Thirteen, Fourteen... Little Boy Unseen (20 page)

59

“
D
R.
W
INTER?”

The old man looked at me like he was confused. He was standing in the doorway of his house, which was located on the beach of Enoe, one of the most beautiful places you could live in our area, at least that’s how I felt. I had always dreamt of living in one of these houses on the beach.

“Yes? Who are you?” the old man asked.

I reached out my hand. “My name is Rebekka Franck. This is Sune Johansen. We work for
Zeeland Times
. Could we talk with you for a second?”

“Rebekka Franck? I know you. I read your stories in my paper all the time. What on earth do you want to talk to me about?”

“The Toft family,” I said.

Dr. Winter looked down. “Ah, them. Well, I guess there’s no harm in that. Come on in.”

We followed him into the living room, where we sat on the couch looking out at the ocean. It was gorgeous. Breathtaking even. It suddenly occurred to me that I did want a house of my own. I wanted a place I could decorate the way I wanted to, a place that was ours, just ours, just Sune’s and mine. I wanted a house like this one.

“It’s such an old story,” the doctor said with a sigh.

“I know. But we would like to know it. We would like to hear your side of it. Please. We want to know what happened to Alex and Hans Toft.”

The doctor smiled. “I ran this program under the title
Gender reassignment
. Basically, we tried to prove that gender isn’t something you are born with, it is taught and could be altered by the nature of what you are exposed to during childhood. So parents came to us if their children suffered from what we called
gender confusion,
like if their little boy dressed up as a girl or vice versa. We tried to influence them in the right way. Basically, to make life easier for them.”

“So you tried to reprogram gays?” I asked, wondering how people could be so ignorant still, even back in the nineties.

The doctor snorted. “They weren’t necessarily gay. More like what we today would call transgender. In my opinion, they were simply confused. We tried to help them.”

“You and Dr. Korner?” I asked.

“Yes. We did a big research program and published it. It was quite the big deal back then.”

“So, at what point did Tina and Dan Toft approach you?”

The doctor cleared his throat. “Well, they had troubles with their daughter Alexandra…”

“Alex,” Sune said.

“Yes, she preferred to be called Alex. The poor girl lived under the conviction that she was really a boy. So, we tried to help her in any way we could. She became a huge part of our research project. You can read all about it in our thesis. It was published in many medical journals all over the world. We did some groundbreaking research.”

“I bet you did,” I said, wondering what all this research had done to the poor little girl. I was starting to get annoyed with this guy. I hated doctors who thought they were gods.

“So, what happened to the twins? All we know is that they ran away from home,” I said.

The doctor’s face froze. He stared at me, looking like he was figuring out what to say. “She was admitted to a mental institution,” he said. “She suffered from severe schizophrenia. She committed suicide when she went home.” The doctor sighed and shook his head. “It was tragic. She wasn’t well. Somehow, she had gotten ahold of a pair of scissors and…well. The parents told me.”

“But the neighbors told us they ran away?” I asked.

“Well, the parents never told anyone what had really happened. Guess they were too afraid of what the neighbors would think. The boy did run away from home. I guess he blamed his parents for her suicide. Anyway, that’s all I know.”

I pulled out the photo given to me by the neighbor and looked at it. I felt so bad for the poor girl. The suicide gave Hans Toft the motive. I looked at Sune. “Do you have a picture of Jeppe?”

Sune shrugged. “I might have one in my phone, why?”

“Show it to Dr. Winter, will you please?”

“Sure.” Sune flipped through his pictures, then found one of him and Jeppe at the Internet Café and showed it to him.

“Is this Hans Toft?” I asked.

The doctor put on his glasses and looked at the photo. “Yes, that’s him,” he said. “I think…but, wait a second. The mole.” He looked at the picture once again, then at me from above his glasses. “That is not Hans Toft,” he said.

60

A
LEX
T
OFT
had heard everything from behind the door. He had entered the doctor’s house through an open window in the basement, and now he was watching them through the door leading to the kitchen. He was sweating heavily and trying hard to restrain himself from just walking in there and shooting all of them. He knew that he would have to at some point.

