A Polished Tale [All The Best 24h race]

A woman's perfect new home begins to feel inhabited by presences she can't quite see. In the corner of her eye, they move. When she turns, they vanish. A psychological tale of perception, paranoia, and the fine line between reality and imagination.

This piece is partly autobiographical, and partly an homage to Giorgio Manganelli's masterpiece Centuria - 100 Romanzi Fiume (Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels), a book consisting of one hundred very short absurd, enigmatic, and dreamlike stories that I read at a very young age and that had a huge impact on my artistic practice.

I created A Polished Tale as part of All The Best Radio's 24h Race, an exciting annual event, a creative challenge that gives producers 24 hours  to conceptualise, record, and produce short stories on a specific theme, this year it was 'mirrored'.

If you have never taken part in a radio race, I encourage you to: it is so much fun, and, at least with All The Best, it is completely free to participate. 

Enjoy the ride!
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What is Art, in all the wrong places?

Characters who can't always be trusted. Because they often don't see the difference between sound and noise, between countryside and abandoned building, between fiction and reality.
I explore sound, speak languages and talk to strangers. This is my work.
AIR Member. www.cristinamarras.com

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) For a few days now, the woman feels a strange sense of unease.

The woman has always led a very solitary life, avoiding casual encounters.

Working as a freelancer translator, it has been easy for her to create her own rhythm

that almost completely excludes the presence of other beings.

All unavoidable exchanges are dealt with messages, emails, or at the most video calls.

For the rest, she has constructed her day as a repetition of pleasant rituals.

Getting up in the morning, having breakfast in the backyard, weather permitting, doing some work,

setting the kettle for coffee mid-morning, holding the steaming mug standing in front of the first floor window,

following the train as it arrives at the station, separated from the backyard only by a stretch of uncultivated land.

She has only recently moved into the house, and she loves it.

It's large, luminous, with huge French windows, and a spectacularly polished honey-coloured wooden floor in every room.

But now, this strange sensation of unease.

Because the woman has realised that the house, sought for long months, now finally found and rented,

is inhabited by strange beings.

For several days, sporadically and without any discernible pattern,

the woman catches sight of strange beings with the corner of her eyes.

Strange beings moving elusive behind her, always and inevitably outside her direct field of vision,

except for a fleeting sensation that remains to her, filling her with anxiety.

She has time and again tried to trick the beings, pretending indifference in the hope they would manifest,

but there is absolutely no way to understand their rhythm,

making it impossible for her to prepare by paying the right attention to the periphery of her field of vision.

So, whenever it happens, the woman tries in vain to push her gaze, to retrace her steps,

to recreate a situation that had caused or evoked the manifestation of the elusive beings,

but, alas, everything proves useless.

This sudden overcrowding has naturally and understandably shaken her.

Overcoming almost immediately a certain fear of the unknown and the supernatural,

the woman begins to question what has driven the fleeting beings to take up residence in her newly rented home.

And even more so, she finds herself distracted, unable to apply herself to her work matters.

Her mind drifts into the void, wondering what purpose such fleeting beings might serve,

whether they might perhaps be bearers of some message from other dimensions that she is, however, incapable of understanding.

What troubles her most is not so much their presence, but the fact that they refuse to manifest themselves openly,

circling around her and surrounding her with their presence instead.

Now a sudden sparkle after descending the wooden staircase,

then a glint behind her after closing the French window that opens onto the backyard.

The thought of the slippery presences keeps growing in the woman's mind,

devouring an ever greater portion of her attention during the day.

She has understood one thing, and this is the only fixed point of her investigations.

She knows that the presences manifest only when she is in motion.

So she has now begun to invent excuses to interrupt her work, usually done in the upstairs study,

to descend the stairs and go to the kitchen under the pretext of getting a glass of water or preparing a cup of coffee,

while she only wants to provoke the appearance of the fleeting beings.

Each time that they manifest without her being able to claim any credit,

it is yet another moment of frustration that leaves her with that sense of inadequacy and discomfort that has now taken hold of her.

She had searched long for that home.

For months she had combed agencies, visited houses and apartments that she had immediately felt alien and distant from her needs.

When she was finally shown this house, she had sensed an instant feeling of warmth and home.

She had not hesitated to offer more than the owner demanded, just to secure the lease.

A reprehensible practise she knows very well, and one she would have never done

had it not been that this house had immediately captivated her, making it impossible and unthinkable for her to imagine not living there.

And now, in her second week of occupancy, she finds herself at the crossroads,

because the impossibility of seeing, or at least understanding the meaning of those elusive presences,

is wearing her down from the inside, preventing her from living her quiet and orderly life.

From a strictly practical standpoint, the woman has no proof whatsoever of the existence of such beings,

so she cannot turn to anyone, nor would she know what to say or how to report those presences.

Yet, they are not only confirmed, but obvious and undeniable.

By the third week, the woman has completely abandoned any pretence of wanting to continue leading her normal freelancer life,

made of emails to clients, searching for new jobs, sporadic visits to the supermarket and occasional evening walks.

Now, she spends her day wandering through the rooms, lingering especially in those spaces where she has the impression that the fleeting presences have manifested with greater frequency.

Sometimes, she even addresses them aloud, directly, in the hope of luring them out into the open,

hoping that they, once and for all, reveal what their function is.

Receiving no response, by the fourth week, the woman goes to the market to buy several bouquets of flowers,

among the most fragrant, and distributes the individual flowers in all the rooms,

hoping that their alluring scent will make the elusive presences understand her good disposition and her fervent desire to communicate.

This action proving useless, the woman combs through ancient books and modern information technologies,

in search of phrases, spells and prayers known for their power to induce presences to reveal themselves.

Tired, exhausted and frustrated by the failure in what has now become her only occupation,

by the fifth week, the woman calls the real estate agent to give notice and to look for a new home.

What the woman does not know is that the elusive presences are nothing other than the luminous reflection of objects

that bounce off the spectacularly shiny wooden floor when the light hits just at the right angle.