Jens Lapidus - Never Fuck Up

No real food came, even though the hours passed. He ate toast with jam and drank chocolate milk instead. The potatoes that Mom’d peeled were lying unboiled in the pot. Out in the living room were two empty pizza cartons, a bunch of empty beer cans, and Mom and Claes on the couch. They were watching some other movie. His Lethal Weapon , which a friend’s dad had copied for him, was still lying on the floor in front of the VHS player.

But it wasn’t the unfairness of not being allowed to finish the movie that hurt. It was the volume of Claes’s voice. Niklas knew what it meant.

Sometimes when he was this drunk, he was nice. But more often, he was scary.

It was only eight o’clock.

He went back into his room. Tried to concentrate on Spider-Man . There was a huge fight with the Juggernaut. Spider-Man threw his web over the entire street and hoped that it would stop the tank-like man.

Claes’s laughter and Mom’s giggles could be heard through his reading.

Juggernaut didn’t care about Spider-Man’s web. He kept walking with heavy steps that made deep impressions in the New York pavement. The web was stretched more and more.

Suddenly, the door to his room opened.

Niklas didn’t look up. Tried to seem unconcerned.

Read a few more panels: Spider-Man’s web didn’t break. The buildings shook.

It was Claes.

“Niklas, why don’t you go down to the basement for a while? You can play that table-hockey game or something. Mom and me, we need some time to ourselves.”

It wasn’t a question, even though it sounded like one. Niklas knew that.

Still, he kept reading. Juggernaut kept walking. The web held up. But the concrete in the buildings where Spider-Man’d fastened it didn’t.

“Did you hear me? Can you go downstairs for a while?”

He hated it when this happened. He wondered what they did when he had to go down to the basement like this. Claes asked now and again. The worst part was that Mom was always on the jerk’s side. Since she seemed happy tonight, Niklas did as he was told.

He got up. Rolled the comic book in his hand, grabbed the house keys in his other hand, and left the apartment. The stairwell was dark; he had to turn the lights on.

He pressed the button for the elevator.

It usually didn’t last for more than a half hour or so. Then Mom would come down and get him.

Last night: Niklas was in a tunnel. Spots of lights in the ceiling. Echoes of heavy breathing. He turned around. He wasn’t being chased. He was the one doing the chasing. The tanto knife in one hand. The tunnel brightened. Who was ahead of him? A man. Maybe it was some bearded warrior from down there. Maybe it was the illegal broker. Then he saw: Claes turned his head. Opened his eyes wide. There was spit around his mouth. Niklas took long strides. The Mizuno shoes held up. The old guy stared. White light filled the tunnel. It was impossible to see anything.

Taxi Driver for the second time today. Knife katas for two hours. Niklas, bare-chested. Like Travis. The sweat dried. Concentrating on the katas took its toll. He went into the kitchen and drank a few gulps of water. A luxury: to be able to drink straight from the tap. In Iraq, what came out of the tap was sewer water, if anything came out at all.

He felt nasty tired. The nightmares were really hitting him hard.

He sat down. Looked around. Despondent.

Mom’d moved back home. That heightened his loneliness. Eight years with buddies. Now: six weeks of loneliness. It was about to break him. He needed a job. Needed something to do. A goal in life. Very soon. Then there was the other thing too: Mom’s suspicions. She’d told him she was completely certain the dead guy was Claes. Niklas thought of his nightmare again.

It was raining outside. What kind of summer was this, anyway? Thank God for the rain to wash the trash off the sidewalk.

He ate from a bag of chips. Saw Claes’s face in front of him. Crunched the ruffled, fried potato slices between his front teeth. Claes was gone now. The story’d gotten a happy ending. Niklas felt relieved.

He turned the DVD on again. His favorite scene. Travis tries to apply for a job as a taxi driver. The guy hiring asks, “How’s your driving record? Clean?” Travis’s pitch-perfect answer: “It’s clean, real clean. Like my conscience.”

Niklas agreed. Whatever he’d done, his conscience was clean. There was a war out there. Fabricated moral strictures collapsed under extreme circumstances as easily as a concrete Iraqi house under a grenade attack. Just the rebars remained, stuck up out of the ruins like sorrowful arms.

He turned the movie off. Unpacked his real knives, not the weapon he trained with. Spread them out on the coffee table. One MercWorx Equatorian, a heavy knife with a hefty bolster. Amazing to slice with—you didn’t even need to put any force into it. Next to it, a CBK, a concealed backup knife. A compact little fucker. The handle was shaped like a half circle at a vertical angle from the blade in order to rest in the palm and make the knife shorter, easier to hide. The sheath was specially designed with a lock mechanism so that you could strap it anywhere: behind your back, under your arm, around your calf. Last but not least, his baby: a Cold Steel Recon Tanto. Crafted according to Japanese tradition with a single blade in layer upon layer of Damascus steel—the Rolls-Royce of knife metal. Freakishly well balanced, the blood groove perfectly positioned on the blade, an ebony handle that fit like it was tailor-made for his hand. He gazed at his reflection in the blade. Beauty defined. So gorgeous. So clean.

It was unusual to use a knife in war. But really, it was the ultimate form of combat. Man to man. No high-tech heat-detecting weapons with night vision. Just you against your opponent. Just you and the cold steel.

Niklas leaned back against the couch. Claes was dead. The world was a little bit better. Mom was a million times freer.

He snapped the movie back on.

“It’s clean, real clean. Like my conscience.”

Niklas thought about calling her to hear how she was doing. But he was too tired right now.

Something was bothering him. Loud voices. From the neighbors again. He lowered the volume. Got up. Listened. Same Arabic as the last time he’d heard screaming. He turned the TV off completely. Put his ear against the wall. Almost stopped breathing. Heard everything.

A man’s voice: “You gotta understand, you’re hurting me.”

The girl, Niklas’s neighbor Jamila: “But I haven’t done anything to you.”

“You know what you’ve done. It hurts me. Get that? I can’t do this, I can’t live my life like this.”

They kept on. Screaming. Arguing. Wouldn’t give up. Didn’t seem like it was going to turn violent this time, at least.

Niklas sat back down on the couch, but didn’t switch the TV back on. Heard fragments of sentences from the argument.

Fiddled with one of his knives again. Took out the sheath. Slowly pushed the knife in.

The racket on the other side of the wall continued.

Fifteen minutes went by.

He turned the movie back on. Could barely hear them. Travis got to know Iris, Jodie Foster: they had coffee together.

Half an hour went by.

The fight in the apartment next door grew louder. Niklas raised the volume on the movie.

Iris to her pimp: “I don’t like what I’m doing, Sport.”

The pimp didn’t give a shit. “Ah, baby, I don’t want you to like what you’re doing. If you like what you’re doing, then you won’t be my woman.”