It took me exactly ten days to fuck up my life.
I’m staring out of the window.
From my room I can see a car park and beyond that the outlines of Långbro Hospital – a former mental institution that has been converted into luxury apartments.
At the moment dark clouds are gathered above the buildings. The pale green foliage contrasts against the violet clouds. The grass grows lush around the car park, but it is still fucking freezing, even though it’s June 11th.
I can hear my mum cleaning up in the kitchen.
She is so annoying. By annoying I don’t just mean that she’s always nagging me to do things – find a job, go to the unemployment office, load the dishwasher, unload the dishwasher and on and on for fucking ever – but that she worries so much. And that worry eats at me, makes my whole body itch, like tiny ants crawling under my skin.
It’s like she can’t get it through her head that I’m an adult now.
I turned eighteen a month ago, but still she hovers around me like some kind of mother hen, demanding to know every step I take.
As if I were her goddamn cause in life.
It drives me crazy.
I think she’d feel a lot better too if she didn’t keep on like that. If she let go, just a little bit. She’s always talking about how much she’s sacrificed for me – so why not get her own life now that she has the chance?
Alexandra, my girlfriend, or maybe the girl-I-sleep-with, says her mother is the same way, but that’s a lie. Sirpa never follows Alexandra into the city, doesn’t phone-stalk her friends or rummage through her pockets in search of weed or condoms.
Speaking of condoms: shouldn’t Mum be happy if she finds condoms? Isn’t that what all parents want: for their children to use protection? Because I assume that’s her biggest fear, that I’ll knock someone up and end up just like her.
A single parent.
Or a singular parent, as they like to say at Mum’s church to make every welfare recipient feel included.
Mum and I live in a three-storey apartment building on Ellen Key’s Street in Fruängen, a totally unremarkable suburb in southern Stockholm. It takes exactly nineteen minutes by train to get to the central station, and surely you can spare nineteen minutes of your life.
Right?
Nineteen minutes to the city and nineteen minutes home, that’s thirty-eight minutes a day. If you make that trip every day, it’s 13,870 minutes a year, or 230 hours, or just about ten days.
Ten days of your life wasted: it’s not so insignificant after all.
A lot can happen in ten days, as you know.
The point is that it’s important to make some calculations before drawing hasty conclusions, like nineteen minutes on the train not mattering.
Maths was the only thing I was ever really good at in school. Maybe Swedish too, when I was younger. Because I liked to read books. But I gave that up; you don’t want to be seen on the train with a book in your hands.
Maths was different though. I never had to make an effort. I could see the numbers in my head and knew the answer long before the others had even reached for their calculators. And though I almost never went to lessons, my maths teacher still gave me an A for my final year of high school.
I guess he wanted to encourage me, but I dropped out of school anyway. I didn’t really see the point in going.
A movement at the corner of my eye catches my attention. In the cage on the floor, the blackbird chick – almost not a chick anymore – leaps up. He roots around a little with his beak among the seed debris on the floor, pauses mid-movement, cocks his head to the side to look at me with yellow-rimmed button eyes.
The common blackbird, Turdus merula.
Well, there is actually one thing I’m good at besides maths, and that’s identifying birds. I was absolutely fucking obsessed with birds when I was little, but I don’t mess with that anymore.
It’s way too geeky.
But when I found the blackbird in the skip, I just had to save it.
I look at the bird again. See its shiny black feathers and the bright yellow beak pecking at the floor.
I feed him seeds and small pieces of tallow. I’ve even taught him to eat out of my hand, like some kind of well-trained pet.
I hold my phone between my thumb and index finger. Check Snapchat.
Liam’s posted a video of an exploding beer can. It looks almost like someone is shooting it, maybe with his air gun. Alexandra’s sent me a picture of herself in bed. Even though her blanket is pulled up to her nose, I can see in her eyes that she’s smiling. Small, hot pink hearts pulsate around her, a filter she added to the picture.
I open WhatsApp: nothing from Igor yet.
In fact I hope I never hear from him again. But unfortunately I fucked up, and now I’m going to have to pay the price.
Ten days.
That’s how long it took to get caught in Igor’s sticky net. As long as it takes to go back and forth to the city by train every day for a year.
