Death Sentence

Final Chapter

I DIDN’T SLEEP last night.

Eight days have passed since I sent this script to the box at Østerbro post office and two days since I received a reply. It was a postcard of the Little Mermaid. All the card had on it was today’s date. The postmark was Nykøbing, the largest town in the area, approximately fifteen kilometres away. I don’t know what to deduce from that. Is he staying locally? Am I under surveillance or was it some smokescreen? Ultimately, doesn’t matter.

I can feel that the time has come.

My body is in a heightened state of alert and nothing escapes my attention. I hear every sound, see every colour and feel the slightest gust of wind against my skin. It’s as if my entire being wants to absorb every single impression while it still can. My hands refuse to relax. They constantly seek surfaces and objects to touch and I register details of the tabletop and the windowsill that I hadn’t noticed before. The veins in the wood feel like mountain ranges and I detect unevenness in the polished marble surface. My taste buds deny me whisky, the taste is too sharp, and I discover nuances in the flavour of tap water I had never noticed before. I drink a lot of water. It tastes heavenly and my throat feels constantly dry.

Outside I watch the birds pecking at the breadcrumbs I have scattered. It’s almost as if I can hear their beaks split open the seeds in the bread. When they spread their wings and take off, I see them in slow motion and I tell myself I could catch them quite easily. I would be able to anticipate their every move and there is a suppleness in my muscles that convinces me I’m faster, better controlled than they are. A sudden urge makes me run around the garden. I feel the wind against my face and the grass under my bare feet. The exertion doesn’t affect me. My breathing is under control. I can hear the air pass in and out of my lungs and airways in a steady rhythm, like mechanical bellows.

When I go back inside, the stuffy air in the house nearly suffocates me. The air feels viscous and slows down my movements. I open all the windows and doors for fifteen minutes before the air is tolerable again. A faint scent of pine from the trees outside remains after the windows have been closed. I empty the bin, which smells of the fry-up I had yesterday. The fridge is empty, but that’s all right. Even though I’m hungry, I know that my taste buds won’t allow themselves to be touched by any old food and there is no prospect of a major gourmet experience in this area. Besides, I can’t leave the house.

I’m expecting guests.

The items we will need are laid out on the dining table. I pick up the scalpel and test the blade, even though I did so earlier this morning. It’s incredibly sharp and makes a small cut in my thumb. The blood seeps out in an evergrowing drop. I swear briefly, replace the scalpel and stick my thumb in my mouth as I head to the bathroom. I get the first-aid kit from the cabinet above the sink and find a plaster. Before I attach it, I run cold water over my thumb until it feels almost numb. When the plaster is in place, I study it closely to see if the blood is still running, until the absurdity of the situation dawns on me.

I start to laugh. I can’t stop. My laughter grows louder and louder and I have to leave the bathroom to find enough room for the sound of my merriment. The whole house resounds and dust is lifted by my outburst. I start to gasp for air and have just about managed to control myself when I happen to glance at my thumb and start laughing all over again.

At last I stagger, still laughing, back to the dining table to make myself stop. The sight of the objects has the required effect and my laughter fades. I wipe the tears from my eyes and blow my nose in a piece of kitchen towel. My throat feels raw again and I drink more water.

My gaze lingers on each item on the table. I have collected them from all over the house, the kitchen, the bathroom and a locked shed outside, which I broke into with the poker from the cast-iron stand next to the wood burner. Ordinary things and tools you would find in most holiday homes. This is what I do, this is my strength: turning everyday objects into something that can wipe the smile off anyone’s face.

The light outside is fading. The days are short in December. It occurs to me that it’s nearly Christmas. The television hasn’t been on since my first night here, but now I turn it on and I see that the whole world is excited about the holidays. They’re showing the old Christmas movies, and advertising breaks are packed with colourful promotions for must-have plastic toys waiting to gather dust in children’s bedrooms. My eyes spurn the flat television image. I switch it off.

