricky threw the blanket and the wild
desire of his, made them fall on the ground. Charlotte left him to control everything, as she was
afraid that her clumsiness would not let the things go well. The pain in the back was then replaced
by the pain of him penetrating her. Ricky seemed her key to the other world. With their bodies on
the floor, his upon hers, she understood the real quintessence of the life she had before. After Ricky
reached the acme of the sexual pleasure, he went to take the knife he left on the chair. His words,
succeeded by long and deep breaths:
-You are perfect. I wish I didn’t have the desire to kill you. I don’t have the intention to make a
speech dedicated to your death. It is meaningless. Only look at me and tell me again that you are
afraid.
-I expected the fear to overload my soul, but it didn’t happen. I don’t fear you Ricky, I fear the
death. If you were meant to be the one who takes my life, it is not about you, you are just a pawn-
she said with her pain in the back converting into those words.
-I know that in this situation there is only one winner, but your death will make me cry of
happiness and I can’t expect more. I will make it special for you.
Ricky grabbed the knife and slowly plunged it into one of her legs. Charlotte was quiet, she didn’t
yell when the knife cleaved her soft and white skin. Ricky was admiring how the blood was leaving
her body through the tiny hole. Nothing distracted him from enjoying the beautiful show. Charlotte
said:
-Thank you for this last day Ricky. The echo of my pain now, will be with you forever. She closed
the eyes, and Ricky got closer to her to see if her heart was still beating. It was violently pounding.
- Charl’, I would kill you again, and again, and again. Her breaths couldn’t be heard anymore.
She died with her blood coloring the floor in a carmine red. A blood color, Ricky never saw before.
He put the knife into one of his pockets. It was dirty of Charlotte’s blood. Therefore, he didn’t take
it out anymore. Then, he spent the whole night with the body. He reflected on how lucky he was to
meet her, because her pain was the air.
****
Chapter 4: Second visit
After that punishment, K. tried to be more attentive when speaking to Nick. He spent more than
seven days copying everything into the old computer offered him for work. It was bought in 2001
and K. encountered a lot of difficulties during the transcription. Some letters were missing from the
keyboard, so he just copied them one by one. That computer was different from the ones K. used at
the university. K. copied all the files excepting the one which had the name Ricky on and put it in
the first shelter of his desk. K. didn’t meet with Sam the week he worked in his office, and it was
like a solace for him. The stress behind the first case and the general pressure offered by Vortex were
disturbing factors for K. During those days spent alone in the office at the fourth floor, he was only
once visited by Nick. The reason behind the unexpected visit was unclear for K. as they were far
from being best friends. As K. ended all the assigned work, he decided to personalize the office to
make him feel comfortable in the working process. He put the strange portrait back on the wall,
even it first he wanted to get rid of it. K. didn’t understand his own decision, but it seemed like it
had power and protected its place in that room. K. brought his laptop for the work, because he
didn’t have the right to go home the week he was locked in with the files. The old one, with its
scratched screen, was disconnected and K. assigned the boy who brought him the documents from
the archive, to take it to the storage room. All the furniture in the room got cleaned by him
personally and all the shelters fulfilled with his personal things such as law books. For K. personally,
the most important one was “Justice, What’s the right thing to do?” written by Michael Sandel. It
had a shining cover, with the main illustration having two doors on it, suggesting that it had always
been a matter of choice for the magistrates. K. read it during his first year of studies. It was a good
push for his ambitions and the decision to be a correct lawyer in the future. In his life, K. was
passioned by many things, but in the office, he brought his Rubik’s cube, which he used to play
with when thinking on important tasks. His cube had personalized colors, with none of the originals
on it. Every original color got substituted by the pale versions of them. K. didn’t have a lot of friends.
His narcissistic personality was feeling comfortable alone, even if he was eager to help everyone, he
didn’t get close to people.
K. realized that another week had passed and Sam didn’t visit him. When they ended the last
conversation, they agreed to meet the week after, but no signs from him. K. was reflecting a lot on
the strange coincidence between the cases. He supposed if the two crimes were committed by the
same person, it was very likely that “Ricky” had a strange attraction for legs. K. found strange the
fact that there were no details about Ricky’s first crime dated with 1988. He had only this detail,
about the legs. K. was very confident about his analytical abilities, but there was a thing he didn’t
understand: why such an impossible case was given to him as the first one.
K. could not find someone to help him with the case. He entered all the rooms in Vortex, but no
one listened, as it was a normal habit. The first room he entered was the one next to his door. That
door wasn’t like his, because of the metallic label which said whose door was it. As it was written,
the office was in use of a person named Ashley. What Walter’s eyes couldn’t miss was the old
computer used by Ashley. He wasn’t a tall man, with an obvious scoliosis, as his back was
unpleasantly curved. His cold brown eyes were concentrated on the screen of the old computer. The
only reason he turned the head in Walter’s direction, was K.’s voice:
-Good morning Mr. Ashley -K. said politely. I was wondering if the cases are solved individually
here, because I was thinking of some sort of teamwork. Meanwhile, Ashley returned to staring on
the screen. He took a pause, as it was necessary to collect the thoughts into a clear speech, but the
answer was disappointing for K.
-You are my new neighbor? I bet, you seem too enthusiastic – he said and the tone of his voice
got lower with every word, so K. had to focus in order to understand the final whispers. No one
knows nothing about you and your case- he continued. Only Nick, but this year he seems
completely implied in other things. The cases which get investigated here, at Vortex are usually
those with no importance, with no relevance for any client. If you got a case, be sure no one will
check how it is going. If you want, you do it.
-You say wrong things Ashley. I got a client last week. He seemed very concerned about the task
he wanted to give me. His name was Sam.
-No, it didn’t happen. I am the one registering all the clients and there was no demand from
someone to be on my list. K. understood that he entered the wrong door trying to solve his
problems. He left the room, leaving Ashley with his obsessive admiration of the screen.
On the same floor with K. and Ashley, there were two more offices. One of them was placed in
front of K.’s. and it was labeled with the name “Diana”, and K. quickly arranged his hairs, because
it was messy due to the morning winds of Nottingham. He entered the room, and what he saw left
him with the mouth wide opened. She was using the same old computer and K. felt blocked in time
for a moment. She was struggling to use the keyboard, but still looked very entertained about it.
Diana was a woman in her thirties, with an ordinary appearance. Her hair was arranged in a small
bun with the front hairs covering her forehead under an intelligent look. The eyeglasses she was
wearing had an unusual size. The round form contrasted with the sharpness of her chin and the
lens were pressing her cheeks. K. was confused about the recklessness he was treated with for the
second time, but being a proud man, he couldn’t let anybody to behave with him like he was an
empty space. Diana noticed his presence, when her spectacles needed to be cleaned. She glanced at
K., and then pulled on a tissue from a box staying on the left corner of the desk. K. tried to catch her
attention by moving a chair close, but Diana was rubbing the glass slowly and accurately. K. could
see her affection and care for that only piece of accessory she was wearing. Diana put her glasses
back on and K. believed that they fit her face, as the dark blue circles under her eyes were
emphasizing the sleepless nights she had. Diana anticipated K. would not leave the room, with no
answers, and she finally started to speak.
- What are you interested in? -she asked, and K. got scared by her high-pitched tone. The question
was quickly put even for him. K didn’t have any time to think on different options and the only
words in his head resulted into an undistinctive mumble. K. reserved himself a moment to get his
thoughts together and said:
-Can you explain me what happens around? I was assigned on a case and my only question was
if I am supposed to work on it alone? I would really appreciate some help on it, as I need a more
proficient view on this specific case.
 - Is this a joke Mr… (K. wanted to interrupt her phrase by doing the presentations, but Diana
continued)? I am the person assigned to put the names of the clients in the computer. There were
no new names in last period.
The resemblance of their answer imposed K. to bridge all the facts inside his mind. Pursuing the
goal to find out the reason behind all those strange occurrences, K. moved the focal point of his
attention from Diana to the walls. They seemed damaged by dampness which created deep cracks
on it. The only portrait he noticed represented a woman at a train station holding the hand of her
children. K. didn’t offer much time on understanding who were the people on Diana’s wall. He
stood up, politely nodded and left the room. His next stop was the door next to Diana’s. As he was
moving towards it, K. realized that the place he worked at was continuously racked by the spirit of
people inside. The comfort with which K. entered every door, was externalized by his light and soft
movements. The door in front was different from the other ones. The notation wasn’t on a metallic
label, but scratched directly into the wood. It seemed like the place was booked for years by the
person he would meet. He knocked at the door after reflecting for some seconds, and at the first
touch of his bent forefinger, it opened. The same stylistic patterns as in the other two rooms made
K.’s eyes to get used to them. An old man in a rocking chair greeted him with a cunning phrase:
-I heard your alarmed steps behind that door (he pointed to the opened door as it was closing).
You could have entered my door first. I don’t get visits very often (the old man looked at the clock
on the wall giving the impression he checks the time that had passed from his last visit).
The old man was wearing a dark yellow sweater and K. compared it with the chroma of the
falling leaves. It was full with small white balls of wool emitting a scent specific to the lonely and
old people. K. noticed the innocence in his eyes, and clearly understood that no one was
interconnected in the building.
-Why is your name scratched, Sir? -K. suddenly asked, with his eminent politeness towards old
people. The old man was swinging the chair and the question K. put wasn’t eloquent for him. The
childish manners instigated K. to make his addressee more serious by repeating the same question.
Meanwhile, the old man was murmuring a song:
-Giro, giro mondo, Casca il tondo. K. recognized the song, but the Italian language was for K. a
difficult subject. His Germanic roots didn’t let him be very flexible in matter of languages.
The old man added:
-I have just answered to all your questions. K. was confused, but found the old man being more
useful and open-minded than people staying in the offices he entered before. His wrinkles were
arranged one above the other completing his dressing style and somehow given confidence to K.
that in his insane world, there were people with the desire to help, even though that people were
not less insane. The old man smiled analyzing K.’s reflections continuing to balance in the chair
which seemed to move for years.
-What do you mean, Sir? -K. asked with the same excessive politeness after several minutes of
thinking. Do I have something to understand from that song? The old man didn’t answer and K.,
before leaving the room glanced at him one more time and his conscience got paralyzed by all the
riddles he had to face. Returned in his office, he occupied the place on the chair, and some tears
were steadily fulfilling his eyes. Then, he opened the first shelter, took a piece of paper, and started
to write. K. used this technique when he couldn’t keep the rage inside. New stocks of paper were
delivered every Monday in the morning, but they were not white as K. would want to. They were
old, with the characteristic odor of a tree bark. K. grabbed a bale of papers and when the pen touched
the first paper he could feel the softness of it.
“The dullness and the flabbiness of the place I work in can only be compared to this pile of papers
underneath the one I use. I don’t even remember when my path started and with the same
uncertainty I think now of the future. I got stuck in a world with less prospects than the world
existing hundreds of years ago. My agony is encompassed by ruthless and injudicious co-workers.
I let myself face a challenge too heavy for my presence. I feel how the walls of this building which
people use to name Vortex is eating my soul steadily, starting with the core. It is the place from
where Justice starts to rot, from the inside. Every little magistrate considered a simple marionette
can take the place of an important one, whenever the fate decides to make changes. My career is
under the threat of becoming a ghost, as the absorbing power of this place drives me insane. I can
associate myself with an obsessed bettor, who is believing that the big win is near and the only
obstacle is the time. When I entered Diana’s office, I thought that the spirit of a single female can
overthrow my entire visualization of the place, but the way she acted was for me more than a simple
key to the question. I walk every day on the streets of Nottingham, and every time I pass near Vortex
I don’t see that others notice it as well. I am stuck in a flow of useless people, and I don’t see a way
out.”
When K. put the final dot, he felt all the anger directed through his arm. Then, K. took the paper
with the ideas consuming him and crumpled it in the palm of his hands. The papers under it got
the contours of what K. had just written. By letter he wrote to himself K. didn’t mean that he was
finally giving up. It was for his personal emotional state, as the day which was almost approaching
its end was the strangest in his life. At 6 pm, the noises in the building stopped, and K. started his
reflections on the lyrics the old man murmured. K. could not remember the exact words anymore,
but the melody was in his head. He started burbling it, and the song made K. imagine himself
swinging in the place old man was. This compelled K. to stop, as it was not a good sign to replace
himself with a body of an old man. K. didn’t leave the office that day, he opened the laptop in search
of information about Vortex, because the place itself was bothering K. the most. On the Internet
there were no evidences about Vortex, and the maps K. looked on showed the place as empty. K.
received it as an Internet error, and continued to search for facts linked with the story of Vortex.
There were no web pages to prove the existence of that obscure location. K. investigated the first
ten pages of the results Google provided, and on the 4 th he saw a title which made him click on it:
“A boy’s suicidal shocks Nottingham”. It was a page with no other subpages; only an article. It was
the case which happened a long time ago. K. noticed the name “David”, and noted it on a paper. K.
was understanding that if the case appeared as a result to his search with one of the tags being
Vortex, then the boy’s suicidal should somehow be connected to the building. When the clock ticked
10 pm, K. scratched his eyes with both hands and stopped his research about David, as the
investigations were useless and grueling.
Next morning reached K. with Sam staying bent over his desk. It made K. to jump off his chair,
and the laptop on the knees fell down. K. tried to stop it with the leg, and the only thing he managed
was to kick it further. It broke in two separate pieces, and K. looked at Sam with the anger he wrote
his thoughts the other day. K. was ready to strangulate Sam, but the politeness he was used to didn’t
let him to even to yell at him. For K. the device he had just broken was precious, because he bought
it from his savings during several years. Sam wasn’t happy like the last time, and K. decided to not
charge the ambiance of their further conversation with his negative thoughts. K. invited Sam to take
place on the chair and said:
-I want to greet you, Sam and also ask you about your late coming. Are you going to visit me
once in 10 days? Do you understand that having such a rhythm your case will never get to a logical
end?
-Good morning Mr. Walter. I am sorry that my second visit was so unexpected like the first one.
The problem is, I woke up this night with a strange feeling in my toe, like someone touched it and
ran and by the moment I was completely awake, I couldn’t see anyone. I felt it was the perfect
moment to visit you. Strange things happen around, and I have the supposition there will not be a
logical end.
