THE NEXT MORNING:
”We got a busy day ahead of us, Samuli” — the damn phone informed the recently awakened fellow still lying in his bed.
— Oh, fucking lovely. Tapani, I don’t know that I--
— --Like where this is going? Yeah, me neither. But he’s our friend, we gotta at least be polite.
— There are days when I wonder why he even is our friend.
— Preaching to the choir.
— ”Okay…” Samuli said, as he was pulled himself together and sat up. ”What’s he done this time?”
— Lost his mind. Trust me, just come over
— I trust you.
Samuli pushed himself up and reached down to get his pants from the floor. Last night’s shirt was still on.
— ”And Samuli.” Tapani’s voice called from the other side of the line.
— Yeah?
— Leave the hammer home. I don’t know what it is, but I’m feeling weird today.

AN HOUR LATER:
Tapani was at the gym, sitting down at the bench. Judging from the long, jammed look in his eyes, he was scanning the heavy discs on the floor, and how they were losing their color. These bitches must’a been bought by the city like, ten years ago. The paint’s coming off. And these aren’t even in contact with anything ever, except each other, when they lay in piles. Miska was standing in front of the bench, with his arms crossed, pacing back and forth, looking at everything.
— ”Couldn’t you be still for a second?” Tapani broke the silence. ”It’s really annoying.”
— ”Shut up” — Miska stated. ”Why do you always have to tease me about everything?”
Tapani tried opening his mouth. Every little hue of his face hinted at a lot to say. He was about to, but the door opened up and interrupted them. Samuli walked in.
— ”So what’s going on?” He went straight to the point.
— ”Miska…” Tapani started explaining.
— ”Well I got in a little bit of a scuffle” Miska interrupted Tapani blatantly.
— ”A scuffle, you say?” Samuli said, starting to put the pieces together. ”Well how’d it go? Who won?”
— What fucking fuckerymood did everybody wake up in today?
— ”Just tell him the fucking number!” Tapani raised his voice.
— …Well. Six.
— ”Six?” Samuli – who, mind you, just got here – couldn’t believe his ears. ”What the hell did you have to do, for six guys to attack you?”
— ”Mmhmm” Tapani mumbled out loud. ”I wonder if it was self-defense this time…”
— You shut the fuck up, Tapani!
— What? Did six guys brutally gangrape your girlfriend?
Riled up about the tone in that voice, Miska walked up to Tapani quick, and Tapani stood up. The two just stood there, face-to-face. Pressure was brewing, both were ready for swings – giving and receiving. Samuli walked up, placed one hand on each friend’s shoulder. They stared at each other, ready still.
— ”Easy now, fuck’s sake” Samuli told the guys, while leading by example with the sophisticated inflection in that voice. ”Let’s just go to Hailuoto again, get this bullshit over with, and be done… Alright? I have other shit to do tonight.”
Both looked at him, and he looked at them both... in the eyes.
— ”Finally, someone with some sense.” Miska praised Samuli.
— ”Shut your hole and get in your corner, now” Samuli demandingly responded to the thirsty asskissing.
Without any resistance, Miska did as asked. A couple of annoyingly quiet seconds rolled on by, as the guys both sat in their corners. Samuli spoke up after some thinkin’ time:
— Okay… we should wait no more, head for the island at noon. Judging from the last trip, there’s no police surveillance. We’ll have to trust that. However, we cut the guys there. Not here. We should be wary, but not stress.
Miska became visibly relieved from Samuli’s input. Tapani felt the opposite. He couldn’t believe this bullshit.
— But, we should make use of every tactic possible to get our minds clear and be ready for action. Focus on progress. When it’s done, it’s done and that’s final.
≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈
You live and you learn
≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈
— ”OK, let’s just forget that we’ve killed six people…” Miska sarcastically mouthed off.
— ”You killed” Tapani corrected.
— Well we’re all staying over at the government-hotel if the car’s stopped. How do I not stress?
— You seriously have A.D.D.
— ”What the fuck?!” Miska said, outraged. He stood up and rushed to Tapani, who was casually getting up from the bench.
— ”In your corners!” Samuli yelled. After they followed the order, he proceeded, ”Miska’s right. However, I don’t see a reason not to just look at the clouds and talk about life while taking the ferry. Be like anyone that’s traveling there” Samuli tried reasoning with Miska. ”That’s all I ask.”
