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fast, and I was . . . drunk and stupid. The odds weren’t very good, you know? Then—I don’t know if this was the assault or something else, some defensive mechanism maybe—but I just got totally passive. Like he could do whatever he wanted with me. And he did.”
    Malin’s voice has dropped to a faint, scratchy whisper. Her eyes remain trained on the linoleum floor in front of her.
    “He raped me several times, vaginally, anally, hitting me in between rounds, not as much as in the beginning. It was like . . . he was running out of energy. He slapped my face a little now and then, kicked me a little, pulled my hair. But in general he kind of lost interest more and more as time went by. I just lay there in . . . my blood and . . . my own urine and . . . and . . .”
    “How long did all this take?” Aina asks in a surprisingly steady voice.
    “How long?” Malin seems taken aback by the question. “How long? At least a few hours anyway.”
    “A few hours? That’s crazy,” Kattis says, upset.
    “What happened? Did you manage to get away?” Sirkka asks cautiously.
    “He fell asleep. That shithead fell asleep. Can you believe it?” Malin says. “He fell asleep right there on the kitchen floor and all, and I could just walk away. So I did the normal thing, went home and showered and scrubbed and showered. I tried to get him off my body, out of my body. I reported him to the police four weeks later. By then, obviously, there was no physical evidence left, no visible injuries either, but the police said they had a good case. He had evidently molested some girl six months earlier and the police found . . . what’s it called? Rohypnol at his place. They said that was why he was so aggressive, kept at it for so long. Rohypnol combined with alcohol apparently has that effect.
    “But I wonder,” Malin continues. “I wonder if some people don’t just have it in them to do something like that to someone, to another living being. Doesn’t that just mean you’re a monster to begin with? I don’t think it had anything to do with drugs. I think he was . . . evil. And then, at the trial, there was a ton of mumbo jumbo about how he had been molested by some kid a few years older than him in Hagsätra in the early nineties, as if it were contagious, as if that were some excuse. Like that would matter to me. They said that’s why he liked rough sex. That’s what he said, you know, that we’d had sex before, and that it had been rough and that I’d liked it, had been into it, had wanted it. Then they used our text messages to prove that we’d had a relationship. And true, there were a few messages where I’d written things that were sort of suggestive, but . . . Anyway, you’ll never believe what happened next. His buddies from Gustavsberg gave him an alibi for that night. They said they’d all been at the movies right when the rape occurred and that, anyway, they knew we were having some kind of relationship, that we were ‘fuck buddies,’ as they say. How could anyone do something like that? How could anyone lie about something like that, protect such a . . . monster? They totally let him off. I see him around town all the time. A few months later we ran into each other at the liquor store downtown. He waved and smiled, like we knew each other, more or less.”
    Malin pauses briefly and then adds, “I wish I’d killed him, to stop it from happening, or that he’d killed me.”
    “Why do you say that?” Sofie asks, again very softly.
    “Because he messed something up inside me, like, in my soul. He took something, something that no one should ever be allowed to take. He . . .” Malin’s voice fades away.
    “What did he take from you, do you think?” Sirkka asks, leaning over so that her frizzy red hair glows like a fiery halo in the light from the overhead fixture.
    “He took . . .” Malin stops and sniffles, wipes away snot with the back of her hand, and slowly