The Storyteller

“Stop it. I don’t want this, I …”

Stop it? I’m just starting, she thought with a smile. I’m just starting to live. I’m just starting out in this world. She released his fingers and her hands returned to his body, to depths not yet fully explored, where she found proof that his body did want what hers did. It was obvious. His breathing, close to her ear, was strangely irregular. She smiled at that, too. His breathing was out of rhythm, strained, as if he was holding something back, something violent. He was talking to her again, through clenched teeth, words she didn’t grasp the meaning of. “This … for me … This has nothing to do with … with tenderness, only with … violence … don’t force me …”

She wasn’t forcing him, was she? Her fingers closed around his erection very gently, as if around something new that only belonged to her, something she was taking possession of. She didn’t know anything, she was just learning, she wasn’t forcing him, no …

And then, there was something like a click. Like the flick of a switch. All of a sudden. Abel’s passivity left. His hands tore her hands away, he freed himself, and she thought he’d push her away. But instead, he grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her so fast she couldn’t react.

“Wait!” she said. His warm body was very close to hers, almost too close now, and his hands weren’t gentle, weren’t careful. She still wanted what he wanted, but it was happening too fast … or did it have to be like this? She wasn’t sure; she didn’t know much about this. He knew better, of course, but … “Wait!” she begged again. “Can’t we … please … you’ve gotta show me, how …”

It was as if he didn’t hear her. Not anymore. He pushed her down to the floor; she fell onto her knees, painfully, landing on the concrete. She didn’t understand what was happening. But she knew it was wrong. Later, in her memory, she would relive the scene again and again: she tries to get to her feet, but his whole weight is on top of her, and his hands, his hands hold her tight. He is too strong for her. “No!” she whispers, struggling to get free. “Stop it! Not like this … it wasn’t meant to be like this … if it has to be like this, I don’t … please … forget about the whole thing … Stop it! Stop it! I’ll scream …”

She doesn’t scream. She can’t. He is pressing one hand over her mouth. And that is the moment she knows, there is no going back. That she has lost. All sense of romance is gone. The only thing left is fear, fear of something she doesn’t have any control of. All human glands stop their secretion … this can’t work. Too much raw, dry skin. No liquids to make things slippery, to glide into.

She thrashes like a trapped animal, trying to hurt him with her fists, but they don’t even touch him. She is helpless, a bundle of stupid, helpless fear, kneeling on the concrete floor of an empty boathouse like in absurd prayer. Everything has happened so quickly, much too quickly. She presses her legs together; he forces them apart with his knee; and then, the sharp pain, the penetration of a foreign body. Violence also works without secretion. That thing behind her, it is not Abel; it is no one she knows; it is something that only makes her afraid, something that hurts her, and, worse, something that wants to hurt her. An animal. The pain tears her apart in the middle. It is everywhere. It was turning her inside out. The light of the flashlight is pale and unearthly. She sees the vague shapes of the boats; she watches the shadows to distract herself from the pain. It doesn’t work. She feels the animal deep, deep inside her. It moves. It pushes her down onto the cold floor, again and again, and the worst thing about it all is its hand, covering her mouth, keeping her from screaming. She closes her eyes so she doesn’t have to see the concrete floor anymore. That doesn’t help either. The pain grows when she can’t see anything anymore; it is grinding her up like the stones in a mill. She won’t survive this; she will give up; she will just give up, she thinks, and die. She only wants it to be over.

And then it is. It only took seconds. The hand isn’t covering her mouth anymore; the weight on her back is gone. She doesn’t move. She crouches on the floor, on her knees, bent over, with her head on her arms. There is a noise like the breaking of dishes in a kitchen. Glass breaking.

When she lifts her head, everything is dark. The flashlight. It must have been the flashlight that broke. She hears footsteps ru

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been cowering on the floor. A long time. She’d heard the rat again. Apart from that, she’d heard nothing. There was nobody in the hall. She was alone. No hidden murderer. Just herself … and the memory of what had happened.

She was bleeding. The blood trickled out of her, together with time. Of course, it wasn’t only blood—it wasn’t only time. There was something else she didn’t want to think about now, a part of an animal—a person—that she didn’t know. She tried to think “Abel,” but the name wouldn’t form inside her head, the letters refusing to get into any order that made sense or was even pronounceable.

She didn’t cry. Not this time. And finally, she got up, found a tissue, and wiped away the blood between her legs. There wasn’t as much as she’d thought. She put her clothes back on. She realized she was shivering. Her fingers were ice-cold, and she could barely button up her pants. When she walked over to the door of the boathouse, the pain came back. She was limping.

On the way to her bike, she tried to think the pain away. By sheer willpower. To walk normally so that no one would notice anything was wrong. There was no one around, of course, but there would be tomorrow … Magnus … Linda … people at school. When she thought about school, she felt sick. She would never, ever tell anyone about this. Not even—especially not—Magnus and Linda. And because she couldn’t tell anyone, she told herself.

“Stupid little girl,” she said to herself, spitting out the words, disgusted. “Stupid little girl; you wanted to have an adventure. There you go. You’ve had your adventure now.”

And then, as she unlocked her bike, she started humming, a ridiculous old children’s song.

Just a tiny little pain,

Three days of heavy rain,

Three days of sunlight,

And everything will be all right...

He’d lost her!

Damn, he’d lost her. He knew she’d been here, on the beach. He’d seen her with him; they hadn’t seen him of course. The shadows behind the surfers’ hut were deep and dark. But now he didn’t know where to look for her. And he would creep home, sneak past his parents’ room, secretly, like a thief in his own house—something he’d gotten used to doing the last few weeks. The dog wouldn’t give him away. The dog was sleeping deeply. He’d seen to that.

He’d lost her.

Somewhere between the beach and the place where the sailboats were docked in summer. He’d been too timid, too bent on not being discovered. The white snow made the nights too bright; it had become more and more difficult to follow her without being seen. He’d given them too much of a lead, and they’d grabbed it like a present and disappeared.

He returned to the beach, saw the rectangle of the police tape in the distance, heard it crackle in the night breeze. He realized he was shivering. He didn’t want to think of that police tape now, didn’t want to think of the dead body that had lain there, didn’t want to think of the blood slowly trickling down from the wound, dyeing the snow red. He didn’t want to wonder what Sören Marinke’s last thought had been. Of whom he’d been thinking. Maybe Sören Marinke had loved, too.

He found himself standing on the ice. He walked out, far out. It didn’t matter when he got home—either they would realize he’d been gone or they wouldn’t—and if they did, he could still tell them a story about bar-hopping with friends. He could try to look guilty and hungover. Bar-hopping with friends? He didn’t have friends.