One

Two years ago

Arvidsjaur Center for the Bewildered

Entrance interview conducted by Dr. Kara Barlind

English translation

Dr. Barlind’s note: The following is the interview held at the admission of Patient A upon the demand of her family members. Clear signs of schizophrenia were demonstrated, and a reluctance by Patient A to admit that her story more resembled a fantastical movie than real life. She expressed a great desire to tell her story, however, which was encouraged and which we hope will facilitate recovery.

INTERVIEW BEGINS:

Dr. Barlind: Good afternoon, Miss A. How are you feeling?

Patient A: I’ve been better, and my name is Aoife, not Miss A. It’s Irish, and pronounced EE-fuh.

Dr. Barlind: My apologies. Aoife. Some patients choose to be anonymous in our reports, but I will make a note of your preference. Would you like to tell us what happened that made your brother and sister decide you needed our care?

Patient A (shuddering): I’d rather not think about it, but I suppose if anyone is going to do anything about it, then I’ll have to tell you what happened last night. It was last night, wasn’t it?

Patient exhibited signs of distress and was reassured that the triggering event had occurred the past evening.

Patient A: Okay, good. I thought I’d lost some time there, too, which, let me tell you, isn’t as freaky as it sounds. Where should I start?

Dr. Barlind: Wherever you are comfortable beginning.

Patient A: I guess it all started with the date. I had no idea that anything… weird… was going to happen. I mean, Terrin looked perfectly normal. He certainly didn’t seem like the type of man who could die and resurrect himself at will.

Patient A shuddered again and rubbed her eyes as if wishing to remove mental images, but ceased before self-harming.

Dr. Barlind: Why don’t you start with your date with this man, then.

Patient A: Yeah. The date. It started all right. Nothing fantastic, but pleasant enough…

“Isn’t the band great?”

A dense wall of throbbing bass surrounded us, thickening the night air and making me feel unusually… needy. In a sexual way.

“What?” My date shouted the word at me. He had to in order to be heard over the noise of the Swedish band that was playing.

I eyed him. I’d only known Terrin for a few days, having bumped into him while attending the traveling circus known as GothFaire. We’d both been in line to have our palms read and had struck up a conversation, ending up with me meeting him for the concert that was now under way.

“I said the band was great. You like it, don’t you?” I yelled, almost into his ear. We were bobbing along with the dense crowd of people, not exactly dancing but moving in time with the music, as if the steady, pounding drumbeat triggered a primal need to move. I was a bit worried about whether Terrin was enjoying himself, not because he looked old—he appeared to be around my age, in his midthirties—but because he gave off a vibe that I couldn’t help but classify as “accountant.” He was the personification of the word nice—everything about him was mildly pleasant: his brown eyes were innocuous, his voice had absolutely no accent, his brown hair was cut short but not super short, and his face was indistinguishable from a thousand other men. He looked like a perfectly respectable, ordinary, white-bread kind of guy.

Whereas I was anything but white-bread. At least, ethnically speaking.

“It’s quite effective, isn’t it?” he answered at the same volume as my question.

“Effective?” I bellowed back.

“The glamour, I mean. Even back here, at the fringe of the crowd, it’s very potent.”

I stared at him. What the hell was he talking about? Maybe I’d made a mistake agreeing to a date, but I had figured that a public location like the GothFaire was safe enough. I must have misheard. “I’ve never heard the band before, and my family has lived in this area since I was a little kid, but they’re good. Different. The music makes me feel…” I stopped, not only because my throat was starting to hurt from shouting everything, but also because I hesitated to admit the odd feeling that had come over me.

Terrin might be giving off the vibe of being just an ordinary guy, but I wasn’t about to risk saying something that could have very bad consequences.

“Horny?” he asked, still bopping along to the music.

My eyes widened. Could he tell that I was suddenly possessed with a desire to kiss him? To touch him? To feel his skin on mine… Desperately, I shoved down those thoughts. Terrin may very well be a nice guy, but that didn’t mean I should be thinking about him touching me, and vice versa. “Er…”

“That’s all right,” he yelled, putting an arm around me and pulling me against his body. He smiled, his eyes not expressing anything but friendly interest. Trust me, they seemed to say. I’m a clean accountant. “There’s no reason to be embarrassed. It’s not as if you could resist the urge.”

I leaned into him for a moment, breathing in the smell of soap, shampoo, and nice man. My inner hussy swooned at the feel of him and the clean smell that surrounded him, but my brain pointed out that there was nothing so special about him that warranted his last comment.

“Um… yeah.” With more strength than I thought possible, I pushed away from him. He didn’t look offended, thankfully. He just gave me a bland smile and took my hand.

We listened to the band until the song ended, at which point he suggested that we see the rest of the Faire.

“I’ve seen most of it already,” I told him when we left the big tent. It was located at one end of the U-shaped arrangement of vendor and attraction booths that constituted GothFaire proper. I pointed to the sign that hung off the entrance of the tent. “I saw the main magic act earlier today, and herregud was it amazing. Have you seen the magician? It’s a father-and-son act, and they do this trick with eggs that gave me goose bumps.”

“Herregud?” Terrin’s brows pulled together in a little puzzled frown.

“Sorry, it’s a Swedish colloquialism. It’s kind of on par with holy cats, or oh my God, or something like that.”

“I thought you were American?” Terrin asked, his hand still holding mine as we strolled down the main aisle of the Faire. There were a few people out still, visiting the various booths to have their fortunes told, palms read, or any of the other fun faux-creepy things that the Faire people offered up.