-Who excluded illogical ends, Sam? (K. permitted to call Sam by the name, because of the
superiority feeling he was experiencing. I found a case in the files sent for me from the archive,
implying the name Ricky. It has the year you mentioned last time, 1988. I don’t know if it is a
coincidence or not, but it would mean that Ricky is now far over fifty, and you called them “boys”.
Am I correct?
-Definitely you are. This is what I saw, and I think that I was not wrong. What are our next moves,
if there are some planned?
K.’s concern was the laptop at that time. He glanced at it with nostalgy, and gathered the pieces
from the floor in a single pile. Sam was eagerly waiting for an answer, which K. anticipated and
gave him what he wanted:
-Isn’t it entertaining to stay aside and watch how I am struggling to deal with an impossible
problem? I don’t know my moves. I thought to check the house where the first crime of Ricky got
place. It would be a good beginning of the inquiry. I am going to provide you with all the evidences
personally as I don’t get any help on the case. Do you want to join me Sam? I am going there in half
an hour. I think, you are interested in this not less than me.
-I am waiting for you on one of the chairs from the entrance hall, Sir. Sam bowed and left the
room, leaving K. alone with his broken computer on the desk.
K. expected the moment Sam would leave and throw his computer in the trash as all of the
components were broken, because of his forced kick. K. got very sad, and the idea he would require
the old computer to be brought back from the storage room amplificated his regret and misery. K.
didn’t have any savings to afford a new computer, and the salary at Vortex was enough only for his
rent (which was expensive) and for aliments. K. spend the rest of the time looking at the portrait on
the wall. The person on it was still staring on K. As he expected, Sam was quietly waiting for him,
but no one was around. Sam jumped of the chair as he saw K. descending the stairs.
-I ask you to be quiet during this walk. I am used to think a lot while I do it – K said. For Sam,
which was obviously ready for a discussion with K., sighed out and accepted the proposal he didn’t
found very pleasant.
 The wind outside was whistling comfortable enough for K. which wanted to avoid Sam’s
burdened breath. The address mentioned in the file was not located at a big distance from Vortex,
only five streets away, and they agreed upon walking. K. moved quietly in the direction they needed
and Sam got very anxious, because of it. K. could analyze all his emotions, without even turning his
head. The houses on both sides of the road seemed empty and K. didn’t think too much and
concluded that it happened this way, because it was the middle of a working day. Sam was moving
his head around trying to not miss something. Scared that the situation with Ricky can occur again,
Sam broke the silence which dominated their road for the most of its part and said:
-I didn’t come to you earlier, because I was afraid that the he could meet me again on the streets.
The reason behind me visiting you in such a sudden way is because I wait until you don’t expect
me. Every single part of my life is affected by the presence of Ricky. As I told you, I felt someone
touching my leg in the night. I don’t say there was someone, but it drives me totally crazy. Moreover,
I leave alone and you understand that such mystique things are not supposed to happen. I know I
seem poor and paranoiac, but the fact that I am afraid about his presence behind me…everywhere
I go doesn’t let me to live normally. K. was hearing Sam, and he caught every word he said, but his
brain and imagination were both in panic about what happened the day he tried to search for help.
The song was playing in his head continuously as a twitch. Therefore, his answer wasn’t elaborate
the way Sam expected:
-I know my following words will not encourage you and I think they are going to have the
opposite effect on you, but I want to tell you that I am afraid too. (K. said it without breathing, as
those words were harsh for him and he wanted to lead them to an end faster)
They got to the house where supposedly Ricky plunged the knife into his wife. It looked old, as
no one was able to touch it during those 30 years. The front door was opened and the white wall
around seemed prepared to fall, because the white dyed concrete was cracked with some pieces
already being on the ground. That house was the only one on the street to have its front door facing
the road. K. felt the same energy he could feel while staying in Vortex alone, until late hours. The
windows were all small, and the only one, which was bigger than the rest, blocked the view to the
inside of the house, because of the dusty curtains. As it was a custom in England to not put gates to
the houses, they could approach it immediately. K. walked around checking if there were no people,
including children, which enjoy playing near such abandoned places. When K. got the confidence
that they would not be bothered by someone during the expertise, he returned to the place where
Sam was staying. The negative energy of the house had a bigger impact on Sam, because he was
staring at the door without blinking. K. woke him up with the invitation to enter through the opened
door. The hall of the house didn’t let any reasons to stop. K. could see different pairs of shoes, all
covered by a thick layer of dust. They were divided into two different heaps; one heap with different
women shoes and the other with men shoes. K. didn’t touch them, as they may suggest Ricky’s shoe
size in the future. Sam was the follower, with his only sight being K.’s back. The line separating the
entrance hall from the rest of the rooms made K. stopped, as the stink coming from inside was so
strong, they could not breathe. He pressed his nose in between his thumb and the forefinger and
passed the line, entering the living room. The floor was soaked with a red color reminding of dirty
blood, which was deriving from a skeleton. K. didn’t understand why it was there, explaining
everything by the aid of the special energy of the house. The body should have been delivered to
the morgue, he thought. K. got closer to the body to analyze it, and detected the same layer of dust
coming from the wall of the room. The shape and the sizes of the body made K. deduce that it was
belonging to a woman. When standing up, his look stopped upon the table with the two glasses on
it and proposed Sam to sit on one of the chairs. Sam executed the order immediately, and despite it
was dirty he didn’t have any remark to express as long as they had a common goal. K. seated on the
other chair, and the scene from 1988, seemed to repeat. K. felt how his blood was fulfilling with a
bestial desire to get rid of Sam. The next second, he left the chair and realized how Sam was getting
even more afraid and anxious, understanding that they were in the house where Ricky killed a
woman a long time before their visit. K. had moved away from Sam in order to rethink about what
was happening and also to check the other rooms. When he entered the bedroom, the floor seemed
deformed, because of the disordered pile of portraits Charlotte slept on in her last night. K. shook
one of them, but he wasn’t able to see it immediately. This layer of dust was for him even heavier
and more unpleasant than in the rest of the rooms. K. inhaled it through the mouth and for a
moment he felt his lungs belonging to those of a dying person. The ulterior coming cough released
the pain provoked by the dust grains and he could finally see the face on the paper. K. looked at it
doubting about if it was Ricky or someone else.
-Saaam! -he was calling to ask about the person in the photo and after a few seconds Sam’s steps
could be heard by K. The door between the bedroom and the living was opened before they entered
the house, so Sam ran through it and asked:
-What’s the pro’- Sam stopped in the middle of the question when the supposed portrait of Ricky
got into his view. He stopped, had a closer look to it and almost fainted. K. left the paper to fall and
jumped to sustain Sam. K. was convinced that the man on the photo was Ricky. Then, he moved
Sam to the nearest wall, with all the force he had, so Sam’s back got supported by it. Meanwhile, K.
rummaged through the other papers, removing all of the dust on them and scattering it around. He
was impressed by the enormous number of portraits approximating a number of over one hundred,
basing on the visual intuition. Sam closed the eyes, which were terrified by the faces of the criminal
who destroyed his toes. They made him feel the discomfort again, as someone tried to remove his
nails with a scalpel. After arranging the portraits in one common column, K. got closer to Sam and
asked him:
-Are you sure we can base on these portraits? But even if we have a drawing of his face, to find
him, after so many years, seems still impossible. At least, we have a step done, we know how he
looks like, or looked. The portraits we see now, are a relevant proof that the person which killed the
woman in 1988 is the same as the one who injured your leg. But how? (whispering the last question
to not disturb Sam’s conscience even more) Sam didn’t open his eyes yet, but asked with the voice
trembling:
-I remember him as in the picture Sir, the same face, and the same neck. That neck is my reason
for fear, the veins on it seem so diabolical. I only want to not see it ever again.
They returned to the living room, where the skeleton of the killed woman was lying on the
ground, and K. understood that a DNA expertise would be useless in this case, because the
geneticist would not be able to identify the origin of a person dead more than 25 years ago.
Therefore, they didn’t touch it anymore, picking one of the portraits (K. picked the one which
Charlotte considered perfect the day before her death). They walked back to Vortex and on their
way, Sam lacked the desire to talk, with his lips shrink. K. was looking with the eyes pointed
towards the fresh asphalt, recently renewed by the authorities. The houses they passed by on their
way to Ricky’s didn’t look empty anymore, and K. observed people which K. considered tired by
the routine. They arrived at Vortex after four hours from the departure, and the chair Sam was
staying on was in the middle of the room. K. put it back to its place, so it would not stay in path of
the people. The only person K. saw in the building was Nick checking some doors which lead from
the entrance hall to some offices K. never visited. The stairs to the second floor had the spike nails
removed and put near on the edge of each stair. K. wasn’t a believer in the conspiration theories
and climbed them by stepping over two. Sam didn’t bother to be as quick as K., and only slowly
followed him.
When K. reached his office at the fourth floor, the song started to interfere with the thoughts he
had on the case. He couldn’t wait for Sam all the stairs in order to speak to him; not about the case,
but only to speak, because the song made K. nervous. After moving several times along the entire
4th floor, he could finally see Sam’s head appeared from behind the balustrade and when the entire
body was in K.’s sight, they both breathed relieved: K. by his arrival and Sam, because of the tiring
way he just underwent. The sweat on Sam’s forehead suggested K. about the bad physical shape of
Sam. K. could argue that, because Sam was always staying at home, overwhelmed by thoughts
about Ricky.
-Sam, I can leave you to go soon, as I can carry on the further work. I brought you back, only to
be confident, the person in the picture is the same as the one you saw a year ago. I want you now to
look at it, without any fear. We are far from that place, and I supposed it would be easier for you.
-I am afraid – Sam said and K. started to doubt about his decision to bring him in the office again.
I am not responsible for any of the consequences. K. unfolded the paper, and Sam looked at it. The
same fear waves penetrated his body and he was on the way to fall again, but K. was attentive,
because he understood that a relapse was possible. K. put him on the chair he left in the morning,
and then realized that his muscles were not able to hold Sam for a long time. The corporal weight
of Sam seemed to increase every time K. tried. Sam’s head was lying on the back of the chair with
the mouth opened, and K. could see that some of his teeth were removed and a great part had caries.
K. continued to watch him, with the same attitude he did on their first visit. After several
minutes of reflecting on the house they visited that day, K. left Sam alone in the room and started
to walk near the door of the old man. The song in his head sounded louder, as it never did and K.
decided to check the room of that old man. First, he put one of the ears on the door to see if the old
man was still inside and then the same voice as the last time scared K.:
-The way you are trying to sneak here will not save you from the fate we all have. Enter, please.
K. was stiff as the proposal made him to look awkward and giddy in front of the old man. The effort
with which he moved the hand to push the door was considerable, as his body could not decide if
it was safe to enter. The man didn’t have any differences in comparison with the one he analyzed a
couple of days before. The same swinging chair and the same attitude brought him back to their
first conversation. K. wanted to open his mouth to say something, but felt how suddenly he lacked
confidence. The silence increased the pressure on K. and the impatience lead him to say:
-I thought you left and I wasn’t trying to sneak into your room, Sir. Only walking around due to
the stress I was subjected to.
-I don’t see the point of you lying, my young friend. -the old man cordially answered. Take a seat.
If you wanted to see what is here inside this room, you could enter anytime. I am always staying in
the chair you see, because my world is based on everything in the room we are in. I am very pleased
that someone as young as you is curious about my life. The smile K. displayed on his face revealed
all the intensions he had about the old man and added:
-Don’t you have anyone? What about your family? Do they know you are closed here?
-I don’t know if I have anyone. I used to -he said insecurely. All the ways are cut once you make
your first step in this building. When I was young, like you, the dreams of fighting for justice were
alive.
The old man stopped and continued to swing, with no further attention to what emotions K. was
trying to express. K. was on his way to turn to the door and leave when Sam sneaked from behind
and K., abruptly for the old man, jumped in his direction making the old chair oscillate faster. The
old man didn’t react to the situation and only continued his strange activity, even if the fast
movement of the chair transformed the pleasant color of his face in whitish. Sam didn’t pay any
attention to the old man, as he wasn’t there. The dark circles under his eyes got contoured after an
hour of sleeping and it offered him a terrifying appearance. At that moment, K. just wanted to go
home and forget everything, but he waited for Sam to say what he was intending to:
-He is waiting for you, Sir. K. immediately understood about who he was talking, but offered
him the chance to continue. I left your room searching for you, and then I saw him with the corner
of my eye, somewhere when 3rd floor. When I noticed the door, I decided to announce you.
K. wasn’t concerned about it, because most probably Sam saw Ricky’s projection after
overthinking on his portraits. The hallucinations could explain it for K. He went down with Sam to
help him calm down, not for the reason he got an interest. As K. expected there was no one waiting
for him, even if Sam insisted:
-R-r-r-icky pointed his finger at me and then to the exact direction of your room and looked at
me with his desire to call you. The way he disappeared now is similar to the day he left me with a
couple of dead toes.
-Sam, look at me -K. replied holding his shoulders in his arms. I know how difficult it is for you
to support everything and even more, I feel the fear myself, but you have to understand that you
are stressed now. Your mind plays games. Don’t let yourself become a psychopath. When a criminal
is appearing in our life, we don’t have to play their mind games, because they are not so powerful
as they wish to be. Your case is a relevant argument for everything. Why would we be afraid, if we
discovered how he looks like, and also other important details. He seems to have a bigger influence
on you, and to a lesser extent on me, than it is needed. No one denies, it is very difficult to show
self-control in cases which are synonyms to survival. Try to avoid imagining him and be rational.
K.’s inspirational speech wasn’t persuasive for Sam, but it made him come back to his usual state.
When climbing the stairs, Sam was again complaining:
 -These stairs offer only pain in my knees. Wait for me in your office, Sir -Sam said. K. felt how
Sam overcame his thoughts, because he didn’t plan to wait his heavy steps to climb the stairs.