During the short time I have watched television, the last of the daylight has died away. I’m annoyed at having missed it and turn on the lights in the house. The final light I switch on is the outdoor lamp, which signals I’m ready. Then I chuck more logs on the wood burner. A large stack of logs from the shed outside is piled up next to it. More than enough.

It’s nearly time.

I listen out, but all I can hear is the roaring in the wood burner and the wind in the trees outside.

The knock on the door startles me. It’s a loud, insistent knocking on the glass window in the front door. My heart races and I think I can hear the blood rush around my veins as I go to answer it. My hand grips the cold metal handle, I push it down and open the door. A cold wind slips past the figure standing outside.

You’re wearing an overcoat and in one hand you’re holding a white plastic bag with the items I was unable to get hold of and the script. Your other hand is buried in your coat pocket. It may be holding a pistol, but you have no intention of letting me know. The hand I can see is covered by a tight-fitting black leather glove.

This time you’re not wearing sunglasses. There is no need for disguises or guesswork any more. All masks are off. Only the writer and the reader are left, ready for the final act.

You look down at my hand and the thumb with the plaster. A smile forms around your lips and you might have quipped something like ‘Have you started without me?’, but I have decided there will be no dialogue.

What is there to say?

I step back so you can enter. You close and lock the door behind you, then you follow me. Your eyes scan the living room as we proceed through the house. I’m four or five steps ahead of you until we reach the dining room. My legs are trembling slightly, but I try to conceal it and sit down on the chair at the end of the dining table. It’s a solid wood chair with armrests and I place my arms on them and look at you apprehensively. You take a roll of gaffer tape from your bag and toss it to me.

I find the end and tear off a long section, which I use to tie my ankle to the leg of the chair. Then I tie my other ankle to the other chair leg. In the meantime, you’re standing some distance from me, watching my efforts closely. I tie my right arm to the armrest with difficulty. When I have done that, I place the tape on the table. You nod and feel safe enough to leave me while you check the other rooms in the house. You find nothing and return to the dining room.

From your bag, you pull out the bottle. It’s a 21-year-old Spring Bank whisky, drawn directly from the cask and almost impossible to get hold of.

With my free hand, I push the two glasses that I have set out earlier towards you. You fill my glass generously, pour a more moderate amount for yourself and sit down on the chair opposite me. We take our glasses, raise them and study the golden liquid before we drink. My taste buds welcome the whisky. I close my eyes and savour the taste. It’s round and mild and the aftertaste lasts for several minutes.

When I open them again, our eyes meet. You nod with approval before you take another sip. I follow your example and before long we have both emptied our glasses.

You get up abruptly, take my free hand and press my wrist against the armrest. You hold it in place with your knee while you tie my lower arm to the chair. Then you check the other bindings by pulling the tape, but find that you’re satisfied with my work.

You seem to relax more now that I’m tied up and you put your coat on one of the other chairs. You take out the script from the plastic bag, put it on a chair a bit further away and open it somewhere near the ending. See here is my guess. Then you go to the dining table and inspect the tools. I have arranged them in the order in which they will be used, the scissors first. You pick them up and start cutting away my right sleeve. It’s drenched in sweat and that makes it difficult for the scissors to cut through, but after some minutes my upper arm is exposed.

The tattoo has become a little blurred in time, like ink on poor-quality paper, but the ISBN number is still legible.

You toss the scissors aside and take the scalpel from the dining table. Kneeling on my lower arm and with a hand on my shoulder, you hold me down while you sink the blade into my flesh, just above the tattoo.

The pain is like an electric shock that shoots through my whole body. I grit my teeth and clench my fists until the pain starts to subside. You take a step back without removing the scalpel and observe how it sits quivering at an angle of 90° from my upper arm. Surprisingly little blood is running from the cut, but then it’s only half a centimetre wide, so far.

You step forward again, place your knee as before and take hold of the scalpel. With a slow sawing movement, you extend the cut round my arm above the tattoo. It hurts, it hurts like hell, but it’s no longer a surprise, so I endure the agony without screaming.

