Last Human Artists

1.

Elena

Kreuzberg, Berlin, present day

Some mornings Elena still catches herself composing messages to her parents.

Not important things, fragments. A strange dream. A line from a book. A photograph of a crooked house in Kreuzberg she knows Papa would have loved. A part of her mind still hasn’t absorbed the fact that nobody is waiting to receive them.

At her writing desk, she returns to the final chapter of her novel, In Another Life, and wonders whether talent can simply run out. The success of her debut novel changed everything. The second might reveal that she’s a fraud and the first had been an accident. Mama would have listened for perhaps thirty seconds before informing her that factories were not built on confidence and neither were books.

Outside her apartment, morning light skates across the Spree, tour boats stitching white wakes through the gunmetal-grey water. Somewhere below, a cyclist rings a bell. Berlin-normal while Elena sits motionless in yesterday’s t-shirt, trying not to imagine the email she might receive if this revision fails.

Ninety days ago, Suzanne had handed back the manuscript with enough enthusiasm to keep hope alive and enough notes to keep her awake at night. Three months, she’d given Elena, with instructions to dig deeper and make it hurt. Today is day ninety, and she is so damned stuck on these last pages.

Make it hurt. To do that, she needs to dig into her own pain. Without it she will write bloodless things, decorative things, and her pages will hold no nerve. It’s also the sick trade at the heart of her manuscript: a woman facing alternate selves, all but one making the wrong decision and suffering. The question is, if you discovered your life diverged from happiness by only one critical choice, could you forgive yourself for making it?

A clot of clouds covers the sun, and something in the shifting light makes her skin feel oddly thin, like she’s turned porous to the air. She rubs her arms vigorously, and her gaze drifts to the painting hanging beside her desk, all sharp planes of cobalt and gold. Tobias. He’d painted it for her twentieth birthday, just before she left for university. For your\ for your big-city move, he’d said, adding, so you don’t forget me when you desert the Old East. As if forgetting Tobias had ever been possible. Even fifteen years later, she can still see him standing awkwardly beside the canvas, pretending not to care whether she liked it.

Her phone buzzes, and a smile tugs at her mouth. It’s Tobias. It’s amazing how often it happens. She’ll be thinking of him when a moment later a message arrives, as though some invisible thread connects them.

In case you forgot, it’s the 31st. Come swim. The lake calls. Don’t let us be tragic indoor poets. And bring wine.

Since that awful time when they were fourteen, they’ve marked the changing season with a lake swim, convinced it brings luck for autumn. She needs that luck or she’ll be living on coffee and humiliation by winter. But with her deadline, she can’t go to the lake today. She sets her hands on the keyboard. Tomorrow she’ll swim with Tobias. One day can’t matter that much.

An email notification pings on her laptop. She’s caught the sender’s name and it’s the same as her own: Elena Kugel. That’s both bizarre, annoying and disturbing. Moving on to the subject line, dread crawls up her throat.

Your manuscript has been stolen.

With a gasp, she clicks back to her manuscript. It’s still there, timestamped minutes ago. She breathes a sigh of relief. The document is whole. Paragraphs untouched. She scrolls, hunting for gaps or glitches. Nothing. If she’d been hacked and somehow lost her manuscript—

The thought is unbearable. So is this email. She hesitates, then opens it.

I know how this will land. You’ll think it’s a prank, or a scam, or the kind of thing people send when they’re bored and cruel. It isn’t. I am you. Not metaphorically. Not in the way people say they “see themselves” in someone. I mean it literally. You’ve already written the framework for this. You just haven’t believed it could happen to you.

Your manuscript has been stolen. Not copied, but reworked and improved. It will be published under another name. Do not pursue it. I know exactly how that sounds. I know you won’t listen. But listen to this: six of us didn’t survive trying to stop it. Leave it. Let the better version exist. You will understand soon enough - Elena

What the actual fuck? Improved – what nerve! And, I am you. She snorts in disbelief.

Of course she believes in multiverse theory, longs to imagine her other selves either stumbled so spectacularly that her own missteps look forgivable, or else slipped free of the snares she couldn’t avoid. Chosen better. Loved wisely.

Not watched Werner marry Mama after Papa died, controlling Mama’s finances, gaslighting her until she mistook his will for her own. Elena confronted him only once, but he assured her very convincingly that everything was fine, that he knew best, and she’d believed him (she was twenty-one and not yet worldly-wise). That choice drained Mama’s savings and her confidence, and left her a hollow shell. Elena’s never forgiven him, or herself for not doing more to stop him. These days, she can spend twenty minutes choosing a brand of coffee, as though every decision is a trapdoor.

But she’s not naïve enough to think the email is truly from another her. It must be a hoax. The bit about six not surviving reeks of scare tactics. She’s going to put it out of her mind, focus on a specific pain, and get to work. Mama in hospital on her last day on Earth, how she’d held her papery hand and let the loss she knew was coming crush her chest until she couldn’t breathe. Now the words sputter out in fits and starts as she types.

