Little Star (36 page)

She tried to pull away, but Micke whispered, ‘Don’t stop, don’t stop’, pressing her head closer so that his cock touched the back of her throat. A violent wave of nausea crashed through her body, surging up until she vomited. Alcopops, red wine and cheese puffs spurted out of her in a red slop that went all over Micke’s cock, hands and jeans, and the garage floor. He backed away towards the wall, shaking the revolting mess off his hands as he yelled, ‘What the fuck are you doing? That’s so fucking disgusting!’

Teresa collapsed and threw up again, a pool forming beneath her on the cement floor. On the edge of her vision she could see Micke ripping off a long length of kitchen towel from a holder on the wall. When had wiped the worst of the mess off himself, he handed her a bundle.

‘Here. This wasn’t such a good idea, was it?’

Teresa wiped her mouth as she mechanically shook her head. An acrid stench hit her nostrils and she blew her nose and took a couple of deep breaths. She heard a snigger and turned towards Micke, who was looking out into the garden.

It took a couple of seconds for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then she saw that there was a little group standing behind a low shrub five metres away from the garage. Jenny, Albin and Karl-Axel.

Micke said, ‘What the hell are you doing, you fucking idiots?’

Karl-Axel held up his mobile. ‘Nothing. Just made a little film. Real hardcore stuff. It’s just that the ending’s a bit disgusting.’

Teresa hid her face in her hands. She heard the sound of running footsteps, screams and laughter. When she raised her head a long time later, she was alone. She got to her feet and looked around. Her red vomit splashed up the walls, the pool at her feet made the garage look like a slaughterhouse. A slaughterhouse.

She rang Göran on her mobile and asked him to come and pick her up. Then she went and sat on the pavement and waited for him, staring down through the grating over a drain. Behind her the party went on.

Somewhere there has to be
rock bottom, a limit to how far a person can fall. It is possible that Teresa had reached this point when she woke up at half past eight on Saturday morning. She started the day by going to the toilet and spewing up everything that hadn’t already come up. Then she lay in her bed with her arms around her belly and just wanted to die. Really die. Be obliterated, not exist any more, not take one more step in this world.

She had thought it was unnecessary to remove all sharp objects from her room; her problems had never had anything to do with taking her own life. Now her thoughts were focused on nothing else. She lay there wondering whether she had the strength or the courage to sharpen a pencil and hold it upright on the desk in her clenched fist, then slam her head down onto the point so that it penetrated her eye and went into her brain.

No. It was too gruesome, and there wasn’t even any guarantee that she would die. But she wanted to die. Her memories of the previous evening were blurred and disjointed, but she remembered the most important bits, which made her want to fill her mouth with earth, cover her body with earth.

The bottle of Fontex tablets was on her bedside table. She knew they weren’t an option, that they wouldn’t work. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been allowed to have them there. Out of habit she reached for the bottle to take her morning tablet, but let her hand drop.

If she stopped taking her tablets, perhaps she really would become mentally ill. Perhaps they would come and take her away. Lock her up. It was an alternative to dying, and almost the same thing. Only the earth in the mouth was missing, but you could always eat that anyway.

That was the way her thoughts went on Saturday morning.

When she got up to go to the toilet again, Maria was sitting in the armchair on the landing, knitting. She never usually sat there. She was keeping watch.

‘Hi,’ said Teresa.

‘Hi. Have you taken your tablet?’

‘Mm.’

Sitting on the toilet, she made her decision. She really would stop taking her tablets, she would see if she went crazy. Give it a month. If that didn’t work she would come up with a way of killing herself that didn’t feel too horrible. Her hope was that she would go mad without actually noticing.

Just after twelve she went downstairs to keep up appearances. She ate a bread roll with cheese; it tasted like ash. The radio was on in Olof’s room because he was listening to
Tracks.
As the song that was bubbling under this week was introduced, Teresa stopped in mid-bite to listen to Kaj Kindvall: ‘A studio version of a track that’s already had considerable success on MySpace and YouTube has now been released. The artist calls herself Tesla, and apart from a couple of appearances and an early exit from the latest series of
Idol,
we don’t know too much about her. Perhaps that will all change now. This is “Fly”.’

The song began, and Teresa resumed her chewing. They had added strings and made the song more showy. It no longer had anything to do with her. She finished her sandwich and had a glass of milk. Then she felt sick and had to go and throw up again.