When the cut reaches all the way round, I look down. The blood is running from the long incision and covers the tattoo and most of my arm down to my elbow. You take a cloth from the table and clean away the blood, but it keeps dripping so your efforts are futile.

The scalpel is sticky with blood and you wipe it on kitchen towel before proceeding to cut number two. The blade sinks in below the tattoo this time and you perform a parallel incision all the way round my arm. You use the cloth to mop up enough blood so you can check that both cuts are unbroken. They form a ribbon around my upper arm.

With an almost casual movement, you cut across the band and let the blade curve under one end which now dangles like a piece of tape. You throw the scalpel on the table and pick up the pincers lying ready.

I close my eyes while the jaws of the pincers grip the skin flap. I feel your hand on my shoulder and how you push your foot against the seat of the chair between my legs.

Then you pull.

Though I have closed my eyes, I’m blinded by a sudden explosion of light and my body arches. I can’t suppress the scream and I howl out into the living room, a prolonged primal scream that carries on until I run out of air. Then I gasp for breath, greedily sucking in the air around me, and the scream is replaced by moaning.

A moment later, I open my eyes. They are full of tears and sting with sweat dripping from my forehead, but I see you standing in front of me, studying the skin flap hanging from the jaws of the pincers. Blood is dripping from it and you drop the flap on the tiled floor, where it lands with a squelch.

My eyes can’t resist returning to the cut on my upper arm. A two-centimetre-wide piece of skin has been torn off, including the subcutaneous layer, so I can make out the contours of the muscles through the blood. To my horror, I see that less than half the ribbon has gone. Again, I gasp for air and avert my eyes. You come back and force me to lean forward as far as I can, so you can reach the last piece.

I hold my breath when I feel the pincers grip and wait for the explosion. It follows soon and I fling myself back. The chair would have fallen over if you hadn’t been standing there. Again, I scream the place down. My head and torso slump forwards and I shake all over. My breathing has become a hissing and saliva has gathered at the corners of my mouth.

I’m aware of you walking past me and stopping in front of me again. The wound burns as if a red-hot iron ring is gripping my arm, but it’s a constant pain and I can cope with it. You drop the pincers with the remaining skin flap on the floor between my feet.

I see that the whole tattoo has now gone and experience a kind of relief. Not only because no more yanking will be required, another kind of relief emerges. By losing the proof of my inauguration, I have been freed of the burden of being a writer. In the Dead Angle has been undone.

The ring around my arm is still smarting, but I try to keep calm. I hold my fingers in a cramped, crooked position and they look like gnarled twigs. The smallest movement tugs at the arm and makes the pain soar.

You pour another glass of whisky. I hear you take a sip and express your appreciation. Then you fling the remains at the open wound. My body stretches as far as the tape will allow and I yell at the ceiling. When I’m sitting down again, wheezing and panting, you show me the lighter. It’s a cheap yellow disposable lighter that I found in a kitchen drawer, but it works, and you demonstrate this a couple of times in front of my half-open eyes.

The whisky ignites reluctantly. The flames are small and move drowsily across the wound and down my arm. It takes a moment before I feel the heat. It begins as an almost pleasant sensation, but quickly grows hotter until it becomes unbearable. My body reacts instinctively by trying to get away from the fire. I struggle under the tape, throwing myself from side to side in the chair, but I can’t get out. The smell of burned hair and flesh reaches my nostrils and I cry out in despair.

You beat out the last flames with the cloth. My arm still feels as if it’s ablaze and I have to look to check the fire really has been put out. The hairs have been singed off and my lower arm is red. The wound is covered by a black crust, which has cracked in a few places where the blood has seeped through. But the bleeding has practically stopped.