The last sun rays were lightning the room, and K. decided to turn on the lamp to not bother later
with such formalities. When Sam appeared at the door, K. folded Ricky’s portraits and invited him
inside. The situation seemed to repeat for K. as he was clearly seeing himself calling Sam to enter
the room earlier that day. Meanwhile, K. started to write all the evidences on a piece of paper:
“Ricky; Age: Unknown; Crimes: I-1988, II-2017; I-kill, II-serious injure”. He put it in the pocket of
the jeans, which K. had from the first year of university and focused on the frame suspended on the
left wall. The same thing was done by Sam, who took his seat and they both looked were looking in
the eyes of the mysterious gentleman. It was hard to appreciate how much time had passed from
the first seconds, they turned their heads to the wall. The night surprised them still staring at the
portrait and K. was the one to get out from the trance, and then with a fast and sudden movement
tried to observe what hour was it through an almost complete obscurity. Sam reacted to it with a
hiccup and bit his tongue, from which a small droplet of blood felt on his T-shirt, which had the
beautiful London Eye on it. When K. turned the light on, Sam observed the droplet on the very top
of the metallic wheel. Sam imagined himself there with the only thought to jump from it, falling for
an entire eternity. K. got very busy with one of his hairs, a sign his mind was fulfilled by tiredness.
He wanted to suggest Sam to leave as soon as possible, so he could get asleep. The thought didn’t
manage to be formulated, when an obvious sound of steps convulsed the silence in the office at the
4th floor. This time K. could hear it as well, and his lips got strained by a strange type of fear. They
both stayed on their places, and then K. decided to be brave, protecting his client from any
unexpected and dangerous situations (his mind suggested him, but it was only his curiosity). K.
could see that Sam’s eyes were not happy about the idea of being left alone in a room with a portrait.
-Sit on my chair until I come back, I will close the light, so the person stepping couldn’t
understand we are two and if it is Ricky as you mentioned, we can’t do something about it -K. said
and immediately went down the stairs from where the noise came. Through that complete darkness,
dominating the building K. saw a silhouette of a corpulent man. K. got more confidence that the
man wasn’t Ricky as he was approaching the silhouette. He was staying near one the walls on the
second floor. When K.’s trembling hand touched the back of the unknown man, he said:
-Nick wants to leave, Nick wants to leave. K. understood that it was Nick’s voice and he couldn’t
distinguish the silhouette, because he didn’t see Nick for more than a week. Nick was for K. a more
difficult charge than Sam. K. put his hands on his shoulders and tried to carry him to the nearest
office. In the dark, K. wasn’t able to see the name on the door and entered the room, pushing it. It
was organized the same way as the once at the 4th floor with the same old computer forcing to focus
your attention on its circuits. Nick looked very confused. His face was distorted by a smile, and the
smell K. felt was of some cheap alcohol.
-What made you come here, Nick? -K. asked, with Nick being completely out of his mind. K.
decided to make him lift the eyes in the direction from where the question came from, but Nick
didn’t seem interested in the questions he was getting from K. That room made K. even angrier than
he was when Sam broke his laptop, because more and more ridiculous situations started to mark
his way. K. placed Nick’s head in his cold palms and when he understood it was useless, he left it
to fall. Is there something good about this place? -K. continued and here Nick’s heavy respiration
started to mumble several words:
-It…i-i-is. -Nick’s short phrase made him enthusiastic, as it meant Nick was at least alive. K.
wanted to find out what brought the poor man there, in the middle of the night, so he struggled to
make him say something. The smile didn’t leave Nick’s face, and K. thought it was just a way to
laugh at him. They both remained in the room until the morning, because K. didn’t want to feel
responsible for any possible occurrences. The old computer hypnotized K., who felt asleep on the
desk, alongside Nick, completely forgetting about the scared Sam in his office.
In the morning, the air in the room was impossible to be breathed with the unpleasant smell
coming from Nick’s lungs replacing all the fresh air. K. coughed and then rushed to the window to
open it, but it didn’t. K. resigned when he felt the pain in his biceps, after carrying on two corpulent
men the previous day. He opened the door, and the same calm atmosphere, as it was the last night,
induced K. to get back to the melody of the Italian song. Nick woke up very conscious about what
was happening around and without any questions or observations he passed near K. Nick was
accelerating with every step and his movements were suggesting that he had some important tasks
to solve in the office belonging to him from the 1st floor. K., who didn’t want to mess the things with
his supervisor again, just left him to do whatever he had in mind.
K. thought that Sam was in his room, and climbed the stairs, with each producing a short craunch.
The office didn’t change, besides the fact Sam was missing. The only sign pointing to this was his
chair on the floor, which looked like something scared Sam to death. After a minute of analyzing
the things, a sound came from the desk:
-Sir, I am here, under the desk, I was afraid of Ricky coming to me, after he would kill you, sorry
for saying that, but I thought about it, so I got the decision to hide under the desk, where nothing
could be seen. Anyway, I am conscious Ricky could smell me, because I feel he can sniff and kill
everything that lives. In the end, I am glad to have you here, Si-i-ir. K. wanted Sam to leave, so he
could go home, but he felt how Sam got bounded to him, and to the Vortex itself. K. didn’t have a
clear idea about what was going to be done in the next 24 hours. He wanted to get a while of
intimacy, so he could arrange the enormous flow of ideas.
The birds were singing outside, but in K.’s head each single note was converted in a continuous
mumble of his own melody. To make the concentration on the case real, K. moved his attention
outside, through the window. Nottingham was a beautiful and a quite big city, but the
agglomeration of people outside didn’t observe the Vortex the way it was staying there, missing it
with every occasion. The sight made K. shortly smile, with the chained red houses creating a
conception of how a city should look. The entire view from the window could distract K. from all
the problems he was encountering. After weeks, he felt that life could be potentially beautiful, if his
dilemmas got solved. K. understood that he was hungry, as he didn’t eat something the day before
and his coffee rituals got totally missed after the start of the new job, but K. was planning to return
to them when Sam would desire to leave the building. K. thought that Vortex must have an eating
hall or at least a café, like it was in his university. He realized he didn’t see any food in Vortex and
tried to convince himself that everyone was eating outside. The smell of fresh food would make him
very creative, he thought, but the building seemed to want him inside as long as it could keep him.
A small street food shop was facing Vortex and K. could see it from the window, so he invited Sam
to join. All the way to the entrance hall was stressful for them, as all the people were looking at from
their offices, as they were guilty for something. K. noticed that only the old man had his door closed
and when they finally got to leave the building the food shop disappeared from the place it was. K.
was confused, and their intestines started growling as they also observed the mystical
disappearance of the shop. No more shops were close to Vortex, and they returned inside with the
rain accompanying their backs. As K. did the first step, all the looks directed to his legs, and the
unexpected attention could make him run on the stairs. The 4 th floor was empty and K. only made
his way through to reach his chair. The window view was still indicating the food shop staying on
the place it was the first time, but K. wasn’t focused on hunger anymore.
The desk, the portrait on the wall and all the papers he gathered for the case seemed to lose all
their value. K.’s entire soul was at the upper limit of anger and the lower of patience with the things
he once loved dissipating. The honor of such a first case started to change into a complete disaster.
Sam wasn’t coming and K. laughed at the portrait on the wall and said the most sarcastic way he
could:
-He might get lost in his fat. K. was furious, with all the eyes pointing his guilt for the case
instigating him to declare the incompetence shown by all of them staring, but K. stayed quiet. When
Sam returned, K. moved his attention from the wall to the signs on the floor and they scared him.
The signs were the same for K., but he analyzed them and understood that some contours got
sharpened by what was very similar with a knife cut. Sam immediately distracted K. from his
important observation and mentioned:
-Your boss, Sir. Nick, as I can remember, he was on the floor immediately after you left, dancing.
I didn’t understand the moves, but they were neither elegant nor beautiful. He seemed completely
despaired and he was crying for help. I didn’t know how to help and I didn’t interfere, as he was
very strict with me on my first visit.
-What is happening here? -K. gently asked, only to support Sam, but in reality, to have a
conversation with himself. Sam started to explain him the moves of Nick’s dance showing them on
his body. For a second K. saw his supervisor in front of him, but Sam’s clumsiness returned his
healthy conscience. The moves which were demonstrated by Sam were not known by K., as dancing
was not his main profile and he actually hated this sort of activities, finding them useless. Sam didn’t
stop, he continued doing the same movements: his left hand above the head with the legs stretched
at the shoulders’ width and the head towards the ceiling with the right hand maintaining the general
equilibrium of the body. Those bizarre dance elements made K. mumble the Italian song again, with
Sam dancing in the background. Their tandem was working, as K. saw how Sam changed his
rhythm according to his melody. K. stopped when the dryness in his neck forced him to cough
violently. Sam was starting to annoy him, who couldn’t resist to stay more than a day with a single
mediocre man, and when K. could understand that Sam wanted to continue through a new act of
his dance, K. said:
-Sam, see you next time. I need a bit of rest. He looked to the ground, and frustrated about the
long way down the stairs left the room, with K. biting one of his nails.
Chapter 5: Michelle
Winters in Nottingham were not distinct from those from the entire British Island. The falling
snowflakes were pushing each other to occupy the free places on the electrical wires. K. was finally
returning home, after another week spent at his working place. He was living in an old house, with
a rent which was affordable for his low financial incomes. The flat was not far from the one Kyle
was dwelling in and therefore it was close to Vortex. The only thing he disliked about that district
were the barking dogs in the nights, which seemed terrifying for the people in the region. No one
ever got injured by a dog, but the fear was mainly spread by their wolf alike noises. K. solved the
problem by sleeping with the head under a couple of pillows. His room was not full of things, as
were all the flats on the street. K. had two shelves filled with books of his favorite authors, his
modern desk which could be set at different heights and his bed with two pillows and a single
brown blanket. K. tried to use all the commodities of his bachelor’s room at maximum. He used to
set the desk at different heights, depending on his mood and level of activity. He liked to study
sitting on his feet, with no chair, because this way it was comfortable to combine the two things he
liked: coffee and reading.
The days spent with Sam, and the entire entourage of Vortex, let K. understand the importance
of being alone with himself. Looking through the window, he picked the note with the details about
Ricky from the pocket, and pinned it to the desk, scratching it with the goal for the note to be seen
every time he was lacking motivation. After hours of sleep, K. woke up with the immediate thought
about the drawings on the floor in his room at Vortex. He also could remember how the shapes and
the contours got changed after the first time he noticed them. He woke up close to the midnight of
that cold winter day. The light of the street lamps got reflected from the thin layer of snow, and it
could disturb K., who drawn the curtains. K. usually preferred to keep the window closed, with no
dependency on what weather it was outside. This time he felt that the wind could be able to distract
him as Sam did with his idiot movements and sayings.
K. realized that those drawings could belong to any person, with his suppositions being focused
around the names of Ricky and Michelle (as the person which worked there before him). When
leaving Vortex, K. wanted to take one of the portraits, but in the last moment his intuition suggested
him about the risk of being lost in a world with only the face of a criminal. Ricky was for K. more
mysterious than the person about he didn’t know anything, Michelle. The way K. analyzed and dug
into different aspects of a problem was impressing, as the barrier of his narcissism got further and
further with every idea of him being slightly above average people. Every hour spent with this first
crime, was provoking K. to be detached from the world around it. Next minutes the bed was calling
him back, K. noticed, and he left the notes on the desk, and covered his head with the soft blanket.
That night wasn’t like others. The barking of the dogs had stopped, and the only movements and
sounds were made by the sleeping body of K. His dreams got attacked by different images and
hypostasizes of Ricky and his portrait which in his sleep conscience got materialized. The real Ricky
was parking the old Toyota in the backyard of his house. His steps didn’t wake up anyone from the
flats next to K.’s. The dream was starting to mix with the real life, and K, could feel the insidious
state of him watching Ricky from aside. Then, he realized how Ricky’s boots didn’t make any sound,
as they were magically silenced. Then, the entire mystery was interrupted by K. which wanted to
know more, with no doubt that it wasn’t a dream, but a prophecy. The idea that he wasn’t in charge
of what he could see made him shout:
-The fact we could be in my dream now, is making me very curious about your intentions, which
by the same reason can be driven by the fears hidden in my subconscious. You are moving to the
room I am imagining, or maybe you are, but still, I believe in the idea that our power now is equal.
The only ambition I have, is to look in your real eyes, to prove that you are scared by all that is alive,
Ricky.
Ricky didn’t seem to hear him. His way to K.’s room was unstoppable, as K. was a bystander in
Ricky’s reality. The stairs in that block of flats, were made from a grey colored concrete, and when
such a stiff surface was touched by one’s toe, a characteristic bone bruising should make the air
vibrate. K. used to keep his door locked up, because the late incidents, in his opinion could put his
person under high levels of risk. Ricky opened it without any difficulties and for K. it looked like a
pure demonstration of authority. He pushed it with one of the fingers, and the only feeling, K.
experienced, was that Ricky controlled his spirit and managed to impose him every desire. Ricky
took the place at the mobile desk, and tickled the notes he left some hours before.
K. woke up very tired, with his bones seemed to be altered by a different locomotor system. He
couldn’t turn his head in either direction, and the motionless legs sent him the idea of corporal
inability to stand up from the messy bed. He knew that the nightmare of the other night was
strongly connected with Ricky, but with no repeatable episodes offered by his memory. His
numbness soon reached its culmination and suddenly stopped, allowing him to move.
K. wasn’t loyal to any religion or cult, ignoring the presence of the superior creatures. He was a
believer in the fact that the world was built by humans, with Earth itself being assembled from
interstellar dust and matter. His beliefs gave him the possibility to not feel guilty for everything
religions condemned, and therefore he felt how the stiffness and stress could be dispersed by the
aid of what other countries considered totally legal. K. didn’t try smoking cigarettes before, and he
didn’t have the intention to start. The only narcotic substance he considered fair to be used was the
plant called Cannabis, or how K. used to name it, “The second soul”. He wasn’t belonging to people
which got addiction from their first trial of something unusual and pleasant. K. used to buy them
from the local dealer, a strange guy, with his code name among the gangs in the town: Brick. K.
bought the drug in small quantities, but used it all at one time, because the stressing situations were
the ones to push him to commit illegalities. They usually met behind K.’s house, where the sunrays
couldn’t enlighten during the day, and only shadows were the rulers.
