9789176990803

Annika’sStorage Space THıRTeen sınısTeR sToRıes FLoRenCe WeTZeL

Annika’s Storage Space

Florence Wetzel

Annika’s Storage Space Thirteen Sinister Stories

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locations, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Quote in “A Friendly Ghost”: Kristina Nordström Töyrä, “Skräckskrivaren: Här är det läskiga Vasastan” (Horror Writers: Here Is the Creepy Vasastan), Mitt i Vasastan, October 23, 2016.

Front cover image created by Jan Vertsberg, with cat picture from Shutterstock. Back cover artwork Ylande familj (Howling Family) by Pernilla Nyman.

NOTE: The reader is always welcome to contact the author via email at florencewetzel@yahoo.com.

Second edition.

First edition published and printed by BoD – Books on Demand 2022.

This book is the English translation of Annikas förråd: En ondskefull novellsamling, published and printed by BoD – Books on Demand 2022. The book was translated from Swedish to English by the author.

Copyright © 2023 Florence Wetzel Förlag: BoD – Books on Demand, Stockholm, Sverige Tryck: BoD – Books on Demand, Norderstedt, Tyskland ISBN: 978-91-7699-080-3

To my beautiful friend, Jussara Terezinha Bastos

Contents Foreword ....................................................................................................................9 Rosie......................................................................................................................... 11 The Agent................................................................................................................ 21 The French Press ................................................................................................... 37 Wicked Children in the Sky .................................................................................. 53 A Tiny Woman....................................................................................................... 63 A Friendly Ghost ................................................................................................... 83 The Spot .................................................................................................................. 89 Annika’s Storage Space ....................................................................................... 111 Anything at All ..................................................................................................... 121 You’ve Got Mail................................................................................................... 137 The Whole Ship Is Sleeping ............................................................................... 147 Under the Bed ...................................................................................................... 169 Miss Hyde.............................................................................................................. 191 Afterword .............................................................................................................. 241 Thank You ............................................................................................................ 247

Foreword During the summer of 2018, I lived in Boulder, Colorado. Three important things happened there that later gave rise to this book.

1. I discovered the Swedish podcast Creepypodden (The Creepy Podcast); 2. My friend Laurel took me to a reading by the gifted horror writer Carmen Maria Machado, author of the short story collection Her Body and Other Parties; and 3. I decided to try writing fiction in Swedish, a language that I had fallen in love with and been studying for several years.

One day that summer, these three events converged, and I had a flash of inspiration: I could write horror stories in Swedish! Or at least try to.

I had never written horror before, but I had become enchanted by the genre and wanted to give it a try. It also felt liberating to change genres for my first attempt to write fiction in Swedish. Instead of trying to imitate what I had previously written in English, the whole experience would be fresh.

It’s only now that I realize that two other experiences were also decisive in my horror journey. In November 2017, I went to a seminar in Stockholm given by the famed Swedish horror writer John Ajvide Lindqvist (Let the Right One In) and his wife Mia. My intention wasn’t to learn how to write horror, but rather to meet one of my favorite authors and perhaps pick up some writing tips.

During the seminar, someone asked John where he got his unique ideas.

That’s when John talked about the “what-if method.” That one could, for 9

example, watch the TV show Allsång på Skansen (Sing-along at Skansen, an outdoor concert series at an open-air museum in Stockholm) and suddenly imagine a completely bizarre scenario: What if everyone in the audience were zombies?

That advice apparently influenced me quite a bit, because the “what-if method” is the cornerstone of almost all the short stories in this book. One of the stories actually did take place, but I’ll reveal that in the afterword.

The second experience happened during Skriv2017 (Write2017), a weekend conference in Gothenburg sponsored by the Swedish magazine Skriva.

While I sat and waited for Sunday’s program to begin, I chatted with the young man sitting next to me, who told me that he was writing a science fiction book.

It sounded interesting, and I said with a sigh, “I only write about reality.”

He regarded me searchingly and said, “Reality is just one point of view.”

A shock went through me. I realized that he was right: there were countless other writing possibilities outside of reality’s boundaries. Our conversation opened a door, even though it took a while before I was ready to walk through it.

One final comment. At the end of this book, there’s a section where I thank various people. Nonetheless I want to take the opportunity now to thank four people who have helped me enormously with the original Swedish version of these stories: Óren Häusler, Anna von Friesen, and Anneli Haake and Daniel Lind from Swedish Made Easy. Four generous people who always believed in my dream to write in Swedish. People like them make the world shine.

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Rosie It all started one morning when I was at the dentist in Stockholm’s Vasastan neighborhood. Once again it was time to fix a broken tooth. It would be expensive, but my boyfriend had promised to pay. He always paid for my doctor visits after an attack. Or an incident, as he liked to call them.

A young woman sat next to me in the waiting room. She had colorful tattoos and was reading the new book by the feminist author Lena Andersson.

Now and then the woman snuck a look at my swollen face, but I never met her glance.

