Death Sentence

Prologue

Until recently I had only killed people on paper.

As it happened, I was good at it. Good enough to make a living from it and so experienced that I could refer to it as my job. Being able to write full-time in a country the size of Denmark is something of a privilege, but there are those who will argue that I’m not a ‘proper writer’ or what I write aren’t ‘proper books’.

I have had to put up with criticism, ridicule even, my whole career, and at times I have secretly agreed with my detractors. It’s not easy to admit, but when critics accuse me of laziness and cynicism, of resorting to shock tactics to make up for weaknesses in a plot, they are not altogether wrong.

But the story you’re about to read is something else entirely.

I know it will be unlike anything I have ever written. Normally I’m invisible, the anonymous narrator who reveals the story without drawing attention to himself. But this time I can’t hide. I have to reveal myself. And this introduction is primarily for my own benefit, a reminder of my project, a wagging finger, telling me what to do and on what terms. That’s what motivates me.

Because I must go on and I must do so alone.

I’m cut off from the world. There are no distractions. At night, the darkness and the silence are as dense as though I were in a bunker. No sounds or impressions can reach me.

But then again, I don’t need outside inspiration.

What follows here has already happened to me and merely needs communicating through my fingers and a keyboard to the computer. The events of the past week have forced me to train the spotlight on myself and document what’s happened while it’s still fresh in my mind and I have sufficient time left. There is no filter. No possible interpretation or perspective can show me or my role in the story in a better light. A shame, really, but no matter how tempted I might be to embellish the distressing and dreadful incidents I have taken part in recently, this time I can’t make it up.

In a way, it’s liberating.

I don’t need to lie.

The technique is different, too. I won’t have to resort to a range of literary devices to serve the plot or build the tension. I can write it as it is, without beating about the bush. The protagonist won’t need to look in the mirror to give the reader an idea of his appearance because the protagonist in this story is me, Frank Føns, a 46-year-old writer, of medium build and height, slim, with dark hair, a closely trimmed beard and a pair of steel-grey eyes which I have been told don’t blink very often.

There, that’s that out of the way.

Had it not been for the gravity of the situation, I would probably have relished my newfound creative freedom. I have some regrets I didn’t try this experiment earlier. Not that I haven’t launched into literary experimentation before, but I discovered early, too early perhaps, a formula that worked and I’ve stuck to it ever since.

But not now.

The rules of the game have changed.

I have been freed from my own and others’ expectations and conventions. I don’t need to worry about conforming to rules determining what a writer can or cannot do. Just as well, really, as I’m forced to start with one of the biggest clichés in the genre, the event that set everything in motion, a telephone call …