K. texted Brick the same day, to acquire the desired dose of drugs. He never felt such strong
influence and manipulation of a plant on a man’s conscience and integrity. Their meeting was fast,
with Brick looking always to the ground, as the world around wasn’t in charge of keeping him
straight. The meaning of the words he was saying worked similar to an electrical shock for K.:
-DUMB ME, DUMB ME! -brawling himself in a gurgle. K. picked the envelope with the
Marijuana inside of it, and he could feel the texture throughout the package. K. gave him the money,
and Brick left immediately without counting or checking their authenticity. And then his mind went
far away, separated from Brick and his package, from Sam and the case, but only a new stream of
thoughts:
 “Around my neck, I feel the sword of a monarch controlling my its movements. I apply the laws
of new physics and disregard the old ones, but they don’t seem to take me out of the gaps I
periodically fall in. This dose makes me feel hope and simultaneously the feeling of anger, of being
constantly imprisoned… imprisoned by me. It’s dangerous to try changing the feelings coming, and
it’s also the challenge of being effete and demented. The inspiration leaves the city I picked to live,
and all my flesh is starting to be salty, as some spiritic power made an excess when cooking me. The
way people lose their energy next to me, converts my ability to be a human being into something
close to a butterfly stealing the color of the other, but I don’t see butterflies here, or maybe I only
purloined their color and now my retina is unable to distinguish what is what.”
K. prepared some special old paper in which he wrapped his dose of Marijuana, and smoked it
fast and in a forlorn silence, with an undercurrent of drums following his back. K. used to hear
different sorts of music, every time he got to smoke what Brick brought him. The palimpsest of the
unknown sounds evoked the early memories of his childhood: a little, young boy, riding a horse, in
the middle of a green field in the town of Quedlinburg. Sigmund, his horse, was a Brandenburger,
a similar name to that of the Brandenburg Gate. Its long, brown tail was fluttering in the wind like
a windmill’s propeller. K. got the skills in equitation from his elder brother, which had his own
horse, named Nernst, and in that memory, he appeared next to K. Once, they got very far from their
house, somewhere in the nearby fields. They tied their horse under the shadow of a tree and went
to analyze the place they were at. For several minutes, Nernst and Sigmund disappeared from their
view and when they finally returned, Sigmund wasn’t there anymore, with Nernst continuously
neighing. The boys went then far into the forest, which encircled the field from all directions, but
no traces which could direct them to find the horses.
A new sound, out of his memory, made him get out from the trance offered by the smoke of
Marijuana. The door started to shake, with someone thrusting it to open. K. stayed where he was,
with a deep reluctance to stand up. In front of him the image of his Branderburger appeared, and
his ears got fulfilled by the sound of Nernst neighing. When the door buckled under pressure, K.
seen his brother staying there, with K.’s horse, and saying:
-I finally found it, remember that day we both went there? In that wood? In the wood we
supposed Sigmund could escape? Brother, I got it for you, and now, we are able to go for a new
ride, here, in the green fields of Nottingham.
K. stared at his brother for some time, and only admired how tall he was and the shapes of his
body. No words were able to leave his tongue, vibrating his larynx, but the chords were close to
tear apart. They had a room for themselves, far from their home, and they started to pet their horse.
The varnished floor got scratched from horse’s hoofs, but K. didn’t have any intention to understand
how he entered the block. They both laid down in the bed, and felt asleep.
The next morning, a new one far from Vortex, K. woke up alone, with the muscles of his body,
being in a better shape than the last one. The hallucinations of the last night suddenly disappeared
from his mind, and the song of the old man returned in his lungs: “Mmm-mm…”. Vortex seemed
to call him back, and K. wore his raincoat, as the windows got permanently attacked by massive
drops of water. The road leading to work was short and K. entered the building with some drowsy,
short steps. Nick was waiting in the chair in the middle of the entrance hall and saluted him:
 -Seeing you again makes my anger rise and my patience unsteady…You work here, and you
don’t have to leave again, is that clear?
K. answered with a short cough to prevent any pauses in his speech:
-I had a day off, is it true? I thought, I leave when I want, not when my dusty boss requires me
to leave (K. mentioned the word “dusty” to emphasize the situation of Vortex and all the people). I
don’t know what makes me return here over and over again, but I feel the compassion that drives
me, or it is even less than that. The night I picked you up from the floor, didn’t make you less toxic?
Or you didn’t feel anything? I am here now to analyze my case, which is denied by every single
person I visited, and for me it is more like a plot against the pure intentions of justice.
Nick looked to the left, to confirm no one was around to see that disgraceful quarrel and then
lowering the voice, he said:
-You can leave now, and I wish I am not seeing you again. You destroy the way I conduct the
things in here. GO!!!
K. climbed the stairs as usually, and went again to his office. The strange thing was that the door
he left closed was wide opened, and some noises came from inside. When he reached it, a woman
was looking at him from the chair he used. She was in her forties, with a French hat, people called
beret, and a blonde hair of an average length which gently touched her shoulders. She was admiring
the portrait on the wall and K. didn’t disturb her from doing that, until he realized a strange person
entered his office without any permission:
-I am sorry, Lady! I was wondering, if people can now enter your room, without even asking,
then what is the point of privacy? It is expected for everyone to respect the rules, and I am totally
sick of this place, where no one respects me, and my p-r-i-v-a-c-y, privacy! So, Lady, who are you?
-If the question is who am I, then you can stay here for long. Maybe, you wanted to ask “Why
am I here?”.
-No, please, we have all the time in the world, so you can go step by step telling me who are you?
-Exquisite! - she exclaimed. I want to go deep into philosophy, if it doesn’t derange you… at all,
I mean. Imagine a little, little owl, who sees only when the dark outside dominates. I am that owl
(nodding), who is not looking for the truth in daylight, as there is no point of doing it, as the
response is always on the dark side. And why owl? The thing is we all get confused why they can
turn their heads all around, every single degree of the total 180˚. If they feel endangered, they can
rotate their heads and see everything.
But in the beginning, I wasn’t this owl. My experience tells me I was a poor horse (K. reacted as
he was in an electric chair at the word horse). You know, that horse tied up to a tree, or ridden and
always controlled by my owner… and you know I only wanted to jump over fences, to escape.
-In the end, who are you? I am sorry for my weakness, I got moved a bit by a last night dream. I
suppose you are Michelle, they told me about you, my enigmatic ex-colleague, but they didn’t know
who were you (K. didn’t remember who were “they” actually). Nick, if you know this man wasn’t
a very good host when I entered the room for the first time. After several time, after that strange
first case, I was completely aware I need to talk to you, but still, who are you?
-Your name? -she asked.
-Walter, Lady.
 -Walter? German? You don’t know still who am I? That’s right, don’t bother answering, I can see.
I am like you, I am still pinned with my brain to the desk here. I come here in the night sometimes,
and actually I could hear you and your friend, which was scared to death about me.
-Sorry to interrupt you, but is it true? How, and why didn’t you come here?
-No way someone have to see me in the night, young man. Don’t make me answer this question
anymore! Michelle is my name, and THEY weren’t wrong. Those big drops hit the window, those
big drops hide it away. Don’t you think like me?
-Generally, I can’t have any opinion. It is pressing me, the place, but I prefer to resist, not to run,
as you did. It could be a mistake, that I decided to stay, but sure, it isn’t all about me…
-Who am I, Walter? Am I someone you know? Am I someone you want to know?
-You are… a woman? -K. asked ironically.
-Is this everything?
-I bet. I can’t know more than I am supposed to see. I see you want to help me or… no
suppositions.
-Quagmires all around. I mean, your minds, but mine isn’t better. We are all trying to escape
from the quicksand ruining our paths. My sleeves are shorter than yours, but the same way your
ambition and dignity look like now.
-Are you trying to offense me, Lady? I am not falling in such traps, in this egregious attitude
towards me. You are a woman, a woman that got lost in her life, haunting her workplace, incapable
of losing the knot that keeps you tied to Vortex, like a war prisoner tied to one of his stiff bed legs.
K. walked around Michelle and continued his counter-speech near her ear:
-You think you have me in your hand, but still… you stay there, exactly where you stayed when
I passed through the threshold. Who are you is the question you wanted to bewilder me, and I just
offered you the answer, a quite straightforward one.
-Sit down, Walter, please. I wanted to see who was my substitute attorney. I only wanted to see
it, and now, I am afraid that you are caught. I will continue to come at nights… every time my body
gets constrained to do it. You will end like me, lost and reshaped, because no one gives a single
penny for your life.
Chapter 6: The dream
“I don’t belong here even if I get eroded, completely eroded. I meet spirits and I dream them. I
can see Brick, but he is more likely to ignore me. I see the stairs, I can observe Nick’s intentions, but
both of them are looking through my head.
Sam, this bastard, sorry for the violence, but who am I offering these apologies? He is appearing
to dig my tomb, or wait, what? Am I really thinking of it? And Ricky, the guy who is more likely to
lift a huge hammer at the age of over 60, I guess, than me to find him. Now, that I am again in my
office, I got some points to be put on my list. How bizarre… who are all these people, and why
everyone seems to be impassive and apprehensive. I get old, I use words that could have never be
used again in this building. And why I am still reflecting in English? Do I really want it? I want to
get back to 1600, for people like me to die of famine, with their heads starving somewhere near the
dumpsters, if there were some. Sam, Sam, Sam, Ricky… Who is going to kill me first? I see that Sam
isn’t lying, but Ricky? Michelle at nights is walking through the corridors. I seem to be lost, lost for
real, good night Walter.”
With these thoughts K. pursued Michelle, as she was leaving the office. She left for him some
new puzzles to be solved and now he had to be also concerned about her, about her look and her
voice. The figure of the woman visiting Vortex wasn’t necessary for K. to appear in the complicated
case he still had to solve. From an unanticipated desire, K. directed his steps to Diana’s room, he
wanted to be sure women didn’t change suddenly with Michelle’s appearance. Being quiet and
vigilant, he directed his feet towards Diana, without even remembering what office was belonging
to her. He knew it only from an instinctual impetus. The chair under Diana’s bottom seemed to get
broken under the pressure. Not that she was fat or somehow disproportional. The guilt was totally
lying on the chair, made from old wood. This time Diana moved her eyes to K, and her dark rings
got transformed in halos. He was certainly having a hallucination due to the lack of attention from
everyone he met before. The halos were making her eyes shine, and her glasses invisible. Diana took
one of those breaths that announced her sparse good-attitude and then K. was forced to say:
-Is there something good for me? Or I am just dreaming another one? I mean, another day, excuse
me for my lack of fluency. Vortex is Vortex, or is it more? I always think of one of those jacuzzi,
where the hot water circulates all the way around the bath. I wish I had one, so I could understand
the real meaning of the word Vortex. After several weeks I didn’t see you and also my other so-
called colleagues, I realized that now I am oblivious, like you all are. But I am not here to spread
some message of hate, for what everyone had done. Only that thing, concealing the provenience of
this desire is making me come.
Diana was quietly moving her head, with all the contours getting reunified back together,
building the same amphibia face she had before. K. thought she was afraid to say something to him,
because of his last reaction on her voice. The room fell in silence for a couple of minutes, and then
Diana said:
-And I am still the person to fill in the names, the names I don’t know, for the people I don’t
know, and all because of the stupid money they give me. I don’t know something which can help
you, I don’t. I don’t know if the money are the once motivating me to stay. Do you believe, I don’t
have any idea about the year we are in? With every “I don’t know”, I feel how I am degenerating,
and nothing should reason the state I reached. The words you hear are said with no hope, I still
don’t know.
-The way it happened to be so… do you think was made for you, or you made it yourself? As in
my case, I feel part of something like a play in the theatre.
-Leave me, I feel uncomfortable to speak, I am sorry.
-Why? But why? Did I say something wrong? -he rushed to fix the situation.
K. left as soon as he got that Diana would not give him anything. The case he delved wasn’t
losing from its importance, as he spent more time without reflection on where Ricky could possibly
be.
-Was the old Toyota so important on that day, before Halloween? I don’t know. Oh!!! She made
me repeat this! I should avoid the influence from someone in this building. An old Toyota, an old
damn Toyota!
K. got more frustrated when he reached the idea Sam wasn’t coming that day. “Is he still hiding
from Ricky?”-he thought. Until the night had darkened all the furniture and the room itself, K.
somehow got absorbed by the car, and he could only see it passing in front of the eyes.
As he was moving to turn the light on, some whispers could be heard from the other side of the
door:
A baritone voice of a man, with a soft Scottish accent:
-Do you want to be heard? There are people still walking at nights here. So, shut up please!
-Who else is here, besides us?
-I can hear someone moving furtively close to this door. I bet he wants to find something out and
I am not wrong if I say it is a “he” not a “she”.
 K. didn’t know if it was the product of his imagination or something really happening. “If there
is someone, I think I am in trouble and if I am not? It arises I am insane?”. He opened the door when
the peculiar noise ended and as he expected no one was there to wait. A new source of sound made
K. to concentrate on it, as it was approaching him through the stairs. He didn’t have any desire to
assume he was crazy, and considered there was someone from those people speaking.
At the end of the zone enlightened by the lamp, Michelle appeared, holding a towel in one of the
hands. K. She was very confused and previously well-arranged clothes were now rumpled and
dirty. K. rushed to “rescue” her and when he got close enough, he could distinguish some signs on
the towel. They were similar to those on his floor, but with a clearer appearance. Michelle wasn’t
eagerly waiting to explain the situation, but K.’s insistence made her say:
-It was us, near your door, me and that man you search for. I don’t know, he found me in the
basement, presented himself as Ricky and he could easily convince me what to say. I don’t know
how his nets made a poor pray from me, but I got easily determined to help him. He wasn’t
threatening me about anything, he only said: “I am Ricky”- with an insidious voice.
-He left? Or you think he wants to play games with us today? -K. said, with an evident fear in the
voice. What were you doing in the basement? Michelle?
-I was going to sleep there, this night only, but I explained what happened. I don’t know, I was
more likely to say what he wanted, not what I did, without having any understandings between us.
Ricky, I guess isn’t just a man, I am waiting for the end of this story, to understand, but till that
moment, I am going to enjoy the beautiful twists of fate… coming.
-Isn’t there happening something very obscure? You appeared in such a moment, I don’t know,
I am still repeating this phrase, that I don’t know what is going on. K. was a very pragmatic man,
with everything unusual being suspicious for him.
After a half a minute of silence, he added:
-You can stay here overnight, if you want! I can sleep, at least I will make a trial, on the chair, and
for you I don’t find something better than this desk.
K. wasn’t in a good relationship with the women his age, and therefore the last time he could
find someone adequate for fulfilling all his hormonal explosions was more than a year before.
