Read Aloud the Text Content

This audio was created by Woord's Text to Speech service by content creators from all around the world.

Text Content or SSML code:

Hello, my name is Alex and I am your host of the How Bizarre podcast and this is Episode 2 of the series, hopefully youll like it and it will take some traction in the time to come. So, what is this podcast about? Its about storytelling and especially about stories that are obscure, unknown to the wider public, strange and sometimes inexplicable, content that somehow never got the attention it deserved, stories that are forgotten in the mists of time regardless if they happened yesterday or some centuries ago. So if you are attracted to bizarre, shocking or just plainly weird stuff, I think youll find this podcast very informative and perhaps even entertaining! This podcast is for mature audiences and listener discretion is advised. All that being said, now let us dive into the second episode of How Bizarre podcast! For the second episode named The Circle, we go to the south-eastern European country of Slovenia, a small, beautiful and utterly insignificant place that was once on my life trail, under a set of strange circumpstances, and that actual place I was working in was this ugly, gray and severely polluted town of Yesenitse, home to some 15000 people and as many foreign workers if not more. One good thing about this rundown place was that it was stone throw away from the Austrian border and all you needed for a sort of a parallel universe experience was 9 euros 99, for a short trip to Klagenfurth in Austria. How can these two places Exist in a same universe Divided by few minutes by train Is beyond me. Today we have a rather sad story with even sadder twist, nothing special or world changing, just a tiny bizarre and real story of a life of a woman. A woman that was subjected to being made laughing stock, malice and gossip that, as they say, are some of the paramounts of small urban areas. The protagonist of the story is a woman in her late fourties or early fifties, woman that I actually knew nothing about and the info I was trying to get later was somewhat useless. Like the tale that she was this genius level scholar at university, totally immersed in her studies and volunteering, that she forgot about everything else in the world and one day apparently waking up imagining giant scorpions in the sink. Her name, or at least I thought that was her name, was Nora, only later to discover that in Slovenian language that actually meant The Mad One. Little was known about her real life, about her trials and tribulations through time, how she ended sleeping in an abandoned building, set for disposal and demolition at some point in the future. People said that she was born Into this upper middle class family and that her childhood and formative years were dominated by her parents and grandparents with extremely high expectations of her, some said that their objective for her, was a successful career in classical music, others said that was not true and the career was in sciences, yet others mentioned a Cult and drug abuse to cope with reality and self-medicate, whatever could be true, if anything at all. So the story goes, she was locked in her room to study and having a boyfriend was out of the question. And as life sometimes does, a boyfriend somehow came up through and Nora in her early twenties by then, was smitten by this guy to the extent of planning to elope with him. Having no money, no job, no financial freedom or healthy self-esteem, she only had her love for her man. At least he never yelled to her, she was never abused by him and he was the only person to be actually happy to see her! Then the story strayed into violence as she was not only verbally but physically punished by her parents and grandparents, being so strict about pursuing her career that they leveraged food and shelter against her having a love interest. Along with that, she used to be locked in her room for an ungodly amounts of time, with a moronic excuse to concentrate on her educational pursuits rather than going out with this working class nobody she was in love with. Needless to say, her parents were furious and even had their sights on a young medical doctor to become her husband in the near future. Being de-facto a prisoner in her own home, ridiculed and belittled, she slowly started to loose touch with reality. After some time, expression on her face turned unusual. A strange and contented smile under her eyes that avoided other people's glaze. She looked older than she really was. She left a vague impression that she was once an attractive girl who probably had lustful glances at her, someone's loving eyes or at least casual interest in her. What was now attracting her attention, besides the steady staple of drunken stupors and her thin body, along with grotesque make-up and the insecure movements, was her baby from whom no one ever saw her separate ... Everywhere she went, she went with her little one. Well wrapped and in a safe motherly embrace. Protected from everything she thought was a threat to the infant ... like many mothers, she sometimes had an expression that is incomprehensible to men ... No one knew who the baby's father was, whether it was a soldier on leave, the love of her life or a local Casanova. Casanova of Yesenitse. Bloody hell… It was strange that she was not the target of gossip anymore, except for the newcomers to the city who saw her for the first time, like myself. The mystery unfolded on a plain rainy day on the steps in front of a local hospital. For reasons forever buried in her mind, she often wandered around the city hospital. No, there were no dramas or confrontations with the eventual father of the child. No fateful encounters, at least not of a kind, after which novels are written, the type of events that are retold as the latest gossip or end up in the pages of the crime chronicles. Just a small slide down the slippery stairs. And shock. Shock when she slipped and fell down the stairs. For the first time in a long while, the baby, under the influence of relentless gravity, left her arms, and rolled down the stairs. It remained lying down on them, between the expression in the mother's eyes, some essence of horror, unbelief, shame and shock in her eyes and the shock of those who witnessed the incident. The baby remained lying down. She did not move at first. Then a growling sound and tears flowing. Despite the fall in which it bounced dozen or so stairs one by one the baby did not make a sound, and how could he or she let go of sound, when it was made of plastic and rubber! It was not a baby but an ordinary doll, perhaps little old-fashioned and shabby but a doll nevertheless. And as we know, Plastic is not prone to injury. To say that I was shocked is an understatement. Feeling of pitty, sorrow and surprise overtook me as i was a just a mute witness to this, some could argue, completely ephemeral event. But really, nobody mentioned that she was carrying a plastic doll for decades, everywhere she went, just to show people that she was a mother? Collateral damage to the invisible whims of fate, drug abuse stories from another time, an insidious game of chance, a karmic incident without a return ticket ... like all of us, although in our own way, carrying our cross as long as we have some illusion in front of us. Almost all of us have something akin to her plastic doll in our hands and we have something that makes us go forward, no matter the lack of hope or lack of motive. It is a circle we all divined, It is a circle we all designed, it is a circle we have shattered and into the wind we scattered. So, let's not interrupt the circle. That could take a ridiculous effort of sacrificing our comfort zone. At the end, what can one say? Is Nora alive today? Did she received help she evidently needed? Or that was just a meaningless scene from a meaningless street in a small, gray and profoundly ugly town on the border with the Promised Land, or just a sad inspiration in the brain of a hydraulic press worker during a cigarette break. I hope you all liked episode 2 of this podcast, thank you so kindly for listening and I will be back this Monday for episode 3 of the How Bizarre podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider liking, share, and above all, subscribe to this channel dear listener! Because, why not! Join me next time for another adventure through space and time! Cheerio !