The Ritual

the cabinets beside the window, to make room for himself, to get some air so that he could
breathe. He looked down at the rifle; he had once fired a .22 rifle in the sea cadets; it had been a bolt action. He slid the bolt back and forth, hoping he was chambering a round. Pointed it at
Fenris again, pulled the trigger. No movement from the trigger. ‘Shit.’
    He leaned the rifle against the wall. It immediately slid down the patchy plaster and clattered noisily against the floor.
    Fenris was now leaning on the plain wooden box that he had been sleeping inside. He had dropped his knife so he could hold his wet side with both hands. He was crying now. Looking at the
ceiling, he called out for Loki twice. Then moaned in anguish and horror at the sight of his own blood coming over his hands and around the handle of the Swiss Army knife that was still stuck
inside him; the knife Luke had just kicked deeper.
    Upstairs: footsteps. Loud, skittering, scuffing, hurried: coming through the ceiling.
    Luke went to Fenris. Picked up the sheath knife from before the youth’s skinny bare feet.
    ‘Please Luke,’ Fenris said.
    Luke smashed it into the boy’s throat. All the way through, until the finger guard of the handle stopped against the lump of his Adam’s apple.
    Luke stepped away, panting. ‘I’m sorry. Shit. Shit.’ He wanted this to stop now.
    The old woman spoke in Swedish. She nodded her little white head in approval and her eyes smiled at him, over Fenris’s shoulder.
    There was a terrible wet choking sound coming from Fenris, and he could not keep still. He staggered about the kitchen, dripping, then tottered out of the room, as if there were someone who
could help him outside.
    Heavy boots banged through a tight corridor upstairs, then boomed on to the stairs. Loki.
    Fenris turned left in the dim hallway and ran for the front door like he was sick and wanted air.
    Luke picked up the rifle, stared at it. Saw the little steel lever above the trigger guard. Put the end of the barrel against the floor, reached down with a hand and slipped the steel lever away
from the SAFETY position.
    Big boots boomed against the bottom two steps of the staircase and then came banging down the cramped hall on the ground floor. Loki was trying to be calm, but was worried; Luke could hear it in
his voice, as he called out in Norwegian to Fenris; who he must have been able to see out on the porch or in the grass paddock. Luke shouldered the weapon and pointed the barrel into the middle of
the doorframe. The rifle was so heavy, so long; it was hard to keep it aloft and steady. It made his arms feel frail.
    But as soon as he had the rifle’s sights aimed at the doorway, Loki ducked into the kitchen, stooping at the waist so his head would miss the top of the frame. He did not see Luke until it
was too late. Their eyes locked for a moment. Loki’s were puffy with sleep, running with mascara, and twitchy with shock. Just as he frowned in confusion, Luke shot him.
    The rifle bucked; not too hard. But the sound deafened him. It seemed to crack the slate floor, smash all the windows and roar like a jet too low to the earth. Loki disappeared from the door.
Luke’s ears whistled. The old lady cried out, afraid. Her little rough hands clouted her own ears. All was jittery around Luke; the world leapt in and out and nothing made sense in the
ringing of his ears, in the impact of sending that bullet through a man.
    Luke punched the bolt up, forward, back, and down. A brass shell dropped and bounced on to the slate stones; some smoke drifted from the end of the shell case. He was getting better. Not so
clumsy. He could smell fireworks.
    Loki was on all fours in the grubby hallway. Head down, hair covering his gasping face, his great back shuddering. Strangely, he too crawled at the front door which was wide open now.
    Luke slipped on the floor. Looked down. His foot was wet with his own blood. He had slipped in the blood that was running down his leg from his hip. There was very little pain in his hip, but
the sight of the blood made his vision go white. He stopped to be sick in the hallway, but nothing came out beside some phlegm. Mostly, it was just a big gassy burp. He looked over his shoulder at
the stairs. But Surtr was not coming down yet. Up there it was silent.
    Loki had reached the doorway and rolled onto his back, half on the porch, half in the hallway. They looked into each other’s eyes. They were both panting,