Caroline Åberg - Stockholm Noir

He reached out a thin, shaking hand.

I ran to the edge of the forest, up among the trees, I had to reach my cave, my lair. My entire body was in revolt. Luckily, I came across a hare, which I sucked dry, but it took a long time for me to calm down.

Later, I retraced my steps to the place where I’d seen him. Both his clothes and the blankets were gone. The Christmas garland was arranged in a circle on the sand, with the words THANKS. DAVID scratched inside.

I had saved him. I had prevented him from drowning himself. I wept with happiness, sorrow, and other human feelings, as if I was still human, over that which was still possible and that which was not.

David! His name alone, and the memory of his eyes — it was enough to make me happy. I snuck up among the human houses until I saw him again. I followed him until I knew where he lived. In the yard by his house, I formed a heart with the last bit of snow, and I hoped he would see it before it began to melt.

I did not dare stay near where he lived. Not even in the neighborhood, by the beach, or even in the forest. I went back to the city, to human beings. My life there was much easier now that I knew how to use my new skills. I could always find somewhere to sleep. And at first I thought it was exciting to go wherever I wanted, observe secrets, research people’s lives. It was like reading books or watching movies, but in real time. Unfortunately, I could not influence them very much. Mostly I watched as I swayed in the darkness outside people’s windows. Much of what I saw shocked me. Many people find themselves in difficult situations that are not their fault, but there are so many others who make life difficult for themselves and others even though they aren’t poor, sick, oppressed, or even damned, the way I was damned. If only you knew! I wanted to scream. You need to value your lives! But I realized that most of the time they would only hear my voice as some frightening sound. It became ever more clear that only those who are not afraid of death will experience me as something other than a monster.

I observed happy people too, the ones who could value themselves and other people. I did not understand where they’d received that gift. They were not always beautiful and rich. They were often fairly lonely people, but still able to enjoy their lives, as if they were honeybees with an inexhaustible supply of internal nectar. When I saw these happy people — and I mean really happy people, not those who pretend they’re happy — when I saw them with my depthless eyes, I saw that they had a golden shimmer around them that seemed to come from within. It might sound sentimental, but they were like little lamps. Seeing them made me both happy and endlessly sad, a pain that was simultaneously as beautiful as it was unbearable. I don’t think I’ll tell you any more about it. It hurts me even to talk about it.

Thinking of David was just like that — a bright blessing and a stinging pain simultaneously. Something alive to protect and value, but with no fulfillment for me. Yet, better to be nourished by the thought, the dream, than to be destroyed by reality. Or so I thought.

Eventually I started searching for others like me. I wanted to know more about who and what I was, but when I finally did find one, I regretted it immediately.

I’d started hanging around in Tanto again so I could spy on Mama. And winter finally returned — my third winter as one of the undead — so I walked over the ice to Årsta Island to sleep in one of the abandoned boats there. I was getting tired of human habitats.

When I woke up and crept out on deck, he was sitting there, hunched like a monkey on the railing, smiling like the Cheshire cat.

Mr. Humbert Fishy. Or that’s how he introduced himself. Thin. Conceited. Wearing a long leather coat, black-red like old blood. I didn’t ask what the coat was made from. Long oily hair. High white forehead. Pointed teeth. With his X-ray vision, he drew me from the inside out and knew my entire history. I couldn’t hide anything from him. That was his power. A devil’s.

“Little saint,” he called me, laughing all the while.

In the pauses between his gales of laughter, he answered my questions. I didn’t even need to ask them — he read my thoughts as easily as a fly eating shit.

Where do we come from, we the damned? Answer: from the same place as everything else, from God the Black Hole. Are we evil? No, why would we be? Living human beings kill more than we do. Can we escape our fate and die the true death? The stake, little saint, the stake or the daylight. Or perhaps starve to death from the wrong kind of food ha ha ha, little saint.

How can I transform them, then? That is, not kill them, but give them the Gift, as I’d gotten it? Not a chance, he said, only the very old and experienced ones can do that. Only those who had fed themselves the right food for hundreds of years.

He told me what I’d been suspecting all along. Only if I regularly drank human blood would I be able to develop into the “remarkable being” I was meant to be. The Crown of Creation, as he put it. He could not only read thoughts, he could fly and he could see entire cities at once, and he could zero in on prey with especially good blood; it was as if they glowed on a map. Yes, he said prey instead of humans . He was a gourmet, he said. Five hundred years had made him one.

Since not a shred of my soul or memory was hidden from him, he sniffed out my love for David right away. Oh, how he laughed!

“Now, my little mosquito,” he said, “how do you think you could be close to him — a living boy? Don’t you think he’d be scared out of his mind? And even more important, how could you resist biting him? You remember how you felt on the beach, right? His pulsing vein, your burning hunger? And you ran away! From such a wonderful piece of meat, from one who wanted to die anyway! You would have done him a favor! ” Mr. Fishy laughed until he choked. And while he laughed, the whole boat shook, and a thousand pieces of broken ice applauded.

“ I can be your friend,” he said. “Absolutely! But only once you’ve become what you really are. Right now, you’re nothing at all!”

He let the width and breadth of his damnation travel so deep into me I could feel my own nothingness and that nothing else existed. I felt crushed and laid on the boat like a whipped dog. Then I felt anger start to rise in me, at first just a spark. He noticed it, of course.

“Why are you mad at me, little flea? You’re the one making it more difficult for yourself by trying to be something you’re not. Focus on me all you want, but soon enough you’ll realize the one you’re fighting is yourself. Bye for now!” And he lifted up from the deck and fluttered like a stupid scarecrow before he shot into the air and flew away so fast I didn’t see him disappear.

The strange thing was I felt more abandoned than ever. However horrible he was, I still wanted him to come back. But he didn’t return. Still, I had many hundreds of years ahead of me to run into him again, right?

I was still mad. That small speck of anger grew and in my mind I heard his raw laughter — at my love and longing! I was going to prove him wrong. I would show him I could make it work — or be brave enough to try.

My wrath did not subside and neither did my longing. I decided to go on an outing to Hässelby strand. I was going to make myself as beautiful as possible. In an apartment, I found a lace dress; perhaps it was for a child, a flower girl at a wedding. I’m so thin and tiny it fit. I wore perfume, and combed my hair, fastening flowers into it.

Then I headed to his house — David’s house. I was so afraid I thought I might faint. I saw light in the window, I knew which room was his.