Chapter One: My Slanted House

12 February 1957

The house stood slightly aslant down a foothill, surrounded by phalanxes of densely grown pine. It was far from upland and close to the Baltic sea; close enough that it threatened flash flooding every time it rained. It was quiet like a sepulchral grave.

The house was quiet because the firecrackers were put away for the winter and there were no whistles of air passing through small openings of rimed windows or gripes of wooden linoleum boards. The blinds on the windows were hushed and there were no gailing taps of tree branches against the glass. Early February snow fell from conifers, clinging atween needles. The air teemed the sound of a conch shell held up to an ear. It was late at night and the moon's glistening streak of light was taut across the clear, oblong surfaces of the sea. The light gleamed through the windows of the house and onto the tall sides of the vaulted ceilings, wiggling back and forth slightly.

The once nötskrika, now in a more hominid, man-shaped form after completing a cycle of Eurasian jay style therianthrope, blinked away the spots in her eyes and sprawled her limbs, cat-like, until they nearly met each corner of the mattress. The mattress and drop cloths formed an awkward bed, tucked in the carrel of someone’s personal library or office. The room was hampered with a myriad of colorful things like book spines, old jars of Mörkbrunt Snus, and Det Goda Teet tins with picToras of roses on each side amongst other unrecognizable things stacked onto mantels, vitrines, and shelves overabundantly; drawn out by the light of a fervid fire and a hand-painted oil lamp to her right.

The man-shaped thing sat up slowly by spreading her palms on the mattress and pushing her weight upwards. She began to inspect the space with distrust. Her eyes tore the room apart, searching for familiarity.

She was well-nigh able to figure out what was around him, but not enough to figure out where she was exactly. A small quilt sat on her lap. It was so small you could hardly wrap a baby in it. It would pass better as a hankie, honestly. It had embroidered rabbits and the words, "LYCKA TILL" in colorful red, green, yellow, and orange yarn. She could remember what rabbits looked like.

The man opened her mouth and began to speak before her throat began to pinch and she began to cough. Everything felt wrong; her body, her head, even the fabric around him. She must have been catatonic for a few hours now. The walls jumped out at him and felt out of place and the depth was nearly impossible to grab. She would say this wasn't her room, but what was? She couldn't remember.

She sat there for a moment and felt the vein on her palm. Shhe counted its beats and then brought her hands up to rub her neck. Her skin was warm to the touch. It was the color of an old photograph and was stretched so tightly around every bone that at first glance you would have thought she had horrible scleroderma everywhere. A few white streaks of fur grew out from piebald parts of her skin. Dark sorrel bristles covered the rest.

Perhaps someone found him in the shed and delivered him to the closest museum with other lusus naturae like three-headed cows and goats that were born with no eyes. She then realized that she had no idea how old she was while grazing over the idea that she was possibly a newborn.

"Åh! Du är vaken!", warbled an excited voice from the other side of the room, followed by little, plastic jangles of a jade-colored acorn and maple tree brooch. Across the room from the fiddly mattress was a taller someone with an interesting shade of dark red, curly hair that swept down below their ears, who was holding a yellow tray and a tin teapot that reflected the room around them. They wore a blue linen pinafore tied over a green smock that had corrugated sleeves with little embroidered stripes over each hem. There were two stalks of wheat embroidered on their chest with a slightly lighter color of blue thread. There was no doubt this someone was no older than him.

"Kan du höra mig?", the mysterious person in the pinafore added, almost tauntingly. It felt like they were pulling off her skin with her eyes. The man rubbed her sockets very vigorously after a little abeyant moment like the person’s image in front of him scorched her vision terribly and was left to blink it away.

"Vad gör du här?", the nötskrika asked, "Är detta ett museum?"

The other person furrowed their brow.

They began again, softness poorly masking frightfulness, "No?"

The door of the office opened, casting a triangle of golden light into the room as if a terrific entrance was being made. In the jamb stood another with her hand on the dummy knob. Visually, she was almost the opposite of the ginger because she was taller, leaner, thinner, and older. A few small ringlets of black-colored hair curled down over the man’s ears. The ginger balanced the tea tray on their palm and pointed towards the mattress a little shamefully like they had broken an expensive ceramic baking dish. The taller man looked where they were pointing, her glistening light brown eyes popping out amongst tan skin like glazed and polished cerith shells.

"En tjej?", she asked.

“En pojke”, the ginger corrected him, taking full hold of the tea tray again.

The man, still sitting on the bed must have been sleeping for hours in that room. The other two act as if they knew him her whole life. Tremors ran up every bone in her body.

