“Get out of my house! Both of you. And tell Suvi that pimps and whores are not welcome here. I can’t believe the time I wasted on feeling sorry for her; that f.cking snake”
“But baby…”
“You heard me. Get out!”
“Where am I gonna stay?”
“I don’t give a shit!”
“Alright, alright. Stop yelling. I’ll let you sleep on it. We’ll talk tomorrow”
Petra didn’t say a word because she knew if she opened her mouth she was going to break down in tears. It was extremely weird and disturbing to watch ‘her man’ and some half naked stranger walk into HER bedroom and put on clothes as if SHE was the one who was invading THEIR privacy. As soon as they walked out Petra collapsed on the floor and began to cry. She stayed there for hours. When it got dark she got up and went to the sofa to sleep. She couldn’t possibly go to the bedroom. She would have had to change the sheets, pillows; everything. She was too weak to do all that. She could still smell Anne’s expensive perfume inside; even after all those hours. What was Lauri thinking... that she wouldn’t have noticed this heavy fragrance anyway; even if she hadn’t walked in on them? He was dumb alright; but that was one of the reasons why she loved him. She thought he was harmless; silly, stupid but true. She hadn’t deserved this. Timing was terrible to say the least. On the other hand, was there ever a good time to catch the love of your life in YOUR bed with a stranger? It made the preciousness of their history and the value that their labor had built brick by brick disappear in no more than a few seconds; just like that. What was she going to do now? Well…for starters, she was going to have to get up and go to school. It was morning again. She hadn’t slept a wink and her first class was going to start in exactly 45 minutes.
Now that she was forced to live alone and she saw no support from her mother in the horizon, she decided to get a job. It wasn’t all that easy but she knew that the successful café chain ‘Natalia’s Pullahuone’ was always on the look out for cheap labor. They LOVED students. She figured she could use some ‘tough occupation’ to get her mind off of things as well as some cash. She was right. The work wasn’t easy at all but she was good at it and found the solace she knew she would have there.
Lauri tried to reach Petra and asked for forgiveness many times but she didn’t know how to face him. She thought she could let him continue suffering for another week and then maybe think about whether or not she could let him back into her life. But the calls from him suddenly stopped. She hated him for what he did but she still loved him; she was worried. Why had he stopped calling and texting? Had something happened to him? Was he alright? He was ‘alright’ indeed. Petra saw him and Suvi kissing on the outside of a small artsy cinema theater.She couldn’t even look away. Her heart was pounding like a wrecking ball through her chest. She felt the sadness and the fury that were blossoming somewhere deep as well as an icy lust for severe vengeance that she felt comfortable about somehow.
x x x x x x x x x x
“My mother was a florist; not a good one mind you. Half the flowers in the store died on her watch; regularly. It wasn’t like she didn’t care; it was just that she couldn’t concentrate easily and when she did, it was always on something that was painfully insignificant. You know what I mean?”
“Not really. Sorry”
“My father on the other hand was the sharp one in the family. He was very good at math. He worked at a bank as a teller. He was well respected but a cruel son of a bitch. He had a side none of his colleagues got to see. He especially hated animals; couldn’t stand the sight of them. Needless to say, I was never allowed to have a pet. One time a friend of mine gave me a tiny aquarium fish in a mid-size jar as a birthday present; the kind you could buy for a few euros in any pet store but I was only 9 years old and it meant the world to me. My mother advised me to get rid of it before my father saw it. I told her I would; but I kept it anyway. I hid the jar under my bed. It took only 2 days for my mother to discover it. I was at school. She was cleaning the floor. Jar tipped over and poor ‘Jupiter’-that was his name- died. She had told my father abou it as soon as he came home. He didn’t let my mother throw away the dead fish. They waited until I came home. It was an unreal experience to watch him throw the only pet I ever owned into an empty blender and turn it on.
“Mika! See what happens to pets that cross my way?”
“That’s awful”
“After that I’ve prayed God to kill him in a painful accident or at least to give him a disease that would make him suffer for the rest of his life; everyday for a year. I don’t do that anymore, though. I was too little to understand what he was going through”
“But what he did was terrible”
“Are you telling me there was never a time that you hated YOUR father with a vengeance?”
“Well…yeah there were times I suppose…. that I was extremely annoyed by the things he did or said but I never wished that he was dead for crying out loud”
“Are you good now? Do you still see each other?”
“No”
“Did I say something wrong? I’m sorry it was too personal. It’s none of my business”
“No it’s just that my father killed himself a few years ago”
“Shit. I’m so sorry to have brought it up”
“It’s okay”
“Was he depressed or something?”
