Caroline Eriksson - The Watcher

“And her?” I say. “How are things with her?”

This time the silence lasts for a long time. Peter hesitates.

“I… Not so well.”

A shock runs through my body.

“What do you mean?”

I hear him fumbling for words on the other end of the phone, hear him hesitate and start again.

“I understand that you’re curious, Elena, but it’s hard to talk about this on the phone. I’d rather that we meet, give ourselves time to have a conversation like that.”

My fingers gripping the phone are suddenly slippery from sweat. I move the phone to my other hand, try to get my pulse to calm down. My throat feels tight, and I have to force the words out.

“You need to tell me what happened. You need to.”

Maybe something in my tone makes it through to him and convinces him.

“OK,” he says. “Then I’ll just say it.”

He sighs into the phone. I remember how his breaths used to feel against my skin, remember the heat and the closeness.

“She died, Elena. She’s dead. That’s what happened.”

Something cold runs through my body and my hand flies up to my mouth. Peter keeps talking, says something that I don’t catch. The room is spinning. I can’t get a word out. In a parallel world, I ask questions and listen while he tells me how and when and what happened. In a parallel world I come off as interested, considerate, appalled.

She’s dead. That’s what happened.

I try pulling my sweater tighter around me, but that doesn’t help. The cold is coming from within. Short, intermittent thoughts come to me, completely without context. Then I register Peter’s voice again. To begin with, it comes from far away. Then I hear it more and more clearly.

“It was an accident, a sheer accident, and I want you to know that I don’t…”

My body reacts on its own, so fast that I hardly understand what’s happening. It’s not until I’ve already hung up on Peter and thrown the phone away from me that I understand. Shivers slowly make their way through each layer of my body until they’ve taken over completely and my teeth start chattering. Why did I call? Why, why, why? I should have realized that it would be like this. On the other side of the questions is neither calmness nor clarity. On the other side, there is only more darkness.

My body starts shaking. I think about what could have been and what will never be, of what I believed and hoped. None of it matters now. I feel that so clearly, that it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Then my consciousness trails away and my thoughts decrease. I get up and lower the blinds, close the window to the outside world. With my computer under my arm, I leave the kitchen.

I’m going to sit down and write, and this time I’m not going to stop until I’m done. I’m going to write the rest of the story, all the way to the final sentence. And then… then I’ll…

I shuffle out to the front hall and then up the stairs.

One step at a time.

She had her chance. In the end, she actually got it. It was as if fate reached out a helping hand. Fate or significantly darker forces. The kind that were brought to life by her fantasies, put in motion during all the hours and days she had dedicated to digging down deep into the dark decay of humanity.

Hatred and desire for revenge. Primitive energies.

The current situation, whatever the cause, had now finally been revealed.

The opportunity.

He was between her and the abyss. Vulnerable, exposed. Everything happened so fast, and yet she experienced it as if time were being stretched, as if every second were being drawn out to its limit.

But then when she saw him so close to the edge, so close to eternity, something totally different from what she’d been counting on ended up happening. Completely different emotions poured in and filled her. It was like she was looking at herself from above, at a distance. Or maybe, she thought later, she was seeing herself through someone else’s eyes.

It only lasted a second, but it was enough.

This isn’t what you want, this isn’t who you are.

The doorbell breaks the silence. My hands stop moving. I look up and listen. Someone has come to see me. I know who it is, suspect what it’s about. The clock chimes again, and I cast a quick glance at the open bedroom door. From where I sit, I can just see the first steps leading down to the front door. I see myself moving the computer aside, getting out of the bed, walking down the stairs, and opening the door. I see it happen, imagine how it will be, but I don’t budge. The doorbell goes quiet, and I turn my full attention back to the keyboard.

The hours pass, and I lose track of time. My back and neck start to ache. My wrists hurt, but I don’t stop writing. It grows dark in the room, and then it grows light again. I’m still writing. Did I sleep a little? An hour here and there, at most two or three in a row, maybe. But it’s as if I don’t need sleep anymore, as if I have wrestled with insomnia for so long that, somehow, I’ve overcome it, liberating myself from one of the most fundamental human needs. As long as I can write, I don’t need to sleep. I leave the bedroom only to go to the bathroom or when my stomach screams for something to eat. Apparently some needs are still intact.

I only stay in the kitchen for as long as it takes to make a sandwich, boil an egg, or make tea. The blinds are still drawn, and I leave them like that, but I still make a habit of turning my back to the window. I take great pains to do what needs to be done as quickly as possible. I don’t tarry unnecessarily, never sit down at the table either to eat or write. I take my plate or cup and return to the bedroom, eating and drinking while I continue writing.

I write about the woman and the man, about the downfall that must come, about the time after that. And while I write, it gets dark and then light again, maybe once, maybe multiple times. Yes, almost certainly several times.

Now and then, the sound of the doorbell can be heard throughout the house. I don’t know how many times it happens, am not sure I even notice them all. There’s an on-and-off ringing in my ears. Sometimes the volume increases and exceeds a roar. Usually it goes away if I set down my computer and sleep for a while. The doorbell ringers go away, too. As long as I just don’t open the door, they go away on their own sooner or later. I turned off my phone a long time ago. There’s only me and the text, the text and me.

The light fades away, and we travel into the darkness together.

I wake up and look at the clock. It says it’s just after five, and I’m still lying on my back, looking at the ceiling and trying to decide whether it’s morning or evening. I can’t decide. All I can determine is that it doesn’t matter. A dull tone cuts through the silence. There’s something familiar about the sound, I think, and I turn my head from one side to the other. The muscles in my neck and shoulders are as tense as springs. Then I hear the sound again and realize that it’s the doorbell.

This time the person outside doesn’t give up. The doorbell rings multiple times, alternating between short and long chiming. I roll onto my side and feel the bed sag under my weight. The sheet is gray and dirty, and when I look down I see a rust-red spot on the material, the size of a coin. Dried blood on my calf just above my right foot suggests that I scratched the skin there until it bled.

Finally the doorbell stops. I lift my face to listen properly. A strand of saliva remains, running from my chin to the mattress. Then the knocking starts, although “knocking” is the wrong word. “Pounding” is more like it. A series of persistent bangs on the door out there and then, after a while, the doorbell again. I moan and cover my ears, but that doesn’t help. I roll out of bed and stagger out of the bedroom, down the stairs, to the door.