Corruption and organized crime dictating the length of shadows in the land of the nightless nights
I spat on his face. He had just pushed the woman, who was carrying his child. To fair, I hadn’t told him yet - the last abortion discussion ended up just another melt-down from half-psychotic half-clueless, fully on the pathological spectrum of antisocial personalities, undercover mafioso Mr. H. Before my pregnancy test the next day after this friendly and mutually respectful deep-end conversation about women’s rights reached its verdict in the form of a pregnancy test conducted too early, he referred to a life possibly growing in me as a ”gift from God” simultaneously believing I would literally push something the size of a watermelon through my vagina like a casual treat of the day for him, and - unless I was ready or willing to become a mother - give ”it” to him like a baby human was something small, minor, like let’s say a bottle of shampoo you can choose to, or not ”give it” forward.
I was reaching the age where classmates and people I heard over the phone had started dropping dead or at least suffering from illnesses such weak knees (check), the gout (thank God no) and lactose intolerance to skimmed oat milk so I did not take it for granted I could ever even become pregnant again. When the ghost appeared next to the test’s control line, my gut instinct didn’t lie. My first reaction was ”fuck” (or as we say in Finland, ”vittu” which translates to the most obnoxious euphemism for cunt, and that’s what got me into this mess in the first place so there was not a joke on anyone, just two clear lines on a pregnancy test as the proof at least some cells in me still vigorously multiply). If I had an abortion he could have someone to remind me for the rest of my wicked days I terminated the potentia of a new human, his child, and those days might not last long - but neither was I going to disappear in the wilderness with growing G-cup boobs that’d lactate and oh yes, a newborn baby if the situation got to that. How could have I even done it? A career I had worked hard for 20 years letting go off more external things than it brought along is under my name. My initials sign my articles. My signature is in every certificate of authenticity and although I go by several catchy aliases and pseudonyms just to confuse everyone, my name would still be Leena Mertanen and if you pronounce that right, it sounds like some kind of shamanic aggressive angrier chanting- but one thing was for sure. I was not going to ”give” ”it” to him. Never, in five million fucking years.
A recap.
How did I end up pregnant to a mafioso?
Summer 2025, Joensuu
”Holy shit this nerve pain is killing me”, I thought as I wandered around the town square trying to buy drugs from random people I had never seen before. I was clutching a 50€ bill firmly in my sweaty palm, that got increasingly moist in the July’s heatwave - I had no idea how to do distinguish possible dealers from someone who had just got outside from an AA-meeting as was a bit upset when I asked - or just you know, normal people on the normal street of a perfectly adequate small town in Finland which had its issues, but so far I felt familiar with. I had got up to late 30’s in life before smoking weed more often than once in a blue moon, and I tried it in Tallinn (Estonia) in a legal coffee shop a year or two earlier as the last option to combat piercing nerve damage pain that under stress always got provoked, and worse. It helped. I felt jolly good and in less pain! Like Homer in The Simpsons says ”WOOHOO!” I stared an Estonian cat in a parking lot, demanding to know if it’s true that seeing pitch-black feline is bad luck from a friend I was traveling with. (He didn’t know, no matter how much I insisted on getting answers, and although I still believe the cat had got nothing to do with the mafia I do know a thing or two about bad luck now) And the effect lasted! For at least ONE full HOUR. Not a blink of an eye, or a heartbeat, not lucky five minutes or a blissful quarter hour, no, one full or even more. I was hooked. Not addicted, not high in traditional sense - just without pain. I kept on wobbling away in my massive outfit to disguise my ever-growing pot belly (yes) thinking these thoughts. Jogging memories. ”Good times” I thought, and a small laughter escaped my lips when I remembered my friend’s answer for the cat-situation: ”HOW would I KNOW?”. I had less than an hour left before having to catch a last bus home. I picked up the speed how fast I can approach people and ask ”Hey, do you sell drugs?” until finally saw something VERY promising. A guy in full white was smoking pot 40 meters away from me, I could tell it from the way he held his breath between puffs so I ran to him, introduced myself and my business but he was still sceptical. In the same food trailer was a soldier’s back, in a pique shirt and jeans doing something that’s obligatory in a restaurant, like, I dunno, dishes?, and the back in a sky-blue athletic tee turned 45° to me, asking ”Are you a cop?”. We stared at each other’s eyes. I had seen those somewhere before. Could have been the eternity, might have been the final meaning of my life, or just love and we both knew it. I knew, he knew. He knew I would have been the BEST undercover cop in the world to pull that stunt off in my outfit. We exchanged our first mutual laughter. ”Yes, I can source you some. How much do you need?” I said I didn’t know. I had just moved to the even deeper into periferia from the Helsinki area and wasn’t so to speak, on the map of gram’s price. The dude in white offered me to share his joint. Which I did. (It was good stuff, that much I can tell you) I had just met Mr. H and his friends.
