Blood Cruise Read online

  ‘Except us, I guess,’ Filip retorts.

  Calle tries to smile.

  The singer on stage starts in on an old ABBA song. The group of girls by the bar squeal in unison, top up their glasses and dash headlong towards the dance floor. Calle watches them go.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ Filip asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Calle replies. ‘No.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he repeats. ‘I don’t know shit any more.’

  Filip nods, a bit perplexed. Calle is acutely aware of the heat and the crowding and the looks from the impatient patrons and the volume you have to speak unnaturally loudly to be heard over.

  ‘I can’t go back to the suite,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘You can stay with me tonight if you want,’ Filip offers.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Want to borrow my pass? I’ll come up for a chat as soon as I can.’

  Calle shakes his head. The pre-parties are probably just getting started up in the staff quarters. He doesn’t want to go there by himself. Not yet. And definitely not sober. But his old colleagues could turn up here too at any time. There is nowhere to hide.

  ‘They’re a lot stricter now than when you worked here, so the staff don’t tend to be out partying among the passengers much these days,’ Filip says, as though he can hear Calle’s thoughts.

  And Calle has to fight back the tears again. ‘I need a drink,’ he says. ‘Something strong.’

  ‘At least we have plenty of that. Your usual, or—?’

  And Calle nods. Yes. His usual.

  Tomas

  He is cold.

  He managed to get up to the tenth floor, as far as the lift would take him, and staggered out onto the promenade deck. He’d intended to go to the sun deck, which covers the entire top of the ship, but had made it only a few feet.

  Now he is curled up on a bench, shaking. There is a roof above him, but rain is being carried in on the wind. He has turned to face the wall. He hears people passing by, groups of them laughing and shouting at one another, far too loud in their inebriated state. There are too many impressions; he can’t process them. And it is getting worse. There is nowhere to go. He can’t go back inside the ship, with its chaos of voices and music and flashing lights and ringing fruit machines and the smells that are more overwhelming to him than anything else: cleaning products, perfumes, food, hand soap, body odour, buttery skin lotions, alcohol, cigarette smoke. He even thought he was able to smell the warm coins in people’s pockets. But the strongest smell of all made all the others pale in comparison, made his head roar. The smell of menstruation. It lingered in the air outside the lift. He could sense it, like a shark senses blood in the water from a mile away. He wanted to find the woman, bury his face between her legs. Go straight to the source. Tear her flesh open to get more, faster.

  He turns his head and vomits. The buffet food is coming back up, heavy and caustic. Luckily, he hadn’t managed to eat much.

  Åse. He had been thinking about Åse, that was why he had barely been able to get anything down. He knows that. But when he thinks about the name Åse now, there are barely any feelings attached to it. Only the memory of the blood smell makes him feel anything at all.

  He is going crazy, properly crazy. And the roof of his mouth aches, all the way up to his sinuses. When he runs his tongue over his palate, it is taut and rigid.

  The only thing he can do is to try to focus on the deep, monotonous rumbling from the belly of the ship, the almost imperceptible vibrations of the bench. The Baltic Charisma is singing to him, soothing him with her basso profundo, helping him shut out all the other things.

  He wants to cry, but can’t get the tears to come.

  ‘Stellar,’ a child’s voice says somewhere nearby.

  He yelps in terror, certain it must be the boy from the cabin. He has found him again, come to exact his revenge. Tomas reluctantly turns his head and sees two kids standing there staring at him.

  They smell so strongly. He can almost see the swirls of particles around them. The girl is wearing a lotion with a sweet chemical smell. Under that is her blood, her young, vital blood, healthy and warm in her veins.

  The roof of his mouth tightens. He can feel his face twisting into a grimace; when the children take a step back, he realises he must look frightening.

  Like a child-killer.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m all right. Just resting for a second.’

  His voice sounds thick and strange. He just wants them to leave now, afraid of what might happen if they stay. The girl has put on a deliberate air of jaded boredom. He can tell from her breath she has been drinking.