My face is drenched in sweat. Snot hangs from my nose and tears fill my eyes. I want to spit all the time and rising nausea makes me take quick, deep breaths. My fingers have started to tingle and I feel woozy. My head lolls from side to side. I try to get my breathing under control. I breathe through my nose and spray snot on to my chest, which heaves and lowers at a manic pace.

The dizziness subsides and my fingers stop tingling. I hear you pick up something from the dining table and go over to the wall, where you insert a plug into a power point and flick a switch. You put the iron on the floor near the chair. I can see the red light that indicates it isn’t hot enough yet.

My heart starts to beat faster. Not because of the iron, but because of what will precede it.

I shake my head and cry. A dry sobbing fills my chest and leaves my mouth in spasms that make my whole body convulse.

You’re standing by the chair with the script, flicking a couple of pages ahead as you nod with satisfaction. Everything is going according to plan.

The red light on the iron goes out.

I try to push the chair backwards, but you place a foot on the seat between my legs to prevent it from moving. You have picked up the garden shears from the table without me noticing and you grab hold of my right hand. I clench it as hard as I can and thrash around in the chair. You let go of my hand and take a step back. I relax and glare at you with hate through my tear-stained eyes. You wait with your hands on your hips. Your eyes radiate disgust. There is no pity. And why should there be? I have asked for this, I have written this.

It’s no use. There is no way out.

I nod and spread my fingers. When you approach, I turn my head away and close my eyes. Again you place your foot on the chair and grip my wrist. My hand is shaking, but still I keep my fingers extended, straining as if I’m trying to catch a ball. You force the jaws of the shears around the inner joint of my index finger. The metal feels cold against my skin. You tighten your hold of my wrist and press down hard against the armrest. I grit my teeth and hold my breath.

The sound is no different from when I cut branches in the garden at the cottage. A quick snip. Something falls on the floor with a thud. It could be an apple core or a carrot, but in this case it’s six centimetres off my right index finger.

My hand contracts as if it has been electrocuted. The pain shoots up my arm, hurtles through my shoulder and drills into my spine, which straightens up with a jerk that sends the excess energy like a whiplash out through my mouth in the form of a long, high-pitched wail. My brain seems to expand and press against the inside of my skull. The howling dies out when I have no more air left in my lungs. My teeth are clattering as if from cold, but the rest of my body is on fire.

Slowly, I turn my head back and force myself to open my eyes. I straighten out my fingers. They’re twitching and beads of sweat sit in the tiny hairs on every one of them. When I see the stump of my index finger, I scream again, not from pain, but from terror. There is one centimetre left below the knuckle, and the cut is unnaturally clean. The blood drips on the floor at a steady pace. In the puddle, I can see the severed finger. It looks unreal, as if it had been transformed into a papier mâché copy as soon as it was liberated from my body.

You seize the chance to grip my open hand and twist the stump upwards. With your other hand, you take the iron and, without hesitation, you press it against the stump. It hisses and a little puff of grey smoke rises from under the sole plate. My hand contracts, but you have a firm hold and you press the iron firmly against the cut. The red light comes on and you return the iron to the floor.

The smell of burned flesh finds my nose and I can no longer suppress my nausea. I fling myself forwards and throw up on the floor between my feet. You step back a little while my stomach forces its contents up through my throat in powerful spasms. I nearly choke. It feels as if there isn’t enough room for my lungs to expand and that’s the reason I can’t breathe. You slap my face and the shock makes me gasp. I cough and splutter and my breathing is jolted back into action like an old tractor.

My finger is no longer bleeding. A black crust covers the cut and the heat has formed blisters on the rest of the stump so it looks as if my finger has melted from the end right down to the knuckle. I try to throw up again, but only produce a sensation of choking and eerie noises in my throat.

I didn’t notice where you put the shears while you cauterized the wound, but suddenly you’re standing there holding them again. The jaws open and shut in front of my eyes.

You have to use both hands to sever my thumb. I can’t help clenching my hand, but you force the shears around the thumb so I can do nothing to prevent the blades from sinking into the flesh and crushing their way through the bone until it gives in. I don’t hear the stump falling – I’m too busy screaming.