I was invited to sit. I had never been in the table of dealers, but to my knowledge, they seemed friendly and alright, perhaps I relaxed a bit once the weed kicked in. They didn’t even laugh when all I had was 50€, and I was treated as a welcomed princess, all of them genuinely interested in my work and well, me. It is not news that half of the men I encounter want me dead, and the other half to copulate like there’s no tomorrow for reasons that have always felt bizarre, so I took their sheer admiration and eyes without even a grain of salt. I am notoriously naive idiot savant who knows how to drive any camera from obscura to large-format high-end Leica without needing a manual or using automatic settings, at the same time accidentally shaving my head as I didn’t know how to use a trimmer properly (instead of going completely bald I wanted a homogenous inch) so I was still cautious to proceed with the drug deal. I had got that far and I still could spend at least 30 minutes before having to hop on a bus home, and I decided to stick with the plan, they all seemed nice. Really nice, in fact. I got a beer served on the table, Mr. H brought it on a tray in front of me and it didn’t seem foggy or spiked, so I consumed a sip or two, it was great beer actually! I was becoming more and more sure I would not end up in pieces by the highway. My 50€ was still not a laughing stock, just paper and purchase power and like a miracle would have happened right there, right then, 15 minutes later I had a small bag of weed and off I went…, no I didn’t. Mr. H wanted my number. I saved his as ”A plumber, house technician ” just as a precaution measure like, if the police would want to confiscate my phone out of the blue it’d might look bad if there was ”Dealer 1” and ”Dealer 2” (the man in white also took mine) on the most called and texted list. I thought a friend of theirs had a plant, that I got some organic well-looked after hippie product. I had no idea, it never even crossed my mind that I had just purchased illegal substance from the mafia. That I had got involved in the circle of organized crime in Joensuu.
September 2025, Joensuu
For a reason known to me a local artist society I was a professional member of, curated my exhibition proposal on display at the city theatre. A play based on Almodovar’s work was translated into a musical that seemed promising and not interesting at the same time, but I was happy, the exhibit would be on for 3 months and perhaps some wealthy art person would invest into my recent painting series ”Pet Sounds”. As the time passed, and Finland was reluctant to sign Palestine’s autonomy paper as a walk of shame of politics it felt more and more wrong to showcase a series on canvas with glitter on top so I changed the theme in a whim on the last week before the installation date. I sprayed red paint over mutilated dolls, attached bells and whistles on Gaza-themed sculptures and sew a 4 meters-tall rag doll with genuine fur irises feeling a tad inspired and jolly good considering the only way to acquire anything would be through Amnesty International or Doctors Without Borders, not only were kids and other minorities (like civilians) brutally murdered on the war zone but the cruelty had already began expanding into volunteers so I did what was right. In one piece was a doll’s middle finger glued on a small mirror in front of the Bible with dedication to the shitty-head prime minister, Petteri Orpo (Kokoomus - the right win average nobody but a middle-aged white caucasian male who’s sadistic and looks after the ”best interests” of other filty-rich men and their trophy wives) who made the final call about Palestine. I was sure I would be forced to leave the country, that the theatre would make Finland collectively disown me because I hadn’t told (yet) about the change of (exhibition) plans. I figured to ask everyone I still knew in the area to come to the vernissage, including Mr. H and Mr. White and we met with Mr. H in the park 30 minutes before I was expected to show up. He was funny, kind, intuitive (a bit smelly though, but like is said in the iconic film by Billy Wilder - ”Nobody’s perfect”), and almost… what were the words of my thoughts when I looked at him - special. Promising. He was from Jamaica, tall, cute and his smile was priceless. He got my sense of humor and laughed at the exact same spots I would have (which almost never happens even though I laughed a lot) (and this was the moment when I began referring to myself in past tense). I also had another 50€ in the pocket of Tsumori Chisato’s catwalk piece, a literally the coolest Minnie Mouse-themed dress I had ever seen so I bought it, of course - for weed.
