The Beast

by Anders Roslund

  Number 33 is best. That's where he nicked the bike. And where he slept.

  They've stopped screaming. The fat little blonde whore is crying, red-eyed, snot running from her nose. The dark slag looks obstinate, staring at him, challenging him, hating. He ties their hands to one of the pipes running along the cement-grey wall. It's hot, must be a hot water pipe. It will burn their arms. They both kick, trying to hit him. Every time, he kicks them back. They get the message soon enough and don't try kicking any more.

  They're sitting still now. Whores should sit still. Whores wait for what's coming to them. He calls the shots. He takes his clothes off. T-shirt, jeans, underpants, shoes, socks. In that order. He undresses in front of them. If they don't look at him, he kicks them until they do. Whores should look. He stands naked in front of them. He's handsome. He knows that he's handsome. Trained body. Muscular legs. Firm buttocks. No belly. Handsome.

  'What do you think?'

  The dark slag is crying now.

  'Horrid horrid cap-man.'

  She's crying, she took her time, but she's just like all the whores.

  'What do you think? Handsome or what?'

  'Horrid horrid cap-man. I want to go home.'

  His cock is hard. He calls the shots. He comes up close, pushes his penis at their faces.

  'Looks good, eh?'

  He shouldn't have wanked. He did it twice this morning. He can only manage two more times, probably. He does it in front of them, his breathing quickens. He kicks the fat blonde when she looks away for a moment, empties himself in their faces, on their hair, it gets messy when they shake their heads.

  They're crying. Whores always cry, all the fucking time.

  He undresses them. Their tops have to be cut first, now that their hands are tied to the hot pipe. They're younger than he'd thought, no sign of tits.

  He pulls everything off except their shoes. Not the shoes. Not yet. The fat blonde slag has got pink shoes, shiny, like patent leather. The brunette is wearing white trainers, like for playing tennis in.

  He bends over the fat blonde whore. He kisses her pink shoes on top, near the toes. He licks both of them, starting at the toe, all along the shoe, the heel too. He takes them off. Her little whore's feet are gorgeous. He lifts one of her feet, she almost tips over backwards. He licks her ankle, her toes, sucks a little on each one. He glances up at her face, she's crying quietly.

  He feels an urgent desire.

  She always wakes when the newspaper arrives. Every single morning. It falls on the wooden floor with a sodding awful thump. Then there're two more thumps, next door, and then the next one along. She has tried to catch him, tell him to stop, but has been too late every time. She caught sight of his back quite a few times. He's young, with his hair in a ponytail. If she gets hold of him she'll explain how people feel at five o'clock on Sunday mornings.

  She can't go back to sleep now. She twists and turns, she's sweating. Must go back to sleep, should sleep, but no, it can't be done. She never used to have this problem, it's different now, her thoughts attack her at once and by six o'clock she's really tense, to hell with the paperboy and his ponytail.

  The Sunday version of Dagens Nyheter feels as weighty as the Bible. She starts reading part of it in bed, looking at the words and then more words; there are too many. Nothing makes sense to her. Lots of in-depth reports about interesting people, she ought to read them but feels too tired to get her mind round it all. She makes a careful pile, she'll tackle it later. She never does.

  She is restless. All these hours. Read DN, then coffee, do teeth, breakfast, make bed, wash up, teeth again. It's not even half past seven yet, a Sunday morning in June with beams of sun piercing the Venetian blinds. She turns her head away, can't face the light yet, too much summer out there, too many people holding other people's hands, too many people sleeping close to other people, too many who're laughing, making love. She can't face any of them, not just now.

  She walks down the steps to the basement, to the store. It's dark down there, lonely and untidy. She knows she's got at least two hours of work ahead, sorting and packing. It'll take her to half past nine. Not so bad.

  The first thing she notices is that the padlock has been forced. And the padlocks on either side as well, on both 32 and 34. She'd better find out who owns them; after seven years in the house she wouldn't even recognise her neighbours. But now they've got forced padlocks in common. Now they can talk to each other.

  The next thing she notices is the bike. Or rather, that the bike isn't there. Jonathan's expensive five-geared black mountain bike. And to think that she was going to sell it; it should have been worth at least 500 kronor. Now she's got to phone him, he's with his father, but better tell him now so he'll have time to calm down before he comes to stay with her.

  Afterwards she cannot explain why she didn't see them. Why she was worrying about the owners of pens 32 and 34, about Jonathan's bike. As if she did not want to see, was unable to see. When the police asked what she had noticed first on entering the pen, wanting her crucial first impressions, she started laughing hysterically. She laughed for a while, started to cough and then explained, with tears flowing down her cheeks. Her first reaction had been that Jonathan would be upset, because his black mountain bike was gone and he wouldn't be able to spend the money he'd get from-selling it on the PlayStation game he wanted. It cost at least 500 kronor.

  Of course, she had never seen death before, never come across anyone so still, looking at her without breathing.

