Titans of Time - Part 1 and 2

Much of the past is inaccessible and I’m glad for it, because I stand indifferent to all ignorance, darkness and suffering, also my own. Still, there is no helping that I remember certain of pain’s gaping moments, when holes were torn in reality and stood there as enemies, as unconquerable titans. I remember the threat of swinging fists. I remember the despair. One more thing I remember. My own conception.

The Vedics speak of a spiritual birth, and that I have had. What I speak of is a third birth, which came before my spirit was awakened. Before I could think, I could something else. Was something more than what you call reason and goodness, these primitive yardsticks that belong to the medieval mind. My legs stand in deep past and fleeting future. Wide-legged and with belt on. Do you see of whom I speak?

The memory is that I go down once. The walls are of concrete. The floor is of old-fashioned vinyl. In the hand I have a toothbrush. From one moment to the next I am surrounded by laughing figures. They push on me. I push back. Thus I turn in the attack-circle that never stops. The fog that covers the memory spreads and flies away, and there stands the titan in clarity. He has stepped out of the circle. Big fists, a big, block-shaped head, and tall. An impeccable picture of a titan. He is one of the strongest boys and the one with highest status, because he thinks about the community, watches over the internal justice and the weak. Now he has turned against me, and I do not understand why. It is in that moment that I understand that I stand in the world without a friend. Tommy Thomasen was the only one who took my defense. Now he is one of them.

Hands lock around shoulders, foreheads lean against each other. I have done this before, in countless wrestling-matches on a grass lawn with a friend from primary school who was called Eskild. But this is different. We swing around in the use of all our powers and hit the wall with repeating smacks.From time to time those who stood in the way are moved aside for the weight of fighting bodies. He is really much stronger than me, but the narrow corridor makes that he does not manage to get me down. Neither does he manage to rip me clear of the ground for a throw, because my feet are deeply nailed fast. My gaze lifts in pride. The laughter of the surrounding flock has silenced, now that their leader does not live up to expectations. Tommy renews his efforts, to no use. I am unbreakable. Every time he thrusts me against the wall, I just swing him directly back.

The warrior went down the castle’s hall

Around thickened with shadows

From the shadows rose a giant

Fire’s son, the raging redbreast

let himself not be subdued

He fought the giant to a draw

Scraping against the walls. Hard impacts. I snarl. Show my total contempt. I am of another kind than them, and they know it. Suddenly Tommy drives the knee straight into my crotch and pushes upward, so I am lifted along the wall. I fall down with hands held to the crotch. Around me pass laughing shadows, until the corridor is silent and empty. Not only did he break our friendship and promise to protect me in a single moment. I fought then chivalrously. He did not. The moment he noticed he might lose, he resorted to the lowest tricks. Everything about him was a disguise, a lie, and that is how from now on I will see that highly praised goodness. I also got to learn how little worth I really am, and how much everyone looks down on me.

From then on there does not go a day when I am not subjected to blows and kicks. Most of it camouflaged as good-natured play, but my arms gradually become marked with permanent bruises. Mocking calls are my companion wherever I show myself. Often I am held down with the pretext that they shall demonstrate arm-locks and wrestling-grips, and they imitate my screams. They always press a little too far, so the elbow-joints ache. I stop being called by name. Now I am only a sound-word or a mocking shriek, or some letters spat out in contempt. Everyone is against me and I have no one, not even anyone who will say a friendly word to me. The majority has passed its judgment, but there are three of them who distinguish themselves. Tommy Thomasen, who now often watches the times I get beaten. Tomas Johansen, who throws an orange straight into my face when I sit down opposite him in the canteen, and sneaks up behind me to cut off the braid I have spent half a year growing. And Steffen Høgseth, who thunders the fist straight into my chest when I dream away on the reserve bench in the sports hall, and otherwise mocks my penis size in the communal shower. One called Ben Lierhagen says that since I have so many pimples, I can shoot at those who torment me with the boils I squeeze out.

