Three Seconds

up.
Back
. He was going to die.
Back
. He was dead the moment he went back into the same unit, hated, hunted, he had broken one of the first prison rules, he was a grass, and you killed grasses.
     
    He got down on his knees in front of the cement toilet bowl, two fingers down his throat, he held them there until he started to puke.
    Fear had sucked everything out of him and he spat it out, he had to get rid of it. He stayed on his knees and emptied himself, emptied out everything that had been, everything that was inside him, he was on his own now, the people who could burn him had burnt again.
    He pressed the button.
    He wasn’t going to die, not yet.
    __________
    He had kept it pressed in for fourteen minutes when the hatch in the door opened and the warden with the eyes shouted at him to bloody well take his finger off.
     
    He didn’t turn round, just pressed even harder.
    ‘The books.’
    ‘You’re going to get them.’
    ‘The books!’
    ‘I’ve got them with me. Governor’s orders. If you want me to come in, take your finger off the button.’
    Piet Hoffmann spotted them as soon as the door opened. His books. In the screw’s hand. His chest, the pressure that had been there, making him shake, was released. He relaxed, wanted to collapse, wanted to cry, that was how it felt, released and he just wanted to cry.
    ‘It smells of puke in here.’
    The screw peered into the cement hole, started retching and moved back.
    ‘It’s your choice. You know that no one cleans in here. That smell, you’ll just have to get used to it.’
    The warden gripped the books in his hands, shook them, flicked through, shook them again. Hoffmann stood in front of him but felt nothing, he knew that they would hold up.
    __________
    He had sat on the iron bed for a long time holding the two books from Aspsås library close by. They were intact. He had just been down on his knees and emptied himself, now, now he was calm, his body felt soft, he could nearly bend over again and if he rested, if he slept for a while, he could refill it with energy, he wasn’t going to die, not yet.
     

friday
     

He had woken gleaming with sweat, fallen asleep again, dreamt in fragments and without colour, the sort of sleep that is shallow and black and white and far away. He had woken again and sat up on the iron bed and looked at the floor and the books that were lying there for a long time – he wouldn’t lie down again, his body was screaming for rest, but as sleep took more energy than it gave he chose to stay sitting where he was and wait as the dawn turned into morning.
     
    It was quiet, dark.
    The solitary confinement corridor would sleep for a few more hours.
    He had emptied himself yesterday of the fear that got in the way and had to be got rid of, the smell still stringent in the air around the cement hole. He had emptied himself and now there was only one thing left, the will to survive.
    Piet Hoffmann lifted up the two books and put them down in front of him on the bed.
Nineteenth Century Stockholm
.
The Marionettes.
Bound in hard, mono-coloured library boards, marked with STORE in blue and ASPSÅS LIBRARY in red. He opened the first page, got a firm grip of the cover and with a powerful tug pulled it loose. Another tug and the spine of the book collapsed, a third and the back came off. He looked over at the locked cell door. Still quiet. No one walking around out there, no one who had heard and hurried over to the hatch at the top of the door with meddlesome eyes. He changed position, back to the door – if anyone was to look in all they would see was a fidgety long-termer who couldn’t sleep.
    He ran his hand carefully over the torn book. His fingers along the left-hand margin and a cut-out, rectangular hole.
    It was there. In eleven pieces.
    __________
    He turned the book over, coaxed out the metal that in a matter of minutes would be a five-centimetre-long mini-revolver. First the larger pieces, the frame with the barrel and cylinder pivot and trigger, a coupleof gentle taps with the handle of the sewing machine screwdriver on the millimetre-long pins between them, then the barrel protector with the first screw, the butt sides with the second screw and the butt stabiliser with the third.
     
    He turned to the door, but the footsteps were only in his head, as before.
    He spun the tiny revolver’s cylinder, emptied it, took his time checking the six bullets as long as half a thumbnail that were lined up on the iron bed