The Kingdom Hospital

I am an avid fan of Lars von Trier's work (think Dogville ect) and while watching Riget, known in English as The Kingdom Hospital I started entertaining the idea of populating the series with Naruto-characters. So here we are! I've chosen the characters that I personally think fitted the roles the most, but I'm going to stay true to characters of Riget, so you might find that the Naruto-characters are going to be slightly OOC.



This is a Danish tv-series, and it takes place in Copenhagen (capital of Denmark) and there are often jabs and jokes to/from the Swedes, and you might not find it funny because you don't understand, but trust me when I say that we find it hillarious. The series was produced in 1994, so the year is 1994 in the story.



The original series was 8 episodes, but since they are 1 hour long each, and I'm not aiming at having you guys giving up, or falling alseep while reading, I've decided to divide each episode into two chapters, and thus hopefully have less people giving up on the way.





Now, just to paint you a pretty picture of how things work in my house, and in the rest of the world;

I do NOT own Naruto or Riget, I never have, never will but I do take freedom to mix the two for my own enjoyment, and absolute no money, what-so-ever, just to make myself and others smile and hopefully have you guys enjoy.











1. Part – Den hvide flok – The Unheavenly Host. 2/2



Tsunade was helping Orochimaru into his suit-jacket while he was loudly complaining about the reason why he had to wear it.



“Childish is what it is. Childish and eccentric!” he said in a tone that almost suggested that she was the one who was responsible for it.



“Yes, yes, Orochimaru, but the most important doctors in this hospital are members of the lodge.” She fixed his collars. “You couldn’t be in finer company. Sarutobi must really believe in you to put you up for that. They are small people, Orochimaru, but even from little men’s shoulders you can see far.”



He scoffed at it, “Yes, yes, ‘Operation Morning Breeze’ and the ‘Sons of the Kingdom’!”



“They might help you. They help each other, in the lodge” Tsunade said quietly as she brushed his shoulders, making sure the jacket was nice and clean, “If that operation on Sumaru became a case, for example, and went to the General Medical Council …”



Orochimaru looked at her with narrowed eyes, “I don’t want to hear another word about Sumaru.” He cast another glance into the mirror before turning back to Tsunade, “Why do you keep brushing me? Do I have dandruff? Am I losing my hair?” he said in an annoyed tone.



She sighed a bit and brushed the last off the other shoulder, “No, leave me alone.” He said as he left the room.



“Have a nice time, dear.” She said with a smile.



-----



Sasuke had been blessed with another evening/night-shift and was heading towards the central-area on the ward where the lifts were. When he got there he noticed a nurse standing, waiting no doubt for a new patient to arrive with the elevator, but also Orochimaru. The tall man was pacing impatiently in front of the lifts, regularly pressing the button the vigor. Sasuke stood for a bit with crossed arms, observing Orochimaru press the button again.



“Doctors and patients sharing lifts! It’s unconscionably embarrassing.” He shook his head, “In Sweden doctors have their own lifts, and nobody finds it strange”



Sasuke smirked a bit before padding the pockets in his smock, looking for something, and when he found it, he showed the white plastic-card to the consultant neurosurgeon. At the creased eyebrows of the other man he went to the black box on the wall between the two lifts and swiped it though the reader. Immediately the lift dinged and the doors slid open. With an arm he gestured for Orochimaru to enter before him and followed inside with a smug smirk as Orochimaru looked appropriately impressed. Sasuke pressed the button for the basement before showing the card once more to the other doctor as he smugly said;



“I have borrowed this from a porter.”



And the doors slid shut, while the lift next to theirs dinged open, and the nurse came forward to pull out the bed with the old lady in.



“Hello” she greeted.



“Hello” the old lady smiled back before twisting a bit to look back and up into the lift. She turned back and addressed the nurse, “May I walk around a bit tonight? Nothing is wrong with my legs.”



“We’ll see,” the nurse smile.



