Adonis Diaries

Alice “The Siren”

X was 3 year-old and lived with his single shizophrenic mother and very obese and who was mostly sick in bed… The mother died in bed and X survived an entire week on bread and jam until there was nothing to eat: He could not open the locked front door or open the food cans. X didn’t know better but to sleep by his mother, and the stench was insufferable, but X could not realize that there is such thing as dying: mother will be up anytime soon.

How X was discovered we don’t know. X was not officially adopted, but Irene considered X her proper son: She had given up on getting pregnant and her husband was the type who took Irene decisions as orders and never tried to counter her opinions. Irene was a tall beauty and she bathed with X and lavished her “love” on him. X fell totally in love with Irene and nothing existed to him but his new found mother.

X never refused Irene anything she asked and he was the most obedient boy any mother could hope for: X would never do anything that angered Irene.

Two years later, Irene is pregnant with a girl and X is already a non entity, a burden to ignore and feed.  If it was not for her husband who for once took a stand, X would have been shipped to a public institution.

Alice was born and would never stop screaming, and X could no longer suffer all that racket, particularly that Alice displaced him with the total love and affection of Irene.

At the age of 5, and being warned never to approach Alice or even touch her, X was once left alone with Alice being bathed by her father. The father was washing Alice and had to answer the door. X drowned Alice without being aware of what he was doing: Alice was now quiet and things will be back to normal.

The father came back in the bathroom and reanimated Alice, but Alice suffered brain damage and was no longer the same baby: She was completely silent, never moving, never demanding anything… X was smiling in the bathroom, and insinuated to the father that Irene and everyone else will be happy again.

Irene focused her time, energy and attention on getting Alice back to something close to normal.

Ironically, Alice meant nothing to X, but Alice adored X: She only smiled and looked at X, and her mother Irene was sort of invisible to her. As she grew up, Alice was never a few feet away from X. When X went to school she was watching him from the window, and when he was back, Alice was waiting for him at the bus stop, smiling to him.

Alice turned out to be a stunning beauty with the same hair as Irene, chestnut color, until she tried to walk or talk, and people got scared and realized that she is not a normal person.  Alice was a perfect swimmer and looked totally normal in the water, and she could dive and outpace anyone swimming.

Once, Irene ordered X to jump in the water as Alice advanced very far out in the sea. X could barely swim and hated water, but he had to obey. Alice almost drowned X and shouted: “This is me you fool. I am your sirin” and insisted that he tows her to shore…

Alice barely talked, though she could for a 5 year-old brain that would never develop any further. X never answered Alice queries or returned her admiration: He didn’t care for her, and it was Irene who responded to Alice’s questions. Irene was beside herself with the attraction of Alice to this over fat boy.

Indeed, X replaced the love of Iirene with eating anything at hand, and he felt constantly hungry.  X had to come to term that Irene don’t love him anymore and has total contempt for him, but he will keep loving her no matter what she did to him.

The family moved to another town as Irene inherited her mother’s house, whom she called “The Viper”. Fat X was the new target for bullies at the new school. X was content with his books and didn’t feel the urge to befriend or associate with kids his age.

One team of bullies, led by Eric, made X life at school a living hell. Ken was basically the “hunting dog” of Eric and Magnus was the third leg. These bullies would fake running after X so that X keeps running and Eric would curse Alice and call her “Mongolian”.

At the age of 18, the voices in X head convinced him that it was time to leave the family, especially as he began to comprehend that Alice’s condition was of his own doing.

On a summer day, Eric demanded from X to bring him a bottle of whiskey after midnight so that he may join them in the party.

X came with the whiskey and the bullies were already drunk. Eric forced X to have several sips of whiskey and the ground started turning around X and his vision blurred. Suddenly, here comes Alice looking for X after midnight. And Eric made Alice drink whiskey and complimenting her on her beauty.

Alice is 13 years by now and still not normal in the head, but a great beauty. Eric pulls Alice top and handles her small perfect tits, and takes off Alice underware to check her pussy. And Eric said “I’m primo” and raped Alice. X is totally drunk and helpless and Magnus is also out of it.

Eric orders Ken to be next on top of Alice and then they force Magnus off the ground and pull down his trousers and made him sleep on top of Alice. Eric is back for an encore, and this time he is vicious and is pulling on Alice hair. And Alice screamed, a deafening stream of screams that made Eric box the head of Alice and break the bones of her face.

The bullies are now very terrified and realizing that they committed a serious crime, except Eric, a sick person lacking empathy. They ran away leaving Alice bleeding and injured. X ran to his home, shutting out his ears to the echoes of the screams and got in bed.

In the morning, the police didn’t pay a visit to the bullies. Irene assumed that it was X who raped Alice. They kicked X out of the house and a few days later moved out to another town. Alice was sent to an institution. The police didn’t receive a complaint and the bullies were not suspected of rape.

