By Sandra J. Bouman
Thwump thunk. Thwump thunk. Roy tossed a worn out tennis ball against the wall and caught it as it bounced back. Thwump thunk. His eyes glazed over as he sat in the rickety folding chair waiting for the phone to charge. It was amazing what one could recover from a library lost and found by smiling at old ladies and describing any generic, rectangular phone. They all looked the same, and people were too trusting.
The charger was slow. The wires were fraying, barely held together by the cracked plastic casing. Roy was starting to feel that way, too. He was growing long in the tooth, as shabby and gray as the walls in the condemned apartment where he’d been squatting. He threw the ball against the wall again, but it sprang back too far and his hand clasped around nothing but air. The ball ricocheted, eventually settling somewhere behind him.
“I’m too old for this,” Roy sighed, running his hands through his thinning brown hair. The scruff on his chin had always been red, but it was starting to turn white in patches. The chair creaked as he leaned over to check the charge. Forty-two percent. Close enough. He removed the plug gingerly. He didn’t want to be shocked again. Roy dragged the heap of wood and metal that masqueraded as a chair toward the wall of the empty room. If he sat in the corner near the window, he could reach a weak internet connection.
When Roy powered on the phone, notifications went wild. He hadn’t had access to Wi-Fi in days, so emails had stacked up. Mostly spam. Spam emails were the only thing Roy had in abundance. His latest get-rich-quick scheme proved to be quite the opposite. The money was almost gone. He needed a new plan. He wasn’t ready to settle down, but looking around, he knew he would have to sooner or later. His stomach growled, but he ignored it, as always. He’d have to go scrounge up something to eat, but he was tired. Maybe later.
He sighed again, swiping to delete the meaningless emails in his inbox. He had his forefinger poised to trash the next one, but something in the subject line caught his eye.
“Shoot, I forgot all about that,” Roy said to himself. A couple months earlier, when he was flush, he had, on a drunken whim, decided to take an ancestry DNA test. He sent in some spit and promptly let it slip his mind. But, now, the results were in.
“Seventy-four percent Scandinavian?” he said out loud. “What, like Norway or something?” The other twenty-six percent was a mixture of Eastern European, Ashkenazi Jewish, and a smidge of North African.
Roy had never known his family history. He was a fourth generation Chicagoan. He hadn’t known his parents’ heritage, but he had known their hardships. They died as he was getting out of school, leaving Roy on his own ever since.
“Maybe I’m a Viking,” Roy chuckled to himself. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
He set back to deleting emails, when another nabbed his attention. Half price airfare to destinations all around the globe. Destinations like Norway. Nobody knew him there. He frowned at his literally crumbling surroundings. Maybe he could start over there.
So, scraping the very bottom of his coffers, Roy booked a one-way ticket to Oslo. He packed his meager belongings in the suitcase he found in a dumpster years ago. It may have been held together with a lick and a promise, but it had always done its job. In Roy’s line of work, he moved around a lot. His current place was set for demolition in the new year.
“Come through for me one more time, buddy,” Roy begged the case as he shoved his coat inside it and zipped it closed. He hugged the suitcase against his chest as he rode the train to the airport.
Roy hadn’t flown in ages, but the flight was nothing special. He slept most of the way. Of course, as airlines are wont to do, they lost Roy’s luggage. He waited and waited for the carousel to spin as it emptied one by one. He was the last passenger standing, but the last suitcase standing wasn’t his. It was nicer, actually.
“What the hell?” Roy thought, and he grabbed it anyway. Couldn’t be any worse than his own stuff, right? Maybe he could sell it.
Roy took a moment to inspect the contents before he passed through customs. He didn’t want it to be full of something that could get him kicked out of the country, or worse.
Roy wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find, but it wasn’t a complete set of Viking garb—down to the helmet with horns—and a single piece of paper with the words “Thursday: 14:45” handwritten below a printed address.
“Oh, well,” Roy thought, “At least I can declare I’m a Viking.”
Cold air slammed him in the chest as he exited the airport. Being from Chicago, Roy knew cold, but this was something else. Who knew Norway was that far north? He looked around. Luckily, some of the signage was in English. He didn’t know a lick of Norwegian. Roy rubbed his hands together. He needed to get to a crowded place to pick some pockets for cash, but he wasn’t sure where to go. He noticed a group of people who looked like they did and followed them to a train, which after half an hour or so, let him off in what appeared to be downtown Oslo.
The passengers on the train stared at Roy. He stuck out like a sore thumb without any sort of winter coat. He may as well have had “Stupid American Tourist” tattooed on his forehead. Then, he had barely made it out of the train station when a car splashed through a frozen puddle, soaking Roy to the skin. He had no choice but to put on the Viking costume. He hesitated before putting on the hat, but felt even more conspicuous without it. Besides, it was warm.
