Rob stretched his arms above his head and twisted his body to get the kinks out of his back while looking out the window of his bedroom. It was early morning in the city of Sundsvall in Sweden. Located about six hours north of the capital of Stockholm by car it was what Rob considered a town, not a city. Being from Chicago, anything with less than five million people was a town or village to him. It had taken him a month to get used to his new environments and the darkness that held the city and country in its grip. He had arrived in January for a five months exchange student program. He was a senior in high school and with both his maternal grandparents being from Sweden, he had decided it would be fun to go and check out the old country.
He had preferred Stockholm, or Gothenburg or even Malmo which were the three largest cities but as fate had it, those spots were already filled so he was stuck with Sundsvall. After the initial shock he quickly realized that it wasn’t as bad as he had thought. The family he was staying with, the Karlssons, which was like saying the Smiths, since it was such a common name were very friendly and took him in as one of their own. Father Sven was a real Viking type, tall broad shoulders, a truck driver by profession and loved fishing and hunting.
His wife Inga was a small blonde woman who baked all the time and Rob had gained several pounds from her delicious magic. Their son Karl was Rob’s age and a friendly but shy kid. At first there had been some tension between them since Rob was much more outgoing but after a few weeks they found a balance and became good friends. The daughter, Lisa, was a seven-year-old who always got in trouble. She was the opposite of her older brother and loved to sit in Rob’s lap and hear stories about his life in the good old USA. She was a bright student and had decent English already even though she sometimes had to look up words on her smartphone or use Google translates.
Rob lowered his arms and peered through the window. The sun had been up for several hours already and it was only seven in the morning. This far north spring and summer only had a few hours of darkness. A moose slowly walked across the gravel road below him and Rob smiled at the sight of it. He often saw wild animals and he enjoyed every bit of it. The Karlssons didn’t live in the city but a twenty-minute drive outside in a small hamlet with one supermarket, one cafe and a post office. The moose disappeared in the trees and Rob went to take a shower. He, Karl and Lisa would leave for school in about an hour.
“Morning,” he said when he walked into the kitchen where Inga was making breakfast. Lisa and Karl where already seated at the wooden table by the window nursing glasses of OJ. One of the things that Rob had to get used to when moving in with the new family were their eating habits. Breakfast was a light meal, corn flakes and a sandwich, lunch was at school and a bit heartier. Dinner was at the early hour of five and then an evening snack about eight in the evening, sandwiches and a cup of tea. Back home, his mother had fed him bacon, eggs, toast in the morning a lighter lunch and then a heavy dinner around seven.
“Did you finish the book last night?” asked Karl.
“Yeah, I liked it. Imagine it was written such a long time ago as a schoolbook about geography.”
Lisa piped up. “I’m so proud of you, reading it in Swedish.”
Rob laughed.
The book in question was The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, written in 1906 by the author Selma Lagerlof. It told the story of a young boy who after getting in trouble with a gnome is magically turned into a gnome sized human. He joins a gaggle of geese and so travels the length of Sweden. The book is read when the students are much younger than Rob, but his Swedish teacher thought it would be a good idea for him to read it in Swedish.
After breakfast the three walked down to the main road where they only had to wait a few minutes before the bus showed up to take them into Sundsvall and their school. A few other students were on it, but Rob only knew them by their faces. They were younger than him but older than Lisa. Out here in the country people lived far apart.
They walked Lisa to her building and then made their way across the school yard and as they approached the main entrance two girls walked up to them. Rob felt how Karl tensed and put a hand on his shoulder. “Chill, dude.”
The two girls were Anna and Johanna. Anna was the typical blonde tall Swedish girl with blue eyes and white skin. Johanna was a girl originally from Iran but adopted as a baby. Her kind brown eyes stared into Robs when she spoke. “Hey, imperialist dirt bag.”
Rob laughed. “Hi, you wannabe terrorist.”
The four walked into the building, neither Karl nor Anna said a word while Johanna and Rob continued with their friendly insults based on their cultures. Not that Johanna was anything less Swedish than Anna, quite the opposite, she was the one with the sexy tight jeans and halter top while Anna wore loose fitting jogging pants with a matching hoodie. Anna was Karl’s love interest but he was too shy to ask her out.
