The Noise Collector.

Another day, whispering to my own thoughts, counting every step as if it might quiet the voice in my skull, the one that repeats, again and again, that I am too much, and that being too much is never enough in a world that prefers me silent. Silence, for me, was an utopy. Something I`ve never know in my 34 years of life. Silence was a privilege reserved for those blessed with an average mind, and average always sounded idyllic to me. Silence was romance, the soft echo of a laugh. Silence was understanding social rules without dissecting them. Silence was a mind that didn`t torture itself every second, a mind that didn`t trap me on the outside of society`s rules.

I lived alone in a very comfortable apartament in the center of Copenhagen. Very fancy, very clean, yet unbearably loud inside my head. Surrounded by silence, but never truly alone.

It was a regular night; I couldn`t continue reading my favorite book by Kafka. Kafka was like a massive sound system for the voice in my head, amplifying the noise and shrinking any possibility I had of passing among the silent ones. I didn`t read Kafka because I wanted to look like an intellectual snob. I read him because he understood my pain, he was broken like me, and he never lived in silence. Maybe it was just another way to torture myself, to punish myself for being like him and never trying to change it, letting his words pull me deeper into my own noise.

It was almost midnight, three minutes before the clock could announce, with cruel precision, the state of my social life. Three minutes before 00:00, when the world resets without me. And then, as if some warped magic had slipped through the cracks of my apartment walls, I heard a knock at the door.

Magical, because no one ever knocks for the noisy woman who reads Kafka and treats Dante`s Inferno like a romance. No one seeks out the mind that can’t quiet itself. No one ever seeks me out. No one ever knocks for the woman whose screams louder than the city beneath her window.

So, whoever or whatever stood behind that door wasn`t looking for company.

It was looking for me.

And i had the sickening feeling it came to offer exactly what I`ve begged for my whole life: silence... and the chance to be ordinary. The knock came again, slower this time, almost patient. I opened the door, only a crack, just enough to convince myself there was nothing there.

But something was there.

A silhoutte, tall and wrong, as if someone had sketched a human shape from memory and forgotten a few details, like my draws in the middle school. Its presence felt heavier than its body, pressing against my thoughts, thinning the noise in my head just by existing.

For the first time in my life, the voices went quiet, not calm... quiet.

" May I come in?" it asked.

The voice wasn`t deep or monstrous; it was gentle, unbearably gentle, like someone imitating compassion after studying it in a textbook.

It sounded like the kind of voice an average mind might trust.

It sounded like the kind of voice an average mind might trust. And if people like that would trust it, then maybe this way was my only chance, my one chance to feel, even for a single day, what it`s like to be okay, to slip quietly into the norm. I let it in. I forced a smile, the kind quiet people wear so effortlessly, and said, " You`re welcome to come in." It looked at me with something close to amusement and replied, " You don’t need to pretend with me. I know exactly what you are."

What was I? Noise trapped inside my own torture chamber? My mind as a chaotic, screaming prison? I knew that to some people I was a menace; they said I was too smart, too creative, too much. I hated hearing it, so I never thought too deeply about how to describe what I was. I only knew one thing : I was not one of the quiet ones.

As it stepped fully into my apartment, it whispered in the smoothest voice, "Yes thats what you are. And I can turn off that noise you can never stop."

" I can hear you, darling. And don`t worry I could also hear that man who could never silence himself, the one who thought becoming an insect migth finally make him quiet."

The creatur moved through my apartment with a strange familiarity, as if it had lived here long before I ever signed the lease. It touched my books with a certain reverence, especially the ones that had hurt me the most.

"You think your problem is the noise," it murmured. " But the noise is just the price of a dangerous gift." I frowned, "Gift? this?" I tapped my temple. " This is torture."

The creature smiled gently, like someone preparing to comfort a child before taking something precious away.

"Oh darling... your mind isn`t broken, it`s overflowing, people like you never stop creating, imagining, rearranging reality. And creativity, in excess becomes noise."

It turned to face me fully, in the dim light its shape flickered, sometimes human, sometimes a shadow wearing skin.

" I have a proposition," it said. "I can quiet the noise, completely. I can make you average, normal, peaceful."

Its smile widened.

" All you must give me is the part of you that makes the noise in the first place."

I swallowed, "My mind?"

"No" it tapped my forehead lightly, almost affectionately.

"Your creativity."

The room seemed to tilt for a moment, I thought of Kafka, of Dante, of every story that had ever held my broken pieces together.

I thought of the notebooks filled with half - finished ideas, metaphors about insects and hell and cities that screamed louder than I did.

"What happens to it?" I asked.

"I keep it, I nurture it. I use it. I give it a home where it won`t torment you anymore," it said.

That creature stepped closer, and the edges of its smile trembled with hunger.

"Imagine it," it whispered. "A mind without noise. A life where you sleep, where you smile and it isn`t forced, where your thoughts don’t tear at you from the inside.

You`ll wake up quiet.

You`ll wake up normal."

My heart clenched painfully.

Quiet.

Normal.

Average.

Everything I had ever envied.

"And I...?" I asked . "What do I become?"

"Content," It answered simply.

"You will be content."

It extended its hand to me, elegant, almost human. Behind it, I felt the books tremble on their shelves, as if they knew they were about to lose me.

"Give me your creativity," the demon whispered, " and I will give you silence."

I took its hand, the moment our skin met, my mind cracked open, not in violence, but in relief.

Something warm slipped out of me. A pulse, a spark, a thread of light pulling itself free from behind my eyes.

My creativity.

My noise.

My everything.

It left so easily, as if it had been waiting at the door.

The demon inhaled sharply, like someone tasting a rare perfume.

Its eyes fluttered closed in pleasure. Then, silence.

My head became a clean, white room.

No echoes.

No storm.

No voice telling me I was too much.

For the first time in thirty - four years, I was quiet. I smiled, a real smile, soft, simple and empty smile. The kind of smile average people wear without thinking.

The creature bowed politely, as if our transaction had been nothing more than signing a lease and slipped out into the night with my creativity cupped in its hands like a newborn flame.

And I ...lived.

Peacefully.

Effortlessly.

A perfect average.

Months later, a friend who I could make thanks to the quite new me, Handed me a book.

"Have you seen this?2 she asked. "It’s everywhere, they`re calling this author a genius."

I looked at the cover.

The title was one of my old phrases, one I had whispered to myself on sleepless nights.

The author`s name was unfamiliar, but the writing... the writing creative soul was mine.

Every line, every metaphor, every broken thought stiched into poetry. My noise cleaned and weaponized into brilliance.

I read page after page, waiting for something inside me to recognize itself.

Nothing did, but my hands began trembling.

Not with emotions, I didn`t have those anymore, but with something colder.

The kind of instinct a body has even after the spirit has been wiped clean. I closed the book.

That night, as I went to sleep in my perfeclty quiet mind, I heard something faint.

A whisper.

Not from inside me like my old noise, from outside, pressed against the window.

A familiar voice, dripping with satisfaction:

"Thank you darling, you were right, your noise was too much, your noise was exquisite."

The whisper grew louder, shaping itself into words from my missing mind:

"Shall I come to visit you tomorrow?"

And at that moment I realized... The silence in my head wasn`t peace, it was vacancy.

And the demon wasn`t gone, it was just getting started.