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.