-----



Orochimaru was still mildly gaping at the young man, before he made his face look blank and looked around the lift with faint disinterest. Sasuke look at the older man for a few seconds before folding his fingers into the universal hand-sign for a phone, putting the tip of his thumb to his lips and then simulating blowing into his finger, and having the pinky unfurl as a response.



Orochimaru was not amused.



“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you a complete idiot?” Sasuke was quiet. “Stop it! What a strange thing to do!”



Sasuke shrugged his shoulders and looked blankly at the other man before answering, “I apologize, I merely thought you were being introduced to the lodge tonight.”



“What in the world does that have to do with the lodge?” Orochimaru demanded angrily.



Sasuke shortly pursed his lips before shrugging again, as if deciding to withhold information, “I just meant to warn you to mind your nose. In 1986 Professor Tobirama Senju had his severely injured.” He let the sentence float a bit around in the space between them before continuing. “That ritual isn’t completely without its risks, huh.”



Orochimaru just looked silently at him with suspicious yellow eyes.



-----



They were walking down one of the many creepy basement-hallways beneath the Kingdom Hospital, which were in fact a transport net that was still useable, despite being ancient. Orochimaru was walking in front, not presently wanting anything more to do with the registrar walking behind him with a veiled smug look on his face. Orochimaru stopped at the double-metal doors that he had been told would lead into the lodge’s room. As he stood slightly hesitantly with his hand on the handles the younger doctor passed him by on his way somewhere else and threw a comment over his shoulder at the elder man,



“Maybe it won’t be that bad.” Sasuke smirked to himself as he heard the door being opened immediately.



As Orochimaru opened the door he could he the voice of a man saying earnestly and with great formality;



“Honorable Elder, beloved Brethren! A duckling has come home!”



The room was filled out with a long table, where twenty or so of the hospital’s eldest and most respectable doctors were standing, all in formal suits. At the end of the table a speaker-chair was placed and there another doctor stood, with a tall black hat on his head, it was him who was speaking.



“Salute, my brethren, salute!”



And then they all did that outrageous thing with their hands and mouth that Uchiha had done, but they added sound to the procedure. After 5 seconds they reached down and took hold of their glasses which were standing on the table between them and started lightly clacking the bottom of the glass against the metal-table-top.



Orochimaru could feel the his jaw start to drop, but steeled himself and held a firm, blank facial expression, while the inside of his mind was doing back-flips and bending over backwards to accommodate the extreme weirdness of it all.



-----



Konohamaru was walking down one of the dark hallways beneath the hospital and was about to turn a corner when he noticed the senior registrar Uchiha walk passed as he was lighting up a cigarette. The black-haired man continued into what looked like the storing-facilities blowing out smoke in an unhurried manner. As he passed two guys in whites one of them waved at him and smiled.



“Hey Uchiha, thanks for the booze!”



“No problem” Sasuke answered back as he reached the fence cutting off that part from the one everyone had access too. He withdrew a large set of keys from his smock and unlocked the chain and padlock securing the gates of the fence together. He continued further onside until he reached a secluded corner, near the giant kettle which contained and heated water for the hospital. As he continued passed it he flipped a light-switch and suddenly a rug, a table, a sofa and a small kitchen came into view. He sat down on the sofa and stabbed out his cigarette in the ash-tray before turning on the radio and lifting the lid off of the tray with food sitting on the low table. He grimaced at the dish and covered it again, pushing it aside before kicking off his shoes and lying backwards onto the couch and closing his eyes with a contended sigh.



-----



Orochimaru was standing at the end of the table, the, who he presumed was, president of the lodge was standing in front of him and Sarutobi in the middle beside him.



“Duckling, raise thy wing!”



Orochimaru looked vaguely confused before a hand helpfully raised his right arm, and he held it there.



“Repeat after me: I swear eternal allegiance to the Sons of The Kingdom, my honorable brethren --”



“I swear eternal allegiance to the Sons of The Kingdom, my honorable brethren.” Orochimaru repeated with a distinctly uninterested and bland voice.



“—and swear to put their well-being, interests and laws above and before anything else --”



“—I swear to put their well-being, interests and laws before anything else.”