If you do not know it from before, you will come to know it. My psyche is stronger than everyone else’s, because as mentioned I am of another kind, another race, another spirit. But even the strong can only endure so long before even his strength ends.

A playmate I get. The German shepherd puppy of one of the fat pigs who work at the place.

All this takes place over a year, and when in spring I stand on a parking lot and fence with myself with a stick, there is a boy who walks past. He imitates my screams again. Full of rage I take the step forward and smash him with the stick so it breaks. Since he is stronger than me, I start to run. Unfortunately he is also faster than me. On a lawn he kicks the legs from under me, sits on my chest and stuffs my mouth full of grass. I claw wildly, and manage to scratch up his face. When the others ask him what has happened, he just makes a sound and does a claw-gesture.

That evening I lock myself into a hidden toilet and cry uncontrollably. I just have to dampen the sounds so no one hears me. Even here inside I cannot be completely free. Can only sink together on the floor and lie there. Suddenly I become aware that a naked woman stands over me. I fantasize again. It is not real.

«Øyvind Tranøy. The hour has come when I show myself, but it is not the last time you see me. Of you I have taken much. Now I shall practice retribution.»

The fantasy-woman grips me by the wrist and … pulls me up. She has brown braids and strokes over my face.

«Tell me what you know.»

So I tell her.

«I know that I can survive this. They do not kill me. Soon it is over, and I will be somewhere else. But they will have taken a piece of my soul. They will have taken my honor.»

«It is them or you,» says the woman. «Tell me what you want.»

«I want my honor back. I want revenge.»

The woman bends down and bites herself fast into my heart. The blood runs from long, white threads, that are pulled out. Right to the last I hear snarling wolf-sounds, and then the veil that is reality is torn away. It was a sheet speckled with distant stars and the tears of saints, that had lain clammy over my face, until now. It is uncertain how long time passes, but when I rise the woman is gone, and I have become another. Someone who is not capable of crying, for many, many years. I stagger to the mirror and take in the reflection. The hair that is short-cut out of necessity, because Terry just snips it off me when he notices it gets too long. Look straight into light-blue eyes with red edges. Look up under shirt-sleeves at the now muscular arms, speckled with blue, green and black marks on both sides.

«Them or me,» I say.

That night I do not lie down as usual in the four-man room. When the doors are closed I am outdoors and swing myself over the fence to the sports hall. Get opened a window that I know has a broken bar-lock and crawl into the basement. The alarm system is old-fashioned and will catch very little, moreover there is little here that is worth stealing. I sneak around in the building with only the light from my personal app, until I find what I am after, in the middle of the floor, as if someone has laid it there for me. A club for the incredibly old-fashioned sport longball. I cannot remember that we ever did that sport. Yet the club is here. I regard the smooth wood in the sterile LED-light. The grip seems to be made for my hands.

In the night-darkness I hide the club in a bush just outside the big barrack-building. Ring on the double-doors. The guards scold me for having come too late, and I get a remark. In the four-man room I am threatened, even though I try to be as quiet as possible. I have anyway become used to it. When I swing up into the upper bunk and close my eyes, I feel for the first time in a year no despair. The day tomorrow is going to be different, and whatever happens my honor will be restored. It will be the first part of retribution without end and limit.

I have a yellow bag of artificial leather. Totally porno, Tommy said back when we still were friends, and offered to buy it from me. I declined, because it is the only possession I have that is special, and because by having it I got his recognition. After having eaten breakfast, not in the canteen, but in the kiosk with my own pocket-money, I go out with the bag over the shoulders. Hope that fate will not be so evil that what I have found was seen and taken by someone else, but no, the longball-club is still here, well hidden in the bushes. I have not wasted my last coins in vain. The zipper of the bag goes up. The weapon is exactly small enough to fit inside.