  The smell of their blood is so strong. His stomach contracts, his body rolls up into a foetal position. There’s nothing but bile coming up now.

  ‘Really, really stellar,’ the girl says, and pulls the boy away.

  A few seconds later he hears them giggling with revulsion.

  He turns back to the wall. His skull is pounding and aching, but his body feels cleansed, purified. His stomach is an empty black hole.

  A new jolt of pain shoots up from the roof of his mouth, through his nose and straight into his head; this time, his eyes tear up.

  Albin

  ‘That was, like, the number one most disgusting thing ever,’ Lo says when they reach the white-painted steel stairs to the sun deck.

  Albin nods and shivers, thinking about the man on the bench, how his whole body tensed up when he hurled.

  ‘Maybe we should tell someone,’ he says. ‘He wasn’t even wearing a coat.’

  ‘That’s his problem. People who are middle-aged should have figured out how to drink normally.’

  Albin thinks about his dad. ‘But still,’ he says, ‘he didn’t exactly seem to be feeling well.’

  They step out onto the roof of the ship. The deck is vast and covered in a green non-slip material that makes it look like a football field. There are little cranes along the side railings, and round, grey skips he knows contain life rafts.

  ‘It’s good to throw up after you drink too much,’ Lo says. ‘That’s why they put emetics in all alcohol in Sweden, so people don’t get alcohol poisoning as easily.’

  Albin looks around. Some of the people on the sun deck have definitely had too much to drink. They move oddly, their eyes empty, like zombies.

  ‘Speaking of disgusting things,’ Lo says, nodding at a guy wearing a T-shirt with a SWEDEN IS FOR SWEDES print.

  Another set of stairs leads up to an observation platform. Albin follows Lo up, hugs himself to keep the wind out when he reaches the top. This is the ship’s highest point. Albin almost feels dizzy when they walk to the railing. Diagonally below them, several storeys down, is the bow deck. Ahead of them is nothing but the wind and the sea and the black sky. Not a light in sight. No stars. The fine drizzle has settled on his face. Somewhere out there is Finland, and they must be close to Åland by now. On a map, the Baltic Sea is puny, but from here it might as well be endless.

  His vertigo subsides, turning into a rather pleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach instead. As though he is flying. He stretches his arms out, closing his eyes against the wind and rain, then hesitates. If Lo hasn’t seen the film, she is going to think he’s some kind of weirdo.

  ‘I’m the king of the world!’ he calls out, but not too loudly.

  ‘You realise the Titanic sank, don’t you? Maybe I’m not exactly loving the reminder at this particular moment.’ But she still giggles. ‘Come on,’ she says, and starts walking down the stairs. ‘We have to find some place where we can be alone.’

  Lo checks around when they get down, before slipping in under the stairs. Albin walks to the railing and looks at the water far below. He almost thinks he can make out the roaring of the froth along the hull. It is so white against the rest of the water, slick and black like oil. He moves in behind the stairs and sits down next to Lo. She has opened one of th
e tiny vodka bottles. She drinks a mouthful and holds it out to him.

  He sips cautiously, having to fight back a grimace. It is so gross, like what petrol must taste like. Lo laughs. He hands the bottle back to her. Putting his hand on the cold metal floor between them, he feels the vibrations of the ship.

  ‘You don’t want more?’ she asks.

  He shakes his head.

  Lo shrugs. She has draped her scarf over her head to keep the rain off. He pulls up his hood from under his jacket.

  People are passing by, but no one turns in their direction. It is like they are invisible.

  ‘Have you ever been in love?’ Lo asks, and turns to him.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You would know if you had.’

  ‘There are some people I like,’ he says.

  It is not an outright lie, but it is also not entirely true. There are girls in his class who are prettier than the others, but does he actually like them? He can’t imagine trying to get together with one of them. Albin doesn’t even know what he would do if he succeeded, what would be expected of him.

  ‘But they’re not interested, or what?’ Lo asks.