“It’s a weird story”
“I wouldn’t mind hearing it; just so you know…”
“When I was a little girl, we were quite poor; me and my parents. Father had a huge debt and we lived on the edge of a fall we were too scared to even talk about. My mother was, rightfully, bitching about it constantly. My father used to buy lottery tickets every week. Then one day on an ordinary Saturday evening he won. We couldn’t believe it. We screamed our heads off and celebrated whole night. The next day while the rest of us were still sleeping to delay facing a brutal headache, my father, thinking no one would have liked to prepare food on a day like this, went out to buy us something. We woke up to the smell of fresh pizza. The lottery ticket was supposed to be in his wallet but he realized that it was gone.He figured he probably dropped it while he paid for the food. He went out and didn’t come back for hours. The wait was one of the worst experiences of my life.My heart was beating like crazy the whole time. What if he couldn’t find it? We were already poor so it wasn’t like anything should’ve been different if he came back without it. But it WAS different now. That night we had experienced something; we had got the taste of freedom for the first time in our lives; well at least I did”
“Couldn’t he find the ticket?”
“He never came back”
“What?”
“He had committed suicide by jumping from Kaisaniemi Bridge; so naturally we assumed he couldn’t find the ticket and he didn’t think he could face us after that”
“Come here”
Mika pulled Petra to his chest and hugged her tight. She wasn’t thrilled about having told the story but she wasn’t all that upset to be consoled by a stranger either. But Mika seemed so genuine that she didn’t want to embarrass him. She was well aware of the awkwardness of the situation though. She could hear his heart beating. It was fast; disturbingly fast.
”Okay. I’m OKAY!!!”
She pushed him away; hard. Mika seemed surprised but not shaken by that strong blow. That motor-mouth of his that hadn’t stopped since the minute she stepped in wasn’t moving anymore.
His blood shot eyes were focused. Petra asked
“Do you realize that you haven’t even asked me why I’m here? I’m here because you made e-mail complaints about me 3 days in a row. You had already received a free- gift compensation after the first one. Why did you keep complaining? Who does that?”
“It wasn’t me”
“It wasn’t YOU?! At least you knew I was coming”
“I didn’t know THAT”
“You said it yourself...’the table was set for me’...reme
mber?”
Mika didn’t answer. His eyes got smaller; his face got serious as if to say ‘I’m not going to take it from a tiny girl who is hardly half my size’.
“By the way… The girl from library...”
She couldn’t manage to produce the rest of the words. Her jaw got so heavy that she felt like she needed to use all her neck muscles to stop it from falling off; her upper lip followed. She looked at her almost empty tea cup.
“Don’t resist it. Lie down” Mika said calmly.
She could still use the rest of her body; or so she thought. She turned around and tried to run but her legs didn’t move as she thought they would.
“Don’t!” Mika screamed.
Petra fell down like a tree, hitting her face to the coffee table. Her body was completely numb now. Thoughts went through her mind at a lightning speed. What was in the tea? Wait a minute! She hadn’t drunk it. Why was her cup empty then? How was it possible? If that was the case, and she could swear it was, why was she on the floor? Her nose was bleeding. She felt no pain but she had difficulty breathing. She looked up in terror to see what was going on. Mika was still standing at the exact point where he was. But he seemed bigger somehow and if her eyes weren’t deceiving her he was getting hairier; every passing second. Before she knew it, a dark shadow was looking down at her. Suddenly she could feel her legs again; her jaw was normal and her chin was cold; her nose hurt. She wasn’t even sure how it all had happened but she got up and ran into the first room she saw; closed the door and pulled the handle up to lock it.She could hear the terrifying sounds coming from the other side; he, or whatever it was, was scratching the door. This was an old fashion heavy door and yet the force it was facing seemed to shake it like a dirt cheap cardboard. Petra screamed. Somebody had to have heard that. She wiped her bleeding nose and looked around for a second. There was huge bed in the room. She pushed it to the door to make a barricade. The scratching had stopped. It was very quiet all of a sudden. She put her ear on the door and tried to hear what was happening. Was he still there? Of course he was. He had to be. Now that he got her trapped in a small room like that why would he go anywhere? She noticed a window.
“Hey maybe...” she thought.
It was the second floor but there was a good chance that she could survive if she jumped. Then she heard footsteps; very heavy ones. Someone was running towards the door. The impact was so strong that she found herself falling down once again. She was unconscious, lying face down on an old carpet. It wasn’t the hit she got that caused it; it was the shear panic her heart couldn’t handle for a second.
x x x x x x x x x x
“What is all that noise?”
“You know damn well what that is woman. Why are you asking me? Downstairs again”
“I thought they had stopped doing that”
“Well apparently they didn’t”
“Aren’t you gonna do anything?”
“Like what?”
“Like go and say something”
“Then what? Do you think they’ll stop?”
“Of course…or else we call the police”
“I don’t mind the noise every now and then. People drink and get carried away sometimes; especially the young ones. So what?”
“Are they young?”
“I don’t know. Compared to us, anybody is young”
“Talk about yourself. I’m 5 years younger than you and I’ll always be”
“And that makes you what? 95?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“72 is not young; whichever way you look at it. Accept that and move on”
“Are you gonna get off that chair and do something?”
“Listen”
“What?”
“Nothing. They’ve stopped”
“So?”
“Alright I tell you what; if the noise starts again within an hour I’ll call the police right away. How does that sound?”
