crunch and a sound like a heavy foot stamping on a frozen puddle. The man’s body arched upwards and his hip brushed against Teresa’s hip before he collapsed and lay flat on his back again. His hands and feet were shaking, and the blood vessels in his eyes burst.
The smells. Teresa was aware of the smells. The sweat of fear from the man’s body, the iron smell of the blood and all around her a miasma of storeroom odours, floating through the air. Rotting bananas, fresh mushrooms, printer’s ink and stale beer from the container of cans for recycling. She recognised them all, she could identify them and tick them off. They melted together with the red, cascading colour inside her head and became one single experience, one single thought going around and around:
She hit the man on the temple, on the head. She smashed his teeth and she knocked out one eye. She hit his forehead as hard as she could several times until a hole opened up in his skull, and she was able to creep close to him, quivering with excitement, and watch the lone thin curl of smoke rise from deep inside. No, she didn’t see it, but she knew it was there, she could smell it; sense its presence.
She drew back her lips and growled softly as it flowed into her and became a part of her.
They took a walk through the closed shop. Teresa picked up a bar of chocolate, took a bite without opening it, then threw it away. She opened a packet of crisps and ate two, then poured the rest all over the contents of the freezer. She barked and bit off a piece of Falun sausage, chewed it to a soggy mess then spat it out over the tomatoes. Meanwhile Theres fetched two plastic bags and filled them with as many jars of baby food as she could carry.
They went back to the storeroom. An irregular pool of blood had flowed from the man’s head, and on the edge of the pool lay the hammer. Teresa picked it up, went over to the sink and rinsed it under the tap. She caught sight of herself in the mirror.
Her face was spattered with blood and a few small, more solid lumps of human tissue were stuck to her cheeks. Streaks of blood had trickled down over her forehead from her hair. She turned to Theres.
‘Theres. Do you think I’m beautiful now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you like to kiss me?’
‘No.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
The cut on her stomach had begun to hurt, but was no longer bleeding. However, both her top and the knees of her trousers were so blood-soaked that no one could have seen her without getting suspicious. She washed her face, then they waited until it was dark before they left.
The last thing they did was to take the notes from the cash box. Then they walked back to Theres’ apartment at normal speed. They didn’t meet a single person on the way.
That night Teresa dreamed about wolves.
First of all she was a human child, a helpless little creature cast out into the forest. Out of the darkness the pale eyes approached, creeping towards her between the trunks of the fir trees. Paws moving silently across the carpet of needles. The circle closing in. She wanted to run, but had not yet learned to walk.
Then rough tongues were licking her body all over. They were in the lair, and the wolves licked and licked her skin. As the tongues rasped over her stomach, it hurt so much that she cried out. Layer after layer of skin was peeled away, and the pain was unbearable. Then the fur began to appear beneath the skin. The pain diminished and the wolves left her.
A small amount of moonlight shone in through the opening of the lair, and she saw herself from the outside. She was lying on the earth floor, wet from the wolves’ saliva, trembling with cold because the sparse fur was not yet able to protect her.
The scene changed, and from the all-seeing perspective of the moon she saw a wolf running through the forest. A crippled or sick wolf with its fur in clumps, a pitiful creature terrified of the least sound. She was in the moon and in the wolf at the same time, she was drifting in the sky and crawling over the ground through the same pair of eyes.
Then time must have passed, because the ground was covered in snow. She was racing through the forest, and every leap was an expression of joy. There was strength in her muscles, and she saw that her front legs were covered in thick, smooth fur. She was following a trail of blood. Dark patches were visible in the snow at irregular intervals, and she was hunting a quarry that was already injured.
She dashed up a hill, the snow whirling up around her paws. When she reached the top she stopped and stood, her tongue hanging out. She was panting and her breath turned to smoke in the cold air. In front of her the pack was gathered around the injured deer whose hooves still moved beneath the mass of grey fur.
The leader of the pack turned to her. The deer stopped moving, a blown eye reflecting the sky. As the whole pack turned like one single creature, focusing their attention on the lone wolf, she showed her submissiveness. She exposed her throat and lay down on her back, waving her paws; she was a wolf cub, lowest in rank of them all.
They moved closer. She whimpered like the cub she now was, displaying her helplessness, not knowing if they were coming to accept her into the pack or to rip her to shreds.
‘Theres? When you dream-what do you dream about?’
‘I don’t know how to do that.’
‘Don’t you dream?’
‘No. How do you do it?’
Teresa was lying on the mattress next to Theres’ bed, watching the dust bunnies quiver as she breathed out. She rolled onto her back. The T-shirt she had borrowed from Theres was so small that it stopped just above the wound on her stomach. She ran her hand over the scab that was beginning to form, and it hurt. She stroked it again. If it hadn’t been for the cut, she would have been able to fly. Tell herself she hadn’t done what she had done.
But the cut was there. Inflicted with a Stanley knife, the kind used to open boxes. By someone who worked in a shop. Who was now dead, beaten to death with a hammer. By Teresa. She stroked the cut and tried to make the act real. She had done it, she would never be able to get away from the fact that she had done it. So it might as well be real. Otherwise everything would be wasted.
‘How do you do it?’ Theres asked.
‘It just happens,’ said Teresa. ‘You can’t make it happen. It’s not something you can learn. I don’t think so, anyway.’
‘Tell me how you do it.’
‘You sleep. And pictures come into your head. You don’t have any control over it, it just comes. Last night I dreamed I was a wolf.’
‘That’s not possible.’
‘In a dream it is.’ Teresa propped herself up on her elbow so that she could see Theres, who was staring up at the ceiling. ‘Theres? Do you ever imagine stuff? I mean, do you have, like pictures and actions in your head that you think about?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No, I didn’t think you would.’ Teresa blew out a puff of air and the dust bunnies danced away under the bed. ‘That thing we did yesterday. To the man in the shop. Do you think about that?’
‘No. It’s over. You’re happy now.’
Teresa curled up as best she could in Theres’ clothes, which were much too tight. They had shoved her own blood-soaked clothes into two plastic bags and thrown them down the rubbish chute the previous evening.
