Authors: Mikkel Birkegaard
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.