Nine, Ten ... Never Sleep Again (24 page)

The man was
looking
in the windows of the French doors leading into
the kitchen. It was dark inside the mansion by the ocean. A small light under
the door revealed that there was someone in the other room next to the kitchen.
Just as he had hoped.

The man lifted his gloved hand and smashed it
through the small window, then stuck his hand through and unlocked the door. He
opened it without making any sound at all. Smoothly he slid through the door
and into the woman's kitchen. Carefully he closed the door behind him, while
stepping on the broken glass underneath his heavy boots.

The man turned and looked at the perfect
kitchen. Knives were hanging on the wall. He grabbed one and looked at it in
the moonlight coming from outside. Then he sighed with a deep feeling of
satisfaction while putting it back. He reached into his own sports bag and
found his own set of knives rolled up in their bag. Like a professional chef he
unfolded the bag and rolled the knives out on the table.

What a beautiful sight to the man's eyes. Clean
blades, sharpened to perfection. Almost a pity he had to mess them up. Cutting
through meat and bones always made them dull. The man picked one out and put
the rest back in his bag. Then he approached the door leading to the living
room where he could tell the TV was on.

The man had studied the woman's daily routine
for weeks now and knew she always dozed off to her favorite show,
The Sopranos
, before she went to the
bathroom at exactly ten-thirty. She was as precise as a clock. She would go
into the kitchen and grab a glass of water that she would bring to put next to
her bed for the night. She had a hard time sleeping lately and that made her
thirsty.

The man walked out of the kitchen door and into
the hallway while he could hear the theme song for
The Sopranos
, and then the TV was shut off.

The man sat down on a chair in the corner of the
guest bedroom and waited, listened to the woman performing her routines, like
he had done many times before, but this time was different. This was the big
finish,
le grand finale
, as they
said in French.

The man glanced at his reflection in the mirror
on the dresser. He touched his pale skin and followed one of the veins with his
finger. Then he smiled at himself. He had been looking forward to this moment
for all of his life. Prepared for it, dreamt about it, arranged it into
details, waiting for the right time and to be in the right place.

And the best of it? He was just starting out.

The old Mrs.
Heinrichsen
let out a small shriek. The spider in her
bathroom sink had startled her. They always did. She shook her head and turned
on the tap. The spider tried to fight the river of water, clinging on to the
slippery side as the water was threatening to flush it down the drain. Mrs.
Heinrichsen watched its struggle with great joy and turned the tap to speed up
the water. She grinned and sang while watching the spider fight for its life.

"The Itsy Bitsy Spider
crawled up the water spout.

Down came the rain, and washed
the spider out.

Out came the sun, and dried up
all the rain,

And the Itsy Bitsy Spider went
up the spout again."

Finally the spider gave up, lost the fight and
disappeared with the water into the drain. She liked these small displays of
power over nature, well she had always enjoyed them over humans as well, but
the last many years the respect for her and her status on the small island had
diminished. No one seemed to care who she was and had been anymore.

There was a time when it wasn't only spiders
that had struggled to stay alive by her mercy. Oh how she missed those days.
How she missed seeing the fear and terror in people's eyes as she strolled down
the street in her new car, showing off her newest fur brought in from Paris or
a jumpsuit from Milan. Those were the days, those were the times she had
cherished, and would remember as her golden years.

But these days no one cared anymore. No one
respected her in the manner they had done back then. To them she was just an
old lady. Someone whose time was ticking down. Someone who was close to the
finish line of life. The youngsters of today didn't have any respect for status
or title anymore. It was all just the same baloney to them. They didn't care
about her position; hell most of them hardly knew her name anymore.

Mrs. Heinrichsen finished brushing her teeth and
walked back towards the bedroom. The old wooden floors of her villa creaked
underneath her weight even if she could hardly make it past ninety pounds
anymore. She was still a strong woman and expected to live at least twenty
years more.

"Gotta make it past the one hundred,"
she always said. "Get the letter from the queen before you go."

It was her goal, and Mrs. Heinrichsen always
reached her goals. Something she had tried to teach her son but in vain. Today
they didn't care abut setting goals and reaching them, about doing what it took
to make it, no matter the cost. Working to accomplish something. Nowadays it
was all about how to get out of working and getting the state to pay for
everything. She saw them down by the harbor, down by the boats leading to the
mainland. The people who could just as well be working, hanging out, drinking
their beers, with their dogs and dirty clothes. Mrs. Heinrichsen knew they got
paid from the state to live that kind of life. Destitute was the nice word for
them. People who couldn't take care of themselves, so the state had to.
Freeloaders, Mrs. Heinrichsen would call them. They were nothing but people who
didn't want to work in her book. And lately with all those newcomers, all those
brown people who had almost invaded the country, even their small island. They
were all being paid huge amounts from the state to get all their relatives up
here, and it was about to destroy the small paradise, destroy Denmark with all
their demands, under the pretense that they just wanted to be
equal
. How those dirty faces could ever get
the thought that they were equal to the proud hardworking Danish people, she
never understood. It was an atrocity. The beautiful country had been invaded by
these ... these foreigners and Mrs. Heinrichsen certainly didn't like what they
were turning this country in to.