“Dude, I just remembered something. I have to take Lisa to her Skogsmulle meeting after school,” said Karl and sighed.
Rob had heard about it but wasn’t sure what or who a Skogsmulle was.
“Can I tag along?”
“Are you sure? It might get boring. After all, it’s just kids following this make-believe troll around the woods for a while.”
“Hey, if it’s part of the culture, I’m all for it.”
They hugged Johanna and Anna goodbye and then went to their classroom. First class was math, one of the subjects Rob hated.
oOo
Rob and Karl walked with Lisa between them who was holding their hands and skip jumping. Over her head Rob asked, “Tell me what to expect.”
“We will meet up with the other kids, usually five or six of them and the parent who is accompanying them. After that, we will walk into the woods and hopefully Skogsmulle will show up.”
“Hopefully?”
Karl winked, not wanting to speak so Lisa would hear them. They turned off the gravel road and turned into the forest, mostly pine trees this far north. The path was soft and around them there were large boulders covered with moss. It became darker as the sun didn’t reach down to them and Rob, looking around realized why the Swedes were obsessed with their troll stories, it did look and feel creepy. They could hear children laughing and came into an opening where the sun shone down.
“Great, you are all here,” said a blond woman waiving at them and then continued, “Children, let’s all hold hands and walk in a line, and be very quiet and Skogsmulle might show up.”
Rob felt a bit stupid as he walked between a fat little dark-haired boy and a skinny Chinese girl who didn’t quite fit into the atmosphere. He had quickly learned that Sweden was a country full of immigrants which he hadn’t known before moving there. From first to fifth generation they were a part of the Swedish culture.
They kept on walking for a while and Rob was impressed by how quiet the kids were, not even whispering between themselves.
“Oh look,” said a woman two kids ahead of Rob as she pointed. Rob followed her outstretched arm and on a large boulder sat a woman. Her brown hair in two long pigtails and her face was heavily freckled with dark lips. She wore a green smock that made her blend into the green moss on the boulder and on her leg, brown pants. As he watched she gracefully slid off the boulder and walked up to them.
“Look children, Skogsmulle is here.” said the same woman.
The children gasped in awe and some even looked away.
“Hello and welcome to my forest. Are you ready to learn about the fantastic plants and animals living here?” said Skogsmulle.
As she went off with the kids, Karl came up to Rob from the front. “Now we just hang here while she teaches the little goblins.”
“Who is she, I mean for real?”
“Didn’t you recognize her? It’s Liv, Elsa’s mom who lives in the yellow house. You see her every day when we walk past her house.”
“Oh shit, yeah, you are right. I should have remembered that ass and boobs.”
Karl laughed. “Yes, she isn’t quite the same without her spandex top and bottom, is she?”
Rob wondered if there was a sexual fetish for trolls. In that case, he was into it. Liv, in her costume was still sexy, her body taunt and those brown pants looked painted onto her. Even though the green smock tried to cover her figure, her boobs were still very well pronounced under it.
While they waited for the children to come back Karl showed Rob a few plants and game tracks that they could make out, rabbit, fox and deer.
When Skogsmulle came back and left the kids with their parents she noted Rob and Karl standing to one side waiting for Lisa to stop talking to another girl. She came up to them and Rob realized she had a tail that she swung seductively in her right hand. It was made of a thick rope with a bushy tip.
“So, Mr. America, what do you think about this Skogsmulle?” she said indicating herself.
“Not sure, you are the first I’ve met. How long have you been doing this?”
She sat down on a boulder planting her foot on it making her legs come a part. “Oh, for about two years now, I love being with the kids and being in the forest.”
Karl was moving nervously next to Rob who couldn’t take his eyes of the creature in front of him. She oozed sexuality even behind the makeup and costume. Her dark green eyes sparkled, and her lush lips looked so inviting. There was only one little problem with Rob’s fantasy about fucking her. She was at least forty.