A sharp knock on the front door sends her fingers skidding across the keys, random letters streaking across the screen. Shit! No buzz from downstairs; it’s probably Frau Miedbrodt, hunting for caraway or cumin or some other spice Elena never keeps. Really, she’s just checking up on her, the way she once checked on Oma. Well-meaning, but Elena has no patience for neighbourly concern today. She hurries to the peephole. Jesus. It’s Liv, balancing a basket on her hip, eyeliner sharp as a blade, vintage scarf knotted just so, layers of chiffon swirling. Liv at nine in the morning was never on the menu.

‘Are you unwell?’ Elena says, opening the door and stepping aside. ‘You’re not supposed to exist at this hour.’ Especially not looking like a Vogue cover.

‘I’ve left the wilds of my bed for you,’ Liv announces, breezing down the hall. ‘You haven’t texted in a week, which is never good. You look like you’ve been locked in here since the last century.’

Elena runs a hand through her dirty blonde hair, closes the door, and follows her into the living room.

Liv gives her the look that has undone her since they were twenty (passing notes in Professor Erpenbeck’s creative writing class), part affection, part delicious bossiness. ‘I come armed with croissants, wine, and moral superiority.’

Elena folds her arms. ‘Can’t do it. I’m wrestling with the final chapter, and it’s due today.’

‘Aha! Wrestling implies unnecessary struggle. I knew you needed me. Your brain always works better after a break.’ She brandishes a croissant. ‘It’s science. Google it. The words will flow when you stop forcing them.’ She takes a bite. ‘Sorry, starving. Get ready, you’re coming. Picnic.’

Tugging at Elena is Tobias’s message, the weight of the unfinished chapter, and Suzanne’s expectations. But Liv is right. Fresh air and stimulating conversation are exactly what she needs to get the words flowing, not just dribbling out. She’ll only end up chewing the inside of her cheek bloody while she rewrites her sentences twenty times.

‘Fine. But if I’m taking a break, you’re swimming. Tobias is expecting me at the lake in Senzig. He won’t mind if you come too.’ A flicker of unease twists in her belly, but she pushes it down. ‘You can borrow a bikini.’

‘Yay!’ Liv claps like an overexcited child. ‘But only if it’s the gold sparkly one I gave you. You never wear it, and it’s criminal to keep it hidden. The public deserves a little joy.’

That bikini is the exact opposite of how Elena moves through the world. Liv knows this. Elena knows she knows this. It came with a note: Dare more, fear less. It’s the kind of thing Liv wears without thought, hips out, chin high. The idea of sunlight catching on every sequin makes Elena’s scalp prickle.

Liv’s green eyes narrow in triumph. ‘I can’t believe you’re finally inviting me to your annual tête-à-tête with the famously reclusive Tobias Münch.’

Neither can Elena. But it feels rude to send Liv away when she’s arrived with pastry and good intentions. At least Liv is a fellow fiction writer. Some conversations you can’t have with civilians. But she does wonder if Liv has staged this ambush knowing that they always swim on August 31st. For years, Liv’s angled to meet Tobias, to glimpse “Elena’s roots”. Maybe it’s not all about Liv. She’s engineered rescues before, without ever naming them.

Her urge to keep Tobias to herself is probably therapist fodder. Dr Vestrel will probably call it control. He’s said before that when the present feels unstable, people cling to relationships that feel historically unshakeable.

‘I’m just going to the ladies,’ Liv says, swanning away.

There’s a needling hiss, and her laptop erupts, the screen boiling into a blizzard of grey and black, pixels writhing and devouring themselves. Zinging panic zips through her and she dashes over to it. She hasn’t saved her manuscript externally. If her laptop dies, she’ll be fucked. Frantic, she sits and jabs at the keyboard. On the screen, lines rip sideways, and then, as if conjured from static, a face emerges, blurred, its features flickering in and out of focus. It’s herself.

No, it must be her reflection. But the woman on the screen doesn’t match her movements, tilting her head while Elena leans forward. The woman’s lips move, but no sound comes out.

Elena recoils, chair legs shrieking against the floor. For a heartbeat, she loses her bearings – screen, desk, body – feeling only the uncanny sensation of being watched from the inside out.

The face unravels, features melting away until her manuscript reappears. She leans away, wary that the screen might flicker again. It must have been a glitch, her webcam looping on an old recording.

‘You coming?’ Liv asks, reappearing, and Elena forces her gaze away from the screen. She has the uneasy sensation that someone remains behind, watching from the other side of the glass.

2.

Nico

He hates the midday light.

That deceitful wavelength sharpens everything to a false edge, turning colours brittle. Nothing breathes beneath it. Shadows are surgical, too precise. Skin becomes parchment. Golden hour is the true alchemy for painting, when the air grows dense and colours bleed together, shadows gathering like ancient wine. That’s when art whispers its secrets.

The radiator clangs fitfully, jolting his memory to the abandoned coffee on his workbench. He grimaces. It’s gone cold, crowned with a greasy halo. He really ought to buy a water filter.