  That's what they did. They looked at her. They were lying on the cement floor with their heads propped up on upturned flowerpots, like rigid pillows. Two little girls, younger than Jonathan, no more than ten years old. One blonde, one dark. There was blood all over them, on their faces, chests, thighs, between their legs. Dried blood everywhere, except their feet; their feet were so clean, almost as if they had been washed.

  She had never seen them before. Well, maybe. They lived nearby, after all. Sure, she might have seen them. In the shop, maybe, or in the park. Always so many children in the park.

  They'd been on the floor in her storage pen for three days and two nights, that's what the police doctor said. Semen had been sprayed all over them, in vagina and anus, on chest and hair. Vagina and anus had received what the doctor called sharp trauma. A pointed object, probably made of metal, had been repeatedly forced inside, causing severe internal haemorrhaging.

  They might have been in the same school as Jonathan. Crowds of girls there, all looking alike, girls do, alike as a thousand sisters.

  They were naked. Their clothes had been arranged in front of them, just inside the door of the pen. One piece of clothing after another, lined up like exhibits. Jackets folded, trousers rolled up, T-shirts, panties, tights, shoes, a hair- ribbon, everything was very neatly and precisely placed with about two centimetres between each item. Just about exactly two centimetres apart.

  The girls had been looking at her. But they had not been breathing.

  * * *

  ABOUT NOW

  * * *

  I

  (24 HOURS)

  Putting on a mask always made him feel very silly. A grown man hiding behind a kid's mask ought to feel silly. But he had watched other men doing it, playing at being Winnie the Pooh or Uncle Scrooge McDuck with some kind of dignity, as if the mask didn't bother them. I'll never get the hang of this, he thought, never get used to it. Won't ever turn into the kind of father I wanted for myself once, the kind I was determined to be one day.

  He kept touching the thin, garishly coloured plastic membrane that covered his face. It was held on by a rubber band that fitted tightly round the back of his head and had become tangled in his hair. It was hard to breathe, each breath smelled of saliva and sweat.

  'You must run, Daddy! You're not running! You're standing still! Big Bad Wolf's always running!'

  She had stopped in front of him, looking at him with her head tilted back, bits of grass and earth scattered in
her long blonde curls. She was trying to look cross, but angry children don't smile and she did; she was smiling with the beaming face of a child who has been chased by the Big Bad Wolf, round and round a house in the small town. Chased until her dad couldn't stand it any more, wanted very much to be somebody else, someone who didn't wear a mask with a wolf's plastic tongue and teeth.

  'Marie, I can't hack it any more. Big Bad Wolf has to sit down and rest for a bit. The Big Bad Wolf wants to become small and kind.'

  She shook her head.

  'One more time, Daddy! Just one more.'

  'That's what you said last time.'

  'This is the last time.'

  You've said that before too.'

  'It's the last time. For sure.'

  'Sure, sure?'

  'Sure.'

  I love her, he thought. She's my daughter. It didn't happen immediately, I didn't understand at first, but now I do. I love her.

  Suddenly he caught sight of the moving shadow. Just behind him. It was slow, crept along. He'd thought the other one was somewhere ahead of him, over by the trees, instead of right behind him, but there he was, moving stealthily at first, then speeding up, just at the moment when the girl with the mucky hair attacked from in front. They pushed him at the same time from opposite directions. He staggered, fell and hit the ground. Now they could both jump on top of him. They stayed as they were, then the girl with mucky hair raised her hand, palm outwards, and the dark- haired boy, the same age as her, raised his hand. Their palms slapped together. High five!

  'David, look! He's given in!'

  'We won!'

  'The Pigs are the best!'

  'The Pigs are always the best!'

  Attacked by two five-year-olds from opposite directions, the Big Bad Wolf hadn't got a hope. As always. He knew what he must do, and rolled over, the two creatures on top of him following the roll. Lying on his back, he raised his hands to the plastic mask and pulled it off his face, blinking in the strong sunlight. He laughed out loud.

  'Isn't it funny? I lose every time. Never win. Have I ever won, just once? Can anyone explain what's going on?'

  Waste of breath. The two creatures didn't listen. They had won the prize, the plastic mask. They would try it on first, then celebrate by wearing it for a run-around. Afterwards they would go inside, upstairs to Marie's room on the first floor, to add the mask to their other trophies. They would stand in front of the pile for a moment, a Ducksburg monument to the glory of two five-year-old friends.

  As the children wandered away, his eyes followed them. He looked at the boy from next door, then at his daughter. So much life inside them, so many years held in their hands, with months slipping between their fingers. I envy them, he thought. I envy their endless time, their sense that an hour is long, that winter will last for ever.

  They disappeared through the door and he turned his face towards the sky. Lying on his back, he searched for different shades of blue, something he had done when he was little and now did again. Any kind of sky held different blues. He'd had a good time back then, when he was just a small boy. His father was a career army officer, a captain, and that meant something. You were in a regiment. Your future promotion was embroidered on the shoulders of your uniform, or so you hoped, at least. His mother was a housewife, at home when he and his brother left for school, and still there when they returned. He'd never understood what she found to do, alone in four rooms on the third floor of a block of flats. How did she endure the sameness of her days?