But it had to be at the right time.

“Look at the mole,” the old doctor said. Alex could see him through the crack in the door. He was pointing at the phone, and then at the picture the woman was holding.

If only you had killed her while you had the chance, you idiot!

Shut up, Hans.

You shut up, Alex! Stupid…

“The man in this picture has a mole on the right side of his nose, whereas the boy in this picture has the mole on the left side,” the doctor continued. “There is no way this can be Hans Toft. It has to…I don’t know how this can be, but it has to be Alexandra.”

That’s it. That’s your cue!

Alex held the gun tightly between his hands, then took in a deep breath.

“Here goes nothing,” he mumbled, right before he kicked the door to the living room. It shattered, and Alex walked inside, pointing the gun at the three people.

“You’re absolutely right, dear Doctor,” he said.

Their baffled faces were worth it all.

“Alexandra?” Dr. Winter said. He gasped and held a hand to his chest.

“At your service. Or, wait a minute. I think I have been for most of my LIFE!” Alex walked closer with the gun pointing directly at the doctor. He wanted to shoot right now, just finish him off. Just the sight of the doctor that had tortured him his entire childhood made him so angry he could hardly restrain himself. But, he had to. It wasn’t over just yet. The doctor needed to pay.

“But…but how is this possible?” The doctor said, stuttering.

“I told you, dear Doctor. I told you numerous times.” Alex walked closer and held the gun to the doctor’s temple. The doctor whimpered. Alex leaned over and yelled in his face. “I am not a girl!”

“Jeppe, please,” Sune said. “There’s no need to hurt any more people.”

Alex turned his head and stared at him. Then, he swung the gun and hit Sune with it. Sune fell backwards. The whiny Rebekka Franck started screaming.

“I thought you would be my brother,” Alex said. “Now, you mean nothing to me.”

Alex returned to the doctor and pressed the gun to his forehead again. “Now, dear Doctor, I would like to tell these nice people the entire story, if you don’t mind. I think they deserve it, don’t you?”

“What do you mean the entire story?” Rebekka Franck asked.

“Of course, you wouldn’t tell them. Why should you do that, Doctor dear? But I can. I can tell them.”

Rebekka Franck stared at Alex. He smiled. “All of my life, I was told I was a girl, when really I’m not.”

“We know they didn’t accept you…” Rebekka said.

“NO!” Alex yelled.

Rebekka jumped.

“It wasn’t like that,” Alex continued. “It wasn’t that I thought I was a boy. I WAS a boy. I was originally born as a boy. Right, Doctor?”

Doctor Winter whimpered and nodded.

“See, my parents had twins,” Alex said. “Twin brothers. But the doctors were supposed to perform a simple procedure when I was just a child. But something went wrong, didn’t it? Didn’t it, Doctor!”

“Y…yes. Yes, it did.”

“Both my brother and I had problems urinating from birth. A simple circumcision would fix the problem, they told our parents. What should have been a routine operation destroyed my life. Rather than perform the operation with a blade, the surgeons used a faulty cauterizing needle. My brother went through the operation just fine, but the electrical equipment malfunctioned while I was on the operating table, leaving me with injuries to my genitals. I was burnt. My penis was gone. Months later, my parents still didn’t know what to do with their disfigured son. Until they were introduced to Dr. Winter and Dr. Korner, who believed that nurture, rather than biology, was the significant factor in determining gender, and as it so happened to be, my brother and I represented the perfect opportunity to test the theory. The doctors’ proposal was for me to be raised as a girl, alongside my twin brother. They couldn’t recreate what had been burned, but they could surgically make me a girl. Under no circumstances was I to be told that I was really a boy. After yet another surgery, I became Alexandra. With hormones and the right influences, they were determined to make me a girl, no matter the cost. And, for years, it seemed that they’d succeeded. At least, according to the two doctors’ thesis that they wrote and published, but they failed to mention how miserable my life was and how I constantly tried to tell the world that I didn’t feel like a girl, even though everyone told me that’s what I was. In the end, they all just decided I was CRAZY and admitted me.”