Liv wiped off the makeup using a cotton ball and then threw it in the bin next to the washbasin. She took off the clothes and threw them in the hamper next to the shower. During the fall and early spring wearing the costume was fun but in May, it could get quite hot while walking in the forest. She got into the shower and began soaping her body. While she did her mind drifted to the young American boy. He looked older than he was, with broad shoulders a square jaw. She would see him walking by with the Karlsson kids while she was working out in her garden before going to work at the bank.
Being a divorcee, her life was quite boring. Her daughter Elsa was eighteen and worked in a hamburger restaurant in Sundsvall and had her own social life and boyfriend. They only met for an hour during dinner where they had some small talk before Elsa would either go out or lock herself in her room chatting with friends on her phone. Liv would sit on her sofa, drink a glass of wine, or two, or three depending on what day of the week it was and watch TV. Most of her friends had been people she had known with her ex-husband, Jonas. When they divorced three years earlier, the friends just disappeared. No invitations to dinners, drinks, movies, or a simple coffee on a Sunday afternoon, nothing. Liv lived her life in her house or at work. She was not the type who went to after work parties with her younger coworkers, she liked to keep it professional.
So, for sexual relief she had a vibrator and the highlight of the week was her Saturday long bath with bubbles after having a couple of orgasms in her bed with her toy. Sad, so fucking sad, she thought as she turned off the water and opened the shower curtain. In the large mirror in front of her, her reflection looked back at her. Tall, with a firm body women half her age would be proud off. Why did she bother, why spend the two hours every morning jogging and working out? She might as well stop it, drink more and eat more. That way she would fit in nicely with most divorced women her age around town.
She longed for a man to hold her, to kiss her, to hear him say she was pretty and beautiful. To touch her body, kiss her nipples and then, kiss her down there. She looked down at her pussy. Fuck, she thought, she hadn’t shaved. She was slipping, that was for sure. She must remember to do it the next day. A shaved pussy was a happy pussy in her opinion, even though it didn’t get any cock. It still had to look inviting.
She walked bare foot to her room but on the way stopped. She heard sounds from Elsa’s room and when she put her ear to it, she gasped. Her daughter was fucking with her boyfriend, Fredrik. Liv slowly shook her head and felt even worse.
oOo
“What’s the deal with Liv?” asked Rob while sipping on a glass of Lingonberry juice. The acid taste was similar to Cranberries but tarter.
“What do you mean?” Karl asked looking up from the book he was reading.
They were on the porch and it was close to eleven at night, the sun was still up, and the birds sang like if it was early morning.
“Is she married?”
“No, divorced. Why?”
“Just curious, a hot lady like that, I just think it’s weird that she is still single. Maybe she's a bitch?”
Karl laughed and put down the book. “No, she isn’t, she is a very nice person. Her daughter, Elsa, is the bitch. She is like two years older than us, and all through junior high, she was the queen bee at school, and a master at making us guys feel like shit. I’m so glad she graduated.”
Rob finished his drink and raised an eyebrow. Karl shook his head. “No, don’t.”
“C’mon, he won’t even notice, he has gallons of the stuff.”
“That’s not the point. If we get drunk, they will notice.”
“They are sleeping and so is Lisa.” Rob got up and grabbed his friend’s glass and went down the two steps on the porch and opened the wooden door to the cellar. He turned on the light and smiled as he made his way to the three 20-gallon plastic bottles standing against the wall. Each had a little tap on the front and when he opened one and the clear liquid ran out, Rob took a deep breath. This was Swedish moonshine; made with all the love he could muster by Sven. It was strong, at least 90 proof so Rob just poured a little before turning off the light and returning to the porch.
He filled the glasses with Lingonberry juice and handed a glass to Karl. “I love this Wolfpaw shit.”
Karl laughed at the literal translation from the Swedish name for the drink, Vargtass. It was a classic in the north and something young swedes often had as their first experience with when they started out drinking.
What was supposed to be one more glass turned out to be three and by the time Karl put his glass down he and Rob had loopy grins on their faces and struggled to stand straight.
“Dude, I’m going for a walk, I need to clear my head,” Rob said and held on to the door frame.