Death Sentence (36 page)

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.