Stepping away from the canvas, he drags the heel of his hand down his jeans, grinding paint into the fabric. The figure still won’t resolve. A woman half-there. He’s painted and erased her shoulders so many times, the bones refuse to scream (or even sing).

‘Fucking hell.’

The work craves resistance. Friction. The pressure of another life colliding with his own. His best art never comes from pure invention, but from proximity, standing close enough to someone else’s unravelling to feel its heat, yet not be scorched. There’s a fleeting instant (if he’s lucky) when a person falters, the mask slips, and something raw emerges. That’s when the lines flow.

But this… this is lifeless. Just a body he’s coaxing toward meaning, but without tension, it’s futile. He exhales, slow and heavy, and the studio seems to shrink around him. That kind of truth can’t be invented. It must be witnessed, caught in the wild. Lately, there’s been only silence.

Six months since the last woman left. She couldn’t handle his “no-sex with his muse” rule, hadn’t understood it disrupted the work, collapsed the distance he needed. The moment things tipped into that other kind of closeness, something in his work dulled. He could have sex with anyone else, just not his muse.

Now it’s just him, a paint-eating cat, and a studio that smells of impending doom. What he needs is emotional voltage.

Turning, he spots Babou sprawled on the battered armchair by the windows. The cat’s mouth is stained a vivid red, and Nico’s heart lurches. God, it’s blood! The poor thing cut himself. He rushes to him, scanning the floor. When he sees the telltale smear on the floor, he sags in relief, which curdles into irritation. The little bastard’s gnawed at another paint tube. Lake Red this time. Damned cat’s already chewed into Viridian Green this week.

Nico gathers him up, ferries him to the kitchen sink, and dabs at his mouth with a wet paper towel while Babou squirms in protest. Maybe the cat’s missing some vital mineral. Or maybe he’s simply mad. He should probably haul the little gremlin to the vet. Stroking ochre-stained fingers through Babou’s ginger fur, he eases his thumb along Babou’s spine, feeling his low, pleased rumble.

Nico sets him down on the bench and pours water into a saucer. ‘Drink. And try not to poison yourself before lunch.’

The cat eyes him like it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard, but laps it up anyway.

Shaking his head, Nico crosses to the other side of the studio where the VantaCorp piece glares accusingly at him, three blank panels and the one he’s struggling with. It’s so ordinary he wants to cry.

With almost religious fervour, his agent thinks it’ll be a triumph, though how Silja knows this when he’s barely started is a mystery. As far as he’s concerned, it’s a mausoleum waiting to happen. He hears the client notes from the commission brief; Speak to the times. Make it inviting whilst at the same time challenging the viewer. Corporate morons.

But he needs this one to ignite, to spill across the canvas like blood from a living heart. If he fails, he knows the drill: collectors vanish, rent devours him, and he’s condemned to teaching oil painting to tourists who think artist means painting quaint pastoral scenes. Better to eat rats for dinner or move in with his parents next door at the embarrassing age of thirty-five. You’d think once you’d technically ‘made it’ in the art world, you wouldn’t have these kinds of problems anymore. It pisses him off the way financial considerations encumber art.

He needs to clear his mind, find a distraction, and return tomorrow with fresh eyes. Maybe Felix will want to see a band tonight. He grabs his phone from the workbench and fires off a message.

Nico: Hey! Want to unwind tonight, maybe catch Dead Calm at the Fitz?

By the time Felix replies, Nico’s made a fresh brew of coffee.

Felix: Can’t, sorry, but was just about to message you. VantaCorp Publishing is holding a big event tonight. It’ll be way more fun with you there. Please say yes. This is me on my knees before you, grovelling like a pathetic peasant.

Nico: What’s the event?

Felix: Book pre-launch for a debut author.

Felix will be wrangling the PR, no question. Nico hisses through his teeth. Hellfire and dried paint tubes! Rooms packed with people, half desperate to sound clever, the rest desperate to be noticed. Maybe he’ll invent a fake job if anyone asks. He gave up pretending to enjoy literary events after the third time someone called him a “visual poet”, as if that were praise.

Visual poet. Christ. He’d sooner chew a wet canvas. Every time someone utters it, with that smug, knowing nod like they’ve cracked some secret code, his skin prickles. He grabs a short palette knife and jabs it into a crack in the workbench, watching it vibrate. If they want poetry, let them sniff someone else’s watercolours.

He slams a fist into his thigh because he won’t say no to the stupid launch, because of that night they never talk about when they were teenagers, the one that carved a line through the three of them, and left only two. The night Nico lost Gisela. The night he may have done something unspeakable.

Felix never once said, You owe me for saving you from a burning building. He didn’t have to. It’s there, in the space between them. In the way Nico lets himself be hauled out of the studio for these pretentious events.

Nico: Fine. Time?

He rubs a palm down his face. Stares at the blank space where the woman’s mouth should be.

Felix: 20:00. Don’t flake. Wear something black. It’s all very noir tonight.

Black. Like Nico’s mood. He’d hoped for live music, but at least there will be free drinks. He scoops up the paint tube Babou mangled. Might as well give the woman on the canvas a mouth, even if it’s the wrong one.