You’ve got fed up with the noise, perhaps you’re also concerned that someone might hear me, so you tear off a piece of gaffer tape and press it across my mouth. Breathing through my nose is difficult for me so you make a cut in the tape to enable me to breathe, but not scream very loudly.

When you have finished, I look at my hand. I must have pulled my hand back hard while you cut. A couple of centimetres of skin have been scraped off and the cut is at the outer joint. The exposed bone stump glows white against the blood. The tip of my thumb is lying on the floor, still displaying the plaster I stuck on it some hours before. I’m reminded of my earlier fit of laughter and I grin hysterically before the pain makes me clench my jaw.

The uneven cut makes it hard to seal the wound with the iron and the stench envelopes us both. Halfway through you take a couple of steps back and cough, but I’m not afforded the same luxury and am overwhelmed by nausea. The tape turns my coughing into an intermittent mumbling and the exertion makes my temples throb.

When the wound has finally been sealed, you get to work on the rest of my fingers.

At some point, I pass out. I don’t know how long for, but my first impression when I resurface is of the sound of Christmas carols. When I open my eyes, you’re sitting in front of the television with a whisky. For a moment I don’t know where I am, but when I remember I panic and thrash around while I try to scream through the tape.

Reluctantly, you take your eyes off the television and study me as if you’re deciding whether or not I intend to stay conscious.

Then you get up, put down your glass and sever the rest of my fingers to the sound of Christmas carols sung by a girls’ choir in a village church.

The soleplate of the iron is black with burned flesh and blood. I have grown used to the pain, but when all ten stumps are lying at my feet, I still scream. Perhaps from the recognition that I have permanently lost my tools and, consequently, my identity. I’m no longer a writer. It’s physically impossible for me to type on a keyboard and communicate my fantasies to paper. The instruments I used to hurt the ones I love are no longer part of my body. My hands have been turned into shapeless lumps of meat and bone – burned, bloody and swollen beyond recognition. The critics would have a field day. This must be what they think I deserve – Frank Føns reduced to a whining freak incapable of ever writing another word. The victim of my own abominable sentences. The world will be a better place without my scribbling to taint literature.

My worst critic waits until I have stopped screaming into the tape before ripping it off in one quick pull. I don’t feel pain, but I’m aware that skin from my lips comes off with it and the taste of blood fills my mouth. I swallow all the air I can in one deep breath, cough and spit blood.

Suddenly you appear with the two wedges I have spent the last couple of days making. I got the wood from one of the shelves in the kitchen cupboard, sawed them into triangles and sanded them down. The angle had to be just right, as wide as possible, but small enough to reach all the way in.

I swallow a couple of times before I open my mouth. You press one wedge into the left side of my mouth with such force that my jaw is nearly dislocated. I groan to the extent that I can with my mouth wide open. You insert the second wedge into the right-hand side and tap it into place with the side of your hand. My lips are fully stretched and it feels as if they could snap like elastic at any time.

You bend down and pick up the pincers. They are covered in blood and vomit and slip out between your gloved fingers. You pick them up again and wipe them and your gloves with a cloth. My mouth fills with saliva. I can’t swallow so I lower my head to allow it to dribble out of my mouth and down my chin. You place one hand on my forehead and force my head back. You hold the pincers with the other and tap them tentatively against my front teeth. The sound of metal against enamel clatters in my head. I close my eyes.

Your thumb finds my eyesocket while you place your fingers across my forehead. I feel the pincers grip a front tooth and you put your foot on the seat between my thighs. The tooth creaks as you tighten the pincers and when you pull I hear a terrifying grating sound as the roots of my tooth are torn from my jaw. My head snaps back and there is a stabbing pain in my neck. I groan and lift my head again. The pain from my hands drowns out everything else so I have to feel with my tongue to check if the tooth has been ripped out. My gum feels ragged and blood flows into my mouth.

