Slowly We Die

by Emelie Schepp

  “Don’t call me that name.”

  “All you have to do, if you don’t want anyone to find out about your complicit past, is let me stay here.”

  She took a step forward, trying to breathe more calmly, but the aggression held her in its iron grip.

  “If they do catch me,” Danilo said, “you can say goodbye to your job as prosecutor, goodbye to your luxury apartment, goodbye to your freedom...”

  She examined his face, searching for any clues that he was bluffing, but he looked perfectly calm.

  “You’re lying,” she said. “You don’t have the boxes. You don’t even know where they are!”

  “I do.”

  “My father has them! He took them.”

  “Wrong, Jana. Your father and I took them together.”

  “Why should I believe you? Out at Arkösund, when I asked you, you said you didn’t know anything.”

  “Oh, but I did.”

  Jana looked at him, breathing rapidly.

  “Now I understand why my father saw you as a risk,” she said, “why he wanted you gone.”

  “Maybe so, but now I’m the only one who knows where the boxes are and can get to them.”

  Jana’s eyes narrowed.

  “I still don’t believe you,” she said.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Prove it to me.”

  The smile disappeared from his lips.

  “Do you really think that I would bring them here, all wrapped up with a big bow on top? Think again.”

  “I want proof that you have them.”

  “You’re just trying to buy time.”

  “That, too.”

  Danilo stood silently for a moment before walking toward her.

  She stood completely still, unmoving, feeling her muscles tense as he approached. She let him come closer but was ready with the knife.

  He leaned forward, hissing in her face.

  “Is this proof enough for you?” he asked, pulling a torn piece of paper from his pocket.

  She grabbed the paper and stared at it. It was a page of her journal that contained her own words, she saw, written by her child’s hand many years ago.

  “I’m staying here,” he said, “and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  She gripped the knife tightly in her hand, wanting desperately to use it, but she knew that she had to release both the knife and the urge to destroy him.

  Danilo was right. There wasn’t anything she could do.

  Not right now.

  August 22

  Dear Diary,

  It started by first break today.

  Martin and I hid in a corner of the schoolyard. Everyone else from class stared at me so strangely. They whispered and pointed and laughed.

  I told Martin that we should go back into class. But when we opened the door, the teacher said that we couldn’t be inside during recess. So we went back out and huddled in the corner.

  They kept it up during history lesson.

  While Holger wrote the names of the Swedish kings on the whiteboard with marker, others started whispering. It began in the far back of the room, with Camilla and Markus, then traveled through the room. The longer Holger stood at the board, the more the gossip spread. Everyone listened and giggled before whispering to the next student.

  When it was finally my turn to listen, Linus leaned toward me and said softly: “You are a disgusting freak.”

  I didn’t say anything. I knew they wanted me to react, but I didn’t. I just looked at Holger and tried to forget about everyone staring at me, about the mean words they said. But it was hard.

  In the afternoon, I went to the hospital with my mother. It was time for yet another of her physical exams. I thought it smelled good in there, but I didn’t tell anyone that.

  I didn’t say anything at all the whole time we were there. I just looked at the doctor, at his pale face. He tried to say he was sorry, that he understood that it could be confusing, that he knew that it wouldn’t help, that it was highly unusual for an operation like the one my mother recently had to go wrong.

  But how could I forgive him? He’d taken my whole world away from me.

  The doctor had no answers; he sat with his head down. He couldn’t say anything definite about the future. But he believed my mom would be okay.

  Mom didn’t think so. I could tell in her face, in her eyes. But she didn’t admit that to me.

  Don’t worry, she said as we left the hospital. She said it again just a minute ago, too, before she went to sleep.

  I’m also going to bed now, because tomorrow is a new day. A new shitty school day.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Thursday

  AIDA NORBERG, HAVING recently graduated from school, was on the morning bus heading home after working her overnight shift at McDonald’s. Sitting beside her was her coworker Melvin Axelsson. Melvin was babbling on and on about how tired he was because he’d been running around for hours and hadn’t even had the chance to drink anything his whole shift.

  “Hello? We work in a total sauna. How the hell do you stand it?” he said to her.

  She didn’t respond. She let him continue complaining as she looked out the bus window. The glass was scratched and dirty, but she could make out the contours of people walking along the street.

  At Eneby Center, she said goodbye to Melvin and stepped off the bus. She could see her neighborhood more clearly now: children on scooters, businessmen in cars, students with backpacks.

  She pulled out her cell phone and began walking down the street. She opened the newest version of Instagram and scrolled through the new filters, thinking how it wasn’t very different from previous versions.

  She selected another app.

  Facebook, always Facebook.

  Someone had added her to a group called Feminist Perspectives. She didn’t want to be part of anything like that. She decided she would leave the group as soon as she had a chance. But for now, she was across the street from home, and it could wait.