Everything went well. The cocktails were non-alcoholic and I was bored to death as usual when I was not hiding in a cleaning closet. When it was the time to give a speech, I delivered and soon it was ok to leave. I ran downstairs, to meet Mr. White. I had given Mr. H my fifty, so I naturally assumed he had the goods when he was standing and waiting me in front of the city theatre. I had been to his place once before, doing business, still in the perfect shape of oblivion that I was involved with organized crime and mafia’s cell. We laughed, joked, Mr. H was energetic, warm and sincerely seemed to like my spirit more than maybe, let’s say my tits - but I was not prepared to be in the same room with two men I didn’t know well, especially as a former hard-core traumatized gang bang-rape survivor - so when Mr. H called Mr. White he is coming upstairs, I asked Mr. White not to let him come, but he had the weed. A misunderstanding number uno. Perhaps orchestral or genuine, but I did get the weed Mr. H delivered to the front door of the block of flats Mr. White lived in, and left home just about catching the last bus.
The next day I got a furious WhatsApp-message from Mr. He used a full. Stop. Between. Each. Word. Maybe. To. Emphasize. How. Disappointed. And. Hurt. And appalled. He. Was. By. The. Fact. I. Stood. Him. Up. I was like Holly-Molly cow, what the hell is this, it wasn’t a date, it was an invitation to my opening and some minor drug business, not a date as in ”date”, no way. I couldn’t understand how it was not apparent to everyone, including him, when I had continuously elaborated how little I wanted a boyfriend - which back then, was zero, or even less - so why would have I even asked him or Mr. White to be my ”date” in the romantic or any other sense than friends? I just didn’t get it. He didn’t seem that slow.
November, 2025 Joensuu
”SHIT…!” My stash was empty. The nerve pain bad. My stalker (that is another long story) had just got captured on my security camera but he was unrecognizable. It was terrifying to sleep in the bed he had just observed from 1 meter distance with a bright led-light system, and I really was in pain both emotionally and physically. The visit had triggered my nightmares, night terrors, dissociation and yes, nerve pain and I did some counter-surveillance (willingly) at a trunk peeking from a ditched Mazda in a pit by my house, carrying a small samurai sword and a cool 50s hat on my head. It was black. I thought my pale face would be less apparent, if I had a hat. I was surprised by my spying skills, even under extreme stress I did not freeze or let the fear paralyze me more than 1 hour at a time the most significant observation being that a neighbor nearby is very likely cheating on his spouse. No stalker arrived, but when the courier delivered a nice highly anticipated package of a British luxury perfumery house to me, and I got up from the trunk in a pyjama, beaver fur, sandals and the hat already mentioned, the courier was polite with a hint of disbelief when he handed the delivery over and left. I thought a line from Pulp Fiction ”Just because you are a character, doesn’t mean you have character” and I knew I was neither.