But if I’m completely honest, it started much earlier. Mum always says that I lack good judgement and can’t focus for longer than it takes to drink a glass of milk. She’s never said it outright, but it’s clear that she thinks I got it from my dad. Since I’ve never met him, I can’t really say otherwise.
Mum, on the other hand, obviously has no such problems.
At least not when it comes to stalking me. She never loses her focus, never gives up.
She’s like a fucking bloodhound.
The school psychologist sent me to the youth mental health services, and they sent me to a specialist. Some shrink bitch with sweaty hands, large silver jewellery, teeth so brown it looked like she’d been chewing shit.
I never liked her.
Especially not when she started going on about neuropsychiatric impairment. She said that even if I didn’t qualify for a diagnosis, I struggled with attention and impulse control. I stopped listening at that very moment. Mum did too, because she didn’t want to admit that there was anything wrong with me besides a bit of bad judgement.
A few months later, I read in a tabloid about a celebrity who said it felt good to finally have a diagnosis; that it explained so much. As if he wanted to be mental, as if the diagnosis was a nice leather jacket or a beautiful tattoo that he liked to show off.
How did I end up mixed up in this shit anyway?
Liam and I used to shoplift in the city. At first it was mostly just for fun. We pinched small things, like perfume or clothing. But we soon realised that if we took electronics – small hard drives, headphones, portable speakers – we could sell the stuff. Liam bought a booster bag – a backpack lined with several layers of aluminium foil – from Janne at the gym, and then all we had to do was duck the surveillance cameras, pull shit off the shelves, throw it into in the bag, get out of there, get back on the train and nineteen minutes later get off at Fruängen.
It was almost too easy.
We got really fucking good at it, we never got caught, but pretty soon Liam’s mum’s basement storage space started to fill up. It was also very labour intensive to sell all the stuff online. And my mum began to wonder why I had multiple mobile phones and always disappeared into my bedroom when I answered them.
So we started selling the stuff to a Chechen named Aslan, a really creepy guy with face tattoos who never smiled.
Aslan didn’t pay very well, we only got a quarter of what we would get on eBay, but he bought it all in one go and never asked questions.
We used the money for drinks, trainers, weed and, now and then, a few grams of coke. One time we went to Stureplan and ate seafood like a pair of high rollers, but usually we just got stoned and watched a good movie.
We hung out at my house during the day and at Liam’s at night because his mum worked the late shift at Huddinge Hospital.
We really didn’t bother anyone.
The shops had insurance, so they got their money back. And we never stole anything from regular people, just from huge companies like Media Markt and Elgiganten, who try to trick people out of their money all day long.
We bought our weed and coke from a guy named Malte who hung out at the pool hall. Malte was tall, extremely skinny, had shaky hands and was uncommonly friendly, for a drug dealer.
I think it was Liam who asked him if we could pay with electronics. But Malte just rubbed his bony hands together, laughed so that the gold teeth in his mouth flashed and explained that wasn’t his line of business. But, he said, if we wanted free weed we could help him with something else instead.
And that’s how it happened. We started working for Malte a bit.
We soon realised that he was an important cog in the machine that supplied the people of Stockholm with weed and coke. In fact he was pretty close to the boss, Igor. So close that Liam sometimes used to call Malte Igor’s bitch.
We laughed a lot about that.
The jobs we did for Malte were small, nothing all that illegal or anything.
We picked up and deposited packages in various places, or watched the phone when customers placed orders on WhatsApp. Even though all communication on the app was encrypted, Malte and his gang had developed mad codes for various products. When someone called and ordered ‘pizza’ it was my job to ask what kind they wanted. ‘Capricciosa’ was weed, for example, and ‘Hawaiian’ was coke. So if a customer wanted five ‘Hawaiians’, that meant five grams of coke.
The price for a gram of first-class coke is 800 kronor, so the pizza wasn’t exactly cheap. But then again the customer also got their product delivered within half an hour, so we did offer high-level service.
We were strictly old school: coke, speed, weed, etc. Not a lot of prescription drugs and shit like that. And of course, we didn’t sell heroin – that market belonged to the Gambians in Kungsträgården.
Sometimes Malte told us about the old days, when dealers stood around on the street slinging product like it was ice cream. And the cops had no trouble picking them up.