“I swear allegiance to the physical sciences and enmity to the occult in all its forms..”



“I swear allegiance to the physical sciences and enmity to the occult in all its forms.”



“And now! The Ritual!”



A doctor stepped forward with a closed suitcase. He placed it on the table and opened it to reveal a piece of paper and long, long knife. The president took both in hand and slowly cut the paper in two with the knife, showing how sharp the edge was. Another brother stepped up behind Orochimaru and placed his hands on his shoulder and pressed down, forcing Orochimaru to his knees. The President in front of him grasped the knife, or more like sword, in both hands and raised his arms up. Sarutobi held a lemon in front of Orochimaru who took the hint and opened his mouth so that he held the lemon between his teeth, before looking up at the sword.



Orochimaru look at the other members who now grasped each other’s hands and raised them up as the all repeated the word “Hep” in a cacophony, making it sound like wild birds or ducks scrapping. The rhythm and pace increased and Orochimaru looked back up at the knife, which was now slowly being brought down, closer and closer to his face and the lemon in his mouth.



He was now looking distinctly uncomfortable with the whole thing and very nervous about the extremely sharp knife in very near vicinity of his face.



-----



Konohamaru continued down the halls, carrying a bag with him. He reached his goal and withdrew some keys and unlocked the door. He entered a cold room with lockers and looked at a piece of paper he had brought with him. Checking it he went to one of the cabinets and opened it. He wheeled the metal-gurney into the room and shifted the stiff body onto it. He then pulled it out again slightly and moved the white cloth down enough to reveal the head of the corpse that they had been using in class last time. From his plastic bag he withdrew a saw. He suddenly looked up and remembered that the door was still open.



He closed it and the sound echoed lightly down the hallway.



A few feet down an old lady in a pink dressing gown was walking down the hallway, looking intently at her pendulum which was swaying with each step she took. She stopped shortly in front of a closed door and looked at it searchingly before continuing on her way.



-----



Orochimaru was laying on the medical-table, trying to contain himself. He distracted himself from the shame by looking out into the hallway and try to imagine how many different ways he could kill these crazy men, some of them standing out in the hall, one next to his bed. A nurse was laying a careful bandage onto his nose.



Sarutobi was talking to him, “-- a real shame, my friend. This hasn’t happened since 1986. How are you feeling?”



He lightly padded Orochimaru’s hand, but the man’s attention was solely on the old woman who walked passed them, looking down at a pendulum. The malingerer!



“There she was again!”



“Who?” Sarutobi asked with furrowed brows.



“Chiyo, the malingerer! Who is the accursed multiple idiot who has admitted her again?”



“I have.” Sarutobi said in a surprised tone, “Naruto examined her; obvious paraesthesiae! I’ve admitted her for observation for a week. Isn’t that reasonable?”



Orochimaru had to contain himself. “Of course. You’re the professor. You know what’s reasonable, of course.” He grounded out each word.



Sarutobi smiled at him. “So, if they’re done patching you up now, then come back to the Brethren.” He padded the man’s shoulder, as if to reassure him. “The rest is just festivities, no more rituals.”



Orochimaru started to get up, “Yes I am very grateful.”



As he righted himself into a sitting position, the nurses steadied him and held him. He turned to one of them.



“Don’t hold the patient when he get’s up. Shall we try?” He turned to Sarutobi. “With all due respect, in Sweden we try to maintain a patina of civilization and concentrate our festive activities around serious, traditional occasions.” He finished as he righted his tie once more.



“Yes, yes, so I’ve heard.” Sarutobi answered. “Crayfish, that sort of thing, right?”



Orochimaru looked at the man with a slightly angry, offended expression as Sarutobi turned to leave.



“Oh yes, I have a request, Orochimaru.” He said as he turned back and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Do you remember that operation you performed on … Sumaru something-or-other?”



Orochimaru nodded his head.



“He suffered permanent brain damage,” Sarutobi continued.



“That can happen when you rummage about in people’s brain” Orochimaru said with a stern face.



