The Bomber

EVIL

My intuition warned me of its existence and power early on. Reason, surrounding me on all sides in the form of adults, was trying to tear this certainty out of me. "That's just make-believe," they would say. "That's not how it is in real life, and anyway, it's always the forces of good that win out." I knew this was a lie because I had heard the story of Hansel and Gretel. There, evil prevailed everywhere, even though the author insisted it was all part of a grander design. Evil forced the little children out into the woods, evil fatted Hans up and heated the oven, but Gretel turned out to be the most evil of them all, for she was the one who actually committed murder.

Stories of that kind never scared me. You don't fear the entity that you're familiar with. This gave me an advantage over the world around me.

Experiences later on in life naturally showed me I had been right. In our country, we've made the fatal mistake of abolishing evil. It doesn't exist officially. Sweden is a state governed by law; understanding and logic have taken the place of evil. That made it possible for evil to move underground, and there, in the dark, it thrived more than ever. It fed on envy and suppressed hatred, became impervious, and with time grew so dark that it became invisible. But I recognized it. Anyone who has once known its being can smell it out, wherever it lies hidden.

A person who has learned from Gretel knows how to deal with evil. Like cures like, that's the only way. I saw evil in the malicious faces at my workplace, in the eyes of the members of the board, in the taut smiles of my colleagues- and I would smile back. The seven-headed monster was nowhere to be seen; it hid behind union talks and in supposedly objective discussions. But I knew and played along. They couldn't fool me. I held up a mirror, and their powers were reflected.

But I saw it make other advances in society. I noted how the violence against several of my employees was ignored by police and prosecutors. A woman in my office reported her ex-husband some twenty times, and every time the police classified it as a "domestic incident." The social services appointed a mediator, but I knew it was futile. I could smell the stench of evil, and I knew her time was up. The woman would die because no one took evil seriously. "He didn't mean any harm; he really only wanted to see the children," I once heard the mediator say. I told my secretary to shut the door because people's inability to act vexes me.

In the end, the woman had her throat slit with a bread knife and those around her reacted with surprise and dismay. They looked for an explanation but overlooked the most obvious one.

Evil escaped yet another time.