I laughed loudly.
I couldn’t understand how people survived before the internet and apps.
I took to it all like a duck to water, but Liam was nervous and wanted to get out. In the end, he forced me to promise we’d stop working for Malte and I said yes, mostly to make him happy.
After a few months we weren’t just swimming in weed, but in money. I quickly figured out I could never earn that much from a normal job.
Liam bought a used BMW from a guy in Bredäng and actually seemed happy for the first time in a long while. As for me, I didn’t dare buy anything expensive, because Mum was already asking so many damn questions about where I got my new clothes and shoes and so on.
It was almost as if she could smell something was off.
One day I was called in to meet Malte’s boss Igor, an enormous Russian with pumped-up muscles and a shaved head.
Igor was a legend for three reasons.
First, he drove a large part of Stockholm’s drug trade.
Second, Liam claimed he got rid of three guys who stole from him by hog-tying them with cable ties and drowning them like kittens.
Third, he apparently wrote poetry and had published several books.
To be honest, I was a little flattered when Igor said he’d heard that I was doing a good job and asked if I wanted to help out with some other, slightly bigger stuff. I’d get paid well and if I continued to show promise there were many openings in the company.
Yeah, he actually called it ‘the company’. As if he were running a real business.
He talked a lot about how the customer was always right, about how important it was to be honest with your buyers and always be ‘service minded’.
It was almost as if he’d taken one of those courses organised by the Employment Service, the ones all about running real companies with VAT and overtime compensation and all that crap.
I said yes immediately. It was only as I was leaving that I started to have any doubts.
But by then it was too late.
Later that evening, Igor invited me to the company’s Friday beer night. I don’t know if it was a joke, but he actually called it an ‘after work’ thing.
We drank beer and played pool. That is, everyone except Igor, who apparently never touched a drop of alcohol, and who just sat at one end of the room watching us.
Liam wasn’t there.
Later he told me that he’d received the same offer from Igor, but declined. He said I was fucking crazy, and that my life would be hell if I didn’t start thinking before I did things.
Besides, I had promised him not to do anymore jobs for Igor and his bitch. And now I’d let him down. Blah blah blah.
That was exactly ten days ago.
The week after, I had to go around with Malte collecting debts from customers who’d been running up a tab. That’s when I realised that the company’s credit management was not exactly customer-oriented and that Malte was not quite the friendly dealer Liam and I had thought he was.
It went something like this: we knocked on the door at the customer’s house, and if he or she opened, Malte explained we were there to collect the money they owed. Sometimes they actually paid and then we thanked them, told them to have a lovely evening and left like a couple of well-mannered Mormons.
Customers often told us that they had no money, but that they would pay us soon. If it was the first visit, we told them we’d be back in a week and that it was ‘best for everyone involved if they paid up then’, after which Malte carefully noted the visit on his phone, where he kept track of all debts.
But if it was the second or third visit, they got a beating.
I didn’t know what happened on the fourth visit, but I suppose somebody other than Malte made that one, probably a real gangster was in charge of that department. Probably the same guy who’d helped Igor drown those guys. That is if the story was even true, because Liam talked a lot of bullshit.
My job was to keep the customers quiet and upright while Malte kicked and punched them like some kind of psycho. Though he usually threatened the girls with a knife; he pressed the shimmering blue serrated blade against the thin skin just below their eyes, scratched just a bit until they bled, and explained to them what ugly scars they’d end up with, while simultaneously pawing at their breasts.
Only once did Malte decide not to beat a person – a chick, of course – even though it was his second visit. It was a young woman with long red hair named Sabina. It was obvious as soon as Sabina opened the door that she and Malte knew each other, and that Malte was hot for her. They talked for so long that I started to get bored and asked if I could use the bathroom.
I could.
When I came back, I saw Malte give the girl a thin bundle of cash, instead of the other way around.
Just like that.
The girl looked pleased and promised to pay him back soon.
Just as she uttered those words, Malte noticed me. He grabbed my collar, pushed me against the wall and hissed in my ear.
‘Not a word about this to anyone, do you understand? I’d be dead. And you too.’
I just nodded.
What did he think? That I was going to talk to Igor? That I was one of his bitches now?