I didn’t want to be around Mr. H - for some reason he gave me the creeps despite being nice. Mr. White couldn’t help me, so I reached to the plumber’s number and he instructed me not to speak so much on the phone but told me he could help. My mom was staying over at Woodpeckerville, a century old wooden house I was in debt for 64k euros but loved its charm and apparent charisma, and the stalker always found me even I kept on moving around so I rather stayed there than ran away. ”With a little help with my friends”, I thought when Mr. H arrived and we smoked a hefty joint.
He stayed over.
And he was a great massage therapist.
Also I had never been fucked before, like he. I orgasmed twice and learned a thing or two about male ejaculation - I was almost 40 and up that age with a body count something between 50 - 100 men and women (and non-binary) sex partners, I had never ever met any guy who can cum twice on separate occasions within 45 minutes. I felt I had been missing out. My whole life was a shit-show, so exploding like a firework with orgasms so strong, it felt like I went to astral space to pick up 10 carat diamonds with a scoop… felt… good. I got hooked. I let him stay overnight. The third guy ever to get the privilege after sex. The same week we got engaged. His wife of 15 years, the five last ”being on paper only” for the kids didn’t seem to mind, or how the fuck could I have known, he never spoke about his life or himself. He was nice. He ate the breakfasts I made him. He didn’t snore around have furry back, sometimes he didn’t smell either and the massages I got were heaven when it didn’t feel like he was going to kill me. My intuition was divided. One third knew. From the way he added more pressure when I said it hurt too much. Two thirds of me believed even I couldn’t be that unlucky, to get a full collection of abusive pricks into my life, but what did I knew back then. Nothing. Absolutely, nothing. I still believed - no, knew - that the world was not only a cold dead-end place for the dying light of humanity, and the circus was only run by politicians who make executive choices on for example, which war to win, how much guns to be bought from Israel, all that shit. I didn’t know that in only 6 months time I would be hiding from the mafia in a hut on an area so remote, even the Google Maps can’t find my home street. On my own, without a body guard, without a lawyer, friends and labelled as psychotic by random people who have too many opinions not backed up by research or, let’s say, intellect.
Here I am. My funeral is planned. I am saying goodbye. No regrets, this is what I came here to do. At least that’s what I keep telling myself, while I am aware that as long as I am alive, the people around me are in danger. The kind of a danger, who becomes an entity the size of civilization, each mafia cell forming the corpse and its twirling, stinking toes and tentacles in places you don’t want them to be. At the police force. It is said there’s basically no corruption in Finland. Monkey’s furry poop ass to that. When eventually I recorded a phone conversation with Mr. H and he threatened to destroy me and ”deal with me later” two officers arrived to my doorstep to see he’s not rampaging there with a shot-gun after I exposed online his dark secret of starting to drink again after years of being sober and asked for my statement. I said I would not give it without a lawyer and would pop in to the station with one soon. Before I got to even do that, I got a letter from the Joensuu police that the crime would not be investigated because none had happened. It came literally in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, which was very confusing to someone having lived in the promised land of rules, articles and bureaucracy most of her life. Sorting out business with them is about as easy as Mission Impossible (all volumes together) because the level of instances, organizations and national offices one needs to go before she, he or other can basically even breath here legally would make even the Vogons (in ”The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) impressed. But I was already a bit broken. I didn’t mind. I didn’t care. Mr. H had already raped me more than five times, and I had thrown him out in equal measure which apparently, harmed his blossoming ego - but he always came back. I had Stockholm Syndrome per half-consent. I didn’t care about myself enough to remove myself from the ”relationship” based on lies, abuse, cheating and financial violence above the injury over insult. But when he assured me I was gonna either be silent, or silenced which means dead, I began thinking. Putting bits and pieces together. Tying knots. I already knew he spoke a lot on the phone considering I never met any of his friends - he got a call each night between midnight and two AM, from the States, that to me appeared as a cheating spouse but there was no else anymore present at my side of the bed.
