tobobi

⛧ even you weren't fully in belief that you'd made it here. after seeing a morbid concert some years back, and eventually mayhem, you'd become somewhat entranced by their stage presence, particularly their singer pelle’s. everything from the way the ground vibrated underneath your feet from the thunderous boom of the bass to the splashes of blood that had become strewn across your face, you swore you never wanted to shower again for fear of washing it away.

⛧ and after nearly a year of your dedication, following them from one grimy bar on the brink of shutting down to the next, it finally paid off. one of your friends, who overtime had become somewhat tight with the group, had managed to introduce you to them on a clammy night in June.

⛧ you could feel your black leather mini skirt sticking and chaffing to your skin uncomfortably as you followed the group into a small backroom. without a mirror, you blindly fixed your hair from sticking to your face.

⛧ you looked around in awe at the rather dingy and cramped brick room that wreaked of alcohol from the bar. it was nothing special, but it was made so by the presence of your favorite band and all their personal belongings scattered around the place. they yelled foreign words at each other, followed by laughter and the clanking of alcohol bottles. some black metal music played semi loudly, only becoming echoed and amplified within the confinement of the small space.

⛧ from where you stood awkwardly in the entrance way, your eyes searched frantically for a certain blonde you’d gained a morbid fascination with. after a brief moment you noticed him slumped on the arm of a sofa in the corner, with Øystein crudely and carelessly wrapping duct tape around the other man's blood covered forearms.

⛧ there was this instinct in you to want to properly bandage it with clean dressing and medical tape. after all, it was just for show, right? there was no need to get an infection just because of a stage stunt. but as your eyes scanned over the room once more, against your wishes you realized there weren't any garments in this room that weren’t soaked in blood or sweat and, therefore, nothing sanitary. you made a mental note, next time you would bring some cloth and bandages with you.

⛧ suddenly, the atmosphere of the room changed, everything was finally packed up and the guys were mentioning the name of a local restaurant. as you were still awkwardly hovering in the doorway, your heart sped up at the prospect of them inviting you.

⛧ your hopes were quickly crushed when they began shouldering past you, commenting that "maybe they'd see you around" and something about you being just another "pathetic groupie." that really wasn't your intention, and you tried not to make your disappointment known. after all, it was a dream to just get to be in their presence.

⛧ the last one to leave was pelle, and for the first time that night he gave you a glance from behind his, now heavily smudged and disheveled, corpse paint. the look wasn't apologetic, it didn't really hold any distinguishable emotion at all, but that split second of mere acknowledgment was enough to leave you on a high for the next week.

⛧ next show you went to, you got invited by your friend to be his plus one to their secret location afterwards. you were filled with a jittery anticipation as you followed the group down the flight of stairs and into a dark underground room where dripping crimson candles were the only form of light.

⛧ pelle seemed to keep looking over at you every few seconds from his perch on a couch in the corner before returning his attention to the paper in his lap.

⛧ after about twenty minutes of building up the courage, combined with a couple shots of alcohol that burned your throat, you walked over to him, your shadow looming over him left him in complete darkness within the already dimly lit basement.

⛧ "May I see?" you asked, but he only looked up at you with a hesitant, indifferent expression. you tapped the top of the note pad for clarification which only prompted him to flip it over in his lap, completely concealing it from your vision as he gave a small shake ‘no’ of his head.

⛧ afraid of further bothering him and intruding on his personal space, you opted to sit on a pillow on the floor across from him and continue watching the rest of the group.

⛧ after just a few hours of being around them all, you began to realize that not only was pelle a man of very few words, but that there was a bit of a language barrier between them. while Swedish and Norwegian language were quite similar from your understanding, there were accents and pronunciations that proved difficulty.

⛧ that meant that it ended up being slightly harder for them to communicate with pelle, which led to him being excluded from conversation often as he simply opted to sit in the corner and find ways to entertain himself.

⛧ weeks went by following this pattern – sitting across from him in silence as the two of you were somewhat separated from the rest of the group.

⛧ in an odd way, it felt like the rest of the people in the room were disinterested in the both of you and that's what ultimately brought you two together.

⛧ one night you were sat across from pelle once more and you decided to pick up a marker that he’d thrown aside as he sketched with a red pen. you began drawing little pictures on the white brick wall that filled the space between the two of you. this got his attention as he peered over his sketchbook to eye intensely at what you were doing.