"What a soldier", the taller man said, "He looked terrible an hour earlier"

"Did she really look that awful? Tora wouldn't let me see him"

"Like the inside of a fig- It was an adult thing"

"You aren't that much older than me- And that's gross!"

"Seven years is antediluvian”, the man exaggerated, "Nevermind, what did you do exactly?" "Do what?"

"With the bird"

"I said a few things but they weren't threatening", said the person in the pinafore, honestly. They looked as if they were going to add something but stopped in their tracks, thinking.

“Don’t be so plain-spoken. She can hear us, she speaks Swedish"

"He talked?"

"He asked if this was a museum”, they responded, “Isn’t that so bizarre?”

"Bra! Han lever", said another voice, coming from the doorframe, "Jag ska prata"

The room's focus was rivet to a woman with many box plaits and a string of thick pearls. Her face was carefully set in a curious way. She made a motion with her hands, sort of tossing the palm loosely back and forth from her wrist to express that it was ok for the person wearing the pinafore to make their way closer. Her pearls jangled and clinked against each other.

“Me?”, the one with red hair asked.

“He’s your bird!”

“He’s not really mine. He’s not even really a bird”, the red-haired girl said, sounding almost a little disappointed before putting the tray on the roll-top desk and taking an adjacent seat at the end of the bed, “But alright”. They waited a moment before beginning.

"Do you know where you are right now?"

"Jag tror inte det-", the bird wept, words bluffing from rapid contractions of the chest and drool, slipping out between the corners of her dry lips. She was practically gasping for air now. The glare from the oil lamp seemed to multiply in the reflection upon shiny things in the room. There were then twice as many people in the room as there were before.

“Oh, well, ok, my name is Ximena and the guy with the black curly hair is Chernobog and the woman with glasses is Tora. They're my close flatmates”, Ximena said, naively, pointing to either one as if teaching a child the alphabet. She seemed to stiffen what Ximena was saying and couldn't entirely process what she had said. There was a little pause of silence she spent blinking at the three in a moronic sort of way, sort of surprised at how fleshy they sounded, not that she ever assumed they were banshees.

“And your name?", Ximena asked.

The man on the mattress was stagnated. Her widened eyes dropped to a squint as she rubbed her head, running her fingers through her fringe to her scalp. Her head felt like it was filled to the top with dryer lint.

"I don't know"

Ximena brought her eyes up to Dan’s, feeling something terrible grow inside her chest, like all of their fear suddenly stood up and saluted like a soldier.

“What?”

The man on the mattress stopped and took her paw down from her head. Something felt odd against her leg. It felt different from the other. It felt like a pruritus patch of skin.

Skeptically, she pulled down the quilt until it just about met her thigh and pulled up the leg of her trousers, flipping them inside out until they displayed the name, "Pinkulítill" stitched with colorful red and yellow yarn on the inside of the cuff.

"Pinkulítill", read Tora, leaning closer to him to get a better look. She was very rail thin and her long tent dress was practically slipping off her shoulders. She smelled a soft scent of balmy perfume.

"That’s not English”, said Chernobog.

“Probably a brand name”

She looked down absentmindedly and continued to stare at the yarn, noticing how there were a few extra holes in the linen as if the last name had been stitched but pulled out from the inner fabric.

"I don’t even know if that really is my name if it's a brand name", she mumbled quietly as her thick eyebrows pushed together until they had cast a crease across her forehead. Pinkulítill couldn't remember the thought of her mother, nor anyone ever calling him Pinkulítill. Things went loud again. She glowered at the smallest bit at a static, ebbing and waning in and out of her ears, and leaving almost as soon as it arrived.

"Did you hear that?", Pinkulítill asked. Tora furrowed her brow, a bit at sea.

"No?", she intoned. Pinkulítill's form depleted and she shook her head lightly. Even if it was something imminent, she had more important things to focus on.

“Probably just the radiator.”

“We don’t have a radiator'', Ximena said. Pinkulítill fixed her position and looked at the spaces between the people in the room.

"Do you want to be called Pinkulítill?”

“No!”, Pinkulítill shrieked, “Something else!”

“Ok, well, what is your actual name”

Pinkulítill waited a moment.

“Dan”, she lied, badly.

“Well, Dan, I can tell from the wound that you stepped into a bear trap and went into-circulatory shock", Ximena said, fixing her position and straightening her skirt as the bed made a sough. These words slowly passed through Dan's head.