At three o’clock her mobile beeped to tell her that she had a message. It said, ‘Film of the year! Check this out!’ A film clip was attached.

Since she already had her face pressed firmly to the ground, she had a look. The picture quality was surprisingly good. Karl-Axel’s father had an excellent job. He gave his son excellent presents. For example an excellent mobile with excellent definition and excellent video and sound recording. The film might even have been even more excellent and more detailed than Teresa’s crappy mobile was capable of showing.

They had been standing there right from the start, and they had filmed the whole thing, right from Teresa’s, ‘Micke. You’re so bloody nice. So kind.’ Teresa saw and understood. No shadow would fall over Micke. He was a boy, and she had practically attacked him. Forced herself on him, then thrown up all over him.

She knew how it worked. The film would spread. Right across the world. In a couple of days people in Buenos Aires would be sitting laughing at the most disgusting thing they had ever seen, then they would send it on to their friends. She couldn’t quite take it in.

Teresa sat down at her desk; her hands were ice-cold. Her mobile rang. She automatically pressed the reply button and put it to her ear.

‘Yes?’

‘Teresa? Hi, it’s Johannes.’

‘Hi, Johannes.’

There was silence at the other end. Then Johannes sighed, making a crackling sound in her ear. ‘How are you feeling?’

Teresa didn’t reply. There was no simple answer to that question.

‘I saw the film,’ said Johannes. ‘Well, not all of it, but…I just wanted to…I feel really sorry for you.’

‘Don’t.’

‘But I do. It’s not right. You’ve had such a…I just wanted to say that…I’m here. Just so you know.’

‘How are things with Agnes?’

‘What? Oh, fine. And she says the same.’

‘Are you back together?’

‘Yes. But Teresa, try to…try…Oh, I don’t know. But I’m here, OK? And Agnes. And we’re very fond of you.’

‘I know you’re not. But thanks anyway. It was kind of you.’

Teresa rang off. When the phone rang again she rejected the call. She lay down on her bed and stared up at the ceiling.

Something gets dirty. A towel. Then it gets dirtier. And even dirtier, so dirty that it begins to fall apart. It is trampled in the mud, picked up, rolled into a ball. There is a breaking point in the state of dirtiness where the object that is dirty ceases to be itself. It becomes something else. The towel no longer looks like a towel, it cannot be used as a towel, it is not a towel. The same thing applies to a human being. Oh, the capacity for reflection might get in the way, the capacity to miss what that person once was. Human, detergent-scented, usable.

But it disappears, very gradually. It disappears.

During the afternoon and evening she received a number of suggestive or downright unpleasant text messages which she saved after reading them. The telephone rang twice; the first time it was somebody making slurping noises, the second time somebody whispering, ‘Don’t stop, don’t stop.’

When Teresa went to bed, she was incapable of sleeping. She tried reading some Ekelöf, but couldn’t concentrate for more than two lines at a time.

She re-read the disgusting texts:
have a nice weekend slag; suck and swallow; World Championship in cock sucking and spewing,
along with those who had made a little more effort.

She couldn’t get enough. It was two o’clock in the morning when she sat down at the computer to see if she had received any emails. She had. More of the same from unfamiliar addresses; the little film had already spread far and wide, and had fired certain people’s imagination and limited ability to articulate their thoughts.

There were several messages from Theres as well, spread over the past few weeks. When she opened one of them she almost expected it to contain some variation on the cock/suck/spew theme.

‘you must come here you have to be here’ one of them said. In another, older message, ‘why did you run away tell me why you didn’t
stay’. The oldest, apart from the one she had deleted, said, ‘jerry says you misunderstood i don’t understand how you misunderstood you have to tell me’. The most recent message had arrived on Friday evening while Teresa was at the party, ‘you have to write i don’t like it when you’re gone’.

Teresa copied the phrases from fourteen messages in total and pasted them in chronological order into one single document, which she read over and over again. If she had still had the ability to cry, she would have done so. Instead of tears a couple of phrases by Ekelöf welled up and forced their way out.

She clicked on reply, and at the top of the message she wrote, ‘I live in another world, but you live in the same one.’

She looked at the sentence. That was really all she had to say. But still her fingers began to move over the keys. She imitated Theres’ elided style, which made it easier to write. She didn’t make any effort to be anything other than honest.

