Gunnar's Frightening Obsession

Gunnar observed his friend lying on the floor in the flickering green light. The green light gave everything in the room a toxic feeling.

“I need to save him as well”, he said. “He needs to be saved.”

He cleared the table in the middle of the room from books and unwashed dishes. The light was comforting as he moved about in the large room crowded with all sorts of things. The tinted light made him avoid seeing things as they were, which made them less ugly in a strange way. He had always wanted to help his friends as they stumbled through life, no matter how ugly they were. Life is not beautiful. Ever. Few things are, he thought. Saving lives was his mission now that he finally found out how. He felt good for the first time. “I help my friends. And I know how.”

He remembered his first book in biology very well. The pictures of how everything fit together in perfect harmony, even if it was fragile in most cases. Living things were such perfect, yet ugly, machines. A wonderful thought of how things are interconnected, yet fragile to both death, transformation and disease. He always kept that old book. He attended a study circle in Biology every Tuesday night at the Edelweiss Café in the centre of Lund. He could expand his knowledge bit by bit in a very comfortable manner. His fellow course attendees were not always interested in hearing how he perceived things. Gunnar thought of this for some time. They somehow knew less than him and struggled to keep up with his thinking. In reality, they supposed he was demented.

“What do you think Gunnar?”

“I endorse Ectogenesis can be applied often.”

“You endorse? What do you mean?”

“Oh, I mean I endure…, sorry I mean I envision that it can be applied often.” The selection process of choosing the correct words was not always kind to him. Especially not if he was in the presence of other people, which rarely happened thankfully.

He started to bring out what he needed. Candles, his books and transcripts and the aluminium tray. He wiped the old stains of blood from the tray and started checking if he had everything. This new friend would soon be saved. Gunnar went to the door and bolted it since the loud talking could be disturbed if someone entered the room, like his sister, and then the whole saving would be interrupted and fail.

Sometimes Gunnar was away for days. He would disappear and arrive days later, acting as if nothing had happened. It was halfway through 1924 and the world was not what it used to be. One time, his sister Hanna was concerned about him and confronted him.

“Where were you the last couple of days Gunnar?”

“Dear sister I have been here all the time. I just had to go visit a close friend. A real friend.” He looked a bit concerned at her. “Do you know what a real friend is, sister?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, of course. But what do you mean? What friend? And where? Did you stay there all the time you were gone?”

“Hanna, it was just one night.”

“Right, then that one night lasted five days. What were you doing all that time? You know you shouldn’t drink alcohol right?”

“Oh, alcohol is nothing I need. No, not at all. We spoke, looked at the strangest architecture you have ever seen and talked in tongues together. But just for one night Hanna. We visited wonderful and horrible places together and made strange things happen. It was truly the most wonderful time. My close friend. Me and Carlo call him ‘the Alchemist’. He has taught me almost everything I know how to save my friends. Carlo seems to be a quick learner as well. He has that wonderful book too.”

The room had a foul odour. Gunnar took his torn jacket, shirt and cap off and tossed them onto a chair by the wall. He went to the wardrobe and fetched the lab coat he had gotten from Hanna. He put it on. It was stained but was very comfortable and he felt safe with it on.

He went to where his new friend was lying. He was ugly indeed. He picked him up and carried him to the middle of the table. He was heavy. Gunnar looked around and felt that it was time. Once again he was about to show the greatness he had achieved through knowledge and experimentation. Without the help from the professor or Carlo, he had made this routine his own. He felt pride and confidence in what he was about to do.

Carlo was standing in a small room without windows, right at the back of the speaking area in the Pentecostal church. The church was not in the best location in Lund and the members were not growing any more. He was concerned but had a plan. He was in an intense discussion with the Elder Brothers of the church. He was trying to convince them that they needed to attract new types of followers. If he could convince the people of Lund that his church was against those horrible experimentations performed on life at the Zoological faculty, where his brother was a faculty member, he would surely attract finer members to his church. The Elder Brothers tried to understand his point of view and how to help in this task while Carlo impatiently tried to explain how it could be done. At the moment, the only new members joining the church were the lost ones. The alcoholics and the poor. Those who had escaped the Asylum S:t Lars and had nowhere else to go. These fractions of humans were his job to help. He could do better.

