Die weisse Wüste

Fog-veined fjords vomit a coal-black brig into a milk-white void; Captain Gaustad, a tyrant carved from obsidian, rules through rape, whip-crack, and rum, his eyes twin furnaces in a frost-bitten skull. Below deck, tar-streaked bodies bruise each other in a frenzy of spilled grog and predatory hunger; above, auroras sneer at human cruelty. Mutiny detonates like a harpoon in a whale flank—blood blooms across hoarfrost sails, the wheel spins crazed, and the vessel groans toward its own icy sarcophagus. When the berg rams the hull, splinters fly like sacrificial splinters from a pagan altar; the sea swallows shrieks, boots, hymnals, sins. Dawn reveals a blinding tabula rasa: two silhouettes, Björn and Sigurd, crawl ashore, ribs etched against the achromatic waste, breaths crystallizing into fragile psalms of survival. They slog through dunes of salt and powdered bone, past frozen corpses locked in eternal tango, until the horizon itself seems to bleed milk-light. Hunger gnaws memories; hallucinations of Gaustad’s grin flicker like northern ghosts. One man dreams of fjord-mothers rocking empty cradles; the other hears ship bells beneath the drifts. Their footprints stitch a short-lived scripture across the immaculate parchment—then wind erases the text, leaving only the echo of a captain’s laugh ricocheting between glaciers.