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He let himself sink into a daydream. How the policeman came up to him after class and was interested in him, sat down next to him. Then he would tell him everything. And the policeman would understand. He would stroke his hair and tell him he was alright; would hold him and say . . . “Fucking snitch.”
A lot of screams for so little wool, said the man who sheared the pig.
He pushed his hands into his pockets and felt sad. Thought about Bobby and how he had looked in the makeshift coffin Dad had made for him. Thought about the cross he had made in wood shop that had snapped in two as they hammered it into the frozen ground. He ought to make a new one.
Tintomara! Two things are white Innocence—Arsenic
Here I sit I am elated Came to shit Ejaculated
He stayed in the booth, staring at something someone had written on the wall. Whoever you are. I love you. And right underneath it someone had written, Do you want some cock?
The suburban mystique is the absence of riddles. —Johan Eriksson
But he, whose heart a skogsrå* steals it never will recover His soul will long for moonlight dreams and no mere mortal lover
He flipped through the pages of a porno, put it back. Wound his scarf around his neck and pulled it tight until his head felt like it was about to explode, released it. Got up and took a few steps on the rug. Sank to his knees, prayed to God.
He was both hornier and more scared than he had ever been since meeting her.
When Håkan was ready to leave he put the jam jar into the bag with the rest of his equipment. During that time Eli had gotten dressed. She was waiting in the hall when Håkan came out. Eli leaned over and lightly planted a kiss on his cheek. Håkan blinked and looked at Eli’s face for a long time. I’m lost. Then he went to work.
“Please, dear God. Let her come back. You can have whatever you like. All my magazines, all my books, my things. Whatever you want. But just make it so she comes back. To me. Please, please God.”
Her voice sounded suspicious, hard. Oskar hurriedly said: “Maybe you already have a guy at your school.” “No, I don’t . . . but Oskar, I can’t. I’m not a girl.” Oskar snorted. “What do you mean? You’re a guy?” “No, no.” “Then what are you?” “Nothing.” “What do you mean, ‘nothing’?” “I’m nothing. Not a child. Not old. Not a boy. Not a girl. Nothing.” Oskar pulled his finger down the spine of The Rats, pinched his lips together and shook his head. “Will you go out with me or not?”
Once he was inside the gate to the graveyard Tommy stopped and looked at the map; the different sections were marked with different letters. His dad was in section D. If you thought about it, it was actually pretty sick. To do this. Burn people up, save the ashes, bury them in the ground, and then call the spot “Grave 104, section D.”
“Oskar.” “Yes.” “Yippee.”
Oskar took his knife out of the bag, held it out, and proclaimed that he was the Knight of Ängby Maybe. Wanted Eli to be the Beautiful Maiden he would rescue from the Dragon. But Eli was a terrible monster who ate beautiful maidens for lunch and she was the one he would have to fight.
It was dark. No one around. Eli looked up into the top of the tree, along five six meters of smooth tree trunk. Kicked off shoes. Materialized new hands, new feet. It hardly hurt at all anymore, just felt like a tingling, an electric current through fingers and toes as they thinned out, took on a new shape. The bones crackled in Eli’s hands as they stretched out, shot out through the melting skin of the fingertips and made long, curved claws. Same thing with the toes. Eli jumped a couple of meters up onto the trunk of the tree, dug in claws, and climbed up to a thick branch that hung out over
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That was when it had really started, that feeling that he didn’t really exist.
The pathologist’s hasty, preliminary assessment that went out to the police was the other reason for the considerable mobilization on their part. The offender was determined to be extremely violent, in official terms. Completely fucking crazy, in other words.
Gösta did not appreciate the joke and Lacke waved his hands in front of him. “No, sorry. I was just . . . uh, I’m all . . . this thing with Virginia, you know. I . . .” He suddenly straightened up, slammed his hand on the table. “I don’t want to be here anymore!” Gösta jumped in his spot on the couch. The cat in front of Lacke’s feet snuck away, hid under the armchair. From somewhere in the room he heard a cat hiss. Gösta shifted his weight, wiggled his glass in his hand. “You don’t have to. Not for my . . .” “No, not that. Here. The whole shebang. Blackeberg. Everything. These buildings, the
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The girl puts flowers in her hair as she wanders through the field. She will be nineteen this year and she smiled to herself as she walks.
Only once after he had been infected did Eli meet another infected person. A grown woman. Just as cynical and hollow as the man with the wig. But Eli received an answer to another question that had been nagging him. “Are there many of us?” The woman shook her head and had said with theatrical sadness: “No. We are so few. So few.” “Why?” “Why? Because most of us kill ourselves, that’s why. You must understand that. Such a heavy burden, oh my.” Her hands fluttered; she said in a shrill voice: “Ooooh, I cannot bear to have dead people on my conscience.” “Can we die?” “Of course we can. All you
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