“So…so, you killed your brother when you returned home? It was him they found, wasn’t it?” Rebekka Franck asked.

“I stabbed him with a pair of scissors. I cut off his penis and he bled to death. I watched him all night as he died. I hated him for being everything I wanted to be. I hated them all. My parents, the pastor who told them to whip the defiance out of me, the doctors who tried to change me. When my brother died, so did Alexandra. Instead, I became him, I became my brother. I ran away. I used my brother’s name until I changed it to Jeppe Kastberg, so no one in my family could ever find me. My parents never told anyone what really happened. Their daughter was dead, that was all they said to the few of their closest relatives. Their son had run away from home. It wasn’t completely wrong. I think they believed it was less embarrassing that way. I didn’t see them again until the day I killed them. They hardly recognized me. Years after I escaped, I went through another change. I cut my hair and worked the streets for years. You won’t believe how much some men will pay to sleep with a girl that looks like a little boy. Finally, I had earned enough money to get a sex change. Lots of people in the streets do that. After six years of hormonal treatments and an operation, I was finally a boy again. Finally, I could be who I was supposed to be. I became a police officer, but could never forget my childhood. All my life, I had thought I was wrong. That everything about me was all wrong. Do you have any idea how that feels? Then, one day, I decided to get my files from the hospital, and in reading them, I learned that I had actually been born a boy. I had been right all along. I could never forgive. Nor could I find peace. I had to do something.”

“So, you killed your parents?”

“It wasn’t planned. It just happened. I wanted to visit them for the first time since I left, but when I got there and we sat on that couch in that house where it had all taken place, I simply snapped. I had worn my uniform to make them proud of me. To let them see that I had made something of myself. Something inside of me shattered when I remembered all this. I don’t remember doing it, but I grabbed the baton and simply started beating them. The anger inside of me was let loose and I couldn’t hold it back any longer. After that, there was no way back. I had to punish all of them.”

“Why Leonora?” Rebekka Franck asked.

Alex turned and looked at her. A new wave of fury rushed over him. “Leonora?” he asked, while gritting his teeth. “The bitch broke my heart. She ripped it out and stepped on it. I loved her. She thought I was a lesbian, and humiliated me, the bitch. They all got what was coming to them.” Alex felt tears roll across his cheeks, and wiped them with his arm. Why was he crying all of a sudden?

He turned and looked at the doctor, with his heart racing in his chest, racing with rage. “It all started with you. You and your ideas of
gender reassignment
.” Alex pressed the gun hard into the doctor’s forehead and put a finger on the trigger.

“So many lives destroyed, just because of you and your ideas!”

“Please, don’t hurt me,” the doctor pleaded. “I only tried to help. I never meant to hurt you. You must know that. Please, don’t hurt me. You’re not well. You have clearly lost contact with yourself and who you are. You need help, Alex. Don’t hurt me. We can figure it out.”

“I have to.”

Alex looked into the eyes of the doctor one last time before he pulled the trigger.

61

I
SCREAMED
as the gun went off, but it was drowned out by the sound of the blast. I watched as the bullet went through the doctor’s head and slammed into the wall behind him, while blood spurted onto the white paint.

Alex Toft panted and was pushed backwards from the blow. As soon as he had regained his balance, he turned the gun to point it at Sune and me. I gasped and put my hands in the air.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” I said. “For everything that has happened to you, but there is no need for anyone else to be hurt.”

My voice was breaking. I was about to scream and cry at the same time. The terrifying image of the bullet going through the doctor’s head kept flickering in my mind.

“Please, don’t hurt us. We have children. You know them. They need us. You’re angry, and I understand why, but please don’t take it out on us. It’s over, Alex. Everyone who hurt you back then is dead. Isn’t it enough?”

Alex was sweating. His face was red with restraint. He gritted his teeth and panted while pointing the gun at us. In the distance, I could hear sirens. Someone had called the police, probably when they heard the gunshot. The sound filled me with hope.