Thin Ice

by Mikael Engström

  Mik took a few steps back and then started running with his arm raised behind him. He threw the ice ball with all his strength. The dog had no time to see it. Smack, it went, right into his eye. He flew sideways, his head in the snow, and stayed there on the ground for a while before he limped, whimpering, from the road. Mik was able to calmly walk past.

  ‘Die,’ said Mik.

  A silver-coloured car stood in the driveway of Lena’s house. Mik didn’t recognise it – lots of people came to visit Lena. She was never off duty. People always needed some kind of cream or had a sore throat or had twisted their ankle. It could be all kinds of things. Mik stepped in and was taken by surprise. This was no twisted ankle.

  At the kitchen table sat Parrot Earrings and Gold Tooth.

  ‘Well, hello there, Mik,’ said Parrot Earrings.

  ‘Hi, how’s it going?’ said Gold Tooth.

  Lena stood with the coffee pot in her hand. She looked at Mik and then at the visitors and then at Mik again. There were buns on a plate. Mik took one, started eating it and decided not to say a word. Nothing. He had moved here and that had nothing to do with them. There was nothing to be afraid of. This time it was Lena who would decide, and he knew he could live here.

  Gold Tooth got up and stood by the front door. Why did he do that? Mik’s bag stood packed on the floor with Pi’s cushion on top. He saw it but didn’t understand at first. He stopped chewing his bun and went completely cold. The chill ran up his back, spread over his shoulders and right into his heart. He spat out the bun and yelled, ‘NO! I’m not going.’

  He turned and ran for the door, but Gold Tooth grabbed hold of him and held him tight.

  ‘But Mik,’ said Parrot Earrings, ‘your dad’s fine now. Of course you have to go home. He’s struggled for your sake. He’s …’

  ‘I haven’t got a dad,’ shouted Mik, wriggling in Gold Tooth’s grip. ‘I haven’t heard from him. He hasn’t phoned, he hasn’t written to me. He doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Now you’re being unkind and unfair,’ said Parrot Earrings. ‘This was only temporary.’

  ‘He’s a spade.’

  ‘You’re going home.’

  ‘I live here,’ shrieked Mik. ‘I’ve moved here. Let me go, you piece of shit.’

  Lena said nothing. She stood with the coffee pot, as if paralysed, and cried.

  PART 3

  THE ZOMBIE BOOK

  Zombie Book 8/3

  How do you write a diary like this? Are there any rules? And what should you write? Are you allowed to write prick? Mik, prick. MIIK. PRICK. MMMMIIIKKK.

  Zombie Book 11/3

  I’ve blacked out the rabbits on the front of this diary with marker pen. Because this is no rabbit book. This is a zombie book.

  Zombie Book 15/3

  Ploppy and I nicked a shopping trolley in Solna today. We rode it down the slope where the swings are. We could have killed ourselves. The wheels were too small so we tipped over. Ploppy scraped his elbows.

  Zombie Book 21/3

  A zombie is a body with no thoughts or feelings. A ghost is thoughts and feelings without a body.

  Zombie Book 25/3

  Tony’s angry all the time. I don’t know what’s up. But something’s happened. You can’t talk to him like before. He’s never home. The video shop was on fire. School’s been set on fire too. It was Ploppy who set light to the paper towels in the girls’ toilets outside the dining-room. There was a lot of smoke for such a small fire. The fire alarm went off and everyone had to run outside and stand in line in the playground. Now they’ve taken away all the paper towels from the toilets. I had to go and see the principal. It wasn’t an interrogation, he said. He wanted to know if I had any information, and I didn’t. But I think he thinks it was me.

  Zombie Book 27/3

  More about zombies: a zombie is made by black magic and voodoo. A sorcerer carries out a ritual that makes someone die. Often it’s a very hated person and someone has paid the sorcerer to get rid of them. The body is then called back. But it’s a body without a soul and with serious brain damage.