Michelle, in her beautiful forties started to look more and more attractive, with every minute which
passed together. She laid on the table, with her back looking directly into K.’s eyes. She put the
towel underneath the body, to somehow make an illusion of softness. Analyzing her spine, which
had the scapula discovered, a bit, K. observed three lovely brown spots, arranged in a triangle. He
wanted to touch them. So much, that he almost did it, but then retired the hand. Michelle didn’t feel
sleepy staying with the eyes opened, counting K.’s breaths. The tension in the air was dictated by
their interest for each other. He was drawing the triangle in the air, trying to not miss any of the
lines, while Michelle tried to catch his attention.
“I can’t let myself touch her. Her back is so gorgeous, it is so smooth and those dark spots… But
I can’t do it, I am afraid she will get mad about the idea, and she is also old, old for me.”-K. thought.
Lying on the table, Michelle was reflecting on the same things: “After this situation, with Ricky, I
can clearly meditate about our previous meeting, when he was rude in the end of it. But how he
breathes…”
 They both got the mental agreement for maintaining the sexual balance at the same level it was
before. K. was wearing a shirt he bought in Germany two years before, with it having an odor of
one of the perfumes you could smell in the fashion journals. Michelle didn’t find it very attractive
and good-smelling, because it got impregnated with the smell of his sweat and even if other women
would consider it masculine, Michelle wasn’t one of them.
After an hour of staying face to back, they both felt the moment to start speaking:
-You first. – Michelle said.
-Do you think I am the one which have to start?
-Why not? -she continued, transforming their discussion into something meaningless.
-I think you should start, I have these instinctual interpretations, you know?
-This is your reason? One my old friends, a Spanish guy would say: “Por favor mi amigo”. If you
ask me, I don’t have any idea how to start this, but I have a supposition your question to me is about
the same thing. But we, stubborn like some goats. I still can’t say it, because in case you didn’t mean
the same, I will have to cover my head in sand of shame.
-I have a single proposal, can we move our places? Let me stay in front of you, with my chair, so
I don’t see your back, or better I can stay with my face to the door.
-Don’t you think it would be unfair for me now? -Michelle asked. Let’s find a compromise, just
put yourself parallel to this woody table, so none of us would feel uncomfortable.
The clock was approaching the late hours. For K., the situation started to lose from its difficulties
and incommodities with the time steadily passing. The way they solved their issue illustrated a
good collaboration between the past and the present worker in that office. They fell asleep, and that
night didn’t intend to have the calm end they both wanted. Even if Ricky didn’t return, he manage
to sneak in their dreams. In his dream, K. saw a Pit Viper slithering on the floor in the room he was
renting and the bad thing was K. didn’t manage to see it all the time, because of the small dimensions
he had. When finally, the viper bit him, K.’s face changed into the one he saw on the portraits, but
the inability of thinking like Ricky frustrated him.
Michelle got a more humanized representation of Ricky and her dreams based on their discussion
from the other day. Some new corridors, where Ricky was punishing her for speaking too much.
The room was quiet, the two bodies were sleeping, shaking the heads sometimes when Ricky’s face
disturbed them.
They both woke up in a new dream. Now, the office was full of fresh orchids, and a new chair
was there right in front of K.’s. It wasn’t difficult to realize who was the person staying in the chair.
-I am always seeking people, for no reason. And I am saying good afternoon, to both of you.
These flowers, they are my favorites. I used to get some fresh in my room, the time I was away,
away in my own thoughts I mean, I never left actually. You can make everything you want here, in
our dream. So, if someone is allergic, and I wish no one is, you are capable to change the flowers.
K. and Michelle looked like the two only spectators at some drama play.
-This night is actually reaching its end, in some miserable two hours, but till then I want to talk.
I managed to scare you so easily, without having any tools. You didn’t even see me. I guess she told
you about me (pointing at Michelle), but did she tell you something about my face? Look, we are
all having a good time, I enjoy it, because beautiful people are implied, and I know you are not too
idiot to misunderstand what I say. My mind works like a mechanism, a perfectly oiled one. Don’t
you see?
The longer the game is, the longer my satisfaction gets, because I can see more people suffering.
In this process, usually, I am called the coordinator of the chaos, but sometimes people are so stupid,
they don’t understand that this bloody chaos comes not from me, a little piece of garbage, but from
themselves. The more people think that they are in charge of a situation, the more they get confused.
I once realized that important is to check yourself, not to check the others. You can see that the
things are created by people who really are not related, but they are afraid. Fear is your enemy, and
your bodies will make you forget what I am saying now, because they want you to be safe, because
they don’t have any intention to leave your bodies trembling like they are now doing. Expecting
that an inspector will have the capacity of catching me, ask yourself what am I doing wrong, and
who invented these laws, I could easily deny, of course. Walter, you were a very promising, and
you can still be and I see you sometimes realize how tiny piece you are in a big system. Banalities
were always my fortes (grinning).
I see people every day, all of us three do this, and I made you be stuck here to lose yourself among
dead people. Why dead I can see on your pretty faces? Don’t make me laugh, you saw them. Are
dead people good for something? I can tell you they are, good at scaring and demoralizing people,
not that I am one of them, I could be, you will figure it out and when you do it, please tell me you
did it. I bet you like speeches, of course you do, remembering my first speech every time I make
one. To not leave the topic, understand that I am in your heads, I am not somewhere else. Long talks
make me feel exhausted, but your bodies dictate me to say it, because your energy is silently going
somewhere, every time you see me, you hear me, “speak to me”. And by this moment I am only a
damn projection, nothing less and sure nothing more. Am I smart man? Are you a smart man
Walter? Or you Michelle, are you having enough brains to support the system? Or you all think it
is my fault, still?
On the clock I look sometimes, and when I see the minutes passing I want to change the room,
so you don’t get bored until the sun will be high enough to wake you up. What would you like,
ladies… and gentlemen?
Michelle was the one to answer, as she was staying in a trial’s auditorium. She took a breath and
then with the usual official tone of a magistrate:
-The situation gets very complicated, if we both get indications from you. We, which stay here,
in front of you will try to make all the possible to find you, and from all we have, or how you
explained “you gave us”. You want to leave us? Then I would change those ugly orchids, I sort of
hate them, they are the most asymmetric flowers I have ever seen. I would love some peonies, I
would enjoy them better.
Ricky didn’t look very sad about his choice and he didn’t let himself go very far understanding their
position as the background of all the things going on.
In the morning, after only five hours of sleep, they realized that the sunrise had already passed.
They stayed quiet, with no clear reflections on something, but with an odd sentiment of dizziness.
-I feel like this night could change a lot, but I don’t know if it is possible to change a lot. How do
you feel, Lady?
 -Nothing good, you know that? I have to say your desk is comfortable, so comfortable that I
would not refuse to use it more times. I have this clear understanding that he was also the reason of
my resignation, I mean Ricky was, not the desk. (smiling) I was thinking of leaving you alone, for
the second time. He will come for you next, to shake the things around a bit.
K. never offered a response to this saying, as he was confident Ricky would once pick him for a
discussion, but not at that moment. The sore should come at the weakest point of all the general
drama and panic, and K. was more than conscious about it. Michelle left in the room only the smell
of her perfume.

Chapter 7: A third, unsuccessful visit

Sam was staying in the bed, picking his aquiline nose with a handkerchief. No one could really
say where this man was, because he would always keep himself hidden. His toes were usually
uncovered when being at home and this time it wasn’t an exception. The same self-compassion
when glancing at the damaged toes. Sam had a pretty small apartment, with the windows looking
to the opposite side of the main road. It was one of those blocks where everyone’s balcony was built
in the opposite side. He used to think a lot about Ricky, when he got distracted from the problems
he had in the house, including the profound analysis of his toes. Sam got used to imagine someone
was listening to him:
“Ricky, Ricky, Ricky, I can’t get you out of my head. From the moment I saw you, I want to say.
I even returned in my town, to forget you. Sheffield is beautiful actually, all those little football
games going around, and the beauty of the green, freshly-cut football fields. I got to go somewhere,
at some football game, and I used to go to that match, the derby, when Wednesday met the other
team, Sheffield United, but now what remained from such a passion. And there was also another
team, I remember, the team we are all proud of, Sheffield, just Sheffield, the very first football team
this planet saw. They used to play with some bad leather balls at first, I saw them at the damn
museum.
You know, I started today with some strange ritual, I put myself in a “candle position”, the long
ones. I named it like this, because with time you get tired and fall like the wax on a burning candle.
I feel some sort of wax-ish when I am afraid. Should I get a train to Nottingham sometime or it was
enough for me? I don’t know, I would still kick some ball at this field I see from the windows, with
those drowsy kids. I used to call my mom before, you know, when she used to come here often.
From that quarrel, I mean she lost the idea of my existence. I wonder if she still has my number, at
least, this time I don’t leave an axe to fly to her head. People don’t tend to understand mistakes. I
didn’t throw it, I just, oh, sometimes I think I really did it. My mother was the Ricky-type of woman,
not the criminal type of course, but the one which could be able to press your brains and squeeze
the last hope out of them. Also, I get some advantages from her avoiding to contact me, I am in my
peace. In my head, I can suppose that…that axe made Ricky appear in my path. My mom was very
religious, the one that would go those Protestant churches every week. When I was a kid, he used
to bring me there with her. My father left us when I was around 4 or 5 years old, and since then she
made me her personal “slave”. I say it due to the fact she was taking me out of the house whenever
she felt sad or depressed. I don’t judge her somehow, but it wasn’t comfortable for me, as a kid. I
thought she would let me go to that football school I wanted but she was conceited in that way that
she would not get married ever again, so she kept me at home as long as she could do it. We used
to get some money from the government and they were enough to keep that small flat we lived in.
But I guess I got too far. Remember I told you about that lawyer? The young one? I don’t know
what is thinking of me, and I hope he is not mad or something. I was really going to visit him as
soon as possible. Maybe he got some changes for me to be announced. We all think this insane way.”
He was again looking through the window when some humming and singing children were
passing near his block. “They should come from school” – Sam thought. The sun was up, directly
into the middle of the sky, which meant it was the midday. Usually, the sound was the one to reach
his room, and the only time he could picture the things happening outside were those when he got
out of the house. At the door someone was moving very noisily. Sam could feel the goosebumps
separating his skin from the environment.
“It could be that noisy neighbor of mine, remember I told you? (looking to his bed as someone
else was lying there) His name was Chris, that old man, with two big, hairy nostrils. I think everyone
still talks about them, when seeing him. Maybe he is walking around moving the assistive cane,
looking for his keys. He is also a bit bad with the eyes. I always remind his story about that terrible
car accident, and I am lucky with what I got.”
When the noise was stopping steadily, Sam put himself on the bed to “admire” his damaged toes
one more time. He didn’t leave the house from the moment he returned from Nottingham and the
only things in his room were some papers, torn from a book, a dirty cup he used for water and some
snacks, he did with the products he had in the fridge even before his way to K. He condemned
himself to death with the only thought of a criminal, thinking that he was so important to be killed
in the first place. The loneliness was cruel for such a person like Sam as he wasn’t very aware of
what happens with him. He would still use the old cheese he had disregarding that it could damage
him before Ricky gets to the place he was in.
The noise at the door was again rising to an annoying level for Sam. He didn’t think too much
and went to the door to analyze what was going on. The old man was still there. Sam could not
remember his name, so the old man was obliged to do the presentations:
 -Mr.? - Sam was trying to build a conversation.
-Mr. O’Sullivan, please.
-What’s going on, Sir? I would like to know. You actually provoke some noise, and I am not
feeling very good with it, if you don’t mind of course.
-Sorry son, I want to cry, it was a while since the last time I lost my keys. My daughter used to
pin them somewhere, so I knew exactly where they were, but I don’t know this time. Apparently,
they fell somewhere. (he started to cry, with some soft, small tears)
-I don’t think Sir, do you mind if I look in your bag? I want to help you. I am your neighbor if
you wonder.
Sam got his hand in that bag, which seemed very old, made from some lumpy material. It was
smelling like the wet wool of a sheep. Sam could barely approach it and he was forced to cover his
nose. There were more things in the bag sounding like keys, and Sam understood it was the reason
why the man couldn’t find them. He could feel some can opener inside, a knife and when finally,
he touched the keys exclaimed:
-Sir, take them, I got them for you. Can you tell your daughter to be a bit more attentive next
time, because you could have heart yourself with that knife of tin opener? Should I give you a hand
with the door or you know the moves? (the same desperate laugh, when he was trying to make
someone like him)
Mr. O’Sullivan entered his apartment without saying a word, and Sam thought the old man can
have sclerosis. This situation was important for him to decide about the case he left unsolved,
because the next morning he bought a train ticket to Nottingham.
“If this blind man is able to walk around with no fear? Why am I afraid of then?”.
When he woke up the next morning, after another night full of Ricky’s portraits, he packed his
bag with some dirty clothes, taken from the laundry. Also, he put there the pages from the book he
torn, with no reason in fact. Then he took one of his razors along with the toothbrush. When
everything was ready, he closed the door on key, and left. The weather outside wasn’t very good to
walk without an umbrella. Streets were full of the usually dispersed puddles, but still Sam didn’t
touch his umbrella which was a big, black one. He was thinking he could leave it somewhere from
mistake and it was important for Sam as that umbrella was a gift from his mother. Even if he hated
his mother with the beautiful name: Sally, or it was better to say he disliked her, because she still
got the title of the woman that born him. The train station Sam needed wasn’t far from his home, a
couple of intersections away. When he got there, the first thing he saw was a mother staying there
with his three children. They seemed to be emigrants from Jamaica and their dark skin and the poor
look was indicating it. They were wearing some light, so-called clothes and one of them, the
youngest one was chewing a grass thread and Sam got an appropriate question in his head: “Where
they take them from? Every time I see their children, they seem to chew the grass.”. Sam’s train was
ready to arrive at 13:30, and he got used that his trains weren’t late. He got on his train, looking at
the Jamaican family from the window. The train wasn’t full in the beginning, at least the section he
chose to travel in.
The only person in the whole compartment was a man reading a newspaper and Sam agreed
with the thought it was old-fashioned to read a newspaper. People like him would base on physical
appearances when choosing friends or collocutors. The man was wearing a bumpy sweater which
was very common to see on streets in Sheffield due to the cold weather. When Sam was passing
near that man, the last raised his eyebrows in sign of interest to his compartment neighbor.
