“I cross the bathroom floor and open the door. I stay standing there for a while. Then I go outside. When I walk down the street, it’s a struggle, as if I have roots in the house that are stretched long behind me, and no matter how far I go, no matter how many corners I turn on the way to Franziska’s flat-share by the beach, they are stuck. They stretch, get thinner and thinner until they are as fine as thread Slowly but surely I imagine that the brewery crumbles and follows me, threading itself on my cord as though it’s a house built from small gleaming beads. The front door reaches me first, then the floor panels from the kitchen, the enamel from the bathtub and the steel covering from the taps, glass-splinters from the chandelier and the apple cores from the compost. And Carral follows too. She crumbles in the bathtub. Tooth by tooth, nail by nail, bone by bone. And new beads grow, threading themselves on my roots. The beads appear from her mouth and eyes, her crotch, hip socket and fingertips.”
―
Jenny Hval,
Paradise Rot