  Zombie Book 2/4

  I’ve got a noise in my ear. I can only hear it when everything is absolutely quiet. A noise that lives inside my head. Should it be there?

  Zombie Book 3/4

  Tony and I boxed today. It was a tough match. Tony said I won, but he gave in. He can do better. But I punched him in the solar plexus. He wasn’t prepared for that. My shoulders are blue now. Actually they’re the same pattern as the knitting on my jumper. The bruises are small squares.

  Zombie Book 7/4

  Ploppy and I went to Solna shopping centre at lunch break. It was liver at school and Ploppy and I hate liver. We went to the hot dog place and bought hamburgers instead. Then we nicked some DVDs. No one said anything and we just roared with laughter when we came out. It just happened; it was pure chance. It was like it wasn’t me who did it. If it hadn’t been liver in school it would never have happened. The films were rubbish.

  Zombie Book 12/4

  On my bed is the cushion Pi gave me. It lies there looking supernatural. It might just as well be a present from an alien. Here you are, a present made of magic material. An unexplainable thing. A cushion.

  Zombie Book 14/4

  You hear a lot of wrong stuff about zombies. They’re not halfdissolved bodies that shuffle through the night to eat fresh brains. Zombies don’t hunt people; they eat normal food.

  Zombie Book 15/4

  I read about scientist Michael Rockefeller from New York. He was on an exploration to New Guinea and when his canoe capsized, Rockefeller swam ten kilometres and came ashore on a beach where cannibals lived. Since then no one’s seen him.

  Zombie Book 17/4

  Today I saw Lisa Nordahl and sat in her sweaty green chair. I don’t understand her. If I tell the truth, she doesn’t believe me. If I lie, she believes me. Today I told her Dad and I had gone to Gröna Lund at the weekend. We bought wristbands and went on everything. Freefall and that new big dipper were best. Then I told her Dad had got a new job, and she thought that was good. She was glad, she said, that everything had turned out so well. But he hasn’t got a new job. He’s washed up on a beach with cannibals.

  Zombie Book 18/4

  Tony hasn’t been home for a few days now. There’s not much food left. Heated up a tin of baked beans and watched a programme on TV about air crashes. Most air crashes happen at take off or landing. Only three out of ten happen during the actual flight. That can be a comfort to know while you’re up in the air.

  Zombie Book 19/4

  This evening Ploppy and I broke into a building site and pissed in all the machines. First we drank one and a half litres of Coca Cola. They’re building a car showroom right where we had our dens. But we’re planning to stop them.

  Zombie Book 22/4

  Our wall clock in the kitchen has a second hand. It ticks loudly. Today I tried to beat my record. I held my breath on the kitchen chair and stared at the clock. My whole body felt like it was exploding and my ears roared. The seconds dragged by. I fell off the chair. Tried again and again but got rubbish times. There must be something wrong with the clock. It’s going too slowly. I put in a new battery but my times were useless. I’m going to train every day. Ate beans. Tony hasn’t come home. Going to bed now. The cushion still smells of Pi. To make the really good times you’ve probably got to be underwater. On land it’s too easy to give up.

  Zombie Book 24/4

  There’s a gun here at home. I found it at the back of the wardrobe when I was looking for bottles. I asked Dad and he said what the hell was I doing snooping around and I should stop acting like I was the police. I could go to hell with my bloody snooping. But I know what kind of gun it is. It’s a shotgun.

  Zombie Book 25/4

  There was no pissing on the building site so tonight Ploppy and I went and poured sand into all the tanks. A big van came so we hid. The van stopped by some containers. Three guys jumped out and cut open the door
s. Ploppy said they welded open the containers. But that’s wrong. You weld things together. You do cutting with an acetylene torch. It was like fireworks. Sparks rained down like from a massive sparkler. Then they loaded things into the van. Tony was one of the three guys. Ploppy didn’t see that, but I did. I didn’t say anything. We got out of there.