“My dearest chap, I know, I know.. But I had a conversation with his mother earlier this evening. I fear that she is going to file a formal complaint. The medical stuff is a bit over her head, so I promised that you’d see her.”



“At once?” Orochimaru said surprised.



“Splendid idea!” Sarutobi said with a smile. “She’s coming to see her son tonight, turn on your charm, we don’t have time for complaints. It’s all part of ‘Operation Morning Breeze’, after all.”



He turned with a smile and joined he men who had been sitting and waiting for them, and they continued down the hall, back to the room, singing as they went. Orochimaru looked at their retreating backs and shook his head before heading in the opposite direction.



-----



The entrance to the hospital was eerily quiet. The lit-up sign above the entry was blinking on an irregular basis and only lit up half of the sign. A wind was blowing fallen leafs around, forming all kinds of shapes in the darkness of the evening. A particularly powerful gust of wind blew leafs towards the glass sliding-doors, and the doors slid apart, though there was no human there to tricker the sensors. The leafs blew inside.



Chiyo was walking inside, watching her pendulum make its circles. As she neared the glass-doors, the second pair opened a well and leafs from outside came all the way inside the hospital. She stood there, looking at the outside with her hand still outstretched with the pendulum, looking quite spooky in the strange half-light-half-dark. She continued away from the doors, through a door in the side of the hall. The sliding doors shut as more leafs blew towards the inside.



She continued down a hall until she came to a stop outside a door. She looked from the pendulum to the door, before opening it. She could hear men’s voices speaking.



She came to a stop and looked disdainfully at the young man sitting at the table with a beer in his hand.



“Kankuro!” she said, with disappointment in her voice.



“Mummy!” he answered with surprise evident in his voice, before looking back at the other occupant in the room as he tried to covertly push the bottle of schnapps away from her line of site. Kiba merely sat back in his chair and discretely lowered his beer so that it was hidden behind him and his chair.



“Drinking after hours! You should be home.”



“I could say the same damn thing to you!” he said in an almost childish voice, trying to push the attention onto her.



She completely bypassed his accusation and continued in an excited voice. “Somebody was calling out to me! A spirit!”



“Mom” he said in a tired voice as he lit their cigarettes.



“It’s not what you think, Kanky” she bent forward to have her cigarette lit. “Somebody was really calling. Someone was crying in the lift shaft. I think it was a small girl.”



Kiba, judging the danger of imminent disapproval to be over, lifted his beer and took a sip, looking at the old lady.



“I couldn’t bring myself to leave her, so I had to get myself re-admitted.” She explained, as if it made perfect sense.



Kankuro couldn’t contain a small roll of his eyes, before he quickly hid it and took a drink from his beer as well.



“Maybe I’ve finally made contact, for the first time!” she said.



Kankuro sat there, twirling his cigarette between his fingers, looking discretely at Kiba.



“Imagine spending a lifetime trying to contact the spirit world and then succeeding in a lift, without meaning to!” she didn’t catch anything of what the young men were doing.



Kiba couldn’t contain a small smile at the old lady’s enthusiasm as he took a small glass of schnapps and emptied it, feeling the liquid lightly burning in his throat. He and Kankuro kept quiet.



“Isn’t it exciting?” she said, “Have you youngsters experienced anything strange or suspicious?”



“Actually, yes I have -” Kiba started only to be interrupted by Kankuro.



“No, no, no!” he said, trying to stop his friend before it was too late.



“Kankuro, Kankuro!” Chiyo said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We have got to get into that lift shaft.”



“No, mummy” Kankuro said flatly.



“Oh, sweet boy, I never imagined you’d help me.” She said sweetly with a slight laugh



“I’m not gonna do it, Mum.” He said sternly.



Her entire demeanor changed in a split second and she looked angrily at her son, “I’m still upset and disappointed about the fuss you made in May 1988!” she said, trying to black-mail her son.



“Oh?” Kiba said with a crooked smile. “What fuss was that?” He raised his schnapps-glass once more, but didn’t drink. “Huh, Kanky? Did you do a little bit of youth-full rebelling?”



