the guilt that haunts Øystein Aarseth
“Where were you at 3 pm earlier today?” The detective's voice is casual, but the topic is as serious as øystein thinks it could get. His mind is all murky, not quite able to recall how he got here. He last remembers being in front of that cabin. He couldn't open the door, he had thrown rocks at the windows all but strong enough to break them. He’d yelled until his voice was too rough to swallow. He was angry. Angry that Pelle was in that room and didn't even have the decency to open the door for him.Oh Pelle. His poor Pelle.
“Hello?” The detective's voice is more leading, this time. Frustration pouring through the edges of the word. Øystein tries to answer yet he’s in such a state of shock and just numbness that he just can't even think of what to say. He sits with his eyes staring into the unclean corners of the interrogation room with his mouth just slightly open. The detective backed off a little, moving from his earlier position of wandering lazy circles around Øystein’s seat, and sat down across from him.
“You need to tell me where you were” he whispers, voice much softer, bright blue eyes much kinder. Eyes like baby blue water that runs clean through the forest creek. Just like Pelle. Øystein can't help it but he breaks down in sobs that wrack his body in great convulsions and he leans forwards, hands coming to his head to cover his tears. He remembers now. He got back from his mothers house with a pit in his stomach and a sickly sort of energy that made him unable to sit still the whole drive home. Maybe he sped a little too fast. Maybe his fingers were drumming on the steering wheel slightly faster than the loud music that blasted through the volvo. He could see the red cabin on the horizon, the bright color blatantly obvious against the gray green woods behind it. Something wasn’t right. He couldnt put his finger on it but he just knew something wasn't okay. The air was darker, the feeling of impending negativity clouding the atmosphere.
There were only two keys to the house, which could lock from the inside and the outside. Jørn had one key, spending the weekend with his parents, along with Jan, who held the other key while at his mom’s house. Pelle was staying home with Øystein for those few days until the return of his friends. Something had come up at Øystein’s parents house. He can't even remember what it was now. He shouldn't have left him alone. Never should have left him alone.
His lungs grab in more air than he can let out, causing dots to sparkle the edges of his vision and his head to develop a fuzzy edge around his thoughts. He was hyperventilating. The detective is speaking calming words into his ears but he can’t hear a thing. HIs thoughts are clouded. It was his fault that Pelle died. He knew he was struggling. He knew he left the gun unlocked. He knew what would happen. He knows that he didn't shoot Pelle but figures he may as well have. He thought about all the times he called Pelle a freak, a disgusting piece of trash. He couldn't take it back, and he would be haunted by the consequences for the rest of his life. His chest burns and he just cant breathe out all the air inside his lungs and he feels his face go red from the lack of oxygen.
He forces his mind to quiet itself as he focuses on breathing before he passes out. He exhales roughly, feeling relieved but still extremely upset. He had been angry at him. Angry that he had to climb through a god damned window to get into his own house. He remembers opening the door to Pelle’s bedroom to find him in a pool of blood on his bed. His mind had stopped. His mouth went dry and he couldn't even breath, lest he disturb the sickly real scene before him. The horror of it had shocked him so deeply that it felt as if his whole world was curling around him. His vision tunneled, the world blurred around the mangled remains of Pelle’s face, which was disturbingly clear in his mind, even in this moment an hour later as he’s sitting in a cold blank interrogation room like he was some type of god damn killer, or something.
Øystein has to physically stop himself from begging the man before him to bring back his friend as tears pool in his eyes. But he’s just a detective, not a miracle worker and he’s just here to make sure that Øystein didn’t kill him. As if he ever could even do such a thing at all. Øystein was all talk. All he ever did was talk. That's why he was so good at what he did. He could talk up alternate realities of popularity and fame and had even managed to drag poor Pelle from his safe warm house in Sweden all the way to a chronically cold barely standing cabin in the middle of the Norwegian woods. He could talk a big game, but could never back it up. His specialty was making promises, not seeing them through.
“I was at my mothers house” He starts, trying to clear his thoughts far enough to explain himself out of this mess and back to his house so he could just rot until he couldn't feel. Maybe he'd have a party and get so black out drunk he would never have to remember anything ever again. The detective is quiet, figuring it better not to pry and just let him tell his story.
“I was only there for an hour, at most. It takes about forty minutes to get there and forty back, so I was gone for a bit over 2 hours. Maybe two and a half. I shouldn't have left him alone, I just shouldn't” The sobs that had started to dissipate were now wracking up again and he had to dig his fingernails into the skin of his palm hard enough to leave crescent shaped marks just to get a hold of himself. In. Out. In. Out. He continued.
“Pelle’s always had issues, like that. Self harm, I guess. Varg sent us ammunition for that rifle, but we had always left it locked up, always.” He thought back to the time that Pelle had been in such a manic state of psychosis that he was frantically trying to harm himself in any way possible to the point where he had to be physically restrained and handcuffed by Jørn, Jan, and himself. He calmed down to a sickly submissive sort of depressed quiet, and upon realizing that there were no keys to those handcuffs, Øystein himself had to drive him to the police station to remove them. Because he cared. Whether he admitted it or not, he cared.
“He must have known that the rifle was in the closet, and used it” He struggles to speak those words, even though he knows the truth. That he drove him to do this. He would never tell the detective. Because humans will act as humans do. They wouldnt understand the slow descent. The slippery slope that slides down into a deep sort of madness that just consumes everything it touches. They would never understand.
“You touched the rifle? And the other weapons, you rearranged them?” Øystein understands how bad that sounds. He’s a lot of things but oblivious isn’t one.
“I was moving them. To try and see what had happened” he lied, but they would never understand. Øystein remembers one of the last things he said to Pelle. How he had told him multiple times before and even then, that he should kill himself. That it would bring him and everyone else so much happiness. Oh, how wrong he was.
He feels so sick about it he can practically feel the bile burn against the back of his throat. He has a headache that pounds like a jackhammer against the back of his skull and a photo of his dead best friend that has burned its way into the back of his irises. He feels absolutely numb.
And he will for a while, but it will fade, as all pain does. It will fade, and people will forget what happened there. The letters on the headstone will fade, the sun will rise and fall across the horizon, the seasons will change. And the rotating monotonous tone of it all will come to haunt him. Along with the nightmares, because Pelle will come back to stalk his sleep for long after, his pale hair and bone white skin and blank stare focused into his soul with those dead eyes. He could never look anyone with those blue eyes in the face again without the frustrating memory of being completely hopeless from the loss of Pelle Ohlin.
He will feel this guilt forever.