  On his twelfth birthday everything changed. Or, to be exact, on the day after. It seemed that Frans had waited until his birthday celebrations were over, as if he had not wanted to ruin them. As if he knew that for his little brother a birthday was something more than when you were born; it was all your longing concentrated into one day.

  Fredrik Steffansson got up and brushed the grass from his shirt and shorts. He often thought about Frans, remembered missing him, more now than he'd used to. From the day after his birthday his brother simply wasn't there. His empty bed stayed made for ever. Their talking together silenced. It was so sudden. In the morning Frans had hugged him for a long time, longer than any time Fredrik could recall. Frans had hugged him, said goodbye and walked off to Strängnäs station in time for the fast train to Stockholm. Next, no more than an hour later, in the metro station, he had bought another single ticket and caught a green line train going south, towards Farsta. At Medborgar Square, he got off, then jumped from the platform on to the track and started walking slowly between the rails into the tunnel towards Skanstull. Six minutes later a train driver caught sight of a human shape in the light of the bright headlamps and threw himself at the brakes, screaming in anguish and terror as the front carriage hit a fifteen-year-old body.

  Ever since, they had left Frans's bed untouched, the bedspread pulled tight, the folded red blanket at the foot- end. He never understood why. Still didn't. Maybe to look welcoming if Frans returned. For years he had kept hoping that one day his brother would simply be there, that it had all been a mistake. After all, such mistakes are not unheard of. They can happen.

  It was as if the whole family had died that day, on the track in a tunnel between Medborgar Square and Skanstull. His mother no longer spent her days waiting around in the flat. She never told anyone where she went but, regardless of season, she was always back at dusk. His father collapsed in every way. The straight-backed captain looked crumpled and bent, and while he'd been taciturn before, he now became practically mute. He stopped chastising his son. At least, after Frans had died, Fredrik couldn't remember ever being beaten again.

  They were back, standing in the doorway. Marie and David. One as tall as the other, five-year-olds' height; he'd forgotten how many centimetres, it had said on the note from the nursery that stated Marie's height and weight, but both kids were presumably as tall as they ought to be; he didn't much care for notes with statistics. Marie's long blonde curls were still full of grass and stuff, and David's short dark hair was sticking to his forehead and temples, which meant that he'd put the mask on while they were inside. Fredrik observed them knowingly and laughed.

  'Look at you, so neat and tidy. Not. Just like me. We all need a bath. Do pigs take baths?'

  He didn't wait for a reply. Putting one hand on each of their thin bony shoulders, he pushed them gently back into the house, through the hall, past Marie's room, past his bedroom, and into the big bathroom. He filled the old bathtub with water, a high-sided old tub on feet and with two seats inside. He'd found it at an auction of stuff from some grand house. Every night he would sit in the bath, allowing the sauna-like conditions to relax him and thinking, doing nothing for half an hour or so, except planning what he'd write the following day. The next chapter, the next word.

  Now he worried about getting the water right for them. Not too hot, not too cold. He squeezed foam from a green Mr Men bottle. It looked soft and inviting. To his surprise they stepped into the bath without any fuss and settled side by side on one seat. He undressed quickly and sat on the seat opposite them.

  Five-year-olds are so small. You don't realise quite how small until they're naked. Soft skin, slender bodies, forever hopeful faces. He looked at Marie, her forehead covered in white bubbles that trickled down her nose. He looked at

  David, who was holding the empty Mr Men bottle upside down, making more bubbles. He felt he lacked a picture of himself at the age of five, and tried placing his own head on Marie's shoulders. People said that they were strikingly alike, they enjoyed pointing it out. This baffled him and embarrassed Marie. His five-year-old face on her body. He ought to recall something, have a recognition of the way he'd felt then, but all he remembered was the beatings. He and Dad in the drawing room, that fucking awful big hand hitting his bottom, this he did remember, and he remembered too Frans pressing his face against the pane of glass in the drawing room door.

  'The foam's finished.'

  David held out the bottle to show him, shook it with the spo
ut touching the water.

  'I noticed. Now, could that be because you've poured it all out?'

  'Wasn't I meant to?'

  Fredrik sighed.

  'Oh, sure. Of course.'

  'You must buy another one.'

  He had used to do it too, watch through the pane when Frans was beaten. Dad never noticed either of them, how they'd be observing what happened through the glazed panel in the door. Frans was older. He got hit more times, the beating took longer, at least that was how it felt from a couple of metres away. Fredrik had not remembered any of this until he was an adult. The beatings hadn't happened for over fifteen years and then, suddenly, it all came back, the big hand and the pane of glass. He was almost thirty by that stage and ever since then he'd had to haul his thoughts away from the memory, away from the drawing room. Not that he felt angry, oddly enough not even vengeful; instead he grieved, or at least, the nearest thing to what he felt was grief.