The old woman didn’t answer she went down and leaned her ear against the floor.
“What the hell are you doing woman?”
“Shhh! Strange. First, all that demolition effect, now complete silence. Who are these people?”
“And it always seems to happen on Fridays. Have you noticed that?”
“Shhh!”
x x x x x x x x x x
“Oh shit! I remember now. There was that huge man chasing me”
Petra pulled her head down; looked around in panic. She had seen a window before she fainted; she remembered that. There it was! She walked towards it. It was a 2 piece window. The part of it that could be opened was so narrow that she knew she couldn’t possibly get out through it. There was no way she could open the big one without some sort of a special key or a tool either. The answer was simple; she was going to have to break it to get out. On the other hand, it was so quiet now that she wasn’t sure if it was the right, ‘polite’, thing to do. How was she going to explain it to the police if she was arrested for breaking a double window that didn’t even belong to her? She couldn’t possibly pay for it; that was for sure. Then she snapped out of it
“There is a strange ‘being’ chasing you dammit! You do whatever you have to do to get the hell out of here and worry about the rest later!”
She picked up the chair that was in the corner. It was going to have to do it because there was nothing else in the room light enough for her to pick up and throw at the window. She didn’t need to worry though; the weight was just right. It was getting dark now and she could see her own reflection on the window glass lifting the chair. But as she was about to swing it, the window broke itself and a huge creature dove in unaffected by the hundreds of glass pieces that would have wounded an any ordinary being.
“What the f.ck are you? A vampire? Are you a f.cking vampire?” Petra screamed with fear. She got on the bed.
Creature didn’t answer. It had a man’s body but it looked like a huge ‘wild pig’, that had gone through hormonal lab experiments, more than anything else. It was drooling like a grizzly bear that spotted its first prey after another long and boring winter sleep; a juicy lamb perhaps. Petra got down from the bed and stood behind it. She noticed that talking to this beast face to face somewhat reduced the fear she was feeling. They stood in silence and looked at each other for at least a minute. Petra didn’t move but tears were running down her cheeks. Suddenly the creature growled and pulled the huge bed out of the way with almost no effort whatsoever. Maybe that was for the better. Petra, who was now scared out of her mind, or what was left of it after the terror she had to have gone through, had no obstacles between her and the door. It was still locked though so she needed a split second to pull the handle down and unlock it. She picked up the chair she couldn’t throw at the window glass earlier.
Doing that meant giving up the possibility of bonding a ‘friendship’ with this ugly creature as a result of which she could be let live was now ‘off the table’. It meant war and she couldn’t believe it either but she was ready for it. What did she have to lose anyway? Only her life. The beast was ready too; it crouched to attack but Petra threw the chair to its face. She knew it would feel like nothing more than a mosquito bite but at least she got the ‘split second’ she needed to pull the handle. But… It wouldn’t come down; it was stuck.
“Of course” she thought to herself “that’s what always happens in the movies”.
She pulled it again with all her might and the door was open. She tried to run out but the beast had caught her leg. It pulled her back in. She felt an indescribable pain at her groin like her body was being torn in two. Luckily it just swung her body and dropped it on the floor without holding onto her leg. She was in no shape to get up again so she tried to crawl away. The beast pulled her from behind leaving bloody scratch marks across her back. It could have been faster and finished her right there but the creature seemed to be taking its time with her. Then it grabbed her by the belt and swung her again to the other side of the room. She hit her
head to the wall. She was tired and shaken beyond belief. She thought to herself
“That’s it girl. You’re dead. Give it up and let it go. Don’t make it any more painful than it has to be”
Then she noticed the nightstand just beside her head. Last time she noticed it, it was the bottom drawer that was open. But now the bottom drawer was closed and the middle drawer was out. She didn’t know why but she pulled it out completely. Ribbons, candy bars, combs, brushes, a faded pulp cooking book were now spread across the floor. There was one more thing on the floor; a metal object: a nail file. She picked it up. She didn’t know what she was doing; it was just an animal instinct. The creature wasn’t done yet. It grabbed Petra from the waist and lifted her up in the air squeezing her tight. She couldn’t breathe anymore; she was running on pure adrenaline. Petra started hitting the hairy bastard with the nail file expecting a flood of blood. Nothing was happening though. It was like stabbing an ‘unpierceable rubber ball’. Maybe she wasn’t using enough force. She tried the neck once again. Nope.
Then their eyes met for a second as if to give her a vital clue. She went for it; first the left one then the right. There it was; the flood she was hoping for. It was no blood, though; just a disgusting and sticky liquid substance. The beast was in agony, howling like an animal. Petra was free. She ran out and saw the bathroom door first. She dove in; locked the door. The beast followed her there and tried to scratch the door like before. But it was different this time; very weak; as if what it was doing was just an act of desperation only being done to save face. In a few seconds it stopped and the house was quiet again. Last thing she was hoping for was another ‘De Ja Vu’ moment; so she quickly checked the bathroom window. It was so small that there was no way anyone could get in through it; but of course that also meant no one could get out either.