Wandering around downtown Oslo in a Viking costume got him some strange looks. Some tourists speaking a language he didn’t recognize took his photo, and a little kid threw some change in his hat when he took a break to think of his next plan. Mostly, the Norwegians ignored him. Maybe they were used to random Vikings walking around, or they just waited until they got home to mock the ridiculous American. People didn’t smile and talk to strangers the way they did back home. Maybe they knew not to trust him.
As Roy wandered, looking for a hostel or a park bench for the night, a figure in a hooded robe appeared out of nowhere and stopped him in his tracks. Nobody else seemed to notice or care this person was there, also in an unusual outfit. Roy couldn’t make out a face under the hood, but a crooked finger pointed straight at him and a voice spoke to him in raspy Norwegian. Roy didn’t understand, and scrambled to open the translation app on his phone. It was unreliable at best, but better than nothing. The gist of the speech was that the Norsemen would be disappointed in him, and the ancestors were angry. The creator was displeased. He needed to watch himself, or they were watching him. He couldn’t tell. The voice repeated one phrase as Roy slunk away: “Viking he is not.” He tried to shake it off, but the voice echoed in his head. “Viking he is not.” Roy kept walking.
He stumbled across a hostel that was cheap enough, but they wouldn’t open for hours. So, he kept wandering. After a while, Roy’s stomach growled loud enough for passersby to look up. He only had enough cash for the hostel, so he was going to have to figure out food another way. He remembered packing some salami in his bag, so he opened the suitcase. Then, he remembered it wasn’t really his. There was no food inside it, but it did contain the paper with the address on it.
Nothing but time on his hands, Roy figured he would check out what was at the address.
“What the hell?’ Roy thought. “When in Norway, right?” Maybe there would be a restaurant nearby he could sneak food from, at least. He tried to stop someone to ask for directions. Many locals spoke English, but none of them wanted to have anything to do with the odd, American Viking.
He gave up when he remembered the GPS on his phone. It wasn’t really his, but he didn’t use it for calls anyway, since there was no number attached to it. Fortunately, the address was only a few kilometers away. He started walking toward it, his nose in the GPS. Suddenly, the hairs on his neck stood up. Roy couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. He looked up. The figure in the hooded robe stooped across the street, staring and pointing at him again. It seriously creeped Roy out. He tried to ignore the whole thing, but the figure started following him. Unsure of what to do, Roy ran for it. The stalker was gaining on him, incredibly fast for someone of that apparent age. The stranger was right on top of him, when Roy slipped on a patch of ice and tumbled down a hill.
Roy came to a while later. He opened his eyes wearily, sitting up and rubbing the bump on his head. What happened? Was he in the middle of a field? What had that hooded hooligan done to him? Was it some kind of Scandinavian magic?
Suddenly, the ground began to rumble. Hundreds of footsteps thundered toward him. Followed by hundreds of people in full Viking regalia, including spears and shields and axes. Roy screamed and scrambled to his feet. As the hoard barreled toward him, he turned and ran.
Roy booked it, but he was old and slow, and he couldn’t outrun the angry Vikings. The stranger had been right, the ancestors were angry, but how had they found him? Had he gone back in time? With one last burst of self-preservation, Roy sprinted, screaming until they mob overtook him. But, they just kept running, dodging him like he was in their way and not their intended target.
“What the hell?” Roy swore. He jumped out of the way of a swinging sword.
Then, somewhere in the distance, someone shouted, “Cut!”
Roy blinked, confused.
“Cut!” The voice shouted again, closer this time. A man in a modern coat and baseball cap with an enormous headset over his ears came over the hill. All of the Vikings had stopped, and were chatting with each other like they hadn’t just chased Roy across a field.
“Quiet everyone!” the director called. “Reset, please. One more take.”
He motioned for Roy to come closer.
“Have much acting experience, pal?” he asked, “because that look of terror on your face was fantastic.”
Roy stammered, but no words came out.
“How would you like to be a featured extra?” the director asked. “I’d love for you to do that again, closer to camera.”
Roy blinked.
“We’ll need to get rid of that hat,” he continued as if Roy had agreed, “It’s not historically accurate. Vikings didn’t really wear those. I knew we shouldn’t have let extras wear their own garb.”
The director called for his assistant over his headset, and a harried young woman appeared. She took Roy’s hat away and brushed him with some sort of powder. Out of the corner of his eye, Roy saw the hooded figure from before standing with the rest of the crowd.
Roy tried to object, but the director cut him off.
“We’ll need you to sign more paperwork, of course,” the director said, “and featured extras do get more money.”
“Money?” Roy asked, raising an eyebrow. Viking he would be.