Axolotl Roadkill by Helene Hegemann Page A

in my bed.
    ‘Oh God, sorry, Mifti, I didn’t notice you were awake. Why are you crying?’
    ‘Yeah, fuck, would you look at my hair now!’
    ‘Come on, Mifti, we have to get this over with, come on now! You look so great, don’t cry, please!’
    Of course Annika can totally understand that I’m crying now and I don’t understand the world any more and don’t recognize myself.
    ‘You look really great.’
    ‘No, I’ve got all these complexes and my hair just gave me this special strength.’
    ‘Honey, look at yourself. You’re really confident . . .’
    ‘I’m not confident at all.’
    ‘We both have no confidence and together we’re strong, me with my nasty fat tummy and now you with your funny hair which looks completely gorgeous.’
    ‘That’s what I’d say now if I was you.’
    ‘You look good, I’m not kidding, you look like Carmen Electra in a lagoon!’
    ‘Really?’
    Annika sits down on the side of the bed, smiling and taking my hand.
    ‘But you really have to get up now, it’s twenty past seven.’
    ‘Hey, come on, just let me sleep another five minutes.’
    ‘What’s up with you? Are you sick? D’you want to stay in bed all day again or what?’
    ‘I told you I’m getting up.’
    ‘You promised me you’d go to school today. This is really the end of the line.’
    ‘No, it’s not the end at all, just let me stay in bed another thirty seconds, look, I’m counting to thirty.’
    I really do count out loud up to twenty-two.
    ‘Your thirty seconds are up.’
    ‘THREE MINUTES, ANNIKA!’
    ‘NO! NO!’
    ‘You’re yelling at me the whole time and bombarding me with freaking orders and you seriously expect me to get up?’
    ‘What d’you expect me to do then, baby sister? Should I beat you out of bed or what? D’you want me to beat you up? I can’t beat you up, though, sorry, that’s out of the question I’m afraid.’
    ‘Of course you can.’
    She gives me a shocked look. ‘No.’
    ‘Of course you can, Annika, just go ahead and beat me up.’
    Within a matter of seconds, her shock transfigures into limitless understanding for every single violent parent and guardian on the planet. She’s struggling, she hates me, she’s capable of forcing me back with traditional unconcern into a position in which I spent years of my life longing for repression and humiliation. As soon as she touches me I’m all hers. We watch each other dying in silence for three long minutes.
    ‘No, I can’t,’ she says and turns away. I pull the cover over my head and start to cry again.
    ‘You’re trying to turn me into your sick, dead, sadistic fucking mother. I’m totally paranoid. You killed your mother and you’ll end up killing me, that’s what my freaking paranoia keeps telling me.’
    ‘I didn’t kill my mother.’
    ‘You were born; you killed her. It’s as simple as that.’
    ‘She said I was the best thing that ever happened to her.’
    ‘She ripped open your oesophagus with the screw of a choke pear. Would you just stop letting these pseudo-naive, pseudo-childish, pseudo-innocent statements out of the wall of your teeth. You’re gonna make me puke, I swear. You’re not the abused three-year-old you constantly pretend to be in your constant pseudo-trauma. There aren’t any vivid memories left inside you that have developed an ominous life of their own and are now turning on you. You’re the one who’s turning on us. You’re grown up, Mifti.’
    ‘Jesus, get you. Quite the amateur psychologist.’
    ‘You’re just demanding your right to be tortured, am I right?’
    ‘Yeah, great.’
    You’re dragged out of bed and across the parquet flooring by your three-year-old pseudo-traumatized hair and after a few minutes of total lack of orientation you find yourself under your half-sister’s shin, she having discovered her sadistic side and attempting to smash the back of your head in with her elbow. She’s kneeling on my back because, unlike me myself, my body is a bundle of