“You might call it that” Chiyo said with a sniff.



“I moved away from home” Kankuro said tiredly. “I was 25 years old, Mummy!”



“You never said a word about not liking living at home!” she said in a hurt voice. “You really upset your old mother.”



“I moved back in a week later!” he said exasperatedly.



She looked at him before turning her attention to Kiba instead, “How is your mother, dear?”



“My mother? She died years ago” Kiba said.



“How nice that must be for you!” Chiyo said to Kiba, but with a hard look at her son.



Kankuro deflated a bit, “What then, if there’s nobody in that lift shaft? Because I can tell you that there isn’t!”



“Yeah, well then ..” she stopped and started a few time, looking at her son with a look that clearly said, is this what you want?, “Then I will hang up my pendulum.”



“Completely? No more séances?” he prodded.



She huffed a bit, “Since it means so much to you!”



He looked silently at her for a short while before taking a last puff of his cigarette, stabbing it out in the ashtray and then picked up the phone and dialed once.



“Porter’s office --” he began.



-----



Konohamaru was standing around with his plastic bag in front of the elevators, waiting. When one of them dinged and Udon stepped out he came forward, draping an arm across his shoulders.



“What kind of time of day is this to choose to call in an imaginative favor that I supposedly owe you?” Udon asked tiredly.



“Sakura is on duty” Konohamaru said, as if it answered everything as they passed through some doors, entering the ward.



“Just give her the bag and send her my regards. Tell her that I’m sorry, but it was the only way out.” Udon still looked hesitant. “Just tell her!”



He pushed the handle of the plasticbag into Udon’s hands as they came to a stop in front of the Sleep Laboratory.



“What are you going on about?” Udon asked, confused.



“Just give her the bag, man!”



Udon went inside and stopped in front of the desk where Sakura was sitting.



“Hello Udon” she greeted with a smile.



“Hello. This is from Konohamaru.” He brought the bag forward. “He says that he’s sorry.”



“I don’t want anything from him” Sakura said with a sigh.



“That’s your choice. He asked me to give the bag to you.” He said with a shrug.



Sakura put her magazine down and got up from the chair, “Tell him to come and fetch his present again.” She took hold of the handle and went to the coat-rag and hanged the bag there, not giving it an ounce of attention. “There is obviously something that he hasn’t understood.”



She gestured to the young man that he could leave the laboratory.



He walked out and turned a corner to where Konohamaru was waiting.



“I gave her the bag.”



“Did she open it?” Konohamaru asked excitedly.



“No”



“Why not?” Konohamaru asked accusingly.



“I have no idea. Now is there anything else, or can I go back to bed?”



Konohamaru suddenly made a weird face and sneaked to the other side of the hall. Udon followed and they could see Moegi walk into the Sleep Laboratory.



“Excuse me?” she asked quietly. “I talked to Dr. Uchiha about coming here? I should have been watching surgery today, but I can’t stomach it. He thought this would be more of my cup of tea.”



Sakura looked at the young medical student. She shrugged. “If you want to be a doctor then you have to observe surgery at some point.”



“I know ..” Moegi said quietly. “Just .. not today ..”



Sakura smiled in a motherly manner too the young girl. “Ok. You can hang your coat over there.”



“Thank you” Moegi said and moved to the coat-rag that Sakura had indicated. She took the plastic-bag down and hanged her coat up. The bag felt weird, its contents had a weird shape. She frowned and looked inside it.



Outside in the hall Konohamaru and Udon were holding their breaths; Konohamaru from excitement and slight fear and Udon because of the tension in the air.



Suddenly a scream was piercing through their ear-drums and went echoing down the halls as a decapitated head with Konohamaru’s goggles on it came rolling out from the Sleep Laboratory. It was the head from the corpse that they had used in class. Konohamaru rushed forward and bent down to pick up the head and hid it under his smock. As he turned to run away he noticed that Sakura was holding a crying and clearly distraught Moegi in her arms, looking angrily and disbelievingly at him.



