The silence in apartment 4B had become annoying. Then, ten slow beats. The clock was the only thing in the room that seemed committed. Tik-tok-tik-tok. He sat listening until the sound got too large for what it was. He tried matching his pulse to it, and for a few seconds it almost worked, then his heart went ahead, then lagged. Why should time get to be so regular anyway? One second, another second, another. My body is supposed to fall in line with that? The thought didn’t really have any place to go. Keys. Saw toward the kitchen. Keeeys, where are you? Nothing of course. Nothing. Then somebody in 4C laughed, and in 4A there was a clink of glass, maybe two glasses, maybe somebody putting a bottle down too hard. A person in the stairwell coughed. Elias listened. The walls were thin. Now he could hear all of it at once and for a moment the apartment stopped feeling empty. That wasn’t exactly better.
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Original title: Omfavnelsen. From an anthology of short stories. ISBN: 9788292302170. Translated and printed with permission.