Blood Cruise Read online

  Dan

  Dan Appelgren runs and runs, but is getting nowhere. It is a perfect metaphor for his fucking turd of a life. To make it worse, he is running on this cruise ship travelling back and forth, back and forth, along the same route, day after day, night after night. He feels like a mythological ferryman, doomed to travel the same godforsaken waters until the end of time.

  He hears the signal indicating the Baltic Charisma is leaving port. Warning smaller boats to make way for the monster.

  Dan turns up the speed of the staff gym treadmill. The whine it emits rises in pitch. His feet hit the worn rubber harder and faster. He is dripping with sweat; it burns his eyes. The smell is distinctly sour. Chemical residue being squeezed out through his skin. He can taste blood now and his pulse is pounding in his ears. It would be pretty fucking undignified to have a heart attack right now. EUROVISION STAR DIES ON FINLAND BOOZE CRUISE.

  He touches his stomach through his soaked vest top. Not too shabby for a forty-five-year-old, but he can’t help pinching the thin layer of fat between his skin and what used to be his six-pack. He turns the speed up higher. Just because he’s a fucking loser doesn’t mean he has to look like one.

  The slapping of his soles against the treadmill is the only rhythm he runs to. He can’t handle music in his earphones any more. Being aboard the Charisma every night is one long music overdose. Hour after hour in the karaoke bar, where he shepherds the drunks through their caterwauling, cheering them on, pretending he thinks they are hilarious, pretending he hasn’t seen and heard it all before. The same songs. The same people, just with new faces. He needs a bloody avalanche of coke to get through it. And to help him sleep he drinks copiously in one of the clubs afterwards. The music is everywhere: a thumping, ear-numbing inferno that kills his soul. Hell’s waiting room, where the same bands and the same DJs play the same songs over and over again. Give the mob what it wants.

  This fucking boat.

  The Charisma’s got him. Nothing awaits him on dry land. Not even the gay clubs book him any more. He has nowhere to live and the friends who are willing to open their doors to him have become few and far between. What is he going to do once he has nowhere to go at all? Where is he going to get money? It’s not as if he knows how to do anything else, and it’s not like he’s planning on getting behind the till at McDonald’s. On the ship room and board are included, but he spends all the money he makes on trying to forget that this is his life now. Forgetting is expensive, so he is stuck here until he dies, or until the ship is scrapped. Whichever comes first. The race is on: the Charisma is a pathetic old eighties behemoth and he has heard the rumours, is aware of the staff’s ever-present fear of losing their jobs.

  Dan is getting light-headed, as though he has used up all the oxygen in the windowless gym. He slows the treadmill to a walk. Sweat gushes out of him in waves, dripping onto the rubber, evaporating from his hot skin. Eventually, he turns the machine off and steps onto the floor. His legs are shaking. A new wave of dizziness hits while his body tries to come to grips with the fact that the floor isn’t moving.

  But then it is never truly still either, of course. The vibrations from the ship’s engines are always there. His body reverberates with them even when he is on shore leave. He wakes up at night thinking he is still on board, because he can feel the vibrations in every cell, like phantom pains.

  His sopping vest top is cold now. Clinging to his skin. Dan drinks greedily from his water bottle and pulls on his sweatshirt. He quickly steps out into the corridor and walks past the common room and the mess, where the staff are having their evening meal, neatly divided into cliques, as always. It is just like school. Plastic potted plants and chequered tablecloths on scuffed old wooden tables. Bread and deli meats and fruit have been set out on a counter. Baskets of ketchup and HP sauce. He spots Jenny and the flabby guys in her dorky little dansband. She looks away when she notices him. Hatred bubbles up inside him when unwelcome memories from his first night on board resurface. Jenny is right. He is a has-been. But she is a wannabe wasting her time on never-gonna-bes. And there is absolutely no reason for her to think herself above him. For her to pretend that she has integrity when she works on a fucking cruiseferry. What a fucking joke. At least he knows what he is.