May 2025, Joensuu
I reported the social workers about Mr. H’s two underaged kids. Considering how much money he got from me, they never had anything else to eat except rice and chicken. They didn’t know how to eat with fork and knife. Mr. H smoked weed around them, not in the house but 2 meters away from the sweet little creatures who deserved better than a pot-smoking drug forwarder and a former army officer who had beat the crap out of of his 13-year old kid 15 years ago over a hairbrush and instructed her not to put shoes on when he threw her out of the house without a coat on at the heart of our Finnish winter time. This story has two different plots: Miss Sweetiepie might be telling the truth. She had just arrived to Finland from Jamaica, didn’t speak the language or have any money - and she was thirteen. Mr. H said she left willingly and didn’t want to put shoes on before walking through the door. But the truth matters. It does. Not to me, not to the universe of even God himself, but because it is the truth. I am highly addicted to it.
Speaking about the truth - I guess it’s pretty fair to say that at least I TRIED to be a low-maintenance girl friend. Fiancée. I AM low-maintenance figure. Either I am happy, jovial even and would like to think it’s easy to get along with me (unless you fall for the category of people who don’t only want me dead, they want me to be resurrected by the Christ and then dead again) - or I am depressed, grieving, in pain and heartbroken. Guess which I was most of the time. I tried to commit suicide three times during the 5 months-long relationship because he clearly had broken the only, simple rule I had: when we had a brief discussion about the borders and subtexts of our relationship, I said ”Don’t ever lie to me”. Anything else might fly. Be something, that can be fixed. But lies are from the devil. They destroy. Eat my salvation like a creepy, polluted worm a bird just puked because it tasted like crap. Those were my words to him. ”Don’t ever lie to me”. And he did. All the time. Each removing a little piece of me, to the dark age where my grand-grand-grandmother was burned alive as a witch. Meaning - to the place the bits don’t belong.
I was not entirely without hope. I got up by 5 AM each morning, wrote something, spoke to my art agent on the phone, made plans, tried to stay sane. I kept it up. Every morning.
What is it, that I learned? How could I tell, that he was lying and how was it so unbearably easy for me to ignore the red flags and run, change my name and address…, wigs… gender…, tombstone…, die? Mr. H and his wife allegedly stole money from the government as a habit. Not as a hobby, no, professionally. They withdrew social benefits for Mr. H’s kids who he did not live with or even be a legal guardian for them anymore, regardless did the victims live in Finland or in Jamaica. One night he gently massaged my shoulders and neck. Soon he pushed the weakest spot on my throat and I knew he could kill me with one little poke right there and then. That was the wake-up call. That was not normal. That wasn’t love. It wasn’t a relationship. - I was a victim.
When Mr. H got a delivery from me to his workplace - I was there to tell him I was pregnant and even though I already loathed his guts and odor - I thought it was something he deserved to know. I wrapped a small dog turd in a 100 dollar Jamaican bill, paraded into the shift I thought he was in and handed it over to Mr. H. He was a shit man. Like, really shit, man he was shit! He pushed me. I was there telling him I was carrying his baby inside me, and I hadn’t yet got abortion. In front of two elderly ladies, who did not want to testify when I asked for their contact details, he casually wrapped his fist into a ball of knuckles and made the choice to hit me. That is not what I came there for. During the emergency call he pushed me on the concrete floor, kicked a bit and I am still not sure which one of us shook more. The damage healed. Almost. A bit by bit, a prescription opiate after another I managed to sleep in 30 minutes periods five or six times in day. Then something happened.
A wonderful person - his former victim - presented me a little information package about his mafia-connections. The following week her car had been smashed. In the parking lot. Just like that. Two days later I called out of the blue, because I felt I had to, to Miss Sweetiepie and she was in the hospital. A guy had followed she and her three friends outside from a bar - for no real apparent reason apart from this of course being statistically speaking the most dangerous country for women in the whole Europe - data doesn’t lie, it is not an opinion or empiric research, it is data for a good reason - and got hit with a rock. All of them. In the head. The damage was really bad. Miss Sweetiepie does know how to sustain an attack, that I knew per her former profession, and she was hit very much so considering. Half of her hair was gone. There was a hole in her cheek. She was crying, scared and to be exported back to Jamaica because Mr. H hadn’t signed a paper. I got livid. Like - only over my dead body. Darkness won’t win. I knew they were messages. The people who I cared for, were treated as messengers with something brutal, unnecessary and cruel. Why? To prove a point. Well, if that is the case, then I am gonna do this.