Theres. I haven’t gone. I exist. But I don’t exist. Everyone wants to hurt me. Everyone hates me. I ran because I love you. I want you to be with me. Not with other people. You don’t know how unhappy I am. All the time. I’m empty. There is nowhere I can be. Forgive me. I live in another world now.

She sent the message. Then she went back to bed. Her own darkness melted into the darkness of the room, and she fell asleep.

When she woke up at nine o’clock, there was a reply from Theres in her inbox.

you must live in this world you must come to me now would be good but next weekend jerry is going to america so you will come then i will show you what to do

For a message from Theres, it was practically a novel. As usual there was a fair amount that needed interpreting, but that didn’t bother
Teresa. She had written, and she had received a reply. She would go to Stockholm, and she would go without any particular hopes. It wasn’t an act of will that made her think that way. It was simply a fact.

On Sunday afternoon, when Teresa
was taken ill, nothing could have been more welcome. Her temperature shot up above thirty-nine degrees and it felt cool and refreshing. Her body was exhausted, her thoughts pleasantly fuzzy. All of her real pain was absorbed in the inconsequential aching of her muscles, and as her temperature approached forty degrees and the fever made her body levitate from the sheets there was even a hint of pleasure.

She took some ibuprofen and her temperature came down during the night, allowing her to sleep, but it was still so high when Maria checked on Monday morning that there was no question of Teresa going to school. As if she would have anyway. She switched off her mobile and lay in bed, doing nothing but savouring her illness, giving herself up to it. That was what she had.

All the time she was conscientiously taking her pills out of the Fontex bottle and throwing them away. When Maria pressed her to take her tablet, she hid it under her tongue until Maria had left the room.

Her temperature was back to normal on Thursday morning and Maria thought she could go back to school, but Teresa said, ‘No. I’m going to stay at home and rest today and tomorrow. I’m going to Stockholm at the weekend.’

‘You are
not.’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Last time you came home a complete wreck and now you’ve just
been ill, so if you think I’m letting you go off there again, you’re wrong.’

‘Mum. There’s nothing you can say or do to stop me. Because it doesn’t matter. If you don’t let me go, I shall just lie here in bed until I die. I won’t eat. I won’t drink. I’m serious.’

It didn’t surprise Teresa that Maria actually listened to what she said, because something had happened to Teresa’s voice. She wasn’t speaking from her mouth any longer, but from her sternum, and she could only say what was true. Maria could obviously hear this too. For a long time she just stood and stared at Teresa. Then she vacated the dangerous plateau on which they found themselves and inclined her head. ‘Right!’ she said. ‘If that’s the way it’s going to be, then you can pay for your own ticket.’

On Saturday morning Göran gave her a lift to the station. They didn’t speak much in the car, and the few words Teresa did say just seemed to make Göran uncomfortable. Teresa understood. It was her voice, she could hear the timbre herself. Perhaps this was how ghosts spoke, or vampires: creatures without a soul.

The train took her to Stockholm and the subway took her to Svedmyra and the lift took her to Theres’ door. She felt nothing. When Theres opened the door she walked past her into the apartment and sat down at the kitchen table. Theres sat opposite her.

Teresa had no desire to say anything, but she had come here, after all. She said, ‘Is Jerry in America?’

‘Yes. With Paris. Why are you unhappy?’

‘Because of what I wrote.’

‘I didn’t understand.’

‘There’s a lot you don’t understand.’

‘Yes. A lot. Do you want some food?’

‘No. Your song is on
Tracks.’

‘I know. We’ll listen. To see if it wins.’

‘What does it matter if it wins?’

‘Then more people will want to listen to it.’

‘Why do you want more people to listen?’

‘My singing is good. Your words are good. Why are you unhappy?’

‘Because I’m fat and ugly and lonely and nobody likes me. For a start.’

‘I like you.’

‘Perhaps. But you like so many people.’

‘I like you best.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There are lots of girls. But I like you best.’

‘Is anyone coming today?’

‘Not today. And not tomorrow.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m going to be with you. Why are you unhappy?’

Teresa got up from the table and took a walk around the apartment. It was like revisiting a place you’ve been away from for so long that everything has become unfamiliar. There was the computer they had played on. There was Theres’ bed where they had sat, the sofa where they had watched horror films. Everything was true and not true. They belonged to someone else. Next to the computer lay her own notebook with lyrics in it. She read a couple of them and couldn’t understand why she had written them.