Mrs. Heinrichsen entered her bedroom and sat on
her bed with a sigh. It had become increasingly more and more difficult for her
to sleep while lying down with her breathing troubles, and she wasn't looking
forward to yet another night sitting up and sleeping. The nights had become
long and painful to her lately and even if she did take a small nightcap it
never quite helped her through the entire night.

"Oh, John. You bastard," she said and
looked at the empty side of the bed where he used to sleep. "I bet you're
up there somewhere enjoying seeing me suffer through these nights, aren't
you?"

The silence from the room was answer enough.
Mrs. Heinrichsen sighed once again, then leaned back on her stack of pillows
and embraced herself for the night. Barely had she closed her eyes before she
heard a sound. Mrs. Heinrichsen sighed annoyed and got out of the bed again
with much discomfort.

"If it's that neighbor's dog again, I'm
sure I'm gonna ..."

She never made it further than that. As she
fought to get out of the bed and up onto her legs, she watched the door to her
bedroom open quietly. Then she gasped.

A face appeared in the darkness.

"Hello, Agnes," the man said.

"I can't
believe you
inherited a real house, Mommy."

I looked at my seven-year-old son, Victor
sitting in the back seat of our old Toyota through the rearview mirror. He was
smiling and his small eyes sparkled. He had been so excited ever since we
received the phone call telling me that my grandmother, my father's mother had
passed away and much to my surprise, since I never knew her, she had left her
house to me.

My oldest daughter Maya was less excited to put
it mildly. But then again at thirteen not much was exciting, especially if it
involved me, her mother or anything remotely grown up and boring.

"Of course she inherited it, you
doofus," she said to her younger brother. "She's her only
grandchild."

"Well she could have left it to grandpa,
her son," I argued while finding my exit from the highway. "That
would have been the most normal thing to do. But for some reason she wanted me
to have it."

"Why?" Maya said with her lips curled,
making her look like she was extremely annoyed.

I shrugged. "I don't know. I have never
even known her. Grandpa says I met her once when I was just a small child, but
I don't remember it. Maybe I chose to forget because she was too scary," I
said and made a funny face.

Maya looked mad. "You're so ... so
pathetic."

"Wow. Well thanks."

That seemed to be the end of that conversation.
It had been a long ride from Copenhagen to Esbjerg and my children hadn't
exactly been talking much. It was getting dark outside the car's windows and
would be way past their bedtime by the time we arrived at our new house.

Victor had slept most of the way and Maya seemed
to feel it was beneath her dignity to talk to me for more than three minutes at
a time. She was pissed because I had made the decision for all of us. I had
decided to move there, to my grandmother's house on Fanoe, a small island in
the North Sea outside of Esbjerg. I knew it wouldn't be popular to make a
decision like that on my children's behalf, but there was no way around it. I
was broke and couldn't afford to keep our apartment in Copenhagen. I had been
fired from my latest job as a writer for a fishing magazine simply because I
had pissed off the chairman of the Danish Fishing Federation, DFF, by asking
him about the many bottles of expensive wine that the Federation had deducted
on their taxes this year. Needless to say it wasn't that kind of story the
magazine was looking for, so they kicked me out. Well, that's just the way
things go. I wasn't exactly looking for a long-term career in fishing
journalism anyway, but it was a paying job and I brought home enough money for
the rent and expenses that my ex had left me with when he decided it was more
fun to be with a twenty-five-year old intern at his TV station.

"Are we there soon?" Victor said with
a slight whimper.

"Why?" I asked. "You need to
go?"

Victor nodded heavily. "Badly."

Maya sighed and rolled her eyes. "You could
have gone when we stopped for snacks."

"I did," Victor said.

"But that's only like ten minutes ago. How
can you need to go already? We have stopped twenty times for you on this
trip." Maya accompanied the last words with a deep annoyed sigh.

"Maya. Your brother ..."

"Has a nervous bladder. I know. There is
always something with him, isn't there?"

That shut me up for once. What was I supposed to
say? Yes, there is always something wrong with your brother? Yes, he suffers
from anxiety attacks, light autism, strange seizures, occasional loss of
bladder control and maybe some other stuff that the doctors are just waiting to
throw at us? Yes, he hasn't been well ever since his dad just took off and only
wanted to see him every six months or whenever it suited him? Yes, I could say
all those things, but I didn't. What's the point anyway? She knew. Maya knew
Victor hadn't been well and she was suffering too, suffering because every hour
of my attention went towards him. She was a big girl, now. She was supposed to
be able to handle it.

"What's that smell?" she asked and
wrinkled her nose.

"That my friend is the smell of
Esbjerg," I said and smiled as I could see the town rise in front of us.
"We'll take the boat out to the island from there. It'll be fun once we're
on the boat. Just wait and see."

"Yay!" Victor exclaimed. "I love
boats."

"It smells like fish," Maya said and
held her nose.

I had to admit the smell was pretty bad and
opening the window only made it worse. "It is fish," I said trying to
sound cheerful. "Fish guts."