~~~

The gap between the east side of Denmark and the south west coast of Sweden was tiny, smaller than the English Channel, and even though the bridge only led to Malmo, it was enough for Sila.

He stared at the map and told Joanna in intermittent bursts that they would be going to Sweden next then Norway then maybe Scotland, if they could get a boat, what did she think?

Not that he really cared,

she could either come or fuck off back to Ljubljana, but he asked her anyway and

when she didn’t answer,

he flipped over to ask the top of his bunk, but there was no need, she was already there, with the knife and the vial and a resigned look on her face, like Joan Severance plucking white hairs from her muff for Corman’s Blue of Noon adap.

‘Okay, Sweden. If we must. But I looked at the map and the ferry ride looks dull. The wind will be freezing too. Why don’t we make things go a little faster?’

‘You mean take that stuff?’

‘I do.’

Sila looked at the vial then switched to the blade. He’d refused the grey almost every time she’d offered

which had been about seven so far

the most aggressive one coming in Salzburg, when she’d grabbed him and screamed right in his ear, ‘we have to go back, we have to, right now,’

Of course, he’d pushed her off and stepped on her wrist to stop her stabbing him and, okay, he’d relented in Innsbruck, when he was low, but he’d told her afterwards, on the train, never, ever again, and now here she was asking again, for a fucking ferry ride, why?

What was her ground game here?

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