Finally the woman cleared her throat. I looked at her, and she said in a low voice, “I can help you. For real and completely free.”

“No one can help me,” I whispered. “I’m stuck.”

She took a cell phone out of her knapsack. Despite my despair, I smiled when I saw the sticker on the back of her phone. It was the head of a Siamese cat. A photo, not a drawing.

“Nice sticker,” I said.

“Do you like cats?”

“I do. Especially Siamese.”

The woman smiled. She dialed a number and gave me the phone. “The woman who’s going to answer is called Persian.”

My first conversation with Persian was short. She instructed me to buy a pay-as-you-go phone and call her as soon as my dentist visit was over.

Persian and I talked for two hours that afternoon, and from then on we spoke daily. Finally the day came when Persian said that it was time to make a 11

plan. She suggested we meet the next morning at ten o’clock at Ritorno, the classic bohemian café on Odengatan.

It was the beginning of March and it was raining. I arrived at quarter to ten, relieved to find the place quiet before the lunch rush. I ordered a latte, but nothing to eat. An incident had taken place the previous evening, and as usual I had lost my appetite afterward. My teeth were unharmed this time, but now I had an ugly black eye.

When I had asked Persian how I would recognize her, she said that it was rather she who would recognize me. It wouldn’t be too difficult since I was the only woman in Ritorno wearing sunglasses.

At exactly ten o’clock, a woman sat opposite me with a cup of coffee and a piece of princess cake. She looked like someone who never left Stockholm’s fancy Östermalm neighborhood. Her hair was blond and straight with discreet highlights, and she wore a white silk blouse and wide-legged black trousers.

Her lemon-colored purse looked like it had cost a fortune.

One thing was unexpected. When the woman put her expensive cell phone on the table, I saw the same Siamese cat sticker on the back. The sticker hadn’t looked odd on the tattooed woman’s phone, but it was rather surprising for a woman as stylish as this one.

Persian smiled. “Nice to finally meet you in person.”

“Same here. Although . . .” I gestured toward my sunglasses.

“Believe me,” Persian said. “I know.” She rolled up her sleeves and revealed a constellation of small red scars. “Cigarettes,” she said calmly. “You should see my back.”

My eyes filled with tears. “I have those too. But today it’s my eye.”

Persian leaned over the table. “And now you’re ready to deal with this.”

“I am.”

“Have you thought about what I asked you?”

Persian had asked me several times what I wanted. Did I want him to be paralyzed for a few hours to give me time to pack up my things and escape?

Or did I want him to be—as she put it—eliminated?

Initially I had thought that it would be enough to paralyze him. But after the incident the previous evening, I had changed my mind.

“The second alternative,” I said.

12

“All right then. Does he sleep well?”

“Like a log.”

“What time does he usually go to bed?”

“Ten.” “Are you sure?”

“Yes. That’s according to the schedule.”

Persian knit her brows. “What schedule?”

I swallowed and looked down at my hands. “That’s why I got this eye. I changed the schedule without asking him. Dinner was ready at quarter to seven instead of six-thirty.”

Persian pursed her lips. “We’ll do it this evening,” she said. “Someone will come to your apartment at eleven o’clock. What’s your door code?”

“5726.”

“One more thing: buy smoked salmon. Fresh, not in a package. It’s best if you leave the salmon out a bit so it’s room temperature.”

“Why?” Persian drank the last of her coffee and stood. “Don’t worry,” she said.

“You’re with us now.” *** When I got home that evening, he had bought me flowers. He had also cooked my favorite meal and opened an expensive bottle of wine. He apologized dozens of times, and he promised that it would never ever happen again. He said that we just needed to put the incident behind us and go forward. The incident didn’t matter at all when you considered our long relationship and how deeply we loved one another.

I put the flowers in a vase. I ate the food and drank the wine. I nodded as he talked. I let him believe that I had forgiven him, but I knew that his promises were empty words. Besides, everything was different now. I wasn’t alone anymore, and hopefully he would soon be . . . eliminated.

We went to bed at nine-thirty. That was according to the schedule. Get into bed at nine-thirty, read for a half hour, turn off the lights at exactly ten. I would have preferred to stay up later, but we lived by his rules. That included the books I read. According to him, detective novels weren’t sufficiently intellectual, and therefore he chose my reading material. Whenever I finished a 13

book, I had to give him a summary so he could judge if I had understood it.

If not, I needed to read the book again. That had happened several times.

That evening I read Karl Ove Knausgård’s The End, and he read Horace Engdahl’s The Last Pig. We turned off the lights at ten as usual. Five minutes later, he was snoring loudly.

Very carefully, I slid out of bed and made my way in the dark to the kitchen.

I opened the refrigerator and took out the smoked salmon that I had bought at Östermalms Saluhall that afternoon. I hid the package behind the electric kettle in case he woke up. The kitchen always had to be spotless, and he would go ballistic if he saw the salmon lying on the counter.

Instead of returning to bed, I sunk into the sofa in the dark living room.

When it was ten to eleven, I got up and sat in the chair by the front door.