"Beartrap?", she asked, pulling down the quilt even further, revealing her left leg, which was propped up on a small, cherry wine-colored couch cushion and wrapped in a tourniquet, venetian-red blood soaking heavily through the wrap until you could hardly see its original color just below the hem of her trousers. It looked like someone had cut the stem of giant ragweed and poured the sap all over. The room began to melt.

"Not a bear trap", she said. Tora’s face grew apprehensive as she looked over to Chernobog and Ximena for direction and then back at Dan whose face was doltish and afraid. Perhaps this was the wrong thing to say.

"It was a bear trap, we could tell by the size of the cuts", Ximena answered for Tora. Chernobog took Tora’s hand in his.

"Are there bears this close to the beach?", Dan asked.

“You’ve got a vendetta?", Ximena jestered. Dan looked up at them.

Tora decided quickly to wander from the subject by responding, "Ximena, may you please bring the kettle over here?"

Ximena nodded and got up to pick up the tray from where it sat on the desk and put it on the foot of the bed. Dan could now see that it had a hand-painted pine tree branch in the middle of the tray. The creamers and other parts of the potlery shielded its beauty. Dan could feel the heat of the teapot against her legs. Ximena looked at Dan slowly as she was fixing the tea; eyes the color of beet cured salmon. She wasnt smiling or frowning, simply investigating him with a deadpan look as if having a competition over who could stare at the other longer.

“I am from Canada actually”

Dan didn’t say anything.

Ximena looked away for a moment to pick up one of the Berggren Swedish coffee mugs and the tin teapot by its handle. Dan watched her face for another second or two and then brought her attention to Ximena's hands holding the pot and mug as the tea pelted into the cup a little balefully. Little, pin-headed pellets that almost resembled gunpowder blended in with the drink. Ximena leveled the teapot and set it back onto the tray while holding the drink up to him at the same time.

"Gunpowder tea", Ximena said.

Dan looked at the mug, noticing the small marigold, and the words, 'Kaffetåren den bästa är av alla jordiska drycker' hand painted on the side. She raised her eyes back up at Ximena.

"I don’t think I need any tea right now”

“The caffeine builds you up before it breaks you down”, Ximena laughed as she passed the mug to Dan softly, her knuckles turning back to a freckled tan as she released her grip. Dan received the tea, awkwardly. It was an orangish shade, like Chernobog’s corduroy jacket. The little gunpowder pellets grew in size and looked like shiny pearls at the bottom of the porcelain cylinder. Ximena got up from the mattress, rising from its bow.

"We will call your parents on the crank phone tomorrow", Tora said, leaning into Chernobog slightly. Dan’s heart twinged with the idea of being left alone in the dark again.

"Försök att koppla av", Chernobog said, making a heart with her middle and pointer fingers. Tora nodded at Chernobog, and then at Ximena. She waved goodnight and left the office with Chernobog not that far behind her. She seemed to be in a bit of a panicked haste. Ximena waited a moment, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

"We have a party line for our phone, but nobody ever uses it anyway", said Ximena with a tuneless simper as she leaned down to pick up the tea tray from the bed again. The strand of hair she pushed out of her eyes fell back onto her face.

"Behöver du någonting?"

"Nej. Tack dig"

Ximena smiled and turned around after the other two, waiting for a moment at the door handle, their grip beginning to twist the spindle. "Godnatt", they maundered, obliquely in a way that made Dan feel like it wasn’t directed towards him. Ximena opened the door and left without looking back.

Dan sat there for a moment or two in awe and benumbnent. Her face was dimly overt by the light from the fireplace, the oil lamp, and the moon's glittering reflection coming in from the Sangallo lace curtains. If she didn't know who she was, it was settled a group of strangers wouldn't know either. Dan set the mug down onto the nightside drawer's doily and set her head down onto her deflated pillow and tittered her body. Tears trickled down her cheek and into her ear. She didn’t even realize she was crying until she found the feeling uncomfortable. She was almost sure both of her legs were broken.

She fixed himself to look up at the window, left of and aloft the bed. Suddenly, she stopped once she propped himself up on her hip and buried himself in the pain of a herniated disc.

"By the way, Dan, if you try and get through the window you'll land head first and freeze to the side of the house and die. We'd have to wait until spring for you to thaw so we can give you a better funeral", Ximena shouted from outside. Her slippers made two shadows in the golden light gape between the door and the ground.

Dan rolled onto her back. She heard shuffling through the walls. She took one final look around the room, almost searching for something she had missed. The colors of the room seemed to fit well together when they really did not match that well on their own. It didn't feel familiar at all. Not even welcoming