Gunnar rummaged around with all the parts that he needed. He stopped when he felt everything was where it was supposed to be. He lit the candles and started to move his hands over the body in circular motions. He opened his mouth and started to speak words in a, to bystander, odd combination. Words in Swedish came to begin with, “I praise and thank you, oh holy father”, these words circulated with a touch of weirdness since they did not really make any sense, even if it was a prayer, which it wasn’t. He had his eyes closed. He continued his chanting. While his eyes were closed, the words suddenly switched to some other language, most probably Hebrew, a leftover from Carlo's teachings. It did not take long until his eyes opened and the white part of his rolling eyes was all that was seen. This happened at the same moment as Gunnar started to use words that no one would be able to define as an existing language. “Y'golonac tharanak lw'nafh hai R'lyeh”. These words were effortlessly repeated over and over again. After a short while something mist-like came out of his mouth. While repeatedly chanting these words, a misty smoke swirled from his mouth out into the room.

While trying to improve the quality of his congregation, Carlo stumbled unexpectedly upon an interesting person. Gunnar. Gunnar lived in the basement under his brother's house in Flackarp. He met him several times while visiting his brother, and understood that Gunnar was a perfect fit for involving in his newly found interest - the book. Carlo immediately saw that Gunnar was a person with some sort of disability in his mind. He was clever but had a different way of approaching reality. Gunnar needed a purpose, this was clear. This inspired Carlo. He started to converse with Gunnar as soon as he had a chance and, against his will, he went to his hated brother's house, much more often than he would otherwise. Mostly to meet with Gunnar. Gunnar had a twisted view of life and collected dead animals in his basement that he thought he could help bring to life with the use of biology. It never happened, until Carlo started to understand the knowledge found in the book. Carlo read the book slowly. If he read more than ten pages at the time, his mind would become separated from the real world and the horror he felt from what the book contained, was too intense to continue reading. The book contained formulas and rituals speaking about the outworldly transformation of life and the summoning of gods and Spirits that can transform life itself. Carlo knew that when he was in church, and praying with the congregation, he often fell into that strange but wonderful feeling of channelling god through words. He didn’t understand the words, even if they came out of his own mouth, but he sensed its power. The power to control people. Surely, this power could be used for more.

Gunnar felt his body pulsate with warmth and strength. He saw the smoke coming out of his mouth as he instinctively performed his Xenolalia. Like from a distance, he saw how the smoke, or living mist, took a life of its own. The candles on the table flickered softly. The mist swirled around the room but focused its movements around the dead rabbit on the table. Gunnar's newly found friend. “Y'golonac tharanak lw'nafh hai R'lyeh” were the words that kept the mist moving and having a will of its own. As the smoke entered the rabbit's mouth, he felt nostalgic and warm about the fact that his ugly friend now was close to being saved. And become beautiful.

The walls of the basement where Gunnar held his ritual, were covered from floor to ceiling with some sort of reptilian cages or aquaria. All contained absolutely dreadful creatures that might once have belonged to the animal kingdom, but most certainly did not now. The animals were twisted, and wretched. They moved in spasmatic ways and had autonomous tentacles coming out of their body in unforeseen places. They were all very different, and all screamed and howled during the ritual Gunnar was performing. They screamed and shrieked continuously and the high pitch was excruciating.

The dead rabbit on the table in the middle of the room with the greenish light and the horrible screaming twitched. Every sound stopped. It was dead quiet. For a second. Then the rabbit started to move his legs. The screaming started again, with renewed vigour. The rabbit twitched and convulsed as the fur exploded in places so that tentacles could emerge. The whole body twisted as far as the fur cracked and was lost in the cracks of the bulging muscles and entrails growing out of the body while slowly turning in all directions composing a horrible, twisted animal, far from being a rabbit and more closely resembling a true monster from nightmares conveyed by people in asylums where thoughts are not constrained by physics or natural laws. The sight was unbearable for any human in this world, but not to Gunnar. “Ahh, my ugly friend. Now you are beautiful and saved. I have returned life to you. Go in peace and enjoy life.”

The creature looked with his strange bulging eyes on Gunnar, his supposed benefactor, from the table. He rose to his hind legs. While facing Gunnar, he emitted a long wheeze from behind his now substantially increased number of teeth, all now sharp as needles. Gunnar smiled and spoke his last words. “Welcome to the world, ugly friend. I, saved you.” The former rabbit leapt onto Gunnar's face and consumed it together with the rest of the head. The mist swept across the room in a violent manner and the cage doors flew open. All Gunnar's macabre “friends” burst, slithering, hopping, wheezing, walking out of the basement into the open air of Flackarp. The screams coming from Lund that night never really ended.