  Zombie Book 4/5

  Lisa Nordahl wants me to tell her my very first memory. The thing I first remember about my life. When I first discovered I existed. No, I couldn’t. I kind of never discovered I existed.

  But of course you’ve got a first memory, she said. But I couldn’t remember anything. She didn’t give up so I made up a story about how the family was on holiday in New Guinea and the boat sank and we saved ourselves by landing on a cannibal island. She got angry. But she tried not to show it. She said I was lying, and I said that if the cannibal island is my first memory, then it is. It couldn’t be, she said, it simply can’t have happened. No, it didn’t happen, I said, but it’s my first memory. And she can’t tell me what my first memory is.

  Her first memory was walking through a meadow with her grandmother, picking flowers. Barefoot. Harebells and daisies. I refused to believe it. I might have done, if she said she’d stood on a piece of glass or something in that meadow. My dad, I said, he shot a cannibal with a shotgun we’ve got in the wardrobe at home. Slap in the middle of the forehead, and it made a big hole in the back of his head where his brains flew out. That was the end of our chats for this week.

  Zombie Book 6/5

  Six ways to detect a zombie:

  Slowness. Zombies move very nervously and slowly. They don’t react much or not at all if you try to make contact with them.

  Difficulty speaking. Zombies either can’t speak or they express themselves in very short sentences. Although often only with sounds.

  Squinting eyes. Zombies are, as a rule, only awake at night. Their eyes cannot tolerate sunlight.

  White spots on their skin. Zombie poison can be so strong it causes white patches.

  Insensitivity to pain. Zombies can feel pain but they react very slowly and therefore seem insensitive to pain.

  Bad smell. Zombies don’t bother washing themselves. They are very dirty and tatty and often have rotten teeth.

  Zombie Book 7/5

  Sand in the tanks didn’t stop them building. Why do they have to build a car showroom just where we had our camps? Who’s decided that? Tengil?

  Zombie Book 8/5

  Dad was sitting on the sofa. He wasn’t that drunk. Perhaps he’d only had one bottle. He was happy and said we’d go fishing in the summer. He wondered if I remembered the stream and the perch we used to catch.

  Maybe, I said, but it was a long time ago.

  Well, this summer we’ll go fishing, you and me, he said. Dig for worms and use them for bait.

  The bottles were behind the sofa, a whole row of them.

  Later, after he’d drunk another bottle, he began boasting and talking about when he worked at sea. It makes me want to throw up just hearing about it. Then, after the third bottle, he gets that thousand-metre-deep look, foggy and far off. He doesn’t move his eyes, he turns his whole head, as if his entire eye mechanism has gone wrong.

  Then comes the crying and how he’s going to die. Somewhere towards the end of bottle number four he usually falls asleep. This is when he’s been drinking wine. It goes fairly slowly then compared to when he drinks spirits. Spirits are dangerous. You have to be prepared. There’s no crying period. He gets angry and violent. He can say I’m a bloody disgusting bloody little creep. He shouts and I’m scared he might go into the wardrobe. Spirits don’t make him fall asleep – he crash lands. His brain switches off, all systems shut down, he gets confused. His eyes turn black and then he falls over. Sometimes a soft landing, sometimes hard. I tip away any alcohol that’s left over.

  He hates me. It’s me who’s going to make him stop drinking.

  Zombie Book 11/5

  Crying a lot makes you thirsty. I drink a lot of water.

  Zombie Book 12/5

  There was a ring at the door today. Parrot Earrings and Gold Tooth were standing outside. I saw them through the spyhole. I didn’t open the door. For a minute I thought about getting the gun. That would have given them a surprise.

  Zombie Book 13/5

  Wonder if there’s any medicine that would kill Snake Alone. Simply kill him there inside my stomach, so I could shit him out.

