John Lindqvist: Handling The Undead

Magnus curled up next to him and they watched a documentary about the circus. When the coffee was ready, David got up despite Magnus' protests. Eva was at the stove, fiddling with one of the knobs.

'Strange,' she remarked, 'I can't turn it off.'

The power light wouldn't go off. David turned some knobs at random, but nothing happened. The burner on which the coffee pot sat gurgling was red-hot. They couldn't be bothered doing anything to it for the moment, so David read his piece out while they drank the heavily sugared espresso and smoked. Eva thought it was funny.

'Can I do it?'

'Absolutely.'

'You don't think that it's…'

'What?'

'Well, going too far. They're right, of course.'

'Well? What does that have to do with it?'

'No, of course. Thanks.'

Ten years they had been married, and hardly a day went by that David did not look at Eva and think, 'How bloody lucky 1 am.' Naturally there were black days. Weeks, even, without joy or the possibility of it, but even then, at the bottom of all the murk, he knew there was a placard that read bloody good luck. Maybe he couldn't see it at that moment, but it always resurfaced.

She worked as an editor and illustrator of non-fiction books for children at a small publishing company called Hippogriff, and she had written and illustrated two books herself featuring Bruno, a philosophically inclined beaver who liked to build things. No huge successes, but as Eva once said with a grimace, 'The upper middle classes seem to like them. Architects. Whether their children do is less certain.' David thought the books were significantly funnier than his monologues.

'Mum! Dad! I can't turn it off!'

Magnus was standing in front of the television, waving the remote control. David hit the off button on the set but the screen did not go black. It was the same as the stove, but here at least the plug was easy to get at, so he pulled on it just as the newscaster announced the start of the evening current affairs show. For a moment it felt like pulling a piece of metal off a magnet, the wall socket sucking at the plug. There was a crackling sound and a tickle in his fingers, then I he newscaster disappeared into the dark.

David held out the plug. 'Did you see that? It was some kind of… short circuit. Now all the fuses have gone.' He flicked the light switch. The ceiling lamp went on, but he could not switch it off again.

Magnus jumped up in his seat.

'Come on! Let's keep playing.'

They let Magnus win Monopoly, and while he was counting his money. David packed his stage shoes and shirt, along with the newspaper. When he came out into the kitchen, Eva was pulling the stove out from the wall.

'No,' David said. 'Don't do that.'

Eva pinched a finger and swore. 'Damn… we can't leave it like this. I'm going over to my dad's. Fuck… ' Eva tugged on the stove but it had become wedged between the cabinets.

'Eva,' David said. 'How many times have we forgotten to turn it off and gone to bed without anything happening?'

'Yeah, I know, but to leave the apartment… ' She kicked the oven door. 'We haven't cleaned back there for years. Bloody thing. Damn, my head hurts.'

'Is that what you want to do right now? Clean behind the stove?'

She let her hands fall, shook her head and chuckled. 'No. I got it in my head. It'll have to wait.'

She made a final desperate lunge at the stove and threw up her hands, defeated. Magnus came out into the kitchen with his money.

'Ninety-seven thousand four hundred.' He scrunched up his eyes. 'My head hurts a whole lot. It's stupid.'

They each took an aspirin and a glass of water, said cheers and swallowed. A farewell toast.

Magnus was going to spend the night at David's mother's place, Eva was going to visit her father in Jarfalla, but come back in the middle of the night. They picked up Magnus between them, and all three kissed.

'Not too much Cartoon Network at Grandma's,' David said. 'Nah,' Magnus said. 'I don't watch that anymore.'

'That's good,' Eva said. 'It'll be…'

'I watch the Disney channel. It's much better.'

David and Eva kissed again, their eyes telegraphing something about how it would be later that night when they were alone. Then Eva took Magnus' hand and they walked off, waving one last time. David remained on the sidewalk, watching them.

What if I never saw them again…

The usual fear gripped him. God had been too good to him, there'd been a mistake, he had got more than he deserved. Now it would all be taken away. Eva and Magnus disappeared around the corner and an impulse told him to run after them, stop them. Say, 'Come on. Let's go home. We'll watch Shrek, we'll play Monopoly, we… can't let ourselves be separated.'

The usual fears, but worse than usual. He got a grip on himself, turned and walked toward St Eriksgatan while he quietly recited his new routine in order to fix it in his mind:

How does this kind of picture come to be? The two women are upset, so what do they do? They go to the store and buy a case of vodka and then a stack of porn magazines. When they've been standing there, pouring and pouring for two hours, Putte M erkert, photographer at Aftonbladet, just happens to catch sight of them.

'Hi there!' Putte Merkert says. 'What are you doing?'

'We're pouring alcohol on porn magazines,' the women answer.

'Aha,' the photographer thinks. A chance for a scoop.

No, not 'the photographer'. Putte Merkert. All the way through.

Aha, thinks Putte Merkert. A chance for a scoop…

Halfway across the bridge, David caught sight of something strange and stopped.

Recently he had read in the newspaper that there were millions of rats in Stockholm. He had never seen a single one, but here there were three, right in the middle of St Erik's bridge. A big one and two smaller ones. They were running in circles on the footpath, chasing each other.

The rats hissed, showing their teeth, and one of the smaller ones bit the bigger one on the back. David backed up a step, looked up. An elderly gentleman was standing a few steps away on the other side of the rats, watching their battle open-mouthed.

The small ones were as big as kittens, the bigger one about the size of a dwarf rabbit. The bare tails whisked over the asphalt and the big rat shrieked as the second small one grabbed hold of its back and a damp, black stain of blood appeared on its fur.

Are they… its children, its little ones?

David held a hand up to his mouth, suddenly nauseated. The big rat threw itself from side to side spasmodically, trying to shake off the smaller ones. David had never heard rats shriek, had not known they could. But the sound that issued from the big one was horrible, as if from a dying bird.

A couple of people had stopped on the other side. Everyone was following the rat fight and for a moment David had a vision of people gathered to watch some kind of organised event. Rat fighting. He wanted to walk away, but couldn't. In part because the traffic across the bridge was steady, in part because he could not tear his gaze from the rats. He felt compelled to stay and watch, and see what happened.

Suddenly the big one stiffened, its tail pointing straight out from its body. The small ones writhed, scrabbling their claws over its belly and their heads moved jerkily back and forth as they tore at the skin. The big one shuffled forward until it reached the edge of the bridge, crept under the railing with its burden and toppled over.

David had time to peer over the railing in time to see it land. The noise from the traffic masked the splash when the rats landed in the dark water and a plume of drops glittered for an instant in the street lamps. Then it was over.