Caroline Åberg - Stockholm Noir

Now I was awake and far too uneasy, my body far too restless to return to sleep. So I sat up in bed with my laptop over the covers on my lap and surfed the Internet, just to pass the time until I got tired enough to drop off to sleep again. Everyone knows that you can’t sleep if you’re sitting with a computer in bed at night, and it was already close to two o’clock in the morning, the sun rising again, so in every way it was a stupid choice. But truly, I had no desire to sleep.

I’d received ten e-mails from an address I didn’t recognize. But I instantly understood where they came from. The address was yourslavekim@xxx.com, so there wasn’t any doubt as to what they were about. All the e-mails had large attachments. I was cold throughout my body, alone in the universe, full of remorse for having felt so important earlier, and again I thought of going to the police with all of it.

None of the attachments had names, just long combinations of numbers and letters. I opened the first one, which was a zipped file with twenty photos. No, I didn’t want to see them, my forearms were heavy as lead and I really didn’t want to look. And yet I looked. A naked body lay on its stomach on something I couldn’t identify. Its arms and legs were stretched out and tied up. My telephone number was written on its back. Seeing this image was like having a dagger plunged into my chest. As if I were guilty. Although I didn’t yet know of what. Nobody seemed to be harmed, and in any case games like this aren’t illegal.

The body looked extremely young. A girlish boy or a boyish girl. I tried to find something by which I could recognize it. Medium-length blond hair. No body hair. Maybe I’d get to see more in the next picture if I looked. I opened the file. Same body position. A rather large man, between forty and fifty, wearing a dark suit and shoes polished to a high shine, dragging Kim — for I assumed that the naked body could belong to nobody else — by the hair so that its head was bent backward. I sensed resistance in the body, which my own reacted to with the uncontrollable tensing of my muscles. The pictures continued with little variation. The body was tied up, the man in the suit drew it taut, pulled it by the hair, pressed his polished shoes against it. And on the body was my telephone number. It was as if I were there. I felt the body’s pains in my own, like a weak reverberation. But uglier than that, despite the fact that I pushed the thought away, I also felt, yes, I actually identified with the corporal grip of the man in the suit, the feeling of the cloth against the naked body, my own hand striking the body while I wore leather gloves.

The next e-mail contained a GIF. It depicted Kim’s completely hairless backside, with an anal plug stuck in its asshole. The genitals were carefully covered with something that made it impossible to identify the gender. The body writhed in discomfort and resistance and I quickly closed the file. I then opened the remaining e-mails to verify that they too contained attachments of various sizes, but I didn’t want to see them. I shut down the computer and lay down on my bed. First I pulled up the covers, then I kicked them off, now it was too cold, now too warm. It wasn’t that I was aroused. I don’t get aroused by BDSM or violent porn. But at this point I really had to get some sleep, so I jerked off mechanically in bed, while trying not to think of anything, even though the pictures floated before my mind’s eye the whole time. After coming, I turned to the wall and, eventually, drifted off.

After a few hours of uneasy sleep I was awakened by the telephone ringing. I didn’t reach it in time and the ringing stopped. Three missed calls. I’d barely slept at all; I’d floated feverishly within different dream scenarios, all of which circled around Kim in myriad ways, somehow not being woken up by the repeated phone calls.

Suddenly I found myself sitting on the edge of the bed. I felt sweaty, filthy, needed a shower before going out. But the restlessness in my body put me on autopilot; I pulled on my jeans and the same, no, a new T-shirt at least, and I went out into the cool Swedish summer-dawn light and began to walk toward Old Town again. The sense that I could be important and must be at hand was so strong that my legs automatically took me all the way back there, along Norr Mälarstrand, the tourist buses to city hall, past the hideous traffic interchange between city hall and the central train station, and over the Vasabron, past the old seats of power — Parliament, the Royal Palace, the House of the Nobility, and the Bonde Palace.

In need of caffeine, I entered Café Tabac, sat down at the bar, and downed a cup of ordinary brewed coffee while I leafed through Dagens Nyheter , the morning paper, seeing neither the pictures nor the headlines. The images of Kim being sexually abused somewhere near here, maybe in a cellar just under the café where I sat, had burned themselves permanently into my retina so that they lay like a film over everything I saw.

Something to eat? No. I had no appetite, even though my stomach was completely empty. I put a few sugar cubes into my coffee instead, took the phone out of my pocket, and looked at it, as if I should be able to conjure up a conversation telepathically. And then it actually rang. Quickly, fumbling, I put the phone to my ear, only to hear about a new electric company. I hung up without even saying anything nasty. When I lowered the phone again I saw that a text message had come in at the same time that the salesman delivered his spiel.

Did you look? was the text.

I tried to answer immediately with a simple Yes, but my phone wouldn’t send it.

Another message came at once: Do you want to? What? Rescue Kim? Participate in Kim’s torture? It was maddening, being made a party to a conversation in which I couldn’t respond.

There’s nothing you have to do, but if there’s something you want, you must come now. Come where? Once again I felt it would be best if I abandoned the whole business, forgot about Kim, pretended that I’d seen nothing, knew nothing. But how could I obliterate the memory of a body that was forced to assume a grotesque backbend while its anus was opened wide with a speculum and its mouth gagged, plugged with a ball to keep it shut. And there was my telephone number, written on the victim’s back.

Like a sleepwalker I wandered back uphill toward Tyska Brunnsplan. The streams of tourists were now more intense on Västerlånggatan even though it was still early in the morning. I sat down on the same bench I’d sat on the previous afternoon. The phone burned hot in my hand. My head was entirely empty, and all my attention was directed at — nothing. Then it finally rang.

This time it was Kim’s voice on the other end. It still sounded androgynous and awfully young, but now there was a new tone of despair, as after many hours of crying. And it seemed to lack focus. I wondered whether Kim was drugged, or just groggy from being subjected to sexual torture all night long, without respite. I shoved these thoughts aside, but I couldn’t keep fantasies about Kim’s treatment from surfacing in my own dazed consciousness, I couldn’t defend myself against them, they touched something, a cord inside me. I told myself it was my opportunity to save this creature who so affected me. Yes, this was my chance to be something of significance to another human being.

— Where are you?

— Don’t you know?

— Why aren’t you here yet?

— I don’t know where you are...

— He says that... A scream of pain interrupted Kim in the middle of the sentence.

— What? What’s that? What’s he saying?

The connection was still there, but it was quiet on the other end. I listened hard for sounds. I could hear weak sobbing, something like a long whimper. It was awful, but it was more appalling to admit that the sound gave rise to a warmth that spread through my chest, as if the blood inside me were rushing violently.