He despised them. Hated them. The ashes of paper fluttered like feathers in the dying flame. The smell clung to his clothes like tobacco. Everything he had ever done was now undone. Yet he felt the monstrosity cling to him with its claws. Just as hard. Just as firmly. Like a festering boil. He poured a whole pitcher of water over the mess. As if that would help. Then he took a shower and tossed his shirt and the coal-black jeans into the washing machine. He sat down and watched the water swirl, break apart, spiral under the pull of the earth’s gravity and rotation. The domestic house spider he’d spotted earlier in the dusty corner of the living room scurried off and hid behind the laundry basket.
He spent the whole night on the porch, watching the pines dance in the wind. The sunrise turned the lake into a spectacle; the silhouettes of the trees looked like otherworldly fractals against a cyan sky. For a moment, he didn’t know if he was part of that picture.
At eight o’clock, he borrowed his aunt’s bicycle and pedaled through the forest—past the Falu-red cottages hiding like trolls among the trees—and into the village. An abandoned suburb, rotting away as its youth drifted off. There were more villas for sale than there were jobs. Outside the local retail, the same middle-aged men sat with a beer in each hand and the same empty stare he himself wore every night—intoxicated by the breath of yeast and nicotine. Pensioners walked their dogs. A few cars rolled by. The sound of children playing. Still, a carpet of death laid over the whole community, as though the healing from the plague had never truly occurred.
It took him about twenty minutes each morning. The only thing keeping the town alive was its folk high school, which stood not far from the church—stately and bourgeois, with rusted bronze lions guarding its gates. The corridors smelled of something undefinable: old wood and stale air, despite all the rattling windows moaning in the wind. Was this how ectoplasm smelled?
“Good morning, Ludvig.” He flinched; he’d almost forgotten he was there, staring out the window. He barely recognized his own voice when he answered, “Morning.” It was Henrik, in charge of the art program. “You’re early as usual,” he said with that kind of casual smile. Ludvig lifted the thermos in his left hand as if to wave. “Yup,” he said, though he couldn’t quite summon the eager expression he was aiming for. “Nice. I’m off for coffee, but see you at ten.”
Ludvig sat outside the classroom door with a brand-new A3 sketchpad and had made a few charcoal studies—each one ending in a field of nothingness, in total blackness. An ocean of infinite static. He couldn’t create art when someone was watching him and wherever he went, it felt like he was being observed; maybe it was his own eyes watching. There, in the limbo just outside the classroom, he felt a fly… or maybe a ghost. After all, they said a janitor hanged himself at the very top of the school. Probably just a legend.
Thirty minutes before class, she glided into the bitterly lit corridor. It was Sofia. She avoided his gaze, and the moment she realized it was him sitting there, she snapped her book shut and moved to a bench as far away as she could. Still, he could smell the artificial rose scent she wore. He hated that smell as much as he hated the way her eyes flicked over his sketchpad, as though she tried to conceal her disgust.
Soon her entire circle of friends arrived. Each of them carried themselves in their own performative madness: the obsession of appearing unique. Maybe it was that very failure to stand out that bound them together—performative to the core; you could read it between the lines.
“Sofia, aren’t you coming with me after school? I’m going to get a tattoo,” one asked. “Oh, what are you getting inked this time?” “Nothing special, continuing on this one,” she said, showing off a half-finished sleeve of neo-traditional flowers. “Pretty,” Sofia answered, then added, “I could never have the courage to get tattooed… I’d hate wearing someone else’s art on my body.”
Silence.
“Well, you can always do it yourself, then,” she answered. Then the third friend jumped in: “I only design my own tattoos,” to which the girl with the flowers replied, “Is that why you don’t have more of them?” The trio laughed, theatrical undertones and all.
Sofia was the one who stood out the most. Maybe that’s why she carried herself with a spine straight as if Death itself had fashioned it. She stuck out in the entire class—misplaced, dressed as if she belonged at the School of Economics. Yet she proclaimed herself an aesthete proudly.
Static. Ludvig nodded off. He could hear his own thoughts, but jolted awake when Henrik sat at his desk—a sympathetic gesture for his insomnia.
“So, today we’re going to try what the Surrealists did,” Henrik began. “I’ll set the timer for twenty minutes. I want you to draw—anything that comes to mind. Let every association, thought, and feeling guide you. Don’t limit yourselves. If the drawing takes a completely different turn a few minutes in, follow it. Let it become what it becomes. Alright? The important thing is to start; you don’t even need to know what you’re drawing. As soon as the time starts, make a line—let it curve. Any questions before I start the clock?” No questions. Just emptiness in the classroom. “Then I start the time… Now!”