«Are you going on a trip?» someone asks me. It is almost friendly, until they understand who I am. «That’s the crazy one!»

That has happened before. Once a young boy, probably a younger sibling of someone here, burst straight into the common-room where I sat on the floor, absorbed in my own thoughts. «So that’s the crazy one!» It was then I understood that everyone talked about me, and that I stood outside any hope of a community.

Now the flock takes up my cries as they usually do.

«ÆÆÆÆ! I DON’T UNDERSTAND! BÆÆÆÆ! DON’T HIT!»

Usually I show my despair and my rage, but that is not what has made it last so long, for they would have done it anyway. Now, nothing. One can endure everything when one has the solution in sight, and now I see him, the titan, standing with his back to on the open space, together with a small flock. The king with his chosen court. Two selected boys with high status … and a girl in chalk-white sweater. Who is she? The blonde ponytail in a pink hair-tie makes me remember. I have seen her before.

I and Tommy enter the kiosk. We have just gotten our pocket money and I am proud to be in his company. I remain standing staring longingly at all the goods in the counter. Dream myself away as I usually do. For too long. Suddenly my head is caught in a headlock and he rubs me properly with his knuckles.

«Come on, Øyvind! Buy something, Øyvind! Buy something, come on!»

He switches to playfully boxing me on the stomach, which nonetheless makes me groan. The scene is watched by the blonde behind the counter. When we place the goods on the counter, I pay for the Conan the Barbarian app comic and a large baguette with Dr. Pepper to drink. Tommy Thomasen … does not pay. The girl just pushes the goods toward him and says it is free. We leave. Him laughing. Me stunned. My thoughts gather into an awl that pierces through my brain whether I want it or not. Tommy used me to lift himself up. The girl preferred him, not me. She witnessed my humiliation and rewarded him for it. That, it will turn out, I will never forgive.

The girl must soon be eighteen. You have to be sixteen to work in a kiosk. Her age makes her a status symbol. On the distant air current I hear her laughter trill so it sounds as if it is right beside me. But what the senses and others perceive is wrong. It is not a wind. I have realized the truth and know that everything is a storm. It is this storm that moves me, light as a leaf, heavy as a mountain. It feels as if I have risen from the asphalt right behind them. The club slowly slides out of the bag in its full length, softly hitting the ground. I lean back, draw in air, and swing the club like an old-fashioned miner.

One of the boys manages to notice me.

«Hey, what are you …!»

The titan is hit in the back of the head with the dry smack of wood. I had half feared that nothing would happen, that the blow would just bounce off someone I had learned to see as invincible. But my enemy, this monster, becomes stiff as a log and tips forward, and with that a whole order collapses. This is a new time. My appointed time, and from it not a single moment shall be stolen.

Before the knot of Tommy’s head hits the ground I swing again. The boy I aim at ducks and the club passes over the hair tufts, only to end in the girl’s mouth with a wet slap. She spins around and runs away with both hands held to the smashed teeth. I swing blindly at whatever I can and follow the club on the downswing. Turn on my back in the fall and manage to smack away the grasping hands that want to take hold of me. Get up and send the striking weapon from side to side and with it chase the opposition.

«He’s crazy! Stop him! Stop him!»

A voice thundering I do not even recognize as my own.

«I SERVE ODIN ALL THE GODS’ ENEMIES MUST DIE!»

The air consists only of swirling colors and the screams of falling stars. In the flickering, flashing chaos I am the navel stone. Calmly I walk over to my great enemy now lying flat and flip him over on his back with my foot. He just manages to open his eyes. What his gaze tells me is indifferent to me and will always be, because he made me his enemy very long ago, and for enemies there is no mercy. He lifts his gaze to something worse than hell, to the valkyrie storm, to me. A female form of wrath, which strangely enough is fastened in my very being.

«You called me crazy. Therefore I am crazy. And the gods demand blood!»

