Go to Hell

When I entered the apartment, there was dirt everywhere. A foul smell of wet dog burned its way into my nose. I narrowed my eyes for a moment. Fragments of thought shot through my head. The sour stench pulled me back instantly. Fur. Medication. Old coffee. Maybe that air freshener in the hallway. Maybe urine. At some point it all started blending together.

Oskar stood in the hallway staring at me. I tried to hold his gaze — and lost it immediately. Small dog. Shaggy. Kind of cute, actually. But completely nervous. That face, as if he had known for years that people were idiots.

“Don’t be scared,” Waltraud called from the kitchen, her voice trembling. “He doesn’t do anything.”

Oskar ran straight between my feet. I set the bucket down. Water spilled over the edge. The floor stuck slightly beneath my shoes.

Coughing came from the bedroom. Wheezing. Scratchy. Wet.

Karl’s voice:

“Where are the pills?”

“You already had your pills.”

“The other ones!”

Waltraud came out of the kitchen holding a dish towel. She looked like she had either been talking for hours or crying for hours. Hard to tell. Probably both.

“He started again today,” she said with a bitter smile.

I just nodded.

Then the pistachio croissant came back into my head. Three euros fifty. My God. For a croissant.

I pulled on the gloves and started wiping.

Oskar sniffed nervously at the bucket.

“No,” I said.

He kept going.

“He keeps reading some garbage in those pharmacy brochures,” Waltraud said. “About pills that supposedly make everything better.”

Immediately Karl shouted from the bedroom:

“Garbage! Everything’s always garbage whenever I say something! You’re the devil!”

Waltraud closed her eyes for a second. First she turned pale, then bright red.

She said nothing.

I kept wiping.

The television in the living room was on without sound. Animals. Horses maybe. Or zebras. I didn’t really look.

“I worked my whole life!” Karl yelled.

At least that’s how it felt to him.

Then the coughing again. Phlegm. A wet choking sound. Then he swallowed it all back down.

You could feel the vibration in the room. The pills rattled inside the glass.

“With these hands!” he shouted.

I could picture them immediately: cracked, swollen, red, dirt still buried beneath the nails. Hands that had once carried everything — and now could barely pull up a blanket.

“And now you people want to tell me what I’m allowed to take. That damned witch should fly away on her broomstick!”

Waltraud snapped back instantly. Always instantly.

I kept wiping, withdrawn into myself, almost amused, reaching underneath the living room table. Dog hair everywhere. The rag kept snagging on something.

Oskar wandered behind me, confused.

“You don’t need them,” Waltraud said from the bedroom, suddenly soft, almost angelic.

“Oh, so now you’re a doctor!” Karl screamed.

“You can all go to hell.”

The animals still moved silently across the television screen. Horses. Or zebras. Hard to tell.

Again the croissant.

Three fifty. Seriously — who can still afford that?

I wrung out the rag. My hands dry and cracked. The water had turned pitch black by then.

Suddenly Waltraud was standing next to me again.

She whispered damply into my ear:

“He used to leave for work every morning at five.”

By then I was already dreaming while awake.

Always the same images: I’m lying in a field. A creek murmurs softly around me.

When the clock struck two, I came back to myself again. Gathered my thoughts. Thought once more about the pistachio croissant.

Late in the evening I left.

I walked near the fields behind the houses.

I could hear music. Schlager. Some song about love. Endless love.

Then I heard Oskar barking.

And suddenly I saw them.

Karl sat in front of the shed on a plastic chair. A beer bottle between his legs. His head flushed red. His eyes glassy.

Waltraud stood a few meters away in the grass, her blue skirt pulled up, pissing into the bushes.

Samu