  Tony came home today. I asked him where he’d been and he said he’d moved in with Dennis. I told him about the gun in the wardrobe. Tony just shook his head and tore up the bills. Then he took some clothes and left.

  Zombie Book 17/5

  If you want some kind of change you have to travel for a while at the speed of light. An astronaut who travels for ten years through the Milky Way at the speed of light will get a flipping surprise when he comes home. The earth has become a million years older.

  Zombie Book 18/5

  I think Dad drinks to escape from himself. But he wakes up every morning and is still among the cannibals.

  Zombie Book 19/5

  If I told Lisa Nordahl what it’s like she’d be sad. If I told her exactly what it was like she’d definitely fall apart, start shaking there on the other side of the desk and POOF. So I don’t.

  Zombie Book 25/5

  Tony came home today. That made me really happy. Everything felt the way it used to, for a while. I nagged him to box with me, but he didn’t want to. I fetched the gloves and the egg timer. He thought I was soft in the head, wanting to box, but he put on the gloves and knocked me down.

  I got up and that made him angry and he hit me in the face. I fell down, everything spinning round, and he carried on hitting me. His main fuse must have blown. He sat astride me and punched and punched. I yelled at him to stop, but he hit me even though I was lying down.

  When the egg timer rang he took off the gloves and left. He had been hitting me for ten minutes, even though I was on the floor. He made my nose bleed.

  It hurts inside my head. Hurts all over my body. I ran into my room, scared, and Pi’s cushion got blood on it. Tried to get it off with cold water but the blood only spread. Tony’s crap.

  Dad’s asleep on the sofa. He’s drunk. I’m never going to talk to Tony again. He can go to hell. Everyone can go to hell. Dick. Shag. Arsehole. What else is there? Breast. No, that’s not the same kind of word. Gaydiarrhoeaprick.

  Zombie Book 26/5

  Parrot Earrings phoned today. She wanted to talk to Dad but I said he had a cold. She wondered how things were, and I said good. But she didn’t believe me. She said she had arranged a family home for me in a safer environment. But I said I already had a family and a home. But Parrot Earrings went on and on and said the family home was in Bro and they had children of their own, and animals, horses and so on.

  No, I said, I want to go to Lena, to Selet, if I have to go anywhere. Parrot Earrings said that was impossible; she said I needed a secure, well-functioning family and that Lena didn’t have the necessary qualifications. What did she mean, quali-fuck-ations, what’s that when it’s at home? What a crap word; I can hardly write it. I hung up. Parrot Earrings can go to hell. Who wants to live in a place called Bro?

  Zombie Book 27/5

  I’ve started making a weird noise that drives my teacher mad. I breathe in air through my nose and kind of make the roof of my mouth vibrate. Not the normal kind of sniffing sound – more like snoring. I can’t stop making it. However hard I try, my brain keeps forcing me to do it. Miss sent me to the school nurse.

  But when the school nurse wanted to hear it, I couldn’t do it. She told me to take off my jumper because she wanted to listen to my lungs. And then she saw all the bruises and she went totally hysterical too. I should never have taken my jumper off.

  Zombie Book 28/5

  I opened a letter that came today. It was to my guardian. That was tricky. It took a while for me to work out what a guardian was. It’s m
y dad.

  The letter said: ‘In accordance with the law on the care of young persons, Mik Backman will be placed without your consent in a more secure environment.’

  There was also a load I didn’t understand. The ninth paragraph??? What??? What the hell is that??? Shit, who cares. The guardian is drunk and isn’t going to get his hands on this letter. So that’s no problem.

  Zombie Book 2/6

  Parrot Earrings and Gold Tooth came to school today. We had maths and sat calculating things. I was helping Ploppy with a sum when they suddenly walked into the classroom. Parrot Earrings said hello to the teacher. Gold Tooth stood by the door and I realised what they were going to do. They were going to capture me. I have actually thought about this, that the classroom is a trap because of the bars on the windows. But Ploppy and I have worked one of the locks loose.