The club is raised as high as my arms can lift and smashes down. Again and again. Mechanical—pulping—murderous. Inside me is a cold. I know exactly what I am doing. Make sure to use the flat side for maximum effect. This is the only chance I get. Perhaps only a few moments before someone stops me. I must ensure that my enemy is destroyed, that he can never rise again. The chest pipes while I press out all strength and let the blows go.

There are no eyes. There is no mouth. In the bubbling porridge I understand that my enemy no longer has a face, and that I have destroyed him for all time, and that I have won for good. The rush of victory rises, dizzying to the heights, followed by a raised club at the tipping point before it falls. In the surrounding fog-chaos a distant scream sounds. Shortly after, the blonde girl throws herself over her boyfriend, arms embracing the head in the most basic protective posture that exists. It was never given to me, not even by my parents, so for that I have no sympathy.

The club blow hits her over the lower back. She collapses like a bridge struck at the midpoint by a dive bomber. I kick her in the face so she rolls over on her back. The blood spray has gone in a fan shape down the snow landscape of the sweater. A corpse-white offering table splashed. The girl gapes briefly with broken teeth in the attempt to scream, and then hides her face in her hands. I keep busy with her lover, find no places to strike down that are not already a running puddle. Continue to strike, in case there should be a man there.

«He’s killing him! In heaven’s name, stop it!»

I. Am. Heaven. Fully charged with roaring light.

«Do something!»

Grasping hands are around me on all sides. They try to take the weapon. I whirl around in madness’s grip. Strike the hands away. Become a living thorn wall that ensures every touch costs if not bones and blood, then life danger. I smash one of the titan’s court over the arm, graze the other over the forehead, which tears open a deep gash. An adult man confronts me and swings at me with the fleshy arm. I hit the top of the bald head so he freezes in a pain grimace. His German shepherd, my only friend, runs panic-stricken in circles around himself, barking and whimpering over the humans’ lack of understanding. Now that the grasping hands have sunk into the maelstrom, I turn and deliver some new demonstrative blows over the dead titan god, out of whose body I shall build my new world. Suddenly as I came, I run in a random direction, before new ones come, before anyone can guess where I run. Some of the bastards try to confront me, but it is half-hearted. The snotty faces look at me in disbelief.

«NONE OF YOU ARE MAN ENOUGH TO STOP ME YOU DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH HONOR!»

The club, swung from side to side, buys me some moments of freedom, and I break out of the thin ranks of the crowd. Flee where only the murder-wolf, the mad one and the outcast flee, toward any opening that is to be found. Not in fear, but in certainty of what comes behind. Thundering feet and sneakers with something inside. A curly-top I pass throws a stone after me.

No one shall have the honor of killing me, or the satisfaction of laying me down. Now I discover for the first time in my life my speed. I simply run faster than most others. Many have not caught what has happened, but they apparently understand the blood-dripping club I have in my hand, and keep away, as if I were a poisonous snake. Imposed fear. Freedom. The same. In this way I reach all the way up to a small forest grove, while people walk around talking in their apps, waving their arms or throwing them up in the air. Some of the boys occasionally throw stones in my direction, so they rattle down among the branches, but they dare not close the distance. Not anymore. Never again.

Some blue-clad figures with peaked caps appear, and point at me with the yellow muzzles of what I understand are stun guns.

«Drop the weapon! Do it now!»

The she-wolf’s gift slides through my fingers and falls. Do you not see now how masterful my intent and calculation is. I straighten up and smile. Right after I am thrown over with all the air knocked out of me. Pressed down on my stomach and get my arms forced behind my back. A multitude of blue-clad figures sit around me. Search my clothes for the things I do not have, for I own very little after all, and get the cold, merciless steel of handcuffs snapped on. In front of the whole crowd I am carried out of the forest head and pushed head first into the back of the van with bars. The crowd watches the whole scene, and they see me in this situation.

But I have seen them too.

You'd best pump those shoes