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‘Can you be locked up in nothing?’

‘No, you can’t,’ Joona replies calmly.

‘Can’t you? I don’t get it, I don’t know, it’s so hard to think,’ the young man whispers quickly. ‘There’s nothing to remember, it’s just dark … it’s all a big nothing, and I get mixed up … I mix up what was before and how it was in the beginning, I can’t think, there’s too much sand, I don’t even know what’s dreams and …’

He coughs, leans his head back and closes his eyes.

‘You said something about how it was in the beginning,’ Joona says. ‘Can you try—’

‘Don’t touch me, I don’t want you to touch me,’ he interrupts.

‘I’m not going to.’

‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I can’t, I don’t want to …’

His eyes roll back and he tilts his head in an odd, crooked way, then shuts his eyes and his body trembles.

‘There’s no danger,’ Joona repeats.

After a while Mikael’s body relaxes again, and he coughs and looks up.

‘Can you tell me anything about how it was in the beginning?’ Joona repeats gently.

‘When I was little … we were huddled together on the floor,’ he says, almost soundlessly.