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.