Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

And he never did come home.

Jan Inge puts the inhaler back into his pocket. He nods to himself. Looks at the wheelchair. It’s been sitting there for years. It was Rudi who got hold of it when Chessi broke her foot. Typical Rudi. He’d bend over backwards for her.

People like that, thinks Jan Inge, you hold on to people like that.

Bit foggy, the job they were on at the minute. As long as Chessi manages to keep calm. She has to stay in the car. He can’t have her getting under Rudi’s feet while he’s working. She’s too volatile. It’s from Mum, thinks Jan Inge, bad genes. She’s ill-tempered and difficult, you’d be hard pressed to say otherwise. But she is his sister. And she is Rudi’s girlfriend. And that’s how it should be.

Jan Inge lowers himself into the wheelchair. It sinks a little beneath his weight, but it supports him well. It’s easy to control, a nice little contraption. He smiles. A dark lustre comes over his narrow pinhead eyes and he rolls off down the hall.

He trundles into the living room and over to the table, picks up a remote control, presses minus, and the ceiling lights dim. He continues over to the armchair in front of the flatscreen, remains seated while he shoves the armchair over to the window, and then parks the wheelchair in front of the TV. This is ingenious, he thinks, and then glances out the window and sees how dark it has become outside. Good, working in daylight, that’s not for us. Rudi will manage this. But it’s a good thing Tong is getting out on Friday. God bless that little mole of a Korean. He’s a demon, but it’s been tough without him, been like a football team without a striker, to draw an analogy.

This, thinks Jan Inge, rocking back and forth a little in the wheelchair, this is ingenious.

Then he trundles across the living-room floor. Goes past the hall and manoeuvres himself into the kitchen, where he opens the fridge and takes down a one-and-a-half-litre bottle of coke and a big bowl of chocolates. He opens a kitchen drawer and pulls out a family size bag of paprika crisps, before heaving the goodies on to his lap and wheeling back to the living room.

Jan Inge parks the wheelchair in front of the TV, and takes hold of the remote controls.

No problem having 120 on board with this thing, I’m able to get around like a robot.

God, she was so cute when she was small. Wimpy, awkward and weird. Jan Inge suddenly pictures her as he tears open the crisp bag and arranges the remotes and the goodies in his lap. He’s really looking forward to following up Carnival of Souls with Three on a Meathook. Seeeerious grindhouse. 1973. Maximum low-budget. Dirty as a rubbish heap. Brilliant scene when Billy goes into the house and finds the dead girls, and the harmonica soundtrack really adds to the atmosphere.

He could have written a book on horror by now, after all the films he’s seen and studied. It’s doubtful there’re many people out there with a better collection of horror or more knowledge of the genre than him. It’s about time he attended one of the international horror conventions. Show his face. Let them know he exists.

God, Cecilie was so cute back then.

She used to waddle around like a penguin. She’d open that little mouth, her voice all smurfy and nice: Janinge bruuv Cecili sisssa.

Yeah.

I can live with this all right, a cold dark September night in 2012, with coke, treats and a horror movie ready, snuggled up in a wheelchair. It’s a starry night outside. After a few harsh autumn weeks, a bright warm day turns up out of the blue. It’s a sign, but of what? Joy or the apocalypse? Your best mate is out trying to clarify a slightly foggy job, and it may be twenty-five years since you soared through the clouds with your little sister’s hand in yours, but you can still feel the imprint as you sit there in front of the flatscreen, as though she is still clinging to you while you cross the Atlantic.

Yeah.

The fog needs to clear.

Snow flickers on the screen. The old VHS player whines. A woman dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved sweater walks across a yard, over towards a shed. She has shoulder-length hair. Just before she is about to unbolt the door, she turns and looks around. Then she pulls back the bolt, opens it, and goes inside. She screams. Three women hang impaled on meat hooks.

Jan Inge smiles and rocks a little in the wheelchair.

It would be nice to see Dad again.

GOOD MEMORIES.

The door slams behind her and Sandra runs off. That daft-looking run of hers. Her right arm under her tits and her tottering legs. Tiril goes into the backroom and grabs a marker from the Spar cup on the break table. She pulls the top off with her teeth and stretches her fingers out in front of her. Which way? Her fingers are thin, her skin is clean and her nails are painted black and bitten down to the quick. They’ve always been told off for that, both her and Malene; do the two of you have to bite your nails?

Tiril sits down on one of the chairs, sets her jaw, concentrates and begins to write. Letter by letter, going over each twice and making them as decorative as she can.

She clenches her fist, closes her eyes: This pain is just too real. Then she hangs up her work clothes and walks into the empty, semi-darkness of the shop. She hears her own footfalls, they resound upon the newly washed lino. Over to one of the tills. Nobody has noticed anything so far. Tiril opens the cabinet with the little key. Not many packs of Prince left. Lots of Marlboro Gold. She fetches out a ten-pack, puts it in her pocket, exhales.

The front doors are locked, she walks into the backroom again, stopping at the bottle deposit belt and tapping the pocket of her jeans to check if she’s got the lighter, the little black one. She looks around one last time. Everything is okay. She switches off the ceiling light, turns on the alarm, 8789, and goes out.

Tiril sits down on the loading ramp in front of the deliveries door, half hidden behind the large wheelie bins. Her feet dangling over the ground. Dad is probably out taking a walk, she thinks, while trying to get her blunt nails underneath the plastic wrapping of the cigarette packet. He’s probably out with Zitha, she thinks, giving up, bringing the packet to her mouth and tearing the plastic with her teeth.

She sniffles, pulls out a cigarette, puts it between her lips, spins the wheel of the lighter, watches the flame grow and lights it.

There’s just so much that time cannot erase.

The worst thing would be if she was standing in front of the whole school, with Thea on the piano, and everything’s going well, everything’s perfect, and then she forgets the words. Not that she thinks that’ll happen, she knows them backwards, but still she worries about it. She just needs to think that she is Amy Lee. That she actually comes from Little Rock, Arakansas, she hasn’t grown up here, she doesn’t live this pissy life in a little suburb in a stupid oil town in crappy Norway. Shitty Stavanger doesn’t exist . She has woken up every day of her life and looked out at the Arkansas River, skyscrapers and the big American sky.

‘Jesus, Tiril, have you started smoking now as well?’ Malene — shit, where did she come from? — is standing in front of Tiril shaking her head. Her arms folded, she rolls her eyes.

Tiril’s eyes flash angrily. ‘What’s it to you?’

Malene assumes a neutral expression and shrugs.

‘Yeah, yeah, no surprise there. Jesus, Tiril, you’re fourteen. Smoking is lethal.’

Jesus. She’s such a bloody old biddy .

‘Yeah, so? It’s lethal to live, in case you didn’t know.’ Tiril takes a long drag and blows the smoke into her sister’s face. ‘Are you following me or something?’