  Albin pulls the sleeves of his jacket down over his hands, which are getting chilly in the wind. He feels more childish than ever. He ponders what to say in order to conceal just how inexperienced he is, but Lo beats him to the punch.

  ‘It’s fine with me if you’re gay, you know that, right? I mean, you could tell me.’

  He wonders if she has been talking to some of her old classmates, who still go to the same school as him. He knows there is a rumour about him being gay. He can never seem to manage to be like the other boys, at least not like the popular, loud ones who say mean things as a joke and squeeze the girls’ breasts until they scream.

  But if Lo is in touch with people from her old class, why won’t she ever talk to him?

  Four guys have taken up position further down the railing. They are smoking and talking loudly in a language Albin thinks might be Italian.

  ‘You could be pretty good-looking if you were more confident,’ Lo says.

  Albin shrugs again. ‘Maybe,’ he says, not wanting Lo to see how happy that makes him. At least Lo doesn’t think he is ugly. Then maybe there are others who don’t either. But how do you get more confident? People say you just have to be yourself, and then everything will turn out great, just great. Yet another lie.

  Sometimes he fantasises about coming back to school and finding everything changed. He would still be weird and different, but in a good way, a way that made him mysterious and exciting. And everyone would realise they had been underestimating him all along. ‘What about you?’ he says. ‘Are you in love with someone?’

  Lo nods. Her lips smack against the bottle when she empties it.

  ‘Are you together?’ Albin asks.

  ‘No, because unfortunately he doesn’t know I exist.’

  She is quiet for a long time. Albin glances furtively at her. How could anyone overlook Lo’s existence? How could anyone miss it?

  ‘He’s in the seventh grade. We don’t even go to the same school any more. At least before, I got to see him every day.’

  Albin can tell from her voice that she is close to tears. He hesitates for a second before moving closer. Timidly, he puts an arm around her back. It starts shaking quietly.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Soran,’ Lo says, wiping her nose.

  ‘Is he cute?’

  ‘No, he’s beautiful. But he doesn’t know it. You can tell. That’s what makes him so amazing.’

  ‘But doesn’t that mean he’s not confident?’

  ‘It’s not the same thing,’ Lo says.

  He is afraid to ask her what she means.

  ‘I could show you a picture of him if this crappy boat had any reception,’ Lo says, wiping the tears from her cheeks. ‘And he’s a good person too. He’s always posting links about human rights and environmental stuff. He cares about things that actually matter.’

  Albin glances at the railing. The Italians flick their smouldering cigarettes into the darkness and walk away.

  ‘Can’t you just tell him the truth?’

  ‘That’s a real stellar idea,’ Lo says. ‘Number one advice.’

  ‘I think he’d like it. I would.’

  ‘You would?’ Lo clears her throat. ‘Seriously? If it were me? And I wasn’t your cousin, obviously.’

  Having her ask him for advice feels surreal. As if he actually knows anything about guys like Soran, or girls like Lo.

  ‘Yes,’ Albin says, trying to look as dead certain as he can.

  Lo wipes her eyes and pulls a powder compact out of her purse. She studies herself in the mirror on the inside of the lid.

  ‘We have to go back to the cabin soon,’ Albin says.

  ‘Mmm,’ Lo says. ‘And turn in.’ She rolls her eyes as she mimics Linda’s favourite expression. ‘I wonder who first started calling it turning in? Turning into what, exactly?’

  ‘Imagine if that’s what actually happened,’ Albin puts in. ‘That you turned into something.’

  Lo lowers her powder compact and bursts out laughing. It is so sudden Albin is caught off guard, and then he starts laughing too. He can just picture it, how someone would get into bed and turn into something completely different the moment they nodded off.

  ‘Super-awkward if you turned into something embarrassing,’ Lo howls. ‘And if you fell asleep on, like, a train, the guard would have to wake you up so you’d change back into a human …’

  Albin can barely breathe. He gasps for air while trying to explain the image that just popped into his head of a dormitory full of random inanimate objects snoring away in their beds.