  A yellow-and-green tram went by, and garbage swirled around in its wake. She put her cell phone back into her pocket, crossed the tram tracks and went into the courtyard between two apartment buildings. She stopped outside the entrance to her building and looked up at the dark windows of her family’s apartment. As usual, she felt anxious about coming home. Would it be yet another day of her mother’s pitiful crying, followed by prolonged silence?

  She didn’t want her days to be like this.

  Aida stood outside for a moment, trying to collect her thoughts. She had dreamed of getting her own place. Many of her friends already had their own apartments—studios, mostly, with kitchenettes. But it was one thing to leave home by yourself, and something completely different to leave behind your little sister.

  She went upstairs and put her key in the door, and was just about to turn it when she realized that the door was already unlocked. Her forehead wrinkled in concern as she stepped into the apartment.

  Her little sister Sara’s backpack was still hanging in the hallway, as was her jacket. That meant Sara hadn’t gone to preschool today. As Aida hung up her jacket in the hallway, she heard a weak whimpering sound. She glanced toward the room she and Sara shared. Something about the sound and the closed door made her nervous.

  Was he here?

  Aida’s body tensed as she moved toward their bedroom. She noticed the key was in the outside lock. That was unusual. She had turned that key countless times—but always from inside the bedroom. This time, someone had locked it from the outside.

  She swallowed, turned the key and opened the bedroom door.

  The roller shade was pulled down and the smiling moon lamp above Sara’s bed was turned off. Aida could barely see inside.

  “Sara?” she whispered i
nto the darkness.

  There was no answer, but the whimpering sound became more intense, so she stepped in and turned on the ceiling light.

  In the bed, almost fully concealed by a down comforter, lay her little sister. Her hair was tousled, and she was looking at Aida with a glassy gaze. Her eyes radiated confusion more than the fear they had when they were forced to listen to the abuse going on in the next room. But her little body was trembling.

  Something unusual had happened in their apartment. What had he done this time, that fucking idiot?

  “Come here,” she said, reaching her arms out for her little sister. But Sara resisted.

  “Calm down,” she said, attempting to put her arms around her sister’s small frame.

  But Sara wrenched herself free from her older sister’s attempted embrace, creeping even farther under the comforter. She was still whimpering.

  Aida turned her gaze back toward the doorway, and at that moment began to understand. She stood up and listened intently as she quietly left the room. Various scenarios raced through her head, each one worse than the one before as she approached the living room, where she found an unbelievably gruesome scene.

  She stood paralyzed with horror at the sight of her mother tied to a chair, covered in blood, her head hanging limply, her hands severed and lying on the floor.

  * * *

  Philip Engström was jerked hastily awake by the alarm in the ambulance station.

  He swung his legs out of the narrow bed and immediately saw on his handset that the call was high priority. He had ninety seconds to get himself and the ambulance driver into the rig and on the road.

  It had been a stressful night with nine calls and hardly any sleep. It was just eight o’clock now, and the second half of his twenty-four-hour shift was just beginning.

  When he got to the ambulance, he saw Sandra standing there, waiting.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he said.

  “Get in,” she said, climbing in behind the wheel.

  Philip raked his hands through his hair, hopped in the rig and pulled the seat belt across his chest. “Where is Katarina?”

  Sandra drove quickly out of the garage, noting the address of the apartment in Eneby listed at the top of the navigation screen. She turned on the sirens and blue flashing lights while Philip began reading the information from dispatch.

  “A woman has lost consciousness. Bleeding heavily from her wrists. Both hands severed. Police on the way.”

  “Her hands are severed?” Sandra asked.

  “Yes,” Philip said.

  “Suicide attempt? Accident? Does it say anything more?”

  He shook his head.

  They drove past the hospital parking area and out onto Gamla Övägen toward downtown. Philip saw the industrial district, the fences and barbed wire that encircled the buildings.

  “To answer your question, Katarina is apparently still sick,” Sandra said.

  “Strange. I talked to her just yesterday. She said that she would be back today.”

  “Yeah, but you know, the symptoms of exhaustion are nothing to play around with. I don’t think she can handle the stress.”

  “No, not everyone can,” he said.

  Large clouds filled the sky, and a shadow lay over the road. The speedometer read 75 mph.

  “My heart still pounds every time,” she said, “as if I’m scared I won’t be good enough, won’t be able to help, that my efforts won’t suffice.”

  “You sound like a professor when you use words like ‘suffice,’” he said.

  Sandra smiled. “Haven’t you ever felt like that?”

  “No.” He raked his hand through his hair again.

  “Not to change the subject,” he said, “but you haven’t seen a gold ring lying around anywhere at work, have you?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I’ve lost mine.”

  “You’ve lost your wedding ring? Nice move.” She smiled.

  “I already know it’s not, but thanks for the reminder.”

  He rested his elbow on the door and looked out through the windshield. He felt the vehicle swaying and closed his eyes for a second.