Before I have time to empty my mouth, you get hold of me again, push my head back and clamp the next tooth with the pincers. The blood is running down my throat and I try to cough. Drops of blood spray across my cheeks. You pull again and my head snaps back for the second time.

I slump forwards and the blood runs out of my mouth and drips on to my trousers. The holes where my teeth used to be feel like craters.

You go over to the wood burner while I carry on bleeding. Saliva and blood form a sticky paste that flows out of my mouth like slime. My whole head aches and my jaw muscles are sore from being stretched for such a long time.

It takes five to ten minutes before the poker is hot enough and with some difficulty you hold my head by my hair and press the iron tip against the wound in my upper jaw. It sizzles and when the poker hits my upper lip, I can feel it split. The heat makes me jerk my head so violently that you are left holding a clump of my hair. Irritably you shake it off your fingers like a piece of stubborn Sellotape.

My head dangles back and forth and from side to side. I find it hard to stay focused and I’m not really aware of what is going on around me. It’s like I’m sedated, possibly because my body has short-circuited my overloaded nervous system. I don’t know how, but through the fog I’m aware that you carry on with the other teeth. When my upper mouth has been cleared, you start work on my lower jaw. This time you don’t pull them out, but fetch a hammer and bash them into my mouth with one blow. It sounds like my jaw breaks and a dart of pain penetrates the fog and lights up like a flashlight. I spit out blood and teeth and am almost grateful when you close the wound with the red-hot poker.

There is no mirror, thank God, but I imagine that my mouth is one gaping big hole of blood, flesh and rubble. My tongue sits in the middle, red and untouched like a stigma in a flower.

My woozy state displeases you. From the table you fetch a green plastic bottle which you hold under my nose. The ammonia attacks my nostrils and I straighten up and open my eyes. I see you pick up the pincers and the poultry shears. With an almost dispassionate movement, I try to turn my head, but you push the pincers into my mouth and clamp my tongue. Pulling directly up to the ceiling, you force my head back. The missing teeth provide you with easy access and you cut off my tongue with a V-incision as far back as you can reach. The blood spurts out of my mouth, but all I notice is my severed tongue, which you place carefully on the seat between my thighs. The blood makes it unrecognizable.

My head lolls forwards to drain the blood from my mouth. My jumper is soaked and the floor is red around the chair. It’s hard to say how much blood I have lost, but it looks serious and I feel distinctly dizzy every time I raise my head.

You cauterize the wound in my mouth with forceful pressure from the poker. It cools rapidly and you have to go back and forth between the wood burner and the chair a couple of times until you’re satisfied, then you yank out the wedges. I can barely close my mouth. My jaw muscles temporarily feel slack, overstretched, so they can no longer function.

My head slumps forward and my chin rests against my chest.

Perhaps I could have stopped it? After all, I wrote the script, but it could have been a trap. What would have prevented me from hiding in the bushes outside and whacking you at the back of your head with a shovel while you waited for me to open the door? I would have tied up your ankles and wrists with the gaffer tape you had brought, dragged you into the living room and drunk the single malt whisky you had brought. It would have tasted fantastic. It would be a victory toast, like a black-and-white photo of a great game hunter with his trophy. When you woke up, I could have forced a confession out of you, tortured you with the same instruments you have used on me until you admitted to killing Mona Weis, Verner Nielsen and Linda Hvilbjerg. I would make sure to record your confession on a dictaphone or on a video camera. Then I would call the police and I would be cleared of every suspicion and proclaimed a hero. I would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country. My books would sell again and this script would be published and turned into a film. Everyone would be dying to hear what had really happened in the holiday home near Nykøbing in my own words. You, too, would become a celebrity. Newspapers and TV companies would offer you lots of money for an interview with you in your cell. You might even write your own version of events and we would meet in talk shows, you handcuffed to two police officers and me in a new suit with manicured nails. Line and the girls would be in the audience and afterwards the four of us would go out for dinner. I would tell them that I had quit drinking and would never write another book again. And I would have kept my word for a very long time … or for several months.