APPROX. 15 MINUTES LATER:
Tapani exited the gym through the backdoor, which Samuli was holding open. He came up to the van sitting out in the vacant backyard of the sports-center. He then reached to the trunk, threw the bag in there, and closed it.
— ”It’s all there.” He declared. ”Let’s just go.”
Miska came from inside the gym, to the gap where Samuli was still standing. Samuli stopped him, landed a hand on his shoulder and told him:
— What you do now is, you just listen, and you listen good. We won’t clean up after you anymore. You understand? Never. This instance can fall in the favor-category, but no more after this. The next time you come at us with bad news, we simply hang up. If you try to blackmail us – with anything, no matter how bad – I’ll come and kill you. I’m fed up with constantly holding the baby for you. I will personally come to your house, when you sleep with Petra, put a pillow over your stupid fucking face and let the gat-pipe sing through the cotton. And just to be sure I don’t get caught of the deed, I’m doing the whore first.
— ”Let the fuck go of me!” Miska yelled, shaking the arm off Samuli’s grip. He walked quietly to the van, past Tapani, who was just standing there, astounded, impressed. Tapani smiled at Samuli, who stopped holding the door open and walked to the van himself.
Tapani shut the driver’s door behind him.
Samuli shut the passenger’s door behind him.
The backdoor closed.

AT HAILUOTO:
The van stopped by the side of the road, and drove to the forest that there was like a mile of, when you first get to the island. They parked and stepped out, proceeding to an open spot in the middle of the woods. Samuli was the first to get to the trunk of the van. He opened it and saw six human-size garbage bags. Tapani and Miska had made it to the back as well. One of the bags was moving; squirming around. Samuli looked at Miska with the absolute I can’t believe you-eyes.
— Any ideas?
— ”What?” Miska answered. ”Why are you both looking at me like that?”
— ”Why?!” Tapani repeated the key word, throwing his hands up in the air. ”Well I’m sorry my precious, but you--”
— GOD. Will you shut. The--
— NO! HOW ABOUT YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP AND FOCUS FOR FUCKING ONCE.
It was silent. Even Samuli was stunned by the vigor, the punch in that response. He pulled himself back, into the position of a neutral observer, maybe even a little satisfied by what just happened… Be that as it may, we’re staying here, and we’re staying quiet.
— ”Listen here, Tapani…” Miska said with intensely heavy breath. ”If I wanted, I could--”
— ”No you couldn’t!” Tapani almost screamed at him. ”You couldn’t kill me. Then you’d have nobody to nag on and on to, nobody to shoot off those stupid fucking insults to. You’d fall back to the same desperation your mongoloid-father and mongoloid-mother conceived you in. Now grab the fucking shovel from the back, shut the FUCK up and do your job!”
The tension, you could cut a piece-- you know the saying.
Samuli looked at Tapani with a smirk, then at Miska, with expectation. Biting his teeth, Miska reached to the back of the trunk, grabbed a shovel, took position, started mustering up all his might for the swing, but stopped.
— ”Well…” He said. ”When I do this, I’ll gladly enough never have to be in contact with you guys.”
— ”Boy, do you catch up quick.” Tapani snapped back.
Miska went back into position, got a crazy stare in his eyes from the malicious juices running in his brain; culminating from what he felt toward Tapani and his remarks, Samuli taking sides like a bitch. With his eyes open, he swinged the thing to the head of the … supposed corpse … and watched, with that same stare still, as it stopped moving. It all stopped, for a second. All three grabbed a bag, put it on their shouldres, getting to work.
AT NIGHT:
Tapani was driving, alone in his car. The night picked up the light of the day, now portraying it through the filters of a slightly clouded, chill sky. There was more of an instantly recognizable shape in the night, than at daytime. The radio played Pink Floyd’s Us and Them. Tapani looked with the rhythm, out of the windscreen. The road ahead of him was long and empty. The slow music went hand in hand with the slow everything. He could see the wind blow through leaves of trees, that just passed by. Nothing was popping, all the other seats were empty. The mood wasn’t the most hype but oh I know, what a night can contain.
o You’d be stupid thinking I wouldn’t know.
• Holy shit, Dark Side of the Moon is… just the thing for me.
o ” With, without. And who'll deny it's what the fighting's all about”.
 That speaks to me quite much.
 Not like, as anything ultimately deep to me, just… I don’t know, it’s said just bluntly enough, just subtly enough.
• It’s sorta odd that I chose that one as my favorite track way back when I was younger, already.
