I mostly stayed in bed, ate candy under the covers, fantasized about a pact with Satan and felt sorry for myself.

When I was 17 I had dropped out of high school because mean boys tortured me in the green corridors, that reeked of linoleum and foot sweat. The walls felt like they were about to close in on me and trap me in an arctic eternity; a wasted ice age.
Those boys called me ugly and stupid. Which I was to some extent. I had a major acne problem, and later that year, in the summer, I fell in love with a guy who had killed three people over a bicycle.

If that's not stupid, I don't know what is.

The summer was a disappointment, as it usually is. When it didn't rain, the skies kept a stern steely-gray and threatening look. And if the sun actually shone, then the wind whipped around the corners, feeling like an icy skeleton hand caressing my pimply cheek.

I mostly stayed in bed, ate candy under the covers, fantasized about a pact with Satan and felt sorry for myself.

Then one day there was a story about a triple murder in the newspaper. We lived in a very small town, way behind god's asshole, on a cultural, intellectual and action-less tundra. Even a triple murder was something to get excited about. But it was terrible too, of course. A father and son had been shot in their heads, from such a close distance that their brains had been blown out of their heads. Their bodies were found on a cemetery. A mother was found in the forest, below the midnight sun and faintly buzzing mosquito clouds. Her throat had been cut all the way into the vertebrae.