At twelve o’clock she helped Theres put the radio on, then they sat in silence on the sofa as song after song was played. Teresa listened behind the music, behind the words. There was nothing there. Yet another song was introduced as a really great track from an exciting new band, and the only thing it expressed was its complete lack of content.

It was a few minutes away from two o’clock when a crackling, buzzing sound was heard. The jingle for this week’s Bullet: the highest new entry, ‘Fly’, by Tesla. The song had gone from nowhere straight to number two, beaten only by The Ark with ‘The Worrying Kind’.

When Teresa switched off the radio, Theres said, ‘We didn’t win.’

‘Maybe next week.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Why are you unhappy?’

‘Can you stop asking me that?’

‘No. I want to know.’

Teresa took out her mobile, scrolled through until she found the clip from the garage, pressed play and gave it to Theres, who held the little screen close to her eyes as she carefully followed the course of events. When it was over she gave the phone back to Teresa and said, ‘Being sick is not good.’

‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’

Theres pondered for a couple of seconds, then asked, ‘Why did you do that? With the boy?’

‘I was drunk.’

‘You’d been drinking alcohol.’

‘Yes.’

‘Alcohol is not good. Why are you unhappy?’

Something had been silently building up and now Teresa jerked as a clearly audible ‘click’ reverberated through her body. A switch was flicked on, a hatch opened. She leapt to her feet and
screamed.

‘Why can’t you understand
anything?
Can’t you understand that’s just about the most disgusting, ugly, revolting thing you can do and it’s on film and it’s
me
who’s doing it and every single fucking person in the entire fucking world can watch it and see how ugly and how completely fucking disgusting I am throwing up all over his cock and I already felt like shit beforehand and I thought I was totally empty then I had a drink so I wouldn’t be empty any more and then that happened and it turned out that it’s actually possible to be
even more
fucking empty. It’s possible to be so fucking empty that you really don’t exist any more and I don’t exist any more and this isn’t me standing here and this isn’t me talking and you don’t know me any more and I don’t know you.’

During this entire screaming monologue, Theres sat straight-backed with her hands resting on her knees, listening attentively.
When Teresa flopped down in the armchair, her face bright red, and wrapped her arms tightly around her body, Theres said, ‘Those were good words. That you wrote.’

‘Which fucking words?’

‘I live in another world, but you live in the same one.’

‘And do you understand what that means?’

‘No. But I laughed.’

‘I’ve never heard you laugh.’

‘I’ve started.’

‘What do you mean, you’ve started?’

‘Some of the girls laugh. Then I laugh too. Sometimes. Otherwise they get scared.’ Theres looked over at the window. ‘We’re going now.’

‘Going where?’

‘I’ll show you what to do.’

Five minutes later they were standing by the loading bay at the back of the local shop, which had closed at two o’clock. Teresa looked at the hammer Theres had brought with her from home, and which was now dangling from her hand.

‘Are we going to break in?’

‘No. He’s coming now. I know.’

Just as Theres uttered the last word, the door opened and a man in his forties came out. He looked remarkably like Teresa’s English teacher. The same sparse beard and slightly bulging eyes, the same clothes: jeans and a check shirt. In his hand he was holding a small metal box, presumably the day’s takings. He caught sight of Theres and Teresa as soon as he opened the door.

‘Hi girls, and what—’

He didn’t get any further before Theres smashed the hammer into his temple. He staggered backwards a couple of steps into the shop, then went down full length on his back. Theres grabbed the door before it swung shut, and walked in. Teresa followed her. She had not yet begun to feel anything.

The heavy metal door closed behind them, and the room was
in semi-darkness. Only the light from the shop windows filtered in through a doorway. Teresa found the light switch, and a couple of fluorescent tubes on the ceiling came on. The man was lying on the floor with his mouth open, one hand pressed to his temple. A small amount of blood was seeping through his fingers.

Theres gave the hammer to Teresa and said, ‘Make him dead.’

Teresa weighed the hammer in her hand and looked at the man. She tried a practice blow in the air. The man started to scream. Inarticulate noises at first, and then with words.