• What happened? When did I start talking to myself? I’m actually speaking out loud currently.
o I know what I think, okay? I just gotta maintain, and let this assumption, floating around in my mind right now, annoyingly enough, go by like your typical thought, and not pay it attention. I am not becoming crazy, come on. I’m a functioning human being.
 No, what? What did I just think about?
 No. I am not.
 Thinking about that, stop. Immediately. I mean right now. It makes me much crazier to think--
 Huh? No, I meant, it makes you much crazier. It makes generally speaking, a human being more crazy to think about being crazy, on the level of… what?
 Well are we crazy here then? No. A person would first lose their mind, their reason. I do have my judgement and everything. Frankly, this is ridiculous.
• It’s dumb to think about this. Hey, let’s not think about thinking this. It’ll only make it deeper. We’re just wasting time here. I can just let it be. Now.
o Now for once.
 But yeah, now that we’re here, speaking and all, and this isn’t too bad.
 That wasn’t even a sentence.
• These fucking slow thinking sessions are different than before too, I’m thinking like a little teenager.
• I’m speaking melodramatically and like a teen… this whole time. Disgusting.
o Okay, where did the blaming come from now?
 And why am I recognizing this
 I am deep…… too. In this thought-babblefuck.
 Well, to mitigate the… Okay I lost that thought. Whatever. This can be caused by the music in my ear. Music always gets me thinking – I’m just thinking for thinking’s sake, because this song – and Pink Floyd’s music in particular, is just… Well, let’s just say it, okay? The only thing that makes me focus. I mean, focus properly. Focus like I wanna focus. I am healthily focused whenever I listen, I suppose. At least not little enough to be disappointed.
 Where was I? Oh yeah.
 Music like this is the only thing that makes my thought-processes… well, progress. Because it’s progressive music, and very good progressive music at that. I don’t know, when it plays, it rings so… larger than life, it sounds so crucial that I shouldn’t waste my time listening to it and not think about something important. Well aren’t we being introspective. Those are the only thought processes that make sense and matter to me. I don’t value my thoughts. Bam. AND on top of that, I like being one as… no, with slow and thought-provoking music. Those are the reason why I’m a good – or at least acclaimed – speaker. My friends are getting fed up with it. That’s how good the skill-level is.
 I guess.
• And when it comes to spectating and observing my own stream-of-consciousness, it’s only a good thing. It is important to be conscious of what you think…
• Why do I feel like this… Why does this always come when I speak of the mind and all the agreeing and disagreeing tentacles of it… I don’t know. They’re all moving, reaching around, all completely aimless. What the fuck’s the point?
o Fuck’s sake now, these summer nights used to regather my thoughts, not further detach them, make them hate each other!
o What else is there? What else, but thinking?
 Now that’s a good point
• Again I felt it; feel it. Again with the feelingfuck! Really? I didn’t even mean to be aloud.
o Oh my god I fell out of coherentness again.
o That’s not the word. Cohesion is.
 There he goes.
 There he goes, forgetting what he was thinking about again.
 All I’m gonna have from this night is a memory of spending too much fucking time in thought and getting out of the fucking car even more fucked up than I was when I woke up this morning.
• What does that even mean? I wish I’d speak normally and I wish I’d even know in a normal way – in a way that sounds proportionate to someone else when I tell them, talk to them. Who am I kidding? Who do I, what do I…
o Hey, I know what to do. And this is a solution that’s been by my side the whole time, waiting to be grabbed, executed. I’ll just be. Why try to be anything else than what I am?
 I’ve always been told – so much that it’s a cliche now – that I should just be myself. But, being that it’s a cliche, I should grab on.
• OR maybe it’s just the wrong way to interpret the sentiment. I shouldn’t have worded it in a cliche way.
• Meh, fuck it, that revelation is shit. I know, I’m a big boy. ”Just be yourself” works only in Disney-movies.
• Why am I making a big deal of… of all this? I could’ve just been quiet, drove home and gone to bed.
o Being conscious ain’t so fancy after all.
o This is not that bad, people have been through different things.
o You know what? Fuck them. Fuck people. And fuck their struggles; yea you heard it. I’ve felt guilty enough about being a mental case for no reason. You know what? I’m gonna follow the initiative I had earlier, and just shut up and keep this in my head. Yeah. I’ll purposely keep this shit I thought about today, inside. It came up in here, it can stay here.