Hypnagogia. A wave of associations. Limbs and bodies transformed into cactus-phallic forms. Everything in an infinite ouroboros; a fractaling slime of Ludvig’s own body’s soul-eating hell. He hated what emerged on the paper. As always. He couldn’t really dive into it. Couldn’t break down that damned barrier and let himself vomit up the monsters that lived inside, turning his body into nothing but a mirage of a human.
“Aaaand… Stop!” Henrik called. He looked at Ludvig—at the grotesque fractal patterns in his pad. He placed a hand on his shoulder, a gesture meant to signal that he had just received some kind of grace: God’s damned judgment. Then he took the paper and held it aloft for the class to see.
“What do you think?” The same reaction the class had given when he asked for questions. Then something beeped behind Ludvig. It made him turn. Sofia sat there with a realistic portrait of a girl at a table, eating from a plate of rose thorns. “Intense,” she had said simply. “Okay? Could you elaborate?” Henrik asked, but she just shrugged.
After class, Ludvig waited until everyone left. Henrik gave him the same smile he’d offered that morning. “When’s the deadline for the collage?” Ludvig asked. “What? You should almost be done.” Ludvig shook his head. “I burned it all last night.” Henrik’s face froze, as if the words had come from a poltergeist. “But… okay. Why did you do that?” Ludvig avoided eye contact and shook his head again. Henrik placed his hand on his shoulder once more and sighed deeply.
“Listen, Ludvig,” he began. “It’s all in your head. Trust me, you’re more than capable of making art. I know it’s hard to see your own work objectively, and it’s easy to get stuck in self-criticism. I’ve been teaching for fifteen years. But I’ve never met anyone with creativity like yours. You have a gift, and I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t truly mean it.”
Why did his words feel empty? They echoed in Ludvig’s mind without sinking in—like a jackdaw’s warning cry in an inner courtyard.
When he got home that day, he made tea and instant noodles. His ribs were visible; he knew he couldn’t survive on one pack of noodles a day. Yet that’s exactly what he ate. As he waited for the water, he saw the same house spider from before—right in the middle of the kitchen floor. Its shape stabbed him with fear, though not enough for him to really react. There was no room for it; his soul was already occupied by inhuman suffering and sorrow. In anger at the crime of being, he crumpled a piece of paper, crushed the eight-legged creature, and whispered a quiet “sorry.” Somehow it felt like he was killing it for someone—an imaginary friend afraid of spiders.
He managed only an hour of sleep that night. He woke during the witching hour and began his ritual of smoking with the pines in front of the lake. That night, he thought of death. The judgement of all things. He thirsted for it. Human life was merely a shell for something greater: a byproduct of sunlight. The sun was a dying god, and he yearned for its annihilation. Still, all of this was just maggots in its excrement.
The next day, he didn’t go home after class. He stayed in the school’s studio until they locked the doors and the flock of human beasts had marched out. All day he’d failed to create anything beautiful—no, anything at all. The church bell tolled, and tears streamed down his face. He could barely feel his body as he lay on the grimy floor stained with watercolor. His sobs turned to nausea, gagging as if something was trying to escape him. He got to his knees, ready to vomit. But instead, insectoid limbs burst forth from him—twisting in forms beyond the limits of existence. Out flowed a sea of black bile and tar. A body smeared, split, corroded itself in an intersection with the waves. The face, a fractal of the same process, blurred as if in an ancient photograph. All of it an expression of escape from himself; an overcoming of himself.
“Intense,” said a voice behind him. How long had it been there? Was it a silhouette of his own consciousness? She came forward. Kissed him, and all he felt was that damned rose scent. Their tongues danced—a growing intensity. But in a pause, he heard the same voice say, “I fucking hate you.” Then she continued, but he took over. He wished he could carve out her entrails. He wished she’d gouged out his eyes. As did she. Neither of them could breathe. They were trapped in each other’s bodies in a violent act born of revulsion. Death himself wished he could join them; suffocated by the boredom of reaping the collapse of stars and life’s ceaseless repetitions. The canvas’ muted paints took a splash of red; an anti-body mix in a cosmic cardiovascular system.
Their bodies could no longer move. Instead, they laid in each other’s arms—feeling hearts pump and lungs fill and empty. They wore wounds and bite marks, congealed blood and each other’s fingerprints.
In that moment, sleep conquered them both.