Strange Bird (2013)

by Anna Jansson

  “Fucking cop cunt!” The tall one moved in close with a syringe in his hand. Maria saw him in the corner of her eye. The syringe was gleaming, filled with dark red blood.

  “Please, I…. Don’t. Don’t. Ouww, oh God!”

  He squatted down on her back. The others held on to her arms and legs. For a moment Maria thought that they were going to rape her, that they were only using the syringe as a threat. But it was far worse than that.

  “Welcome to hell.” The taunting voice cut into her. The needle pierced her trousers and skin, went in deep and grazed her femur. Maria tried to kick herself free. The needle glided out. Maybe it had snapped inside her flesh? She didn’t know. He continued stabbing her with it. She had to try and mark him. She bit, scratched, clawed at his masked face. He spit at her. Right in her face. His eyes were overflowing with hatred. He stood up to kick her one more time.

  Someone opened a window and a woman’s voice called out.

  “If you don’t stop that racket I’ll call the police!”

  “Do it! Call the police!” Maria’s voice did not carry. Another kick slammed into her, she convulsed and gasped for air. Her back was smashed. The pain was beyond endurance.

  Another window opened.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Help!” Maria’s voice made a hollow, croaking sound.

  One more kick swished into her. She tried to protect her head with her arm. Another kick. There was a cracking sound. The pain made her black out.

  “Call an ambulance! Please….” Her voice was no more than a whisper, maybe just a thought. Everything went silent. The kicking stopped. Dark figures moved indistinctly round them, like a dance of witches. Steel-toed boots. The voices from the windows turned into echoes. A last kick cut clean through her whole body.

  When Maria regained consciousness she only saw the staring eyes at first. Black human bodies with long legs and eyes. A quiet murmuring of perturbed and dismayed voices. Echoes, half-perceived words to cling onto in a sea of raging pain. She tried to make out the words but they remained indecipherable. The sound of an approaching ambulance accentuated everything. Someone touched her, tried to move her. The pain was indescribable.

  A new face came up close to her. A man with an anxious gaze, though his words were calm. Clear. A kind voice. She wanted to cry.

  “How are you? Where does it hurt?” The ambulance man was speaking to her.

  “Is the boy alive?” He couldn’t hear her. It was painful to breathe.

  “Where does it hurt?”

  She couldn’t make herself understood. Her lips were swollen and she couldn’t project her voice: each word felt like internal bleeding or a fractured neck. Her whole identity seemed to be in swaying motion, without any firm grip. The man’s voice took command. Passively she let herself be moved. They were placed on stretchers and transferred to the waiting ambulances. She caught a glimpse of the boy’s limp body. He simply had to pull through, had to survive, in spite of all the blows and kicks to his head. Where were his parents? Soon they’d find out. Maria felt a fit of weeping in her body, but without tears. Every time the car jolted, an excruciating pain coursed through her. The ambulance man was there, the one with the anxious eyes and calm voice. All the way on the bumpy road to the hospital he was there with her. He told her his name was Tobias. She held onto his name as if it were a mantra.

  The fluorescent lights in the white room cut into her eyes. White-dressed figures flitted past like bright butterflies. They were hands and voices in a sea of pain. A doctor introduced himself but Maria couldn’t fix his name in her mind. His face was round. He was sweating and his glasses had slipped down his nose; his lower jaw masticated as he spoke. He’d nicked himself on his chin with his razor. A tiny, bleeding cut. He seemed to be saying something about an X-ray. He asked a question, wanted an answer. But the pain engulfed her in darkness. The voices came and went in her wavering consciousness.

  “The boy, is the boy all right?” Maria grabbed hold of a white coat. She had to know.

  “Is he your son?”

  Maria shook her head.

  “He’s in intensive care. The police want to talk to you later.” The woman’s voice was soft and calm. Do healthcare staff have to take an oral exam before they’re offered a job? The quieter and calmer they sound, the more serious the situation. One can see it in their eyes. Only there does the truth leak out. At times of utter silence one knows death has showed up; death is beginning its struggle with life.

  Maria was helped to crawl over into a bed. “They stabbed me with needles!”

  “We’ll take you for an X-ray in a minute.” Two voices talking. No one heard her. The bed started rolling along.

  “I could be infected. My blood.” Fear cut through her body. “I could be infected!” Still they could not hear. The bed took off. The blinding lights along the girders flashed by overhead. White coats swished past, silent as shadows in a dream. Only the hushing of fans and the scraping and singing of the bed’s wheels against the concrete floor could be heard. “I’ve been stabbed with a goddamn syringe!” Maria tried to make eye contact with the auxiliary just as he was greeting a passing colleague. “I may have been infected with HIV!”

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