BooksBarbecue
Back Bad Apples Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. Acknowledgements

In the back of a parked pick-up truck there is a seething, heaving mass of naked bodies. They all have bags over their heads but they are moving to the violin noises and they are pulsating like a singular mass of pale maggots.

More wild howls and screams. Cackling. The gimp-masked violinists walk away from each other, leaving the bandstand, stepping among us. Some people sit on the grass. Calm. Masked spectators. But others are kissing, leaving in groups of two or three, heading to the open door of the Hive.

And then someone else screams.

A different tone.

Not playful.

Fearful.

Two women in animal fur and latex Elvis masks rush to the clockmaker’s shop. A man in a full bearskin, complete with a saggy bear head, holds a cast-iron pan high above his head.

The violinists stop playing.

The bearskin man roars. ‘Get the Sheriff!’

19

A small crowd of us runs over to Hans Wimmer’s clock shop but most people just ignore the roar. They carry on groping each other, kissing, bobbing for rotten apples, and walking backwards round the square.

Twenty people circle the bearskin man and the pan. A herd of beasts.

The Sheriff comes through and people make way.

‘Give me some space.’

The howling and chanting still fills the square. But the violinists are silent.

There’s a huddle. Three people remove their masks. One is Luka Kodro, the pizzeria owner. One is Ragnar Falk, his white beard glowing in the din. One is a woman I don’t recognise. She’s wearing furs and red face paint.

The Sheriff has his hand on the radio affixed to his shoulder.

The woman sifts through the contents of the pan and nods and then looks up at the Sheriff. ‘Definitely human teeth,’ she says, adjusting her minks, each one whole, each one hanging limp from her body. ‘Not animal. Human.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ asks a man still wearing a black carrier bag over his head.

‘Because I studied these.’ She holds up a molar, its root obscenely long in her fingers. ‘I studied these for longer than you were in full-time education.’

It’s Dr Edlund. Eva Edlund.

The Sheriff takes the tooth from her, and then he takes the pan.

He still has his hand on his radio. Hesitating. Thinking.

A man opposite with a moose head, not a mask, an actual hollowed-out moose head complete with antlers, shakes his head from side to side. It’s a small gesture but his antlers magnify the movement.

The Sheriff swallows and takes his hand off the radio and walks away with the pan. I hear the contents rattle as he moves. Sounds like grit or glass beads.

‘Plumber’s teeth?’ asks a woman beside me with grey make-up and a rough sackcloth hat similar to the ones wrapped around the streetlights.

I run after the Sheriff.