‘Take the money! There’s almost eight thousand! Take it and get out of here! I’ve never seen you, I don’t know who you are, my mother’s ill, she needs me, you can’t, please don’t do anything stupid, just take the money…’

Theres found a roll of packing tape and tore off a strip, which she wound twice around the man’s mouth. Teresa was surprised that he offered no resistance, but his hands were moving in an odd, jerky way. Presumably the blow to the head had sabotaged something to do with his bodily functions. The man snorted and snot ran out of his nose and down over the packing tape. It looked a bit like
Hostel.
That was probably where Theres had got the idea of the tape from.

Teresa took a step towards the man and his feet scrabbled on the floor as he tried to move backwards. She raised the hammer; asked herself how she felt. Then she held it out to Theres.

‘I can’t.’

Theres didn’t take it. ‘No. You have to do it.’

‘Why?’

‘You say you’re empty. You need to.’

Theres turned to face Teresa and looked her in the eyes. Teresa gasped. She stared into those dark blue voids as Theres’ voice flowed into her ears. ‘You make him dead. Then you take him. There will be a little bit of smoke. Red smoke. You take it. Then you’re not empty. Then you’ll be happy and you’ll want to do things again.’

Theres’ voice had taken on something of the same quality as Teresa’s; it was coming from a different place in her body, not from
her mouth, and everything she said was true. When Teresa turned back to the man, he had managed to turn on his side and grab hold of something on the floor. A Stanley knife for opening boxes. He was holding it up with the blade pointing at Teresa as he tried to get to his feet. His eyes were staring insanely and snot kept spurting out of his nose.

Teresa gritted her teeth and raised the hammer. The man’s hand flew out and the blade sliced through her top, making a superficial cut on her stomach. The movement overbalanced the man, and he fell on the floor again. Theres stamped on his hand until he dropped the knife.

Teresa looked at the blood tricking down towards the waistband of her trousers, drew her index and middle fingers through it and stuck them in her mouth. It turned red inside, and the colour billowed up in her head until that too was red on the inside. Colour. She had colour. When she ran her tongue over her teeth, it felt as if they had been sharpened into points.

She quickly squatted down and slammed the hammer straight into the man’s forehead. There was an echoing crunch and a sound like a heavy foot stamping on a frozen puddle. The man’s body arched upwards and his hip brushed against Teresa’s hip before he collapsed and lay flat on his back again. His hands and feet were shaking, and the blood vessels in his eyes burst.

The smells. Teresa was aware of the smells. The sweat of fear from the man’s body, the iron smell of the blood and all around her a miasma of storeroom odours, floating through the air. Rotting bananas, fresh mushrooms, printer’s ink and stale beer from the container of cans for recycling. She recognised them all, she could identify them and tick them off. They melted together with the red, cascading colour inside her head and became one single experience, one single thought going around and around:
I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive.

She hit the man on the temple, on the head. She smashed his teeth and she knocked out one eye. She hit his forehead as hard as she could
several times until a hole opened up in his skull, and she was able to creep close to him, quivering with excitement, and watch the lone thin curl of smoke rise from deep inside. No, she didn’t see it, but she knew it was there, she could smell it; sense its presence.

She drew back her lips and growled softly as it flowed into her and became a part of her.

They took a walk through the closed shop. Teresa picked up a bar of chocolate, took a bite without opening it, then threw it away. She opened a packet of crisps and ate two, then poured the rest all over the contents of the freezer. She barked and bit off a piece of Falun sausage, chewed it to a soggy mess then spat it out over the tomatoes. Meanwhile Theres fetched two plastic bags and filled them with as many jars of baby food as she could carry.

They went back to the storeroom. An irregular pool of blood had flowed from the man’s head, and on the edge of the pool lay the hammer. Teresa picked it up, went over to the sink and rinsed it under the tap. She caught sight of herself in the mirror.

Her face was spattered with blood and a few small, more solid lumps of human tissue were stuck to her cheeks. Streaks of blood had trickled down over her forehead from her hair. She turned to Theres.

‘Theres. Do you think I’m beautiful now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you like to kiss me?’

‘No.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

The cut on her stomach had begun to hurt, but was no longer bleeding. However, both her top and the knees of her trousers were so blood-soaked that no one could have seen her without getting suspicious. She washed her face, then they waited until it was dark before they left.

The last thing they did was to take the notes from the cash box. Then they walked back to Theres’ apartment at normal speed. They didn’t meet a single person on the way.