Oh, yes, I might have been able to save my life, but I wouldn’t have been able to save myself.

The ammonia stings my nose and my body jerks. I cough. Slime and blood are forced from my mouth and stain your clothes. You ignore it. Instead you grab my head and force open an eyelid with your thumb. I try to focus, but it isn’t easy and my eyelid glides shut as soon as you let go.

I’m freezing. My clothes are soaked with blood and sweat and my entire body is shaking from a combination of cold and shock.

I feel you pinching my eyelid again, this time with your thumb and index finger, pulling the skin out from the eyeball. The scalpel gleams in the light from the lamp above the table and I see you stare directly into my eye with deep concentration as you slice off my eyelid. I try instinctively to close my eye, but nothing happens and I can no longer keep visual impressions at bay. Blood runs into my eye and dyes the room pink. I shake my head and try to move it as far away from you as possible, but you get hold of my hair and force my head back. I squeeze my eyes shut, but I can still see the scalpel approach the other eye in the red mist. You cannot pinch my other eyelid and hold my head still at the same time, so instead you sink the scalpel into my skin just below the eyebrow. With a sawing motion, you cut along the brow bone until you reach the root of my nose. You toss the scalpel aside, get hold of the skin flap and pull it off like a plaster that’s no longer needed.

When you release my hair, my head drops to the side and comes to rest on my shoulder. The blood makes it almost impossible to see anything but shadows, but I’m aware of you going to the wood burner to fetch the poker. Shortly afterwards you get hold of my hair again, force my head back and seal the wound above the eye with the poker. When you repeat this with my other eye, my body goes into spasms so the metal hits my eyeball, which sizzles. I scream.

The red veil before my eyes is suddenly lifted and I see you standing with a glass in your hand. The water drips from my face and it causes pain to shoot through my tongue stump when I tried to direct some of it into my mouth. My throat feels dry and swollen and I try to ask for water, but the only sound to come out of my crater of a mouth is a dry hiss. Nevertheless, you understand the hint and go out into the kitchen where you calmly refill the glass and return. I lean back my head and open my mouth so you can pour in the liquid. It’s like eating ice cubes and firecrackers the same time. The pain makes me cough, but my craving for the water forces me to swallow what I can.

There is a big cotton wool cloud to the right in my field of vision which refuses to go away.

You go over to the dining table. It’s starting to resemble a workbench in a slaughterhouse. The scalpel, the garden shears, the pincers and the poultry shears are lying in a pool of blood, and small chunks of flesh and fragments of teeth are strewn between the tools. The neat layout I prepared earlier has been spoiled.

The line of instruments has almost reached the end, only two remain.

I take a deep breath when you pick up the matches. You hold the box up to your ear and shake it. It rattles. It’s almost full. Satisfied, you slip it into your back pocket and pick up the petrol can. It’s a small chubby container of black plastic. It contains at most five litres, but that will suffice. I found it in the shed, but had to top it up with petrol from my own car. The blend of lawnmower and car petrol probably wouldn’t do either of them any good, but it burns all right.

You squat in front of me and open the container. The detachable spout is clipped between the handle and the container, and it appears to be stuck because you almost topple over when you finally yank it loose. I can smell petrol. Even though I try to breathe calmly, I start to hyperventilate. The sweat pours from my forehead and runs from my armpits. No more ammonia is required. My senses are working overtime, every one of your movements is registered with rising terror.

Slowly, you screw the spout to the plastic container’s thread and tighten it.

I try to plead for my life, but the only noise coming from my chapped lips is a mix of vowels and sobbing. The tears flow from my exposed eyeballs and I tilt my head.

You look at me, clearly repulsed by the sight, which only seems to motivate you further. You get up and hold the petrol container over me. I squirm in the chair as the liquid cascades over my body. My injuries wake up and pump SOS signals through my nervous system. I writhe, but you carry on pouring. A squirt hits my face and my eyes seem to melt. Colours explode in front of my eyes and the muscles around them instinctively try to close even though there is nothing left to close with. I cough and splutter as the petrol finds its way to my mouth.