He ran past Udon who turned and followed him down the hall.



-----



Orochimaru was standing outside room 4 on the children’s ward, breathing in deeply before opening the door.



Inside were two beds, one empty, and one containing a small child, with a tired-looking mother sitting next to the bed. The state of her hair and knitted sweater could have spoken for her. The small boy was slowly rocking back and forth with an open mouth and open, unseeing eyes that didn’t really register his surroundings. He had on a dish-rag bib and his mother was trying to make him eat his dinner as she fed him with a small plastic spoon. It was some sort of porridge, and it kept sliding out of his mouth and dripping onto the bib, making a mess around his small form. She looked up at him shortly with red-rimmed eyes before relocating her attention to her son once more, ignoring the man in the doorway.



“Come one baby, just one more mouthful, yes honey, one more. Do it for mommy, come on baby ..” It was an endless line of encouragement that fell from her lips as she tried to coach her son into taking one more bite.



“Good evening.” Orochimaru started, waiting for a response.



She didn’t even look up at him, but continued with the supportive words to her son.



“My name is Dr. Orochimaru”



She looked up at him and said, “I don’t understand Swedish,” before returning to her son.



“Try one more time, honey.”



“I am Dr. Orochimaru.” He tried again, speaking a bit more clearly.



The porridge was all over the childs’ face, especially the lips as the mother wiped the worst away and brought the spoon up again. “Try again ..” almost all of the porridge came out again, and she tried to catch it with the spoon to put it back inside.



He pulled the cord, and within a short while a nurse came into the room.



“Yes, like that darling, that was great!” she sounded momentarily relieved. “Now, swallow it again ..”



A nurse in white with short black hair and pearlescent eyes, reminding him of one of the doctors from the ‘Sons of the Kingdom’, came into the room and looked from the mother by the bed to him.



“Nurse, this lady doesn’t understand my accent, would you please translate?”



“If I can, of course.” She said with a small smile.



“Thank you,” he said to her, and then started speaking to the mother. “I am the doctor who operated on your son.”



“This is the doctor who operated on Sumaru” the nurse said.



“I know” the mother said in a drained voice.



“She knows” the nurse said to Orochimaru.



Momentarily containing himself, Orochimaru said, “Thank you, I do understand what the lady is saying.” He looked to the child in the bed. “Sumaru.” He addressed him.



“There you go darling, yes, good..” the mother kept feeding her child, not looking at the doctor.



“Sumaru,” Orochimaru tried again. “Little Sumaru” He addressed the mother this time. “How is Sumaru doing?”



“How is he doing?” she repeated. “You can see for yourself; He’ll never get better, he’ll never be himself again.” Her voice wavered a bit at the end as she wiped some porridge from her child’s face.



“There are a few things you should know about his operation,” Orochimaru continued as blandly as ever.



She breathed in deeply before looking at him. “There a few things you need to understand about the operation my son went through. I have spoken to a doctor.”



“Who? Which one?” Orochimaru asked.



“This kind of thing must never happen.” She focused on Orochimaru solely now, taking a step towards him. “You’ve taken my son from me.” She bit her lip, trying to hold back tears as she sniffed and turned her head to look at her son. “I’d rather he have died than ended up like this.” She sobbed and went to her son, “Oh no, baby, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it ..”



Orochimaru breathed in deeply and went for what he thought would be the best solution.



“I’m sorry -” he tried to put a hand on her shoulder in what he thought was a comforting manner when she wrenched away from him.



“DON’T TOUCH ME!” she sniffed and pulled herself a bit together. “I’m filing a complaint. It doesn’t matter that you say that you’re sorry that you made a mistake.”



“Are you accusing me of making a mistake?” Orochimaru took the statement in for a few seconds, moving to the end of the bed. “Here we have the mother of a patient accusing me, consultant neurosurgeon Orochimaru, of making a mistake.”



The mother was deteriorating in front of their eyes, starting to sob small cries as she held her son, who was as un-aware of everything around him as ever, rocking back and forth. Back and forth.