  The ship is full of people who would be nobodies on land, but here they live like they’re the kings of the world. Like that security guard Pär, who loves his uniform so fucking much it is painfully obvious he must be thoroughly browbeaten in real life, probably by a frigid wife and nasty-looking kids. Or take the captain himself, Berggren, and his posse. They even have a separate officers’ mess, so they don’t have to eat with the rest of the staff. It isn’t even nicer. Just smaller. And with real plants. Everyone on board is obsessed with the pecking order, with the number of stripes on their shoulder bars. Berggren is the lord of the floating manor, of course, and everyone treats him like royalty. But the king of something as pathetic as the Charisma is not someone Dan’s ever going to kowtow to.

  He heads down a flight of stairs to deck nine and turns along a corridor. His cabin is small, but at least it has a window, unlike the staff cabins on deck ten. Jenny’s, for example.

  Twenty years ago they would have given him the ship’s only luxury suite. They would have laid on free dinners in the real restaurants upstairs, allowed him to invite guests on the cruises. And he would probably still have declined. ‘Like Fever in My Heart’ was at the top of the charts and it would have been beneath him to work on a fucking booze cruise.

  Dan removes his sweatshirt. His vest top hits the floor with a smack. He kicks off his shoes, pulls off his socks. The blue vinyl is cold under his feet. When he removes his shorts, the musty smell of old sex wafts from his crotch. What was her name? Everyone he fucks on board the Charisma seems to be called Anna, Maria, Marie, Linda, Petra, Åsa. But this girl was younger. Elsa? She said she had adored ‘Like Fever in My Heart’ when she was in preschool. It simultaneously made him uneasy and got his cock so hard it practically dribbled pre-cum. And she had known exactly what to do with it. Some of the girls born in the nineties are porn-damaged. They turn the bed into an ADD circus show. No position can last more than a few minutes. They want to be held down, have their hair pulled, be strangled. He always has the feeling the attention is the only thing they truly enjoy, and the hope of making an indelible impression.

  He scrubs all traces of Elsa off in the shower. Gets a half-boner while trimming his pubes. His cock feels big and heavy. He wonders what Elsa did the rest of the day, after he left the cabin she shared with a friend he never met. Did she roam the ship looking for him? Did she tell her friend everything about what it was like having sex with Dan Appelgren? She might be home by now, wherever home might be. The ship has spat her out and devoured a fresh set of bodies. And soon it will all start up again.

  Filip

  His coffee went cold while he sorted out the till, but he downs the last of it anyway, hoping the caffeine can help cut through the soupy fog in his head. The Charisma’s engines make the glasses hanging above the bar clink softly against each other. He considers doing a shot of Fernet, but picks up a rag and wipes the counter instead.

  Filip is doing his eighth consecutive day behind the bar at the dansband club Charisma Starlight and he is beyond tired. He feels worn out in the truest sense, as though his body has been put through the wringer and every muscle is torn. He should probably be more worried about how long his body can keep this up. He had a few hours of kip while the ship was docked. When he lay down, his back was so stiff and numb he could barely feel the mattress underneath him. The bar opens again in half an hour, and he will be here until five tomorrow morning.

  He gets to go home in a couple of days. Finally catch up on his sleep. Sometimes he is virtually comatose for days on end, only leaving his bed to slump on the sofa in front of the TV. Right now, that sounds like heaven. And yet he knows he will miss the Charisma after a week’s shore leave. He will be restlessly counting th
e days until it is time to embark once more.

  Marisol comes up behind him, picks up his empty glass and disappears into the staff room. Filip’s spine cracks when he straightens up. In the ceiling beyond the bar twinkle the constellations of lights for which Charisma Starlight was named. When he turns around, Marisol is back. She is looking at her phone. The screen illuminates her dimly from below. She smiles as her thumbs dart about the screen.

  Filip walks to the stack of drinks crates and starts restocking the fridges with Bacardi Breezers.

  ‘When are you going to stop being so nauseatingly in love?’ he says, and laughs.

  Marisol slips the phone back into her apron pocket and gathers her long, dark hair into a ponytail. The hair band makes a snapping sound when she twists it into place.