X is now about 40 of age, married with two sons and returned to his school town Fjallbacke to work in the local library. X is changed and looking very different: robust, handsome, wearing corrective glasses, and friendly. Eric, Ken and Magnus didn’t suspect that this is the same X they used to harass. The three former bullies were all married with kids. Ken and Magnus were happily married, but Eric was still chasing girls and was rich from shady business transactions.

What happened to X in the last 22 years? No information. Only once, X fell in love with a single mother with a little kid. This was the period that X felt totally happy: laughing, playing with the kid, and discussing project with Maria, this beautiful former professional dancer with chestnut colored hair and in the blue robe, like having a kid of his own…

And one day, the other person in X butted in and started to harass X: He was not supposed to be that happy, he had no right to be happy after what he committed in childhood… And the only way for X to return to his normal unhappy life was for the two cherished persons to die. X wore women garments and the long chestnut wig and Maria and the kids were drowned in the bathtub.

X was on medication when he arrived to town 5 years ago. And in the last 18 months, he decided that it was about time to write his book “The Sirin”. X had to stop taking medication that prevented him from pouring out his frustration. He worked in a shed on his manuscript.

As X started writing his manuscript, he began receiving threatening letters almost every month.

Eric and Ken also received threatening letters in the last 3 months, but nobody would divulge to anyone that he received such kinds of letters. Magnus never received a threatening letter.

The evening before the signing ceremony for his published book, Magnus, the only real friend of X, read a copy of the book and understood who was X. In the morning, Magnus visited with X to apologize and try to check his reaction.  My contention was that Magnus was ready to pay a visit to the police and get this heavy burden off his chest.

On entering the shed, Magnus saw a lady with long chestnut hair and he was stabbed to death. Apparently, Magnus barged in the wrong timing: X was in his second personality condition. X liked Magnus and had no grudge against him.

X went to the ceremony and received a bouquet of flowers with a card saying: “She walked by your side. She followed you. You have no rights on your own life. She does.” And X fainted.

The lady with the wig paid a visit to Lisbet, the dying wife of Ken, and told her the story of the secret childhood life of her husband.

Ken also was saved from an attempt at his life while jogging in the same usually route. Ken believed that Alice is back with vengeance on her mind.

It dawned on X that if he does not commit suicide, he will eventually attempt to kill his two kids. X hanged himself.

X was the person sending the letters to himself and also to Ken and Eric.

The wig was the same in color, length and shape as Alice, Irene and Maria.

Who X was emulating and in the name of whom of the three ladies was he on a rampage?

Was X punishing himself for failing Irene (the only person he loved before Maria) in taking good care of Alice and protecting her?

Was he angry for failing Alice, the one person who adored him without any precondition?

Was he angry against those who raped Alice simply because they ultimately were the cause for his second personality to kill Maria and her son?

Note 1: “The Siren” is a detective murder novel (410 pages) written by the Swede Camilla Lackberg. I read the French version. After page 50, I got restless and jumped to the last chapter, and then returned to read the beginning of each chapter, which started with significant sections of what X had published.

Note 2: Camilla Lackberg had published “The princess of Ices”, “The Predicator”, “The Stone Cutter”, “The bird of bad Omen”, “The German Kid”,  and Cyanide. Erica Falck is the heroine of the detective novels.

Note 3: In the last few pages, you discover that almost everyone in the novel has died or in the process of dying. Louise, wife of Eric, is driving to the airport to take a good peek at her husband in shackles, and she smashes into a car.  And who is in the other car? Erica (pregnant with twins) and her sister also pregnant. The two ladies were driving to the hospital because detective Patrick (husband of Erica) suffered a heart attack, just as he closed his case…

I felt dejected with all these deaths happening on the last page, a superfluous carnage that is irrelevant to the story. Why?

Note 4: Eric, one of the main villains, is going to get it easy: A couple of years in prison and will resume his previous life trend and behavior. The message is that “if you lack empathy and are immoral, you can get away with responsibilities and remorse…”

Note 5: I guess Camilla lacked the necessary imagination to compose samples of threatening letters sent to Ken and Eric, on the ground that the letters might let the rabbit out and readers might guess the underlying relationship…

My position is: “If you are not given a chance to try to guess and imagine the stroy, it is not worth reading a detective novel…”

Note 6: What do you think was the life of Irene before she decided to marry Ragnar? And why did she marry a short, colorless, and insipid man?

I conjecture that her haughty mother  “The Viper” taunted her relestlessly for fooling around and maybe falling in love with a man that she thought was not in the same “classy circle” or potential class the mother figured her highly beautiful daughter deserved. And Irene got pregnant and her beau fled and she had to abort, and discovered that she could not be pregnant again… And she married the first man who showed some interest…