QUARTZ EYES, per ohlin

to hell! (and back)

Pelle felt alienated as he listened to Øystein and Alex fight during the rehearsal, at first he felt nostalgic, he remembered when the girl had arrived in Norway; her blue hair and bright eyes, now her hair was black and her eyes were dead. It's been almost 40 minutes and they're still yelling at each other.

"Fuck you!", no one remembered why they were fighting, Pelle exchanged glances with Jørn, Jan was practically dozing on top of the drums. Alex started walking towards the door leading to the stairs to exit the attic.

"Where are you fucking going?!", Øystein asked.

"To hell!", she slammed the door behind her, Pelle flinched as he was snapped out of his trance by the loud bang.

"We'll continue without her", Aarseth positioned himself, hearing grunts of protest.

"Let's stop man, we've been rehearsing for hours!", Jan said awkwardly, his cheek pressed against his arm from the way he was lying down.

"No one here has eaten anything today, I'm starving!", Jørn complained, Øystein wanted to maintain his posture, but he would also give anything to eat at that moment.

"We'll continue tomorrow", Øystein spoke almost like a decree, Jan breathed a relieved sigh. Pelle fixed his microphone cable, putting it away carefully, it was one of the few things he took good care of.

The bad mood seemed to be contagious, when Pelle finally rose, he felt the stress invade his body; the house was too hot and his stomach rumbled, just thinking about having to wait for someone to cook before eating something made him want to punch someone.

But all that stress was for a motive: After several other failed concert attempts, they got the opportunity to finally tour, it wouldn't be too big, but they would go to the former East Germany. A guy named Abo Alsleben, from Leipzig, had shown the opportunity to Øystein, who took it with open arms.

"Bitch!", Øystein grumbled as he trudged back home. "She left with the damn car!"

Everyone started grunting in anger, apparently they had reached a consensus that they would go out to eat, and that was the solution, unless they wanted to eat the rest of the food from the dishes in the sink.

"What are we going to do?", Jørn threw himself on the couch, Pelle watched the situation silently as he knew that if he opened his mouth, Øystein would start fighting with him.

"Don't you have your bike? You can ride to Ski and buy us something", Aarseth suggested.

"Oh, sure. I'm going to fucking die as soon as I reach the end of the street and then you eat my meat!", Jørn protested ironically.

"Let's at least roast it to kill the viruses you have in your body", Jan added.

"Maybe his meat is sweet from how much candy he eats", Pelle commented lastly. Aarseth turned on the TV, slumping into the armchair they had found years ago when they were drunk and had given Alex as a new home gift.

As they discussed manners, heard the noise of the old volvo arriving at the door of the house, Aarseth was the first to get up and run to the door to confront Alex. The girl got out of the car pulling something with her, Øystein started to complain, until he saw her with several grocery bags and pizza boxes.

"What the fuck are you looking at? Come help me", she mumbled, curled up with the bags. Aarseth ran to get some bags from her arm and from inside the car. "Come eat, fuckers", she called out as she tossed the pizza box onto the table.

"You're a fucking lifeguard", Jørn said as he opened the boxes, seeing a few pieces missing, the three of them looked at her.

"I ate a piece on the way, I was hungry!", Alex justified herself as she opened the closet to store the few things she had bought.

"No beer?", Aarseth asked as he walked in with the bags.

"Would you rather be drunk or fed?", Jørn asked with his mouth full.

They sat on the sofa, leaving the boxes open on the coffee table in the living room. Alex sat on the arm of the sofa, next to Pelle, who was looking at the food with thirsty eyes, but hadn't taken any of it.

"Aren't you going to eat?", Alex asked just for him to hear, her voice muffled by the horror movie Aarseth had chosen, which happened to be terrible.

Pelle shrugged, he hadn't eaten since the day before, Alex knew that, she had been monitoring for almost a week. She leaned forward and fished out a piece, handing it to Pelle, he took it open-handed but didn't move the food an inch close to his mouth.

"Come on, honey. Eat", Alex almost sounded like a mother, not his, but a mother. Pelle found it a little strange to think that of the girl he was in love and had been having sex with a few days ago, but didn't stop to develop the thought as his mouth opened and his hand took the piece inside involuntarily.

Without realizing it, Pelle was eating his third piece, the taste of that mixture of ingredients was undeniably a temptation for anyone. Alex chuckled as she bent down to pick up her last piece.

"I've never seen you eat that much. Are you pregnant?", Pelle wrinkled his nose and grimaced, his cheeks puffed out from the pizza, she laughed again.

The mood in the house really did seem to lighten up, which confirmed Alex's theory that when Øystein is being a bitch and looks like he shit his pants, it's because he's hungry; he even laughed while watching the movie, which no one thought he would be able to do about 30 minutes ago.

In the end, what was a tiring day of rehearsals and fights turned into a fun night out with pizza, cheap horror movies with friends. Pelle dozed off using Alex's thighs as a pillow while the others settled in anyway, she woke up in the middle of the night with the TV on a blue screen, with a message asking to insert the tape.

Moving carefully so as not to wake Ohlin and walking in silence, she grabbed some extra blankets from her room and covered her friends before crawling under the covers of her bed. Alex ended up sleeping with the door open, since she forgot to close it during the night, she didn't even remember how she got there, which earned her the nickname "sleepwalker" for the next day.