I’m flying around the dark cave.
Round and round – carried by the cool, damp air. My wings are strong and my body endures, but sometimes I hit the wall. Then I lie down and let my beak fall to the side. Rest against the ground as my little bird heart ticks feverishly inside my chest.
I cock my head. Look at my grey plumage. My tail and wings have black markings and my chest is pinkish. My legs are short, sturdy and pink.
Without being one hundred per cent certain I’d say pigeon.
Columba palumbus.
Occasionally fragments of conversation, of human voices, penetrate the thick rock into the cave, like water trickling down through cracks in a mountain.
Sometimes I recognise the voices, even understand what they are saying.
For instance I heard Rachel. She sounded scared and said: What have you done with him? Then she said: If you as much as touch a hair on his head him I will . . . And then: . . . will call the police if you don’t leave my house NOW, do you hear me?
The man she was talking to answered in such a strong southern Swedish dialect that I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he sounded angry, very fucking angry.
My brain was slow and tired, but I could still articulate the question: was it Olle she was talking to? Had he come home at last?
But the voices always fade away.
They crack, crumble and become dust that spreads across the damp floor of the cave.
Sometimes there is light.
The light is harsh and hard and cuts my sensitive eyes like a sharp knife. I close my eyes, longing for the dark of the cave, but the light pulls at me. Pulls and tugs as if I were a wet towel that had to be wrung out. I am stretched out and my beak burns like fire.
In the end I land in my body again, the other body – the one that has arms rather than wings, fingers and toes rather than talons.
But that never lasts very long, because then there’s the sting in my buttock and the next instant the warmth spreads inside of me.
Then I fall again.
I fall and fall, straight through the floor, through the ground and through the rock. I fall all the way down into the cave again. Ruffle my feathers, coo a bit and let my beak sink into the soft down that covers my chest.
The cave isn’t too bad by the way.
There is no pain here, no hunger, no anxiety.
Everything is predictable, has its own rhythm, like waves or heartbeats. At regular intervals the darkness hands me over to the light, which in turns hands me back over to the darkness.
Until.
Until.
Somewhere above me I sense that the colour of the cave’s ceiling has shifted. The black is sort of less black. Outlines emerge more distinctly and the air is clearer.
The light is coming and it is stronger than ever before. It intensifies, becomes a sun and finally wrests me out of the cave, as if I were a carrot being harvested.
Everything becomes sharp and hard and hurts like hell.
And I can feel my arms, legs, yes, even my toes resting under something soft and warm. I can feel my heart too – which isn’t really a bird heart at all, but a much bigger one beating heavily in my chest. And I can feel the weight of my head and the blood rushing through my veins.
But I feel other things too, unpleasant things, like how dry my mouth is – it is as if my tongue is glued to my palate – and the odd burning pain in my nose.
‘Gaahh aarrgghh.’
The sounds are coming from my body.
The words that aren’t words, just grunting sounds, pig sounds, are coming from me.
I squint at the light, even though it cuts and stings my eyes.
Above me a giant spider is hanging from its web in the ceiling.
The body is as large as that of a human. The belly, head and the long jutting jaws are blue, but the legs are long and black.
I try to scream, but all that happens is that warm saliva spills out of the corner of my mouth and down my cheek.
The spider’s legs come closer, so close that I can see the long, bristle-like hairs growing on them and the claws at the ends of the limbs.
On the intensely blue head there are several pairs of shiny metallic eyes. They gleam dully in the sharp light.
I scream again and again, and in the end I must have actually scared the giant arachnid because it sort of freezes and shifts shape before my eyes.
The legs shrink and become black nylon straps. The claws become plastic buckles and the blue body shifts shape and becomes rectangular. The eyes ossify into metal buttons.
I blink, trying to comprehend.
What the hell?
It isn’t a spider. It is Jonas’s fucking retard-harness. The one that Rachel uses when she needs to move him.
I am lying in the bed, under the seat sling.
In Jonas’s fucking bed!
The realisation is like a kick to my gut.
What the hell am I doing in Jonas’s bed? Am I sick?
And where is Jonas?
I try calling for Rachel, because surely she knows what happened? Surely she can explain why I, and not he, am lying here in bed like a clubbed seal without being able to lift a finger.
But my mouth won’t obey, it refuses to shape the words and the only thing I can get out is more saliva.
And then I remember how Jonas was lying there in the bed – skinny as a fucking junkie with skin as white and smooth as polished marble – and wasn’t breathing anymore.
A chill creeps up my spine.
Is Jonas dead?
I try turning my head so that I can see the bedside table better, but I can’t. I tell my body, no, I shout at it to turn my head, but it refuses, as if it were still down there, in the cave.
I make a new attempt and this time my head actually does turn a bit, just not enough to see the bedside table that I know is right next to me.
I give it another try. Close my eyes, concentrate as much as I possibly can and visualise my head moving on the pillow. How it slides to the side, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
One more inch.
I open my eyes.
On the bedside table there is a vase with a fresh-cut rose. Next to it is the tube of hand cream and the lip balm. I can see a glimpse of the calendar on the wall above the bedside table.
June 24th.
That can’t be right, it is the 22nd, Midsummer’s Eve.
Because surely I haven’t been lying here for two days?
The thought makes the room spin and my ears rush.
‘Gaahhrraa.’
The grunt just comes. I’m not even trying to scream this time. The sound just sort of slips out of my chest, as if it too wanted to escape this place.
I look at the bedside table again, and at the rose in its little vase, just as usual. Then my eyes are drawn to the scratches in the veneer, the ones Jonas tried to reach with his hand.
And I see.
From my new vantage point in bed I see that they aren’t scratches.
They are letters.
Inscribed, or maybe rather scratched into the veneer, with crooked, sprawling letters, is a lone word.
HELP.