INGRID (ENGLISH VERSION)

THE KNIFE

ATTENTION PLEASE! THE FOLLOWING CHAPTER CONTAINS VIOLENCE, PILL CONSUMPTION, AS WELL AS MENTAL DISEASE AND SELF-HARM DESCRIPTIONS.

After this view, we both got into my car. Sofia, who has always been the joker of the company, now had a frozen look on her face and was speechless. Until we got home, neither of us had said a single word. Sofia's blood was running so cold, that I could even hear her heartbeat. The only thing I could tell her was: "Please, inform her family". I finally saw that she pulled out her phone and sent a text message. We couldn't even talk.

We got in the house and the girls asked: "Where's Eva?". I didn't talk, but I only headed towards the rooms inside. "Ingrid", Jesikka shouted. I locked myself in my room and the girls knew that whenever I would lock myself inside, nobody could get me out. I didn't cry at all. My blood was running so cold, that I couldn't even react at all. I was sitting on my bed and I closed my eyes, hoping I could calm down. But the blade....the blade full of blood....it was constantly turning around my mind. It would never leave!

I don't know how much time had passed, but when I eventually walked out, I went to the kitchen. The girls were still there. They had bolted down many vodka bottles and they were blind drunk, but they weren't saying anything. They had fallen on the table in a real mess. I eventually bolted down anything that had remained and after getting wasted on drinking, I also passed out on the table. I was having freaking dreams during the whole night. I was dreaming I was swimming in the boundless ocean. Suddenly, huge waves were coming towards me, like tsunamis, about to drown me. I was smiling because they reminded me of Harbour Oil, the tide which was coming back every morning at 6 o'clock. Just like those days in my dreams, when I would hide under the waves and there's where everything would calm down. However, this time I couldn't hide at all. The waves were coming in such a forceful way, that they would throw me in the shore and then pull me back again in the sea. In the end, some wave came so forcefully and threw me so far, that I found myself in a room full of corpses and all around me I could see blades with blood. Blades were everywhere!

I woke up because someone shouted: "Ingrid!" The four of us sprang up all awake. It was my mum: "How drunk did you get?", she asked.

"Mum, it's not a time to joke around", I said.

My mum looked at us in a question. Then, Dina said seriously:

"Niki, our friend, Eva, killed herself last night. Your daughter and Sofia found her with her throat sliced".

My mum opened widely her eyes and then walked away in a rush. I looked at Dina angrily: "What do you want?", she said. "Do you expect me to be discreet after all?".

Half an hour later, I told the girls: "I need you to leave me alone".

Then, Dina turned to me and said: "Just don't go and kill yourself, ok?". I shook my head and told her: "If I do, I'll be the second one to leave the company".

I didn't have any reason not to be ironic. After this view, everything seemed funny to me. I'd never again in my life showed such cruelty to anybody, nor did I feel such hate towards life itself. I was at times disappointed or bitter indeed, but I would never feel hate. But now things had changed. Now, I wasn't pretending to have empty feelings anymore. Now I really couldn't feel anything, because I didn't know what to feel anymore.

Eva's funeral took place the next day. I didn't shed a single tear. Not because I didn't care for her or I didn't love her at all. I just couldn't feel anything but fear. And as far as I realised, terror was drawn in the face of the other girls too. I also felt rage towards Eva. Rage, because she killed herself. You might say that I also wanted to do the same thing during the previous months. And Christians consider it a sin not to forgive a dead person, because there is this so-called remission of sins. I, though, was an atheist and I would never forgive Eva. Because she was a hypocrite. She was the only one of us who never ever seemed to be upset and she turned everything into a joke. She was pretending to be fine, whereas she wasn't at all. And she ended up killing herself, exactly because she never told anyone what she was feeling, while she instead was everyone's psychotherapist.