But, like I said, the redhead was the only exception. Everyone else got a beating.
Many screamed. Some cried.
Huge guys with gorilla biceps and skull tattoos wailed like babies and begged for mercy. One guy threw up on my new Gucci trainers after Malte punched him in the stomach.
It was awful.
This wasn’t just shoplifting from Media Markt or taking pizza orders that were really coke, but hurting people for real. I couldn’t handle it. I know I’ve done some illegal shit, but I’m not a fucking monster.
I realised that first night that Igor’s company probably wasn’t for me.
But how do you quit a job like that?
In the end, I screwed up my courage and told Igor how it was, that I didn’t like beating the shit out of people.
He nodded seriously and smiled. Leaned back in his chair so that his nice leather jacket squeaked. He then explained that this job wasn’t for everyone, and that there were other things I could help with, if I was a little pussy who thought he was too good to get his hands dirty.
He sneered as he said that last bit, and I felt myself turning red with shame against my will.
But then Igor got serious again, told me he believed in diversity, and that people had different talents. If you want to build a strong organisation, you had to make use of various kinds of competencies.
Then he leaned forward and took out a package, about the size of a square of butter and wrapped in brown paper, and he threw it to me.
‘Go to the industrial area on Monday night. Meet me outside the abandoned garage at nine. Not a minute later. Turn your phone off before you go there and take this package with you. This is important, do you understand? Your job will be to keep watch while I meet a customer. A fucking big customer. A distributor.’
He paused and seemed to be scrutinising me before he continued:
‘That package contains samples of our product, so I don’t need to explain to you how important it is not to lose it.’
I nodded and left Igor’s office at the back of the pool hall full of both shame and relief. But mostly I felt relief: I wouldn’t have to beat anyone up anymore and anything was better than that.
But now it’s Sunday and the relief I felt in Igor’s smoky office has slowly been replaced by a creeping discomfort.
I weigh the package in my hand and stare out of the window. The clouds above the old mental asylum have grown denser and a light rain has started to fall onto the car park. The asphalt is black and shiny, like the ice on a newly frozen and very deep lake.
The package isn’t heavy; I’d guess it weighs about a hundred grams. During my short but intense career within the company, I’ve developed the ability to estimate the weight of small baggies and packages to perfection.
I’m almost as good at it as I am at doing calculations in my head.
One hundred grams. Probably coke. 800 kronor per gram. This means that the street price of this product is 80,000 kronor.
There’s a knock. Reflexively I lay the package down on the table and turn to the door.
Mum comes in.
She looks tired.
Her long brown hair is streaked with grey and hangs onto her shoulders in worn curls. Her denim shirt is stretched tight over her breasts and a gold cross glitters at her throat. Her pressed khakis are so worn they’ve begun to fray at the bottom. She’s holding a bag of rubbish in one hand.
‘What are you up to?’ she asks, her eyes roaming as she pushes a wisp of hair behind her ear. ‘Are you doing anything right now? Or are you just sitting around and . . . I mean, that’s OK too. If you’re not doing anything, I mean.’
Mum always talks too much. It’s as if her words tumble out of her mouth without passing through her brain first. Like a bird that’s just escaped from a cage.
‘Nothing,’ I tell her, hoping she’ll leave, because I can’t stand to hear her bitch at me right now.
‘Did you call Ingemar today? I really do think it would be good if you did. Called him, I mean.’
Ingemar was one of the elders in Mum’s congregation. A man in his sixties with frizzy grey hair and thick red lips. He was always smiling, even when the pastor was talking about hell and eternal damnation. Ingemar owns a small chain of hot dog stands and always needed people, at least according to Mum.
But why would I grill hotdogs for, like, 90 kronor an hour when I can earn at least ten times that much with Igor?
‘Nope. Haven’t had time.’
Mum drops the bin bag. It falls to the floor with a wet thud.
‘But Samuel, you promised me. What did you have to do that was so important?’
I don’t answer her. What can I say? That I spent all day playing video games?
She takes a few steps towards me and crosses her arms over her chest. A wet, shiny stain starts to grow beneath the rubbish bag on the floor.
‘We can’t go on like this, Samuel. You have to take charge of your life at some point. You can’t just sit around at home and . . . and . . .’