“This is a violation of honor, even if we are in this damn country.” His voice was rising, and the nurse went to the young mother who was now openly crying. “I have opened a cranium or two before in my career. That whelp is not the first one!”



And with that last angry line he left the room with a rocking, lost child and a shocked nurse trying to comfort the broken mother she held in her arms.



-----



The woman slid the tray of glasses towards her partner. He sprayed them and the sound of pressurized water hitting glasses was the only thing to be heard in the quiet basement. He turned to look at her as he hung up the hose.



“When things are sad, the children cry.”



She turned to look at him.



“When things are sorrowful, the grown-ups cry” he continued.



She focused on him as she tried to push her pink glasses to sit better on the bridge of her nose.



“But how are things when the buildings begin to cry?” he said and then sprayed the tray once more.



Hands in wet pink gloves twisted and turned before she said, “What is the old lady doing?”



He looked up, “She is trying to get to the little girl.” He sprayed again.



“Isn’t she scared?” she shook her hands to convey ‘scared’.



“No, not anymore.”



She tried a couple of times to form the words. “Is the building crying?”



“The building has been crying for a long time.”



-----



Orochimaru was walking on the roof of Kingdom Hospital. He walked to the edge and looked out over the lights of the city and into the darkness of the night. He raised his binoculars and looked to the horizon. There he found what he was looking for. The blinking towers of Barsebäck, the Swedish nuclear power station on the Swedish coast, on the other side of the water separating to the countries.



“Thank you, O Swedish watch towers! With your plutonium we shall force the Danes to their knees.”



He raised them again, looking with longing at his country.



“Here, Denmark,” he almost spat out the word, “Shat out of chalk and water.” He looked to Barsebäck again, “There, Sweden; hewn out in granite. Danish scum.”



He took his binoculars down and looked to the dark-night sky, with raised arms he yelled to it, “DANISH SCUM!!”



-----



The elevator-shaft was as quiet as ever, only the sounds of old metal and wheels could be heard as the lift slowly descended. When it reached the bottom, a set of doors opened in the side of the shaft, a light-beam flowing into the darkness. Kankuro pointed the flashlight around before spotting the switch at the floor. He clicked it and the roof of the elevator lit up, letting them have a look at the top outside of the lift.



Chiyo looked searchingly at the lift. “It sounded like she was scratching with her nails on the roof to get inside, to get to me.”



Kankuro was looking at the lift as well, but with a palm able doubt as opposed to his mothers’ eagerness. He glanced at his mother, then back at the lift. He stepped out onto the left before helping her on as well.



-----



The highway into Copenhagen was empty and dead in the black of night.



Suddenly sirens could be heard and the flashing lights of an ambulance tore down the road in the middle lane.



-----



Konohamaru and Udon were walking down the halls of the creepy basement of Kingdom Hospital, Konohamaru still holding the severed head awkwardly behind his smock. They turned and were about to enter the room where the bodies were kept when they stopped and tried to silently inch backwards.



Professor Hyuuga was in there, looking at the body with the missing head! Konohamaru bit his lower lip with a silent ‘shit!’. Slowly but progressively faster they backed away and rushed away from the room, running down the hall away, away. Their footsteps echoed in the silent tunnel. Konohamaru stopped at some lockers that were lining the hallway and opened the first unlocked one and put the head inside on the top-shelve. He closed it and leant back, grimacing to himself. He slid down the locker, ending up on the ground with his hands folded, banging them against his forehead. Udon didn’t say anything, but simply watched his friend as he cursed himself for the idea.



In the silence they could hear the water running in the pipes above them, and Udon couldn’t help put look at the pipes that crossed the hall from one side to another. Some of the water even escaped from some leak in the pipes, and trickled down the wall from where the pipes entered the wall. It almost sounded like the water-pressure was increasing.



-----



Chiyo was still looking intently at the lift-roof, and could hear her son making impatient noises when she noticed something. Squatting down as well as she could, she reached forward to something dark-red on the lift. It looked like drops or stains, standing out from the rest of the rust on the elevator. She reached forward and touched it with her fingers, and when she brought them back up to look, some kind of dark-red liquid was on her finger-pads.