  They take it further and further, because they both want to be the one who comes up with the last and best image of sleeping people turning into random things. And when it is done, Albin feels physically exhausted and his head is empty of thoughts and he is completely calm.

  ‘That, like, gave me a headache,’ Lo says.

  ‘And my stomach hurts,’ Albin says.

  ‘I’m just going to try to make myself look vaguely human,’ Lo says, and pulls her powder case out again. ‘It’s, like, so my top tip to go out in public looking like this.’

  Albin studies her while she adds another layer, and it strikes him that the makeup and all the rest of it is like an exoskeleton. A hard shell that encases everything gooey and sensitive inside Lo, hides it so no one can get at it.

  But now he knows it is there.

  He wishes he had something to hide behind too, when he needs it.

  Madde

  Lasse is snub-nosed, to the point where Madde can actually see up his nostrils a bit, even though he is facing her head-on. The fact that his face is pink with sunburn makes him look even more like a pig. Tiny flakes of skin are peeling off around his nose. And Madde feels fucking offended. Why does it have to be the ugliest of the stag-doers who is hitting on her? She may not be the most beautiful woman in the world, but how the fuck can someone like him think he has a chance with her? And his provincial accent is hardly helping matters either.

  At least he is done droning on about his job and his trip to Sri Lanka, which apparently is the new Thailand, you simply have to go before the tourists catch on. As though he becomes a native wherever he goes.

  ‘Poor Stefan,’ he says with a nod to his friend.

  The grimy veil hangs askew on the groom-to-be’s head. One of his boobs has deflated under the floral dress. He is draped over some of the guys in their group; otherwise he would probably be unable to stay upright, even if he weren’t in heels. It is a miracle he hasn’t fractured his ankles yet. Madde has a distinct feeling Stefan is going to be hobbling down the aisle on crutches.

  ‘It wasn’t my idea to hit a booze cruise,’ Lasse says.

  Madde reluctantly leans closer to hear him over the thumping music at Club Charisma. The floor is swaying under her feet; she can’
t be sure if it is the rolling of the ship or her intoxication.

  ‘I suggested we do something that would be fun for everyone,’ he continues. ‘Like, first do some kind of action thing together and then have dinner at Riche. Do you go there a lot?’

  Madde shakes her head and searches for Zandra, hoping against hope that she will come back from the dance floor, where she is sucking face with one of Lasse’s mates. Peo, or whatever his name is.

  ‘The lads voted me down,’ Lasse continues, and when she turns back to him he looks sad in a way that feels like a pose. ‘We don’t hang out that much any more. I suppose we’ve grown apart. That’s how it goes. Sad, but true, you know.’

  Madde finishes her gin and tonic. Shakes a couple of ice cubes into her mouth and chews them, making a loud crunching sound in her head. Like a rock crusher working to the beat of the music.

  ‘Wanna dance?’ he says.

  ‘Zandra and I were going to head to the karaoke in a bit.’

  She regrets saying it when he lights up.

  ‘Sounds like a riot,’ he says.

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I do a mean Spice Girls,’ Lasse says, and watches her expectantly, apparently waiting for some kind of reaction.

  He is actually truly repulsively ugly.

  ‘Neat,’ she says.

  ‘Do you want another drink in the meantime? If you don’t mind me asking? I don’t want you to think I’m expecting anything in return.’

  She hesitates. Zandra had better not make her wait much longer. One more drink, then she is leaving without her.

  ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘I’ll have another G&T, I guess.’

  Lasse nods and turns to face the bar. Madde’s feet are numb in her shoes. She leans back against the counter, spotting an attractive bloke, but he doesn’t even look at her. No one is going to look at her while Pig Face is standing right next to her, acting like he has called dibs.

  ‘Here,’ he says, and hands her a foggy glass.

  ‘Wow,’ she says, surprised, ‘that was quick.’

  ‘I always make sure I tip well the first time I order,’ he says, clearly pleased with himself. ‘That way you get good service all night.’