 No I can’t. If I could, I’d have stopped--
• UGH.
o Okay, let’s not think like that.
 Why couldn’t have my life always been different? Why does everyone say I talk and think weird, or that I’ve changed? I fucking hate it and it tears my heart out every time someone says you’ve changed. I know.
• Well, Miska says it… and I should take everything he sais with a grain of salt.
o But that hurts too.
 Well, if we are here now, and now that we know, how about I just let this subject--
• STOP.
• I was thinking… fuck it, talking – we can call this talking by now – about the song.
• I chose this song as my favorite track because, umm…
o Well, of course because of the tranquil nature of it, but… There was something about it. An intrigue. Only that I was too young to know what that word means.
 Maybe this song really has some kind of hidden sentimental value – sentimental, as in a memory. I can’t remember what it was that happened, or I felt. Wouldn’t be a surprise. If that makes sense.
 I remember the desperate need as a child to learn the lyrics of this song, at least. I just knew they wouldn’t waste this kind of a song, the kind of a platform these instruments are, for speaking some nonsense or, anything non-classic-status-worthy. That’s how I felt. An instinctive realization. Things making sense. I miss those.
 Anyways…
• I remember it went something a little like this: the little me had heard from some neighbors, that these lyrics on this album are basically poetry, all the way. They’d let me hear the song, and it sounded cool. There was only one thing, that there wasn’t singing in every song. On this, there was, and I was so drawn-in by the whole aesthetic of it… I had to know what it said.
o I remember I told mom I wanted to know the words on the mysterious song on Dark Side. She wrote them down for me as well as she could.
o She knew English.
Tapani smiled. The horns, which he knew would fade the song out, ultimately to silence, started playing.
o --No, it didn’t go quite like that. I forgot, she also recited the words for me, but only once. I asked her to do it again and she said I have to learn them myself.
 I remember reading a lot of mom’s English books after that. Or at least trying. It was spotty as fuck, but eventually I’d get the hang of it. This was when I was like, four years old. ’72 was when I was born.
• Mom told me, that they would have to force me to do chores, force me to go to sleep, because I was so drawn in by those books. I wouldn’t stop studying English. I used to read dictionaries and short stories on the kitchen floor, close the covers just to speak a sentence or two in English to mom and dad. They always hung out at the kitchen,
• Which is weird now, in retrospect.
• They’d be proud and I’d tell them that if studying really was this easy, the wouldn’t be stopping me once I start going to school.
o I was wrong.
• BUT, that’s not the point. It felt great, encouraging, being the size of a fire-extinguisher, and thinking that you have the whole course of your life figured--
• Let’s not go there again; it’s slippery there.
o Bottom line is, that matters more than all the success.
 …
• Oh, now I remember: she told me I could have my own English storybook, the biggest one they could find, If I would write a spotless story in English. Didn’t matter how long it was, as long as it was of my own making. I wrote a story about a boy that listened to Dark Side for the first time, and whose mother wrote down the words for him because he didn’t know what the interesting song said. She got such a big smile on her face from that. It made her…
o …proud.
o I wouldn’t wonder if I had hit something or someone on the way. How deep was I just now? Holy fuck.
He stopped and punched his head in the steering wheel. It stayed there.
— ”I guess it ain’t fucking coming then.” He said, after laying his head there for a hopeless minute. ”I’d fucking want to cry. I’d fucking want to show you how much you matter--” He said, turning his eyes to the sky. ”But it is hard. It is, because me and you haven’t seen in such a long time, and I’ve done bad things. I’ve hurt people. I’m sincere this time, you have to believe me. And… our relationship is getting colder, I can feel it, you’re not proud of me anymore. I’ve felt this for months, it’s always come back to me – that feeling – when I was alone. I feel it getting colder, the same way I felt you were on my side back then, when I was going through a whole other set of trouble. And as I speak, I feel the coldness. The nothing. Shit.”
He turned off the radio.
— ”It’s just like everything that could happen, does happen, and in the worst way possible.” He spoke up, with fear overruling his tone. ”And this is nothing new, it’s been like this for a long time. I’d want to show, I’d want to prove in some way. And you know me, I’ve always cried when I’ve had the urge, I never cared for what people say about a grown man crying. But this time I can’t cry.”
He took a breath, and started speaking in a rapid fire-fashion:
— Everything seems to invariably end up in disaster and I’ve wondered a lot of time, how long I can take this anymore.
Summer-sky offered him the same answer as before; a stare.