-Going to Nottingham, my old friend? Don’t worry, I am the good man, I saw it on your ticket,
even before you entered the train. I am going there, as well, would you mind joining me?

****
K. was preparing to analyze the portraits again, in a more professional and meticulous way. He
got tired from doing this almost every day, but he hoped they would give him confidence. The mind
of the man named with a single letter got full of names and situations and the limit was near, but
then he suddenly remembered Sam in a way he never did before. “Sam” was missing from the train
of thought he was having.
“Should I be thankful to this man? He seems dead by now, at least for me, I don’t have a lot of
variants what could happen to him. He made life difficult for me, but still, I don’t see the other boys
from advocacy to get such case as their first one.”
He took them out of the wardrobe (the one with similar signs to those on the floor). All of them.
The two he left near his desk were the main ones to be studied, but he thought he could get new
details from the others.
****
Sam picked his nose again, with the same handkerchief he used the day before. It was already
holding some of his mucus, but in an arcane manner he always founded a clean piece of it.
-You saw on my ticket that I am going? Are you sure, actually I didn’t hold it in my hand today.
-Are you against looking at what you hold in your left hand?
It was the ticket, and for Sam the bizarre appearance of it in his hand was very close to a part
from a terrific thriller. The man knew exactly it was his ticket and not something else.
-And you knew it from? Why not just a piece of paper, but the ticket?
“I must have been very confused if I had taken the ticket instead of the torn papers out of my
satchel”
-Don’t worry, I would say it one more time, just don’t, it was just my good intuition and that’s it.
Sam was continuing his way to the other end of the wagon to avoid the stranger. He would prefer
to stay in total silence, and that guy wasn’t fitting this thought. All the way, the man was glancing
at Sam and the level of cringe for him was reaching the absurdity. When the train got ready to stop
Sam made all the way to the door to be the first one quitting and he had the same feeling as K., that
something was spookily going as a part of a great scenario. The taxis could be seen at 100 m away
from the train’s door and what he made was to embrace his bag like a baby and run, continuously
run from that train. The people around were suffering mutations in Sam’s head, and all he could
see instead of normal faces were Ricky’s faces, a lot of them, with the same tattooed number on the
neck: 1988. The schizophrenia penetrated his brain at that moment, and Sam stumbled when his
feet were a few meters away from a waiting cab. A few Rickies around him jumped and some swear
words flew in his direction. The driver of the cab wasn’t very distinctive from the other Rickies, but
at least he got the idea of those strange hallucinations he was having. The address he gave too that
Ricky was the one he remembered from the file with the crime from 1988 and he knew the way to
Vortex from there. Sam was covering his sleepy face with a blanket that was there on the back seat
to ignore all that happened around. The taxi driver asked: “Are you alright, Sir?”. Sam didn’t give
an answer to the question and soon he fell tightly asleep. The way to Ricky’s house was long and
that nap transformed into one of the nights.
Ricky was driving him to the flat in Sheffield in a special taxi uniform telling a story about an old
house he had visited before. Sam opened the door while the car was still on and he bruised both
arms and the sweater got torn in several places. At this moment the real driver woke him up
whispering:
-Sir, we are there, the place you required, can you wake up?
Sam, still scared and sleepy answered with a certain fear in the timbre:
-Ye-e-e-e-s, I am ready to go, Ri-i-i-i-c-ky,
The name was said in almost total silence and the driver only confused by the fear let his
trembling hands to take out the pennies from the wallet and with no other comments let him go
wherever his client wanted.
****
All the office got full of those portraits again. K. was keeping the door closed, with a chair put
directly into the way so no one entered through to make him feel bad. The chair was supported by
the handgrip and if someone wanted to enter they had to knock. After a while of thinking, K.
ordered the portraits and really thought of burning them, because they were trenchant for his spirit
and anyway useless to find the man he was supposed to.
The knock at the door was accompanied by several long and expulsing tiredness breaths. K. got
the idea it was Sam from the breaths he was constantly hearing, but he wouldn’t let that “bastard”
in for anything he had to say. Sam wanted to enter insistently and he also knew that K. was inside
from the light coming through the holes of the door.
-Siiir, I know you would rather leave me go ‘cause I fled twice before and left you endangered,
but I realized something from the old Mr. O’Sullivan. If you wonder (Sam was talking to K. that
didn’t offer any reaction to that unexpected arrival), he is my neighbor, a nice old man and he is
blind, blind as I was when leaving but he taught me how to pass the difficulties and leave all the
incisive memories apart. He is blind, but he is going out, but I was just staying alone in the flat,
without any bless of the sun in the mornings.
K. was remembering that the old man he met in Vortex was the only one to give him a clue, or at
least something to think of later. The old balancing chair got into his mind and the song: “Mm-mm-
mmm”. No words were able to reach the poor imagination and he could reflect for a minute what
was possible to happen if he knew or he was Italian for a day or two.
From the other part of the door Sam was performing his speech, but from a moment he remained
talking by himself, the same way he was doing at home, in his empty apartment in Sheffield:
-Sir, can I somehow enter the room. If not, I can continue and maybe you will do it soon, I mean,
I am very sorry for all I did, for the laptop and all, I can give myself to this case and hopefully we’ll
get to find Ricky. That man, O’Sullivan wasn’t reminding of Ricky, one of the very few in this world
that didn’t. If I take my mother as an example, I would tell you she is very unpleasant, and I imagine
I could see Ricky instead of her when she comes.
K. finally answered Sam which was almost feeling the pain in his articulations from staying in
one place:
-There is no point of you here Sam, you don’t feel that we are not ruling a thing in this case, don’t
you feel a livid tool used in this criminal game. You are crazy by now I would say, from your words,
that you see him everywhere, but we didn’t still see him, in full touchable size. We never saw him
and we are afraid. Don’t you feel the same? If you don’t, you can go, your pseudo-confidence isn’t
good for anything.
-I don’t know what to answer, but I figured out that we can do something, at least to get a minute
of relief. I feel his image more like an afterimage. Tremulously saying it, Sir.
-None of your excuses will reach their destination, you hear me, don’t you? I might have been
audacious when letting you influence my thoughts, you were no more than the accusation part of
the entire process. I was the only unflinching guy, that would go further every time, but you are a
just a piece of barbed wire which would not be an obstacle for someone seeing you.
-But Sir…- Sam was trying again to make K. let him in, but the response came very violently
interrupting another excuse:
-Go away, please, you can go to the basement, I heard people enjoy staying there, once in a while.
You are lingering there only for me to have a better opinion about you.
Sam wasn’t persuasively trying to reach K. He just felt very annoyed and exhausted, in a way he
never experienced before. Both of the Achilles tendons softened and the breath was losing from the
enthusiasm. Sam touched his black, short hair to realize that the dust was accumulating there,
falling from the ceiling. He collected the splinters in one of the hands, analyzed them for a while
and then started to sniff them desiring to get the smell of Ricky’s sweat which was impregnated in
his olfactory papules.
Everything was ruining for Sam.
“I would hide somewhere behind the curtains like the ants going fast to their… anthill. Oh, even
my tongue spells tautologies. Why he recommended me to go to the basement?”
-Sir? Are you listening to me?
From the other side of the door only silence was stealthily coming. K. got to the desk again to see
that the signs on the floor got new outlines like periodically digging with a knife in a wood pad. He
was barely listening to the anguished voice of Sam.
-Sir? -Sam took an interior decision to leave if K. didn’t offer an answer to that very last trial.
Obviously no hastily answering whispers came from the room, and Sam threw away the ashes and
went to the basement, at least to sleep, he thought.
Chapter 8: A thought to survive
There was a great noise in the hallway of Vortex. A dead body and its pungent scent were scaring
the people walking nearby. From the room at the 4th floor, K. could barely understand the reasons
behind the scared voices, but he was aware that he should go to see what was going on. The stairs
were never jammed with people, because everyone preferred to lazily stay in their chairs, alone
pretending they are working on something very important.
In the hall, K. saw a low of new faces, some of them completely new, people working there he
never paid attention to. Some girls were hiding the corpse with their backs and their felt-skirted
legs. For K. their tears were so bald and false that he wanted to punch them directly in the face and
it was one of the first times he wanted to do it to a woman. Then he said:
-Who is it?
The people around were very confused about the question and all their sour looks stopped on
K.’s face, lighted by one of the chandeliers hanging above. In the first row, the women didn’t want
to move and K. was forced to go around them and the face of that person totally shocked him, it
was Sam. His face and the body were not having any traces of violence, only a scared grimace. No
doctors were there to check the corpse or at least to make a final death statement. Everyone was
feeling very pleased about the fact and K. mixed with the crowd’s intention. Nick was staying at
one of the secretary’s desk looking with an implicated look, averring K.’s fault in this death. After
looking at Sam for a time, the image of the girl in Ricky’s house appeared in the mind and he thought
Sam would be let to stay there like she was. K. put himself the goal to carry the body somewhere
out of the path, and the basement, the place to which he directed Sam the day before seemed perfect
for such things.
Then he approached Nick to ask him about the eye accusation:
-Good morning, Sir, I saw you looking at me with some undertones, do I see the things right?
You incriminate me about all that happened?
Nick firmly focused on K.’s mouth, trying to make him say more things, but it was futile.
-No, I don’t think so, I know it. It is like this from the moment you came. I would like you to
introduce your initiative in some dirty place and just conduct the things like we did. This place isn’t
accepting such people, you understand? And this stubborn, what’s wrong with him? I still think it’s
all your bloody fault, but I am telling you that the boy we send to the archive found him, he was
staring in a point, the same way he is looking now like there was someone or something who made
him have a heart attack. I think if he was older he would die the same way.
-Sir? Why am I guilty? What’s the problem with me? You hate me from the first day, in a curios
way I never figured out. I am going to take your place you think, I don’t want it, I am here only for
experience, but what’s happening is hell over me and my expectancies. And still I feel like I don’t
want to quit, I want to reach the end of this half destroyed human wreck.
-I told you, leave the place, if you are able to do it…
 K. was the only one from the crowd which stayed near the body. He stayed there for more hours
than expected and then realized that time wasn’t a normal concept anymore in the building. Then
he took the dead body which looked perfectly healthy and took it to the place he thought in the
morning. A satisfying curiosity for that place under the whole building was moving in form of
adrenaline through K.’s body. There were a lot of metallic old shelters with all the corners being
covered in spider web. The rusty framework of the shelters mixed with the cold in the room made
K. realize that no one could ever live there as Michelle said before.
“You are dead Sam. I know there is little hope you will hear me talking, but I still want to
apologize. Nick said its totally my mistake that you are dead now, and in a way, I can’t disagree
with him, because faintly keeping you outside made you go to this dark place. I know you were a
good man, at least like a personality yourself not towards the others. You had this very unpleasant
thing… to appear where is not even your business, like in the day you broke my computer, and it
is hilarious that now I am working on one of those old, fat-bottomed computers. There are good for
nothing if you want to know something. I guess if you were alive, you would enjoy me talking to
you, and I want to rehabilitate all the things before I put your body behind one of those metallic
things. There is no point in telling you you don’t deserve such nasty conditions to be “buried”. You
don’t care probably by this moment, you are just a biological trace in the world you lived. Soon,
your body will disappear, all the tissues, your body will get dry and brittle. I tend to approach
wrong topics sometimes, but I just want to say something to you, my first client. You were so clumsy
and emotionally weak that I wanted to resign from the first day of work, but now I see what Ricky
wants to get. I will try to find him for you, and kill him. I never said that, but I have an extraordinary
inclination to cut him in fourths. I don’t have what to lose anyway, I will not escape till I don’t see
the demonstration that he is dead, that he is hidden like you, in some basement, rotting like that girl
did. I would say you want to tell me something if you were alive, but you don’t. Listen Sam, I am
glad that I met you, and I wish you good luck and what else you want to have.”
K. let all his obstreperous anger to be relieved outside of the soul through the walls of his lungs
and through the entire skin. He could narrowly breath there near a corpse and he associated the
scent with that of vinegar. When K. decided to finally leave, he hugged the decomposing body and
concealed it behind a pile of documents from the ground. “They could be the once Nick wanted me
to copy in digital format”-he thought.
When getting a few meters away, to see how the people entering would see the body, it was
confusing to find it again and it made K. reflect again:
“How short and worthless are our lives. Sam isn’t there now, he was actually, but now, what I
see is that he was substituted by a bunch of useless, pulped paper. If I knew where he lives…”
The hallway was full with people again, interested in everything else but not in the body lying
there in the morning, on that varnished, old floor. The only thing that made K. feel good was that
Nick wasn’t there to say some new sardonic speeches about how bad and dishonorable he was.
**
K. got nervously to his office desiring an unfathomable door instead of the unsteady one he had.
He took the one of the portraits, the best one of them, turned them on the other side, took two pens,
in case one was running out of ink and started to write violently:
 “I want you to die. You and all your friends, your mother and everyone you ever touched. You
hear me, criminal bastard, you are not the lord or the boss. In fact, you are a little piece of garbage,
I have this on my mind from somewhere, only this was the determinative I wanted to use, a little
piece of dirt, an ash in a tray, a needle hidden in a pillow, a two letter word in a book, a nothing you
are. I know you will still read this, maybe you are watching me now, nervous like I am, but you are
going to lose.
I have these four lyrics, fulfilled with banality, but listen:

I want me to cry
Until the moment you die
Until your skin is one’s dye
Until you die, until you die

I know you killed him, poor Sam and also that I am guilty, but you arranged it, you, stupid
criminal. I never felt like this before. NEVER. Ready to write it with blood. NEVER. I will not tell
you anymore about what I don’t know. You can get in my mind using any of your tricks, but the
only words you will hear… actually we will get our chance to speak, maybe you will sneak again
in one of the dreams when I will be at home. Next time I will make you notice me, I will not stay in
the corner. See you.”
When the paper ended, he pressed the final dot until he made a hole in the paper. K. got very
concerned suddenly about the ways to identify Ricky’s location. The most insane ideas came and
left the conscience affected by the hitherto death of Sam:
“May be a rat trap? Let’s imagine how it would go in case I am not dead until that moment.
Catching him on something he really enjoys and loves or at least, if not loves…thinking of someone
or something, what could it be? In the end of the day he is not a robot, a usual earth-born. I never
talked to him and I don’t know things about the behavior he is most likely to manifest. The crazy
think I know is that I am the only one who never saw the man. All did. I don’t know about Sam, but
I tend to think he was scared by the criminal when the death punished him. Could he be the Grim
Reaper himself, Ricky? There is no point to doubt that things are not going according to the normal
laws.