Her voice breaks and for once she is at a loss for words. I see her eyes slide over to the birdcage, and she shakes her head almost imperceptibly.
Then she freezes.
‘What’s this?’
She picks Igor’s package up from the table.
‘Give that to me,’ I say, standing up and simultaneously realising that my rapid and forceful reaction has exposed me.
Mum shakes the package, as if she could hear what’s inside.
‘Give that to me, dammit!’
I reach for the brown package.
‘Don’t curse in my home,’ my mother hisses.
And then:
‘But . . . what is it?’
She backs away from me a few steps, but her eyes say it all. They don’t look worried or angry, just disappointed.
As usual.
I am her greatest disappointment.
‘Nothing,’ I say.
‘Well, then it won’t matter if I take it. If it’s nothing important. You won’t care if I take it from you. Right?’
Mum fiddles with the package, examining it from every direction, as if it were a bomb. With trembling fingers she tears off the tape and rips open the paper. Finally the brown paper bursts and about twenty very small, transparent white plastic baggies fall onto the floor and land at her feet, like autumn leaves around a large tree.
‘What in the world . . . ?’
‘It’s not what you think. It’s . . .’
But I can find no good excuse, because what else would be stored in tiny baggies besides marching powder?
Mum rocks back and forth with her mouth open. Her eyes shining with tears.
‘You get out of here, Samuel. I mean it.’
Her voice is calm, even though she looks like she’s just seen a ghost in broad daylight.
‘I . . .’
‘Out!’ she roars and then sinks down. Scrapes together the tiny baggies, goes over to the bin bag and pushes them down in among old milk cartons, shrimp skins and apple cores. Then she picks it up and goes out into the hall.
I stare at the wet stain on the floor and hear the door to the stairwell open. Then I hear the familiar, metallic sound of the rubbish chute opening and closing.
I hear steps and the apartment door closing.
‘Out!’ she screams again from the hall.
I grab my stuff, put it in my backpack, pull on my hoodie and head out into the hall.
‘Get out of my house,’ Mum hisses. ‘And take this with you.’
She takes off the bracelet of colourful glass beads that I made for her in first grade and throws it on the floor. Then she leaves the room sobbing.
I pick up the bracelet – she’s worn it as long as I can remember. Rub the glass beads between my fingers.
They are still warm.
*
Our front door key works on the rubbish room in the basement as well, and after coaxing it for a while the door opens with a whine. I take in the suffocating stench of rotting food, old nappies and sour wine.
Somewhere outside, I can hear the sound of a truck driving away.
I grope for the light switch along the concrete wall, find it, turn it and in the next moment the room is bathed in cold light.
The rubbish is gone.
New, empty bin bags hang neatly in the carousel. They flutter and rattle a little in the draught from the door.
My heart pounds in my chest and I rush up to the front door, open it and step out into the rain, just in time to see the rubbish truck drive away with 80,000 kronor’s worth of coke.
It was never my fault.
I have always had poor impulse control, even the psychologist with shit teeth said it was so, and she should know.
I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone, even though Mum seems to think that I consciously try to sabotage her life.
We only shoplifted from huge corporations that were insured to the teeth, and we only sold weed and coke to consenting adults, customers, who had chosen to pay to get high.
Where there is a demand, there will be a market.
All we did was meet that demand in a way that was quick, efficient and even service minded.
And the collection work with Malte?
No, that’s nothing I’m proud of, and if I could go back and choose again I would have said no when Igor asked me. But you can’t go back. Time moves in only one direction. The fucking clock just keeps on ticking.
Seven thirty-six.
In exactly one day, one hour, and twenty-four minutes, I have to be in the industrial area.
I remember Igor’s words.
‘That package contains samples of our product, so I don’t need to explain to you how important it is not to lose it.’
If I show up there without the package Igor will go insane. But if I don’t show up at all I don’t even want to contemplate what might happen. I suppose they’d send the gangster after me, the one in charge of the fourth meeting.
I sink down on my knees. Staring at the wet tarmac with my back to the wall.
The bracelet of glass beads glitters in the streetlights. Five of the beads have letters on them.
I blink a few times and read the familiar word.
MUMMY.