After Eva's funeral, I relapsed and things had never got worse than that. I knew that pills made my mind numb, that's why I decided to increase the dose, without informing Hanna about it. I ended up taking three Lyrica per day, which in the beginning were only causing lucid dreams For about a whole month, I started composing psychedelic music constantly. Thus, I composed fifteen instrumental songs, containing nonsensical music. At some point, I called Johanna and told her: "Can you do an album cover for me?".

"Are you releasing an album with the band?", she asked.

"I don't know", I replied. "We might do. Well, listen up. Draw the ceiling of a cave, in which a brown rock is attached to it. And a huge sharp purple crystal should be hanging under this rock".

Johanna sighed: "What's this again?".

"Johanna, please, I don't want to discuss anything about it", I yelled.

"I'm sorry", she said calmly. "I didn't want to pressure you at all".

"It's only....my weird mind. Just make it for me".

During the following days, Johanna eventually sent me the cover. It was marvellous and indeed what I had exactly in my mind. I wrote at the back of the paper Storms in the Darkness. I was thinking about where I could hide the paper, but then I found it. I opened the notebook, where I was writing my book, the one with this psychopath writer, and I placed the paper between the cover and the first page. My story! I was wondering about my author, my Poet. How was she doing? I think it was high time I gave this book an ending, no matter if I was never going to publish it.

I had stopped writing when the author starts to hate her sister and decides to write a novel, in which her sister kills herself. I decided to get the story going like that, in a heavy heart, even though it was the harshest and most inhumane thing I could ever write. Whatsoever, I had increased the dose of the pills and as a result, I felt I had lost any sense of reality and everything seemed like a neverending dream. This was probably the evidence of the fact that excessive usage of sympatholytics turns you into a zombie. At least, I hadn't lost any of my creativity, even though I would get out a side of myself, which nobody had ever seen again.

A few days later, I reached the point, where the author's sister is about to commit suicide....of course, in the author's book. However, I stopped there. I couldn't do it. I couldn't write a book, in which an author also writes a book, in which her sister commits suicide. That couldn't happen! I started feeling depressed and considered taking another Lyrica pill. However, I regretted it. I didn't want to take another pill, nor write. I only wanted to die. I was the one who had to die, not my heroine's sister. She wasn't anything to blame for, whereas the fault for everything was mine. In the beginning, I thought I could just go and drown myself in the sea. Return in the place I was born in. Because, when we are close to death, we want to return to the place, where we are born. It makes us feel safe and secure. But then, I thought of Eva's suicide. I smiled, as I realised how effective this was, how painless it was, in contrast with trying to drown yourself. There was a much quicker death rather than drowning yourself or taking pills. You can only tuck a knife into your body and soon everything is over. Eva gave me such great ideas.

The time was 11 o'clock in the night when I grabbed the kitchen's huge knife. I lied on my bed with the knife on my right side and my story on my left side. The plan was that I would sleep only for a few hours and at 3 o'clock I would wake up and I would slice my throat on the floor of my house, just like Eva did. So, I fell asleep with a wide smile, being sure that soon I wouldn't be suffering anymore.

When I woke up, everything was in its right position. The knife on my right, the story on my left. I held the knife in my hands and walked on the cold floor. I went into the living room before the fireplace, where the fire was burning. I knelt there as if I was offered to the gods as a sacrifice. And then I stretched the hand, which was holding the huge knife and pulled it horizontally to my throat.

I sprang up!

I was still in bed!

So....this was a dream! And the knife was still on my left. This means....that I never pulled the knife and that this was nothing but a nightmare. No, no I couldn't do this. I had changed my mind, I couldn't harm myself. I had to ask for help. And this story! This story would kill me. This author wasn't me. The author had to die and not me. It was me the one who should live. I rose from the bed, this time holding the story in my hands. I went into the living room before the fireplace, where the fire was burning. I knelt there as if I was offered to the gods as a sacrifice. And then I stretched the hand, which was holding the story and prepared to throw the story into the fire. But, at the very last moment, I changed my mind.