  ‘Well, I’m away from home half the time so I reckon we’re allowed twice as long as normal people, no?’

  She has lived in Sweden all her life, but there are traces of her Chilean parents’ pronunciation in her speech.

  ‘I might forgive you if you’d ever come out partying,’ he says. ‘You’ve been proper boring since the two of you got together.’

  Marisol grins at him.

  He wonders how she makes it work with her new boyfriend. In all his years working aboard the Charisma he has never managed to build a relationship with a land-dweller. It becomes unsustainable in the long term. The hurried chats, crowbarred in between shifts and insufficient sleep. His efforts to collect stories, to remember everything that happens on board so he’ll have something to talk about when he gets home. But once he’s back on dry land, the stories always feel pointless. They have lost their sparkle. It is difficult to bring the two worlds together. Lots of crew members lead double lives. They have one relationship on land and one at sea.

  Filip and Marisol work for a while in companionable silence. He enjoys the daily routines with Marisol before the bar opens. It is peaceful, but there is something to get on with. Filip closes the fridge doors and carries the empty crates out to the store room.

  ‘Speaking of lovebirds,’ he says when he comes back out, ‘I wonder how Calle’s doing?’

  ‘Have you heard anything?’ Marisol mechanically slices lemons, throwing them into one of the plastic tubs under the counter.

  ‘No, not yet,’ he replies, washing his hands and placing a handful of limes on a cutting board.

  The wet sound of the knives slicing through fruit fills the silence. The glasses keep on clinking.

  ‘I feel like it was just yesterday Calle worked here,’ he says. ‘Time bloody flies. It’s mental.’

  ‘Yeah, old men tend to think so,’ Marisol snipes, and shoots him a sweet smile.

  It stings more than he cares to admit.

  ‘You’ll be my side of forty in just a couple more years.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to bring that up when I’m holding a knife?’ she asks. ‘Did you say you’ve met this new boyfriend?’

  ‘No, I’ve barely even seen Calle since he quit and moved down south to study. I should have kept in touch but … you know how it goes.’

  Marisol nods agreement, and Filip realises he might be saying something similar about her one day. To her, the Charisma is just a job. To him, the ship is his life, his home. The only place, in fact, where he has ever felt at home. He can’t imagine working anywhere else. Yet another thing he should probably be more worried about. Especially now there are rumours the Charisma’s days are numbered.

  ‘What did he become?’ she asks. ‘I mean, what did he study?’

  ‘Garden architect,’ Filip replies, ‘or something along those lines. Shit, I should really know that, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Probably.’

  He hopes Pia knows so he won’t have to ask Calle directly.

  Marisol is just about to say something else when the steel security grille at the entrance jangles. They exchange a look.

  ‘It’s your turn,’ she says.

  But when Filip walks to the grille, it turns out not to be an impatient passenger trying to get into the bar, but Pia, standing there with a paper bag in her hand, rocking back and forth in her boots.

  ‘I had a text from Calle,’ she says. ‘They just sat down for dinner at Poseidon.’

  ‘Give me a minute,’ he says, and goes back to the bar to hang up his apron. ‘It should be quick. But I might not make it back to open.’

  ‘I think I can manage for a bit,’ Marisol replies.

  There is a loud rattling as Filip fills a Plexiglas bucket with ice. Marisol takes down two champagne glasses and hands them to him when he has finished burying the bottle in the ice.

  She walks him to the grille. It sticks in the usual place about three feet off the floor. He can feel Pia and Marisol grinning at each other when he curses. Every goddamn day he has to stand here tugging at this bloody grille. He shakes it, jiggles it, pushes it with his hip while he pulls and finally it rolls all the way up with a deafening clatter.

  Albin

  Stockholm’s archipelago is slowly gliding by outside the windows behind his mum and dad. The last rays of the setting sun set the treetops ablaze. Albin gazes at the wooden villas peeking out between the trees, the gazebos down by the water. He wonders what it would feel like to sit on one of those jetties and watch the big cruiseferries pass. His dad has told him those houses cost at least ten times as much as the terraced house they live in.