Maybe the girl she killed? Maybe she is a good point to start with? I don’t know how the mind
of an ordinary culprit works, there should be bugs fighting lava and even more strange stuff going.
I could be right with the statement, it sounds very good actually, only me and him now, he scared
the people I never actually considered very useful, some of them will die later I think. Be strong
Walter.”
When he turned to the door, there was a person admiring the difficult reflections K. had at the
moment. It was a boy, around the age of 20, who was keeping some orchids in one of the hands.
They were of different species and of different colors. K. was perplexed and very worried about
who was that boy, and why he delivered flowers to him. At the moment, nothing made sense for K.
and no logic had to be given to those flowers, appraising their quality, their state and their hidden
intention.
 The boy was analyzed by K. in the very inconsequential details. He looked at the T-shirt, at the
jeans jacket, at the cap, at his sleeves and his palms, at his sweating forehead and even he tried to
sniff the young man staying there. It was embarrassing for K. to do it, but strictly necessary in his
own opinion.
-Do I have to say hello to you, do you think so? Or should I say hello to Ricky? -K. was saying
words with no actual meaning for the boy who was striving to stay quiet.
-Do you mind if I leave, Sir?
-No, can you join me to a cup of coffee? For the moment.
-I will get punished at work, Sir. I should really retire. There is one of the guys waiting for me. I
like your intentions though.
-I am very disappointed to say that you will let me offended if there is no acceptance from your
side. If they give you a fine, let me pay it for you, but I want to talk and its clear I want details about
these flowers. (K. kicked them slightly with the leg to show he was very indifferent about them, but
at the same time with great concerns about who might have sent them to his office)
-It ends that I can’t refuse you, Sir?
-Exactly! So, don’t be worried, just don’t, I am with a few innocent questions. You know the girls
receiving flowers and wondering who sent them. I can try to behave that way. My first question is
if you have any clue or detail about the customer sending me the flowers and also if you have
something from your side?
-I can tell you only a thing, that it was a man.
-You know that it is not enough at all, how was the voice at least, how he paid, think please, it is
crucial.
The boy started to panic when K. offered the question about the voice and then quietly answered:
-He had a very strange voice, one of those you can’t compare to anything else, something you
hear once and hope you will never do it again, but one thing impressed me. The way he was
speaking, even the voice didn’t mess the things up. He seemed very intelligent and well balanced,
very attentive about everything. I don’t want to make some discriminatory allusions, but are you
gay?
-NO! -K. abruptly answered. This is why I ask you, don’t you find it confusing that a man sends
flowers to me? A man myself. But they are beautiful, the orchids, aren’t they? I like the white one.
-Yes, they are definitely one of the best ones we had there. You know, there is a detail… this order
is for a week, every day you have to receive these flowers. I don’t know who affords that, but it’s
clear is not a poor man. You see the flowers, Sir? They are the most expensive in our shop, they are
collected only if someone wants them. A rare species…
-But why? Okay, leave me in my intimacy. Thanks for the flowers, they are really beautiful. If
you come the next week tell me if they punished you. Good day.
-Good day! -the boy rushed to the door and K. never saw him again, as the boys sent were
changing daily. None of the faces repeated, none of them.
The boys coming to deliver the flowers, after the first one were shy and somehow scared of the
place they were in. They were strangely analyzing the walls, staring at everything what was
different for them. The only discussion he managed to have was on the 5 th day of flowers. That
young man was more confident than the others, but he lacked linguistic skills being able to link
words in very short and simple sentences.
-Ma name is Steven. These flowers for you.
K. was a bit disappointed about the young man, but he didn’t avoid to face a conversation like
that one.
-Do you know something, Steven? About who is sending the flowers? Something?
-Must I know it, Mr.? You better know.
When the conversation reached its upper limit of balderdash, K. hasted to end their talk instead
of dallying and losing time.
It was the moment to go to the place where the skeleton of a woman killed by Ricky was lying.
The moment arrived when he counted the seventh day of flowers. The office got full of them, every
corner. It was difficult again to leave the chair and the building. The room made him very passive
and inattentive, very slow-thinking and quiet, but he managed to gather all the attention in one side
of the brain. The gimmick for K. was from what to start when arriving at the place.
K. grabbed the coat he was always wearing in the last days, because the building got colder and
of any upheavals. Tiny specks covered his view when he finally exited the building. His mind found
the idea to go to that home unrealistically superfluous when a week before it seemed the only
solution.
K. tried to predict some possible scenarios of him staying again in the scent of a dead body. The
old way of looking at things, an aghast man sitting in front of Vortex, contemplating the scenes from
the head. K. never liked to be a pawn, even if that was a pawn in the front row. To be the Queen
from the last row was more appreciable as when the pawns finally fall, pawns like Sam or Michelle,
then the time for the great hits comes, the Queen always has the power. After an exhaustingly long
stay, K. jumped, changing the supporting leg once at a time. When the lethargy left the violet blood
streams of his legs, he started to move along the street. A machine was passing nearby wiping out
the dust and the small, small stones of the way. K. followed it focusing on the driver, which was
very moody and perplex about the job he was having. The quietness of the street calmed K. for some
hundreds of meters. Timewise, it would be insignificant.
The sun was shining through the clouds, pointing the light layers towards the old house of crime.
The windows were not accepting the sunlight gleaming it in the outer world. K. saw the door which
was opened and the instinct pushed him to approach it. No fear ever could be compared to K.’s
feelings. The space between the door and the wall, supposing to keep it closed was obscurely
pleasuring the eye, and the previous instinct lead him through the door’s framework. A sudden
pressure in the stomach made him seat on the dusty shoes, but he never stopped from going. He
pulled the floor moving like a soldier in the war when the enemy was spreading bullets above the
head, and for K. the war was the best association with what was happening. “A move and the bullet
is destroying my body.”-he thought.
The things didn’t change too much. The orchids were already there, the orchids similar to the
ones he received from the seven young men. “Seven young men would dare to enter an abandoned
place?”.
 The drama was staying there for K. “Why if Ricky is somewhere around looking at me? The
flowers, they are perfect.”. K. looked again at the skeleton which seemed rottener. The white bones
weren’t white even the first time, but then they looked like pure ivory.
“No matter what happens, I should leave Vortex and the city once and forever. Sam returned,
Sam really returned and never knew that better was to stay at home, trying to reach his Mama.
Naturally, I need to go, I need it.”
K. struggled with his knees once in a while, they really hurt. His rotulas were whanging and
crying to be detached from the entire leg. The pain hit him there, resulting in kneeling near the heap
of bones.
“These pain hitters are irresistible. I need to get up. GET UP body, please.”
K. massaged the knees, pretending to ignore the skeleton. The pain relieved as soon as the sun
retired the entire army of rays. Alone in that house like a wounded wolf, K. made the decision to
change the things, basing on the serendipity of the future life. The next day he would take a train to
the place he knew better, the beautiful city of London.
Young K. enjoyed to look at the old photos such emblematic cities like London was. He admired
the red the city was wearing, he would enjoy to establish there.
The joy behind the idea got rapidly killed when he arrived at Vortex. Nick was again waiting as
feeling those thoughts inside K.’s head. Nick was anxiously moving his legs and asked K. when that
understood Nick would call him anyway:
-Where have you been? -with a false composure. You never tell me, I wish I could know
everything, as your supervisor.
-Looking for something in my case Sir. Remember the dead boy there? His case, still desiring to
finish it. Do you mind if I do it, Sir?
-Oh, well…
K. never cowered when facing his supervisor. It would be a very stupid and superficial attitude
towards himself. Nick let him to go, and when he got back to his office, the drawings on the floor
got finally clear and easy to understand.
The words graved were: “Giro, giro tondo” and the song returned into his mind, combining both
the melody with the words.
 Chapter 9: A publisher in London
When returned at home, there was a thin layer of dust covering the furniture. After several visits
at the old house, K. actually started to hate dusty things being finally extricated about the Vortex,
about Ricky and about the people working there.
He breathed differently and started to think about the near future. But before all the things he
searched for the song on Google. He typed: “Giro, giro tondo English translation”. The first page
translated the whole song for him and the mumbled lyrics of the old, balancing man found their
meaning in that poorly arranged Google page:
Ring-a-ring o’ roses
The world falls down
The old man said right things, if by world he meant the Vortex making K. reflect on those two
meaningful lyrics:
“Ah, I never actually asked the name of that old man. Its correct what people say, that sometimes
the indefinite words of an old man can be wiser than the speech of a youngster. The world falls
down actually, by itself, not only the world of Vortex. I will never get the answer about the bizarre
things happening there. The simplest thing to ask is who was staying in my office on the wall or in
Diana’s office on the wall. Maybe it is the best way it can be. That I don’t know and sometimes to
lack knowledge ends in a safer way, despite the usual phrase that knowledge gives safety.”
The first idea that popped into his head was to write a book, a short one. Several titles lead their
way from the subconscious.
“How to avoid the fear if someone threatens you during your work as a representative of
justice?”. K. felt like he was the most suitable person to write such papers. As his move would take
much more time than a day he decided to take a pen and writing down the first thoughts, obviously
regretting about not having his laptop or even the damn fat computer from Vortex.
“Lawyers are the people working for the justice, working to promote fairness and defend those
who suffer from illegalities. During their trials, during the court meeting lawyers get threatened by
the criminal authorities from every individual city. There is no such thing as fear in all these
procedures. It is most likely that your mind suggests you to be afraid when there is no threat. If
imaging the danger of a terrorist? The only reason we fear them is because they get the
psychological control of our minds driving our fears to nowhere. Remember how much lawyers
died from murders in the past decade? Only a few. But those a few are enough to scare the entire
justice.
 The thing I managed to learn during my very short experience was to be cool in every situation,
to maintain calm, to keep moving forward declining the outer details. In the situation when my
client died, when several colleagues were starving and scared in their offices, I managed to keep in
control the situation. But how to do it when your nerves are not of steel? Actually, the best way to
not get in such situation is to avoid them. The analogy with childbirth is obviously giving a better
understanding: if you want to have no children, just be an abstinent.
If you still want to succeed, having the best cases it would be good to control yourself every single
time. My client was very dull and boring, but a thing he taught me was to be patient. Actually, I
couldn’t tell him to stop his useless apologies every time and that made my mind cool regarding
such small details.
Patience to wait until the police catches the criminal shouldn’t make you very afraid even he is
free somewhere in your city. They don’t usually risk to get out of their dens.”
When the first introductive words were written, K. realized that he was really in doing it, in
writing even though the criminal games represented more fun for him than just making notes in a
journal. He left the pen and went to the bed he left tidied a couple of weeks before.
“Finally sleeping in horizontal position.”-K. sarcastically thought when the stretched backbone
got relaxed. At night, the only dream K. had was of Sam, a real Sam, the one lying there in the
entrance hall of Vortex. He felt again the same compassion, but K. seldom woke up in the middle
of the nights, even if having severe nightmares.
In the morning a knock woke him up. He set up a meeting with the owner even before
understanding the fact he wanted to leave the city. The owner of his small flat was a man over the
age of 50, with short uniformly growing hairs and a slightly bumped belly, because of the beers he
was always having after work.
K. always smiled seeing this man. They could be friends in K.’s opinion if not the age difference
in between.
-I guess I have beaten at the right time boy. You look like just woken up. I couldn’t come any
later, sorry. Let’s get to our business?
-Sir, I wanted to announce that I am actually leaving the flat in two weeks. I didn’t feel like
running from here, even if the idea visited me over the times. The last weeks I didn’t sleep here, I
wasn’t here for a couple of weeks either, and then the decision to leave the city. I would be grateful
agreeing on the sum I have to pay for the two weeks remaining as well getting our contract to an
end.
-Ah, my boy.
The old man, named John, saw the paper with the crime details on it.
-Oh, Sir, about that, don’t look please. Just from the work. Some crimes of a guy known simply
as Ricky.
-I got to go boy. -he rushed and left K. alone the same way people were doing the last days. He
never saw him again. He never paid the money left.
The next two weeks were productive and silent for K. The short book was going very well. He
described the case he had alongside the stories happening.
“The new branch in justice? Fear Management”
 Nevertheless, the stories were descriptive and very detailed. K. didn’t miss anything from the
things which happened. After two weeks K. could see material results of his work. A heap of notes
and folded papers were covering the workplace and the task to arrange them in order was the most
difficult. More difficult than the task Nick gave him in his first week at work. The thoughts on those
papers were so similarly bizarre that it was too hard to link a chain from them.
Then, he put the gathered papers in one of his two backpacks, which were already staying near
the exit. All the stuff he had to be worried about were in the “picked one”. K. didn’t have any idea
still where he was going to, but London was definitely his choice.
There were several cabs in front of his block, waiting usually for clients to appear like mushrooms
or worms after the rain. A cab driver was fixing something under the bonnet when he noticed K.
carrying on the backpacks, the only things he took with him in that journey.
The driver raised his hand and shouted:
-Free ca-a-a-a-b! Free ca-a-a-a-b! -knowing what he was doing, because K. immediately noticed
the driver and the only thing he said was:
-To the train station. Don’t be very fast, I want to look around.
There was pretty quiet in the cab until the moment the driver yawned being obviously bored
about the atmosphere. K. tried to not talk to people anymore. Not for a long time. Everyone was for
him now a new potential Ricky, with the hammer hidden somewhere under the seat.
The train station was almost empty at that time in the morning. The only people there were some
nuns collecting money for a school. K. dropped some coins in their straw basket and then went to
the ticket office. The train to London had already left and the next one was in about an hour.
“Some force is still keeping me in the city, even if I am almost gone, gone for good.”-he thought.
The next hour he spent analyzing the people around, their moods and them being under time
pressure.
“Everyone is a fly when they rush. I wonder where everyone is flying. Hmm, nice play on words
right here in my mind. Those nuns are very pretty and they are not rushing anyway. Should I talk
to them? Or it is better to calmly leave the place. Maybe I will meet nuns in London as well or better
some priests? No, better nuns. Priests can be very annoying with their fundamentalist.
Wait, wait for the train Walter.”
