If you’re reading this, either I survived the night or I didn’t bother to delete my notes. Both possibilities feel equally plausible.
By day, I’m Dr. Yoofi Akerman, clinic psychologist, specialist in second chances and third strikes. By night, I am the person people pray doesn’t find them. The city prefers me sleepless, dressed in elegant black, with secrets stitched into my sleeves and daggers hidden where hope goes to die.
Sniper, my cat, is judging me from the dresser. He has a way of staring like he knows the ending already.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I tell him. “I recycle. I’m practically a saint.”
He flicks his tail. Guilty verdict.
* * *
The bodies started piling up three days ago. Wind-up keys embedded in their backs like some sadistic signature. Turn the key and click click nothing happens except the echo in your skull. The press calls him The Toymaker. I call him a narcissist with good wrist strength.
Martin Flores calls me into his office. He’s my boss on paper, my leash in practice. Corrupt bureaucrat, smile like a notarized lie.
“Yoofi,” he says, folding his hands. “You’ve been busy.”
“Busy is when I forget to feed my cat. This is called breathing.”
Flores grins. “You have a patient. Recently paroled. Antique watchmaker.”
I don’t blink. Profilers learn early: blinking is consent.
“Name?” I ask.
“Elias Kornfeld.”
Sniper’s ears twitch. He hates watches. The ticking makes him murderous. We have that in common.
* * *
Elias Kornfeld sits like a man wound too tight. Thin fingers, meticulous nails, eyes that don’t quite land on mine. He smells like oil and old brass.
“You collect automata,” I say.
“They are not toys,” he corrects. “They are prayers with gears.”
“Prayers usually don’t stab people.”
He smiles. It’s small. Controlled. “People stab people.”
We dance. Trauma, guilt, the art of repairing broken things. He talks about restoring clocks the way some men talk about God.
“Do you hear them?” he asks suddenly.
“Hear what?”
“The city,” he says. “Always rushing. Never wound properly.”
I jot a note: Possible auditory metaphor. Or confession in haiku.
“Why the automata?” I ask.
“They remind us we’re all mechanisms,” he says. “Some of us need a key.”
I end the session early. My pulse keeps time.
* * *
Flores corners me by my Ducati Panigale. Red. Fast. Honest.
“You like him,” Flores says.
“I like cats. I tolerate people.”
“Careful,” he says. “This one’s delicate.”
“So is a bomb.”
Flores chuckles like he’s paid to. “Don’t freelance.”
I mount the Ducati and rev. “You don’t own my nights.”
He watches me go, smile ticking.
* * *
The Jaguar XJ220 hums like a promise as I park in an alley that smells like regret and hot garbage. The body is slumped forward, wind-up key gleaming between shoulder blades.
A cop recognizes me. “Doc.”
“Officer,” I say. “Any luck?”
He shakes his head. “No prints. No witnesses. Clean insertion.”
“Like a professional,” I say.
“Like a watchmaker,” he mutters.
I crouch, studying the angle. Right-handed. Precise. Almost tender.
“You’re enjoying this,” Sniper says in my head. He always sounds like my conscience after three espressos.
“I enjoy puzzles,” I whisper. “And endings.”
* * *
I break in quietly. Pencak Silat teaches you how to move like a rumour. The shop is a cathedral of ticking. Automata line the shelves, dancers, soldiers, birds that bow.
One turns its head as I pass. I freeze.
“Motion sensor,” a voice says.
Elias steps from the shadows, holding a key.
“Breaking and entering,” he says mildly. “That’s a setback.”
“So is murder,” I reply, dagger sliding into my palm.
He sighs. “Always the blunt instrument.”
We circle. His eyes flick to my hands, my stance. He knows I’m dangerous. He’s curious anyway.
“Why the keys?” I ask.
“To give them purpose,” he says. “They were all criminals. Like your patients. Like you.”
“Ends justify means?” I ask.
He smiles. “You taught me that.”
I lunge. He moves faster than he looks, slamming a shelf into me. Automata crash, ticking turning frantic.
We fight. His strength surprises me. Mine surprises him more.
“You could stop,” he pants.
“So could you,” I say, and put a dagger through his sleeve, pinning him to a corkboard of blueprints.
He laughs. “You think this ends me?”
“No,” I say. “I think this ends us.”
* * *
3:01 a.m. — Twist
Sirens. Flores steps in, clapping slowly.
“Bravo,” he says. “You always deliver.”
I stare. “You knew.”
Flores shrugs. “We needed a narrative. You needed a purpose. Elias needed… direction.”
Elias coughs. “You promised…”
Flores shoots him without blinking. The sound is ugly. Final.
I feel something inside me wind too tight.
“Clean it up,” Flores says to me. “Like always.”
I don’t move.
He raises the gun. Sniper chooses that moment to leap from the shadows, claws finding Flores’s face. Chaos is a small, furry thing.
I move. The dagger finds Flores’s throat. Ends. Means.
* * *
The shop burns. Automata melt into silence. Elias is gone. Flores is gone. The city keeps ticking.
I drive until dawn, Jaguar purring, Sniper asleep on the passenger seat like he earned it.
By day, I’ll help men put themselves back together.
By night, I’ll remember that some mechanisms can’t be fixed.
I turn the key on the engine.
Click.
Nothing happens.
I smile anyway.
The end
The Sphinx 