  His mum says money doesn’t buy happiness, but Albin can’t imagine anyone being unhappy in one of those houses. Especially if it were on its very own island, which no one could find their way to unless he wanted them to.

  ‘Those idiots in purchasing are clueless,’ his dad says. ‘The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. And I’m bloody tired of always being the one who has to clean up after them.’

  He claims he loves his job, but it never seems that way when he talks about it. It is all problems all the time, problems of other people’s making. He is always blameless and everyone else is either stupid or lazy.

  When Albin was little, he thought his dad was the best at everything. His dad told him stories where the whole world was under threat from fire-breathing dragons and massive earthquakes, and then he would swoop in and save everyone. But the best stories were the ones about when they picked up Albin from the orphanage in Vietnam. About how he knew instantly that Albin was their little boy, and how they stayed for several months so Albin could get to know them before they brought him back to Sweden. Albin had thought his dad could do anything, knew everything. But now he knows better. Everything that comes out of his dad’s mouth is just a story.

  Last night, he was talking about Grandma again. Those are always the worst nights.

  Maybe I should do what Mum did. Then you’d all be happy, wouldn’t you? His voice was really thick and gross.

  I’ve been such a fucking idiot, thinking I was worthy of love.

  You would have left me a long time ago if you thought anyone else would have you. You and Abbe just want to get rid of me.

  Albin lay awake, listening to his dad pacing downstairs. He wanted to be ready if he heard him coming. His dad’s tread on the stairs is like a language unto itself. You can tell if the dad coming is angry dad or the dad who can’t stop crying. They are like two completely different dads, even though they say practically the same things. And both dads are scary, because it is as if neither one of them listens or even understands what you are saying. Sometimes, he disappears in the middle of the night. That is when he says he is going to do it, that he can’t take it any more.

  I want you to know that if I can’t take it any more, it’s not your fault, Abbe. Never think that.

  A handful of seagulls fly past the windows. Their beaks open and close, but the screeches can’t be heard from inside the Charisma Buffet. All you can hear in here is cutlery clattering against plates and loud voices. If Lo had been here, and if Lo had still been Lo, he would have told her that in the olden days people thought seagu
lls were the souls of dead sailors. And he would have told her there were tons of shipwrecks everywhere in the Baltic. Tons of dead sailors who were never found.

  But Lo isn’t here yet. They have started without her.

  Lo, who didn’t want to come on the cruise with them.

  Albin looks at his plate. Potato gratin, meatballs, mini hotdogs, gravlax, egg halves with shrimp. He is hungry and yet there is no room in his stomach. His thoughts are taking up all the available space, like a big lump of cement. Last time he saw Lo was the previous summer. His mum and dad and Linda had rented a cottage in Grisslehamn. It rained almost every day that week; he and Lo read in their bunk beds. He was on the top and sometimes he couldn’t stop himself from peering over the edge to watch Lo’s face. It had moved unconsciously, so he could tell from her expression what kind of scene she was reading. Every evening they ate soft-serve with mint sprinkles down in the harbour, despite the rain. Lo had seen lots of horror movies and at night she told Albin about all the scariest parts. Sometimes they were so terrified he had to sleep in her bed. They lay awake together, watching the shadows in the corners and the trees moving outside the windows. It was like accidentally peeking behind a curtain they didn’t even know existed, glimpsing another world behind the regular one. A bottomless world where anything could be lurking. Albin was so afraid it felt like the fear itself became a magnet that attracted the very thing he was afraid of. And yet those were the best moments of that whole vacation, lying under the blankets with Lo, fear rushing between their bodies, consumed by hysterical laughter they couldn’t stop.

  ‘So how’s sixth grade treating you, Abbe?’ Linda says, and puts a glistening piece of pickled herring in her mouth.

  ‘All right, I guess,’ Albin replies.

  ‘Are you still doing well?’

  ‘Best in his class,’ his dad says. ‘His teacher even gives him extra assignments so he won’t be bored.’