The train was appearing from the darkness of the tunnel like a mole is making its way through
the soil. It had a lot of compartments and K.’s ticket was free of choice, so he tried to pick the
emptiest one, where people are old and very, very calm. He knew that the spirit of Nottingham will
not leave him with all those locals accompanying his entire way to London, but at least the idea to
partially get rid of it made him briefly smile. The compartment he entered was one of the furthest
from the central doors of the train where the main crowd was waiting. In that very far side of the
train K. managed to change looks with several women and some very strange band of boys holding
their electric guitars.
One of the women presented herself as Susan and then K. thought: “Why everyone is trying to
talk to me? I want to escape it. Ah, yes, my politeness, my endless politeness.”
-Good morning, Susan! How do you do?
 -Well enough, do you mind if I join you? I am just alone here for some hours, and I see an
intellectual in front of me. You know this feeling? When you feel you actually feel people and how
they act?
-I heard this once… controlling the feelings. I know a man telling me this all the time, that he
knew me very well and in greatly deep details. Do you mind telling me more about these first
impressions? It can help me writing my book. Oh, forget about the book, just tell me about your
feelings. I actually need more of it to understand certain features of someone’s psychology.
-Sorry? You said a book? That you are writing a book? That’s right? I am publisher myself if you
want to know. A pretty good one. I am in touches with Dan’s Brown publisher since a while. Not
boasting, I just want to know you can rely on me, stranger. (she offered K. a friendly smile)
-I mean it is not finished. At all. Some scratches on the papers I did for the past two weeks. I don’t
know if I get done with it, but I enjoyed the idea of doing it. I mean, I don’t have now any place to
go. I don’t have too much money for hotels now. Not even for a shared place in a hostel.
-What’s your book about?
K. didn’t feel suspicious about Susan the way he was doing with lots of people he met in the path
before. He was just looking at her, seeing a good interlocutor in her personality, but she asked about
what the content of those notes. He never wanted someone to hear the story from him personally.
-Huh. -K. hesitated. It is a short story long. A short story with a lot of detailed stuff about the
conscience of a criminal and I would characterize it as a guideline for the threatened lawyers, as I
was feeling myself.
-Never heard about someone describing such topics. Well, I didn’t think it would impress me.
Whatever you were going to tell me, but now I see I was kind of right. You are an intellectual. A
very sharp and good one. May I see the notes?
-You can see only the first page. It was my boost to continue writing, and this is what I can show
you by now.
It didn’t take for an experienced eye to pass through everything very quickly. The reaction Susan
had was priceless for K.’s further attitude. She was very pleased about the paper-based notes.
-This is actually GREAT. -the emphasize on the last word made everyone turn their heads in the
direction where the “pair” discussed the book. I haven’t seen paper notes for ages. It made me
ecstatic. Do you have more of these?
-I do, but can we get back to it later, because I feel now like a butcher thinking about if he cut the
meat properly. I feel this about my papers and also the hand-writing. I want to get everything in
order, and then we can meet again.
-Your metaphors are so ear-catching. I want to have you in my office when the work is done.
Take this money for the coming period. It should be enough to rent a room.
K. wasn’t in the position to refuse the money and he coolly accepted the cash. He was very
enthusiastic how the miserable life he had was going up again.
-Did you feel something passing near Nottingham? -K. asked. Didn’t you feel virgin about it?
Feeling-wise? Didn’t you feel empty when waiting for the crowd to get in.
Susan asked with a short laugh:
 -I felt more like this reading the paper. I mean, I always considered the trains, the airports neutral
points on map. Officially they belong to the cities, villages and so on, but isn’t the real essence of a
location to have its own inhabitants? Not with people from the surroundings being there? Do you
think, for example, that an airport in Barcelona with hundreds of Chinese people in it is still morally
belonging to the city? I guess this is why I didn’t feel something.
“That was so good from her.”
-Susan? Why did you approach me? I am a sceptic, no doubt that you liked me, but why? Sorry
if the question makes you feel bad or angry. But I felt part of a scenario before and to experience it
again will kill me definitely. I have to endure all these things for nothing?
-Oh, that’s how one bad experience fades the other good ones. Sure, why not supposing I am
doing my job very well? Or that you are just lucky. Some luck at its best, huh?
The puzzle wasn’t solved for K. He was still searching answers for the luck he had. Susan was
admiring his black hair through her palms, exposing the pure enthusiasm she had, but K. was still
cogitating.
-Okay, I have to believe you. There is no doubt that I should listen to my fate. Maybe it gives me
back what was taken from me before during this stupid voyage in Nottingham.
-If you want to forget, just don’t say it too loud anymore. You need to get distracted from your
old business.
-I have the hope that what I have written on those papers you saw will end to be an axiom, not
just an abandoned theorem. My hapless days should end, they should.
-Oh, please stop. You are strong, I thought. Let’s sprawl a little on these seats.
Susan took her words very seriously and she put her legs, with her boots faintly leaving traces of
some dried mud. K. was excited about that total lack of negative emotions and about the juvenile
happiness. He did the same thing, and for several minutes she felt like birds would feel resting on
some clouds.
The time wasn’t meekly waiting for them to enjoy the moments K. considered everlasting. The
train was losing from its speed and being very inattentive K. fell off the chairs and the only thing
Susan was going to do was to laugh. If it weren’t her there, K. would likely be very serious, but that
wasn’t the moment to do it. He just did the same thing, ceaselessly laughed.
In meanwhile he collected the paper scraps and put them together in one of the two backpacks
he was having.
“I might look weird with two backpacks. I desire Susan didn’t see them very closely.”
-You know, can I get your number? I want to talk to you more in the future. I rarely meet people
with so good thoughts, some of them complex, some of them bizarre, but still they seem to fit
together perfectly. I met a lot of poets, lots of writers and journalists, but they never seemed
something very special to me. Just a bunch of people who can link words into beauty, no more than
that. But you write from inside, you feel the words, you feel pain from the words you’ve just written
on a paper. And they all come with their computers. I wish they had those old ones where you have
to wait periodically for a letter to appear on your screen.
K. interrupted her when she touched the old computers topic:
-Please, don’t mention old computers, I have a story with them. Maybe later you will know it.
 Susan sarcastically answered:
-Don’t worry, we don’t keep them in our houses or offices here in London.
-Here is my number. I am quite alone, so whenever you want to call, tap the number and I will
surely pick your call.
When the train finally stopped, they seemed the only ones in the wagon as no one was there
before that day.
-That was a good time if we didn’t see those people getting out. Look, the train station. There are
the cabs, I will show you. -Susan politely said.
-I mean, can you get me to the bloody hotel? I want some rest after all the mess.
-No problem, and if you are good enough, exclude the word “bloody” from your bloody lexicon.
It is worthless, here in London. I knew a cabby who used the word quite a lot and you know he
wasn’t from the good boys, making his bargains. Once a policeman caught him when he was
changing the settings of that device counting the kilometers. They took him he used the word
bloody before saying hello, so think about it later. Let me get you a car now.
K. seized her hand and quietly said:
-I am apologizing. I should be more attentive, sorry for these words! I am completely vexed about
the new place.
-Don’t worry comrade. Everything is fine. -she gently smiled.
“Her sense of humor is brilliant. I should see such people more, on a daily basis. I guess she can
fulfill my lack of healthy social interactions from the last period. I hope thinking without saying a
word will not make her consider me a freak.”
-So, go in comrade.
-This was the fastest way you could arrange the things. Thanks for all, I mean see you later.
Then, Susan told the cabby to drive K. to a hotel on the Staines Road, and K. started to have an
inexplainable woe. He would be alone again, hidden somewhere in a hotel room.
“At least with a hope.”
All the way, he meditated how the things were going up in a step-by-step process.
“Am I on my way to laurels now? Or it is another trap? A plethora of thoughts is obfuscating me.
The heinous figure of Ricky will ever leave me to live peacefully?
How on Earth am I going to stay there alone again? I hope they have more sunny days here in
London. I am not going to get brainwashed by seeking people and buildings through this metallic
framework.
I have to remain concentrated and steady. Allegedly, Ricky stayed there, far away from me.”
The cabby was a young man, one of those K. used to see with a bunch of orchids in his door. He
wasn’t very talkative.
“He must be a freshman in the business.”
-Do we still have a lot until we get to my place?
-No, Sir, some minutes, I won’t make a guess, but still, hopefully we get there in ten minutes, Sir.
-Okay, now get your eyes back to the road. Thanks.
“I am too rude with people today. I should really get a rest. A full day of lying in bed and
overthinking.”
 When the cabby announced that they arrived, K. rushed to get the money out and told the cabby:
-Keep the change.
The young man smiled and left, leaving K. alone in a totally new city, but the hotel was right in
front. The glass front door lead to a quite well-arranged lobby, with only two people in. One of the
women responsible for bookings saw him and greeted the new client:
-Sir, do you want to make a booking?
-Yes please. A room where is quiet, very quiet. That’s for work. I hope you can arrange one for
me. Thank you.
-A quiet one, let me think.
A minute of searches in the database and voila:
-Oh, Sir… I know what would fit you perfectly.
-Lead me there please, as fast as you can.
The room was simply arranged, the windows opened to a side-street, but the view wasn’t crucial.
He got the clothes of and them sneaked into a deep, deep sleep. It would be perfect if the wicked
face of Ricky didn’t appear.
This time, K. was visited in London., in his new hotel room. Ricky violently entered the front
door to ask about K. and when the answer hesitated to come from the receptionists, he hurried to
the room where as in reality K. was sleeping.
-You decided to run my old friend. I thought we could have a nice time together.
This short beginning of the speech woke K. up and Ricky started all over again, shouting the part
he was going to repeat.
-A bad place to hide. I would preferably see you in another country, but no, you would not escape
anyway. I am your shadow, your only shadow. You don’t see, but at nights I am using to move and
look at you. To goad you is a great pleasure and if you don’t throw me through that window, you
can’t change anything about me being your shadow. I saw you write a book about us, about our
game and about me. You really think you overcame the fear already? Are you ready for these eternal
pains and struggles? Because writing about it every holy day you will get your nerves sucked out.
-Good morning or evening or afternoon Ricky. You pick yourself. Anyway, you are always with
me. Nothing makes you exit my brain, but yes, I managed to get over the childish impulses I had
before when reflecting about you. I thought you are braver, but still you never came to see me in
reality. Never came.
-Be sure, I will visit you, in the coming period. I bet there is no trouble about me simple people
know. I am just waiting when you will get maximally unbridled, when the wrath will be the only
core of your soul, when you will beg for death. I will find you in the deepest and the best hidden
pothole on the planet.
-So, I will try to finish the book as fast as I can and then I can breathe normally, without any Ricky
in my head. For a replete image, you can jump yourself through the window. I am not going to
occupy my time with a meanwhile defenestration.
When he woke up, the dizzy conscience made him exclaim:
-Will you ever disappear from my head? WILL YOU?
The, the telephone rung and a sweet female voice announced:
 -Sir, there is someone in the lobby, who wants to see you. She presented herself as Susan. Do I let
her in?
-Yes, of course, tell her to come in 5 minutes until I dress up.
The knock at the door came even faster and when K. opened, the big smile on her face made him
devoid of the old thoughts.
-Good morning.
Impressed:
-Oh, it’s already morning? How could I sleep so much? You know this happens to me a lot in the
last period. When I put myself in bed I just sleep for 16 hours or even more. I am surmising now it
will different, like it was before the job.
-16 hours? That’s a lot I would say, but lucky you. There a people who just don’t wake up for
days. Some black humor, get ready. We are going to a near café to get our coffees of courses. I hope
you love coffee.
-Definitely, the best drink humanity ever invented. I am actually ready. The messy hair isn’t a
big deal?
Susan smiled and K. followed her on the way through the long corridor. People there were
always greeting each other.
“Maybe this is the nemesis of Ricky. People smiling all around.”
K. was whirling his spoon in the cup, discrediting the work of the barista aspiring to a perfect
mix. Susan started to put sugar cubes in her coffee, and K. again grabbed the splendid arm and said:
-Hey, don’t do that. You are killing it. Just don’t put sugar in that brown miracle.
-You know, I am in love with sugar-coffee not with coffee-coffee.
-Okay, I will not insist, but you are on your way to lose a beautiful cup of coffee. We both ordered
Americanos, but in the end, I drink a genuine one, while you are breaking the sugar chains.
-I mean, it’s a ceaseless joy talking to you, but please save the sugar chains. At least by the mean
of words.
-Actually, you drowned them yourself. Now stick them again piece by piece. What made you
visit me today? Only to see what is going on with my hotel room or to have a little talk on the future
book.
-None of those variants you proposed. Actually, I found a flat for you. I’ve been thinking a while
about it, but you can join me, at my place. We can live together until I publish your book and
allegedly you get your money. I have two rooms so you can share.
-That would actually be magnificent. I lived alone for too long.
-So, you agree? I thought it would easier for us to get along, to discuss your book from time to
time. You get benefits and I save up some money.
-I hope that Ricky isn’t lurking in your flat. I need this trivial thing, to talk to people. So, the book,
I just slept as you might have seen on my face and nothing is added to the previous scraps, but
today you will have the chapters and maybe a bit written. The best way to think of a book is when
you look at its table of contents.
 -Don’t you think it works the same for humans? That we all offer a certain table of contents which
is fully opened to the others and some epilogue nobody sees? What would be your table of contents?
Walter?
-You know, I always have a different preface depending on people I am talking to. For my boss
Nick, I was pretending to be obeying to all his whims and wishes, and he finished it the book started.
I stopped from fulfilling his desires.
With my client Sam, the things were different. He was very afraid about Ricky. He was really
afraid about him and I tried to support the poor boy. I was always calm and gentle, even when he
broke my laptop. But then he opened my book as well when the bounds were exceeded. He fretted
all the time about the criminal and my table of contents wasn’t for him a way to escape even when
he came back convinced about his bravery.
And my brother. For him I was always opened. I was an opened book. And now if getting to the
point, my chapters are simple. In fact, there are three: my life in Germany, the university and the
Ricky period. Now, we are still in the period of that odious man. What about you?
-Beautifully answered. I am continuously revering you. I would not give you too much
information. You are my client, and I need to know things about you, not vice versa. I need your
understanding. Just business with pretty chats for a quite long time. Books don’t write themselves.
-I also admire your kindness. I hope that nothing will hamper the end of Ricky period to occur.