My lawyer won’t touch this case even with a 10 meters long cucumber - meaning not very likely to happen - 90% of private sector security companies who happily promise a response within 24 hours to possible clients are silent enough for me to hear its echo all the way to my hut in rural Finland. My friend - a journalist - blocked me without saying a word when I introduced the sketch idea for this piece. Yle (national news in Finland) are not willing to discuss this. What else?
The hardest thing for me, is not even that it happened but to realize the world is actually like this. I don’t grieve over my wounds, shit happens (right?) or even that much of terminating my life, or the broken heart. What is really, really painful is to feel the suffering. Of kindred, innocent civilians who go to work or not, but at least try to maintain a certain level of decency and treating the law not as guidelines, but rules. Unlike me, of course, the bad person drug addict. I haven’t had a puff in months. I told the police officer investigating the assault that I am willing to testify under oath in court about Mr. H dealing or forwarding drugs, admit and explain how and why I happen to know it, meaning to plea guilty for using. If that’d be the only way to get some of the posse out from the streets, I would do it.
I don’t think I have the time to do that.
My legacy - if you don’t mind me sounding so pretentious - my music, my portfolio, my thesis, essays, articles, you name it - are to be at safe loving hands. I only ever dreamed about the government funding enough shelters for victims of domestic violence, because like I already told you, Finland ranks as the first in that continental-wise. I can’t tell you to ”Do something about this”, because it’s impossible. Organized crime benefits certain parties who also appear clean. If all drugs would be legalized globally, some of their ammos would be done and dusted. Not just de-criminalized, but become legal. You must know what I mean.
The end. Man, I sound like one of those manic street preachers you see every day asking do you have the time to talk about Jesus before the end is here? I am always like ”Yeah I am down for it” with such enthusiasm - at least someone wants to still interact with me - that mostly they just offer me a cup of coffee and go away. Change location.
About location - no, I am not opening a real estate business for sure - but a final piece of information about myself: I LOVE coming up with surreal or poignant euphemisms for things. Such as to ”kick the bucket” we say ”throw the spoon in the corner” et cetera, et cetera, but we also sometimes say ”Oh yes, Barbara changed the perish” meaning Barbara had died. So, I will be probably walking in the fields of gold soon. If I don’t get killed, I am still not sure is this world like this worth living for. The truth is, I don’t know. The creature is everywhere. In anything and everything. There’s not a safe place to reach out, because they are constantly ”making offers one cannot refuse” and I am not fond of the thought of me living the rest of my life as Lydia Bishop or Margaret Humper under 24h surveillance somewhere in a place that ain’t like home. This world has no spot, a space, a location where I would not be found. Except one.
I also made him a deal. He refused. He said he’ll NEVER be on my side of the law or apologize. Of course he doesn’t - it’s like expecting a 2-year old toddler with brain damage to excel in Nasa’s testing - but it was still worth asking. Now I know for sure, there is evil among us. Not individuals, but the code. Can we ever code faster, or backwards? I don’t know. But I am still believing in love. Respect. Hope. Courage. Righteousness. Justice. Morality. Being kind. After everything I have been through, I believe so even deeper. You can kill one in the Matrix or the body on its own - sorry my referee style is overboard like a truck moving snow from one place to another for no other reason than it should not be there - you can destroy a person. But you can’t kill love. Energy. Cosmos.
Where ever I go - where ever I will be - do remember that this was a choice I made, not a chance I took. Look after the ones you love, and be grateful. Because you can never truly know what’s gonna happen and when. To whom.
Leena Mertanen