  “You should stop taking those meds,” she said.

  “What the hell would I take meds for?” he mumbled.

  “I don’t know...”

  “Do you think that I need meds?”

  “No, but sometimes you slur your speech,” Sandra said. “It’s obvious you’re on something.”

  “I’m just tired. Can’t a person just be tired?”

  She didn’t answer. Or maybe she did; Philip didn’t know. He was already in the borderland between dreams and reality.

  * * *

  She felt sick as she pulled her jacket over her shoulders. Jana Berzelius stood in her walk-in closet with her eyes on the mirror. The bedroom door was locked. She wasn’t scared, that wasn’t the issue. She wanted to be at peace with her thoughts. Her mother had just died. And now this. She had thought all night about the situation, about Danilo. About him staying in her apartment.

  The police hadn’t yet issued a description to the general public, which gave her some amount of relief. Just think what would happen if someone had seen him near her apartment and recognized him?

  During the hours she’d been awake, she had heard him moving through the rooms, opening the refrigerator, flushing the toilet. Then finally everything had become silent. He had presumably fallen asleep, but she didn’t want to know where, whether on the sofa, the floor or the chaise longue.

  How had he gotten in? Through a window? Or had he been able to pick the front-door lock without her ever noticing?

  Irritated, she fastened the top button on her jacket and adjusted her hair to cover her neck. She thought about how she should have been more aware, should have seen something, heard something. But she had been taken completely by surprise, and she hated it. Hated that he was unpredictable, that his movements were always so difficult to anticipate, that he could always get past whatever defense she put up. She hated his bold, competent, hostile, intense manner. Hated that he was the one who always made up the rules of the game. Hated their shared past.

  Danilo was, in a way, uneducated—he had learned from experience, from practice. He had learned to navigate in his reality. He had no normal boundaries.

  But then, she didn’t, either.

  Because of that, her reaction had already exposed her. That she hadn’t killed him showed exactly how important it was for her to get the boxes back.

  And he knew it.

  She sighed, turned off the light and left her room.

  * * *

  “Philip!” Sandra said. “Wake up!”

  “I am awake!” he shouted in the ambulance cab.

  He met Sandra’s serious gaze and knew that she had yelled at him more than once. They were already in Eneby.

  “Bring the bag,” she said, getting out of the cab.

  Philip rubbed both hands over his mouth and eyes, grabbed the medical bag, and with the stretcher between them, they ascended the stairs to the second floor.

  On the top step sat a teenager, her cell phone pressed to her ear. She was wearing a gray T-shirt and ripped jeans. Her hair was black, and she had a wing tattooed on her right lower arm. It began around her wrist and ended at her elbow.

  When she saw Philip and Sandra, she pulled the phone from her ear and got up. Her shirt was bloody and her face pale; she was clearly upset.

  “Hurry. My mom’s in there,” she said, pointing toward the open door. “You have to help her. Her hands... They said that I should try and lay her down, but her arms are tied to the chair and I don’t know how to free them. I tried, but I can’t do it.”

  The girl’s body was shaking.

  “What’s your mom’s name?” Philip asked, exam
ining the girl’s face.

  “Shirin.”

  “And yours?”

  “Aida.”

  Philip and Sandra followed her into a room furnished with a leather sofa, round rug and long drapes. Tied to a chair in a sitting position was an attractive, middle-aged woman, wearing a black top and leopard-print pants. She seemed barely alive.

  “What the hell...” said Philip, exchanging glances with Sandra. They heard Aida’s voice behind her.

  “She was like this when I came home,” she said. “There’s so much blood...oh god, I can’t look...”

  Both of the woman’s hands had been cut off and lay a couple of feet from the chair she’d been tied to. Around each arm was a white zip tie, both pulled so tightly that they were cutting into her skin. The blood dripped slowly from her wrists. Judging from the amount of blood on the floor, Philip quickly surmised that the woman was in shock from extreme blood loss.

  He rushed forward, lifted her head up and confirmed that her airway was free. He placed one hand on her forehead, two fingers under her chin, and gently tilted her head farther back. At the same time, he thought there was something familiar about her face. Had he met her before? When? Where?

  “Shirin,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He leaned over so one ear was near the woman’s mouth, looked at her rib cage and saw she was breathing.

  “What happened? Who did this to you?” he said.

  As he tried to find her pulse, he continued talking to her. He pressed his fingers to her neck and tried to establish the strength and frequency of her pulse, but he could hardly feel it.

  “Shirin,” he said, but she didn’t answer. Only when he took her shoulders and carefully shook her did she react.

  “We have to cut her loose,” he said to Sandra, who was standing behind him. “Quickly.”

  “How should we do that?” she asked.

  “I can’t cut the zip ties without first stopping the flow of blood.”

  Philip opened the medical bag, pulled out the blood pressure cuff, placed it on the woman’s upper arm. He closed the air valve and pumped it up as much as possible.