At exactly eleven o’clock, I heard a light knock. I opened the door at once.

The person standing there was a young woman, I was sure of that. But it was difficult to describe her further because she wore a black baseball cap with a black hoodie drawn up over it.

“Hey,” she said quietly. “Everything all right?”

“He’s sleeping.”

“Good. I’ll be back in an hour. Give her the salmon afterward. Otherwise she’ll be crabby.”

“Who?” The woman lifted up a small black cage. “Rosie.”

I looked in the cage. It was a cat. A little Siamese.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Are you sure you’re in the right place?”

In answer to my question, the young woman showed me her hand. The skin was chalk-white and horribly shriveled.

“My ex put it in hot oil,” she said.

I took the cage.

“Unlock it and let her out,” the young woman continued. “Be sure to leave the bedroom door ajar. Rosie isn’t going to spend a lot of time in there, maybe ten minutes. When it’s over, she’ll come out. Rosie prefers to work alone, so you don’t need to go in with her.”

“OK,” I said doubtfully.

“Don’t forget the salmon. A little water too.”

14

I nodded.

“All right then,” the young woman said. “See you at midnight. Good luck.”

She went quickly down the steps and disappeared.

I looked at the cage again. A cat. Seriously? This was crazy.

But what choice did I have? It was too late to back out now. Persian seemed like a woman who knew what was what; it was just a matter of opening the cage and following instructions.

I closed the front door and took the cage into the living room. I couldn’t turn on the lights because I was afraid of waking him, but luckily the moon shone in through the window. I put the cage by the sofa, got down on my knees, and opened the little door.

Rosie came out at once. She was small and sleek with almond-shaped blue eyes. Her face, legs, and tail were chocolate brown, and her fur was creamy white. A real beauty.

Suddenly I jerked back. In the perfect little face with its symmetrical markings, there was something completely unexpected. A long front tooth, white and sharp.

Rosie came up to me and rubbed her face on my calf. The tooth’s sharp edge scraped against my skin. I reached down a hand and carefully let my fingers touch her silky coat.

“Hi, Rosie,” I whispered nervously.

She looked at the open bedroom door, then up at me. My God, that tooth was long! It reached all the way down to her chin.

“Yep,” I said softly. “In there.”

Rosie lifted her tail and went toward the bedroom. With a smooth movement, she curved her little body around the open door and slipped into the room.

I waited five minutes. Five unbearable minutes. The young woman had said that I should leave Rosie alone with him, but I was terrified. Not for his sake, but for the cat’s. He would be furious if he woke up and saw Rosie, and then anything at all could happen. That’s why I had never gotten a cat, despite the fact that I liked them so much.

As quietly as possible, I got up and went on tiptoe to the bedroom. I leaned forward and looked in.

15

Rosie stood on his chest. She turned her head and stared at me. Her eyes glowed in the dark, two supernatural white-green lights. A stream of moonlight from the window hit her long front tooth and made it shine like a diamond.

Slowly I backed out of the room. I sat on the sofa and pressed my palms together. My mind was totally blank.

A few minutes later, Rosie came out of the bedroom, holding her tail high and proud. I watched in horror as she came toward me. She rubbed her face against me like before, then hopped up onto my lap. Purring loudly, she pushed her head up under my chin.

I ran my fingers gently along Rosie’s spine. It was hard to tell in the dark, but I could have sworn that her long tooth was bloody.

“Salmon time?” I stammered. “Come!”

I carefully set Rosie on the floor, and we walked together into the dark kitchen. I laid slices of smoked salmon on a plate and filled a bowl with water.

Naturally I used our best china.

Rosie sniffed the fish a long time before she finally started eating. She ate slowly and carefully, and afterward cleaned herself thoroughly. Then she went back into the living room and stepped into the cage. She sat down and placed her chocolate-colored front paws precisely beside one another. An elegant lady. Apart from the bloody tooth, that is.

At midnight I heard the light knock again. I locked the cage and brought it to the front door, where I once again saw the anonymous woman in the hoodie.

“Everything all right?” she whispered.

“I think so. I haven’t gone into the bedroom.”

“Go to bed. Do everything as usual.”

“And then?”

“Call an ambulance when it’s time. Play the loving girlfriend. Everything will happen by itself.”

“When?”

“Sometime tomorrow. By the way, did you remember the salmon?”

“Of course.”

“Good. That makes my night easier. One last thing.”

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A Siamese cat with frightening powers. A writer who is terrified of her literary agent. A wooden-horse factory with a dark secret. An attic in Stockholm’s Old Town with a mysterious cupboard.

These unpleasantries and more can be found in this short story collection set in Sweden. Just open the door and step into Annika’s Storage Space . . . if you dare.

Florence Wetzel is an American author who has published books in several genres. Annika’s Storage Space was first written by the author in Swedish, then translated by her into English.

Front cover: Image created by Jan Vertsberg, with cat picture from Shutterstock. Back cover: Ylande familj (Howling Family) by Pernilla Nyman.