⛧ once you were done, you held out the marker to him, as a form of peace offering, and his slender fingers reached out to take it from you. he seemed to glance over at Øystein for a brief moment before he added his own doodles beside yours.

⛧ at the end of the night when Øystein noticed, he came over and made some snide comment about “what the fuck” you two did to the wall.

⛧ “personally, I think it adds to the ambiance.” you looked up at him with a smirk and glanced over to see pelle with the first ghosting of a smile you'd seen on him.

⛧ from that night on, you found that you two could have wordless conversations for hours on end, only with a pen and paper passed in between you two.

⛧ eventually, you found yourself sitting next to him on the couch instead of on the dusty concrete floor. you’d waited plenty of time, trying to get him to warm up to your presence before you did something so bold. and to your relief, he didn’t seem that bothered by you. it eventually got to the point where you could sit with your legs pressed against each other’s or your head resting on his shoulder.

⛧ the two of you could fill up page after page, passing it back and forth doing one small drawing at a time, adding onto each other’s to tell a story. you’d draw an anatomical bleeding heart, he’d draw a dagger through it, you draw a cat, he’d draw a dagger through it. you pushed his shoulder with a laugh and he let out a chuckle before he straightened up and began to draw more intricate images.

⛧ it got to the point where you could tell his mood and state of mind just through the things he decided to portray. sometimes it was more lighthearted, well, lighthearted for him, like realistic wilting flowers or spindly trees with long twisted branches and not a leaf in sight. he loved to capture nature imagery, and the accuracy was enough to let you know that he spends a lot of time outside studying it. but other days it was rotting corpses, roadkill, or other incomprehensible gore.

⛧ on days where you could tell it was worse, you’d simply sit close to him and lean against him gently, not wanting to put pressure on his frail body. you'd come to learn that his stunts on stage weren't just for shock value but stemmed from a deep fascination with death. because of it, you seldom left him to be alone for too many days in a row.

⛧ so you would just watch him sketch for hours on end and never grow bored. he was truly more talented than anyone gave him credit for. once in awhile he’d stop and offer you the pad, but you’d push it back into his hands, not wanting to mess up his masterpiece.

⛧ sometimes though, he’d insist that you add something. anything. as if a little tiny piece of you would make the whole bigger picture better somehow. those days you’d simply do a little simplistic flower or heart or even just a smiley face and that was good enough for him. he just wanted a little part of you to be permanently incorporated into his work.

⛧ sometimes you’d even get him to play pictionary.,,, it was ridiculous and silly and at first you felt utterly embarrassed to even suggest that the face of evil play a game. as much as he acted like he totally wasn’t into it, you knew he felt differently than he led on from the way he’d softly ask to play just ‘one more round’ before you’d leave for the night. even though it was worded like a question, it came off as more of a command.

⛧ after a couple months, you get to start hanging out at their house. when pelle lets you into his room for the first time, it’s basically just a worn mattress on the floor surrounded by a sea of loose-leaf paper. chaotic fragments of thought scattered haphazardly and carelessly around your feet, with a few sections of bare carpet to leap from one spot to another.

⛧ you sit down on the mattress and notice your own face staring back at you on a piece of paper close by. you pick it up and admire it before realizing that there’s actually many sketches of yourself surrounding the bed. you begin to recognize the different outfits and hair styles and realize that all of these had been drawn on nights you’d hung out with them after shows.

⛧ then you realized that others were ficticious depictions of you like you as an angel of death holding a large, intricate scythe above his head. the accuracy of your features and the contortions of your body left you in amazement and disbelief. it was like your image was burned into his brain and drawing it was the only way to get rid of it.

⛧ when pelle walks in he’s very embarrassed and asks you to put them down. you comply but you begin to compliment and praise him profusely, stuttering a bit as you go from the combination of shock and flattery.

⛧ never did you think back when you’d attended all those shows and dedicated so much time to following his groups that someday you'd become the object of pelle’s art, his very own muse. there were hardly words to describe the feelings that brewed in your chest, but one eventually came to mind.

⛧ over the months you’d taken to learning Swedish in your free time when you got the chance to, in another attempt to communicate to him in his mother tongue. anything you could do to help ease his isolation you would try, growing worried for him when he was often feeling so alone.