The splashing stops and you toss aside the container. It lands with a hollow thud, jumps a couple of times before landing on its side. The smell is unbearable. Fumes force their way into my lungs and cause me to retch, but nothing comes up.

The petrol has dissolved most of the blood on what used to be my hands. They seem to boil in the fluid and my finger stumps wriggle comically in agony.

I hear a rattling noise and I look up. You’re holding the matchbox with a wry smile. The pain disappears temporarily and is replaced by terror. I rock the chair back and forth, but it hardly moves.

The first match doesn’t catch. I hear sulphur rub against sulphur, but the familiar crackling of a flame fails to follow. You shrug, change your grip of the match and the box and strike the sulphur against the side with a quick movement. Sparks fly and a flame flares up. You hold the match at an angle so the fire can take.

Our eyes meet.

Your eyes radiate a combination of anticipation and respect. I take a breath and hold it.

We have reached the end of the road.

The match spins towards me as if in slow motion. The flame grows small and blue as it goes through the air, but it carries on burning and is heading for my groin. Before it lands, the fumes ignite with a whoosh. The fire is blue, red and yellow. It spreads up across my body in an instant.

The first few seconds I feel nothing at all. I can see the flames, taste them almost, but I don’t feel anything. My jumper starts to melt and there is a smell of burned plastic. It starts to get hot from my neck and upwards. My hair is burning and the temperature rises. My hands are starting to hurt. The stumps resemble torches and they twitch, but there is nothing I can do. My body arches and tries to break the chair. It throws itself around in an attempt to avoid the flames. The pain is unbearable. It fills my entire body with a blinding white explosion, an explosion that never ends, but carries on growing without limit or centre. My skin is melting. My screams are muffled into a gurgling sound as if someone had poured liquid lead down my throat. My hair falls off in burning clumps and lands in the blood under the chair with a hiss. The tape comes apart on my left wrist and my arm jumps up towards the ceiling in an attempt to escape my burning body. It looks like a runaway version of the arm of the Statue of Liberty and flails around the air with its newfound freedom. I don’t control it, but it soon realizes that it can’t tear itself loose and returns to my body. What was once my palm slams into my face and covers my mouth.

The pain has disappeared or has grown so strong that I can no longer contain it. My senses implode. They melt and leave me in darkness and silence. Sounds can no longer reach me, nor can impressions or smells, only darkness. It’s nice here. Time seems to have stopped, the moment will last for ever, but I know there is very little time left.

That’s OK.

I have got what I wanted.

Hopefully I have atoned for some of my mistakes, made amends to all the people I let down and hurt, paid for the insults and malice I spread about me. It’s all far too late, of course. It won’t make much of a difference now, but at least the world can carry on without the poison that is Frank Føns.

The foggy spot to the right in my field of vision slowly changes shape, it condenses in some places and fades in others. It turns into a photo. A light-coloured picture, mainly in pale shades. Three figures on a bench. They’re all dressed in white and bathed in sunshine. A woman and two girls in summer dresses. The woman is sitting in the middle. She and the older of the girls look knowingly into the camera, while the younger girl is busy with her mother’s hair. In the woman’s hair is a garland of flowers, tied together a little clumsily and with an uneven distribution of white and yellow colours. The little girl is grinning broadly while the others smile at the lens with more restraint. The older girl’s smile is a little ironic, as if she has noticed something about the photographer’s face which shouldn’t be there, a secret she can share with the others and laugh at. The woman is smiling, too. There are tiny laughter lines around her eyes, which are half closed from her smile and the sunshine. Her mouth is slightly open and you can see the bottom two of her front teeth. On one side of her cheek, you can make out a dimple and, in an extension of that, a small wrinkle.

I think she smiles often.