den svenske.

Creating them had been a mistake. Niels had never intended for the world of Mikael and Lisbeth and Harriet to become a real one; he had not intended for them to be mass-marketed for public consumption and yet he had allowed it and therefore was now allowed to regret the decision of bringing them to life in the first place. It was just a story inside of his head, after all, one of many, and yet the disappearance of Harriet Vanger had lit up the world. It was the books at first, which really meant nothing at all, but then there had been a film and suddenly he had become some sort of sick, quazi-celebrity at home and now there was this. The English Version. The International Version. The one with the Hollywood budget, and hollywood casting and hollywood distribution. Niels was used to seeing his creations come to life on the big screen, but this was different. This was too personal, and for the first time in his decade or so involvement with the film industry, he had slunk off and skipped any and all screenings of the movie before it was released. Maybe he would get lucky, be able to skip the premiers. Knowing himself, though, Niels doubted it.

The tickets sat on his bedside table, next to the atomic clock that Astrid had bought him the Christmas past. It didn't work properly; a large-faced thing too big for the room, it had been bought so that he could see the numbers at night without straining, and so that he could see the temperature outside before he even got out of bed. As it were, however, the light on the clock didn't work (or he simply couldn't figure out how to make it work) and the temperature gauged the heat or lack thereof within the room. It was hardly practical at all, and yet he kept it even as he used his iPhone for an alarm because that was what fathers did, or what Niels felt fathers did. It was the same reason he kept the tickets, perhaps even the same reason he kept the tickets tucked beneath the clock's plastic base. 28.2 degrees, the face read when he lifted up his phone and illuminated both screen and tickets. He had yet to change his fitted bedsheets from winter and now the flannel beneath him felt as though it was giving off heat whilst the cotton summer sheet he had managed to throw over top felt utterly restricting.

28.2 degrees on a clock he couldn't even read. He stared into nothing for a moment, contemplating the irony as his sad little bedside fan did its best impression of a tropical breeze. Niels shifted, wincing as the tension in his back manifested itself in a sharp pain running from shoulder blades to base of the skull. 28.2 degrees still, and not even dreaming of dropping to something more reasonable. The tickets glinted in the glare of his phone's light and the sliver of moon that sliced through the small window next to the bed. He hated those tickets. He hated Mikael and Lisbeth, both mostly he hated the disappearance of Harriet Vanger and the way it had shifted his life from something familiar to something utterly isolating.