Ostergotland, October
Eggs hatch.
Blind baby snakes peer out. More and more and more. They make my blood boil.
But let me start here: let’s pretend there’s a film.
A film about a person’s life, where every moment is captured from an illuminating angle.
My film isn’t black, white, or a thousand colours. It’s matt red and sepia-tinted, a slow journey through numbing loneliness.
I see thousands of people in the images.
They flicker past, but never return. Nothing and no one stays, it’s the loneliest of lonely films.
There’s no disgust in the people’s faces, merely, at best, a lack of interest. Most of them don’t see me. I am a person in the form of air, like a fading outline in a shifting landscape. I once had something to cling to, but I’ve taught myself to be free. But did I ever actually manage it? Maybe I just tell myself I did so that I can bear to go on.
And now? After what’s happened? Him, I don’t want to say his name, floating in the cold dark water. I have no illusions about forgiveness or understanding.
But the rage was wonderful. It was as if the snakes left me, ran out of my body and left me calm and powerful. It really didn’t matter what direction it was aimed in, but to say that he didn’t deserve it is wrong. I can do it again if need be, if only to experience once more that feeling of something evil disappearing out of me, the snakes calming down, and me, the person I could have been, should have been, there instead.
It was within me, the violence. And it comes from you, Father, you’re the man in the pictures, you’re hunting me, beating me, you don’t care about the others hunting me, beating me, making me the least significant person in the world, and no one, no one cares, no one comes to my rescue.
Except him. He comes.
The pictures shift.
I have a friend. A proper friend. He saves me.
Sometimes I work this autumn, in spite of what’s hunting me.
I can feel the warm breath of destruction against my neck. No matter what I do, I must protect myself, it’s the only way for us to survive.
They’re hunting me now, trying to find out who I am. But I shall evade them, it must be my turn now. I don’t regret anything, after all, I’ve simply restored a form of order. I possess both the fear of the hunter and of the hunted. In some ways I long for the violence to give me the feeling of calm again, even if I know that’s wrong.
I am all the nuances of loneliness that exist in the world, all the quiet, soundless fear.
Father.
You’re rushing around with your camera, a cigarette glued to your free hand. You raise your bitter, scared hand with nicotine-yellow nails. Strike nimbly at the body lying on the ground. I don’t want to be that body.
But you don’t exist, Father. In a way, I can put even that injustice right. I have been waiting beneath the trees, outside the doors of the heart of evil. Maybe this is my time, after all.
You boys who hate me without me knowing why, without you knowing why. You do not exist.
And then you are gone, you, my rescuer, my friend.
Just like everyone else, you have disappeared.