-----



The trickle of water was increasing down the wall, almost becoming a vertical stream. The water was not clear; it was dirty, almost muddy, except the color was not brown. It was more of a mix between brown and deep red.



-----



The tiles of the parking-lot shifted. Suddenly they started sinking in an apparently random pattern, and water emerged from beneath them.



-----



The ambulance was getting closer, the front lights almost blinding with their yellow-ish light. Orochimaru observed it through his binoculars as it came under a bridge and started nearing the side of the street, before turning in at the sign which directed people to the Emergency Entrance of the Kingdom Hospital. It passed his car in the swing and continued. The youngsters who were hanging out down there suddenly started making a fuss and running around. More tiles were sinking and the street lamp started leaning to one side, almost like a sinking ship, loosing height.



He only hoped -!



Oh, too late.



The street lamp had fallen like a cut-down tree and had hit the top of the roof of his beloved red car before falling to the side. Orochimaru almost dropped his binoculars in his outrage. As if to put icing on the cake, the fire-hydrant next to his car blew its top off and started sprinkling pressurized water on anything within its radius.



-----



Kakashi was running out onto the parking lot, trying to wave all the people away.



“Get away, damn it!” he yelled at the kids running around the fire-hydrant. He had to jump to side to avoid a car, but continued yelling at the kids. “Get away! The water has destabilized the whole damn thing!”



He ran onto the tiles to get the last people away, but the tiles were sinking and moving under his feet and the water was seeping into his shoes and making his socks wet and freezing.



-----



The ambulance arrived at the Emergency Entrance, the lights on the vehicle once more messing up the image on the security-monitor. The windows were glowing with white light from the inside. It stopped in the middle of the picture, lights still turning on the roof.



-----



Kankuro and Chiyo were standing on the roof of the lift as it slowly ascended. They were looking up through the shaft, checking for anything weird. The lights almost made the walls of the shaft seems red, and the sound of the machinery nearly sounded like voices; complaining, moaning in their suffering. Kankuro stopped the lift and Chiyo took the flashlight from her son and started pointing it upwards. She lit up a small circle of the ceiling at a time, looking from corner to corner. When she had looked all over the ceiling, she started looking at the walls, paying special attention to the little places where small and large pipes came out and went down or up, where there were platforms to step on and chicken wire to keep people on the safe side. She lit up a particular corner behind one of the big pipes, behind chicken wire, deep in the corner. She thought she saw something. Kankuro shifted beside her and he was squinting as well at the place, having a weird feeling in his chest. It looked like a head.



Looking closer, Chiyo inhaled in shock as she saw her. A small see-through girl in a white nightdress with her hair up in four pig-tails on her head was sitting up there, looking down at her. She was sickly-dark around her eyes and was looking very pale and she had a bell in a long string around her neck. Old Chiyo almost thought her vision had tricked her when she heard Kankuro suddenly audibly breathe in as well.



But it couldn’t be true, could it?



Then the little girl moved the string in her hand, and she could hear the bell ring its shrill tones.



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Dear readers, allow me to thank you for coming with us to the Kingdom. We have kicked off quite cautiously so as not to leave anyone behind. Though I can promise you that things will start to take off in a fast pace already from the next episode, for there truly is something deeply wrong with these buildings, and a foreign voice is crying out. How often has it not happened to yourself that a strangers’ foreign voice has cried out to you? And how often were you willing to extent your hand to that person? Often? Rarely? Perhaps never? But this story is confined to our imagination, however limited it may be, and can never approach the real life as God has created it. Even the most inventive artist is but an ant at his feet.



My name is Lars von Trier and I wish you a vey pleasant evening. And should you feel drawn and have a wish to spend more time with us at the Kingdom then be prepared to take the Good with the Evil …



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I'd really appreciate some reviews, because this is a very diffirent kind of way for me to write, and I'd love some feedback. Was it scary at all?



Love Mulle.