Юхан Теорин - The Asylum

‘ Do something cool,’ says Peter .

Torgny nods; he has an idea: ‘We’ll stub out our fags on him! ’

Peter stands back and carries on smoking as his subordinates put out their cigarettes. One by one, on Jan’s skin. It turns into a competition to find the best place .

Christer stubs out his cigarette on Jan’s chest, between the nipples .

Niklas goes for a testicle. ‘Did you hear that?’ he shouts. ‘It made a hissing noise! Did you hear it? ’

Peter Malm nods and takes another drag on his cigarette .

Torgny smiles and takes his time .

Eventually he chooses the place where the skin is thinnest, on the throat .

At that point Jan closes his eyes .

‘The worst thing isn’t the pain,’ Jan said to Rami. ‘I mean, of course it hurts, it’s a bit like a nail going through your skin... but that passes.’

‘So what is the worst thing?’

‘It’s the smell. It kind of lingers. You can smell burnt flesh... and it’s your own.’

As he talked about it the smell was there again, as if it were still inside his nostrils after a whole week.

He had known he was going to die there in the shower. Alone with the Gang of Four — there was no hope for him.

The cigarettes have been stubbed out. Jan has brownish-red circles on his skin, like fresh birthmarks. The hands holding him down loosen their grip slightly; the fingers are beginning to tire .

Soon. Soon it will be over, he thinks. They’ll go in a minute .

But then Peter Malm issues a new order: ‘Chuck him in the sauna .’

‘ Fanfuckingtastic!’says Torgny. ‘We’ll lock him in! ’

‘ What are you talking about?’ says Niklas. ‘There’s no lock .’

Disappointed silence. Jan keeps quiet too .

‘ Chuck him in there anyway,’ says Peter; it is obvious from the tone of his voice that he is starting to get bored. ‘Chuck him in and we’ll get out of here .’

The grip on Jan’s arms tightens once more. They are assuming he will fight back, and he does. This is the final battle, but he loses it in no time. Six hands drag him towards the sauna, and Peter holds the door open .

For just a second Jan’s thigh presses against Torgny as they struggle, and he realizes that Torgny has a rock-hard erection .

Then Jan is hurled into the sauna. He lands on his back on the duckboards, and the door slams shut .

Silence .

The light is on inside the sauna, and a faint smell of cigarette smoke still lingers in the air .

Jan can hear their laughter through the door .

‘ Time to turn up the heat, Hauger! ’

The light goes out. The Gang of Four have switched it off .

Torgny is still shouting. ‘We’re taking your clothes .’

Niklas chips in, ‘We’re going to chuck them in the pond, Hauger, so everybody will think you’ve drowned! ’

Jan doesn’t respond. He lies there like a mouse in the darkness. Silent, waiting .

He knows that the Gang of Four are holding the door shut, but they’re bound to leave at some point. Sooner or later torturing a little Year 10 kid is going to get boring, it’s going to start feeling like hard work, and then they’ll give up. That’s what he’s waiting for .

The black metal heater inside the sauna begins to make a series of clicking noises, and he realizes they’ve actually done it; they’ve turned the control outside the door from OFF to ON. But how high have they set the temperature? Fifty degrees? Sixty? Or much hotter?

It doesn’t matter. They’ll go soon .

Eventually everything goes quiet outside the door, and Jan feels brave enough to move .

He gets to his feet. The sauna is already warmer. Not hot, but warm .

He listens again, places the palm of his hand against the door, and pushes .

‘I couldn’t open it,’ he said to Rami. ‘It should have just swung open, but it wouldn’t move. They’d jammed it somehow. So I was locked inside the sauna, and the heater was clicking away... It was getting hotter and hotter.’

Jan saw street lights shimmering up ahead of him, and knew that he was on his way out of the forest.

He had been wandering around in a state of rising panic for forty-five minutes now, searching among the fir trees and even down by the lake, but he had found no trace of William. A five-year-old shouldn’t have been able to get this far, but then William could have gone in absolutely any direction.

Jan had lost control. He was tired, slightly angry, and increasingly desperate. Sometimes he thought the child was hiding from him, that he was standing behind a tree giggling to himself.

Why had William clambered out of the bunker? Didn’t he realize he was safer in there than out in the forest? He had plenty of food and drink, and he would have been locked in there for less than forty-eight hours. Then Jan would have let him go, whatever happened.

His plan. His carefully thought-out plan.

Jan stopped in the middle of the undergrowth. His shoes were soaking wet, he felt empty and exhausted.

Locked inside a bunker — with only a toy robot for company . Jan looked around him and suddenly felt how wrong the whole thing had been. It had to stop now. There had to be a happy ending.

He stood there for a long time on the edge of the forest, wondering what to do. He felt safe there because nobody could see him, but eventually he moved out from among the trees and headed down towards the street lights. This was a residential area with long rows of apartment blocks and large, asphalt-covered inner courtyards, all ready for the coming winter. There were lights showing in many of the windows, but the streets were deserted.

Jan walked along the nearest pavement, looking around all the time. He felt the urge to call out William’s name, but clamped his lips firmly together.

If I were five years old , he thought, and the glow of the street lights had lured me out of the forest, where would I go?

Home, of course. When you have been locked up and then you escape, you want to go home.

But Jan knew where William lived, and it was in a completely different part of Nordbro. It was unlikely that he would be able to find his way there.

A few hundred metres away there was a main road, and Jan made his way towards it. What he really wanted was to go home too, go home and go to bed, but then he would be leaving William. Not just leaving, but abandoning him.

Up ahead he could see a bus stop, with a few teenagers hanging around. On the same side of the road a family was out for a walk, a man and his two children going towards the town centre.

No, it wasn’t a family. As Jan got closer he could see that the smallest child was actually a dog, a long-legged poodle on a short lead. And the other... the other child was a little boy with fair hair.

The man holding the boy’s hand looked like his grandfather, a pensioner in a cap, ambling along between the boy and the poodle. The boy wasn’t wearing a hat, but he was dressed in a dark-blue padded jacket with white reflector strips.

Jan recognized it, and broke into a run.

‘William!’

His shout made the boy stop and look around. The man tugged at his hand, but the boy pulled away, wanting to stop and see who was calling his name.

Jan was out of breath by the time he reached them. He bent down. ‘Do you remember me, William?’

The boy looked at him without moving. Everything had stopped dead. The man holding William’s hand was staring at Jan in surprise, and even the poodle had turned around and was standing there motionless.