With every breath the taste of death made its way into Emma’s lungs, clawing itself into the most remote bronchial tubes as if it had talons. Not even the loudest scream or worst coughing could shake it off. Emma knew that even if she survived this encounter (which didn’t look likely), deep inside her something would survive forever, a germ of horror, fertile ground for the most appalling nightmares.
‘Leave her in peace!’ Palandt yelled in a scream-cum-sob. Staring death in the face had afforded Emma some moments of lucidity, and now Palandt’s words confirmed her suspicion that the bony foot and decomposing lower leg belonged to a woman. She was also in no doubt that Palandt, brandishing the utility knife above her, must be the Hairdresser.
Emma was lost. She was still sitting on the damp floor beside the toolbox. She was armed now too, having hectically fished from the tool box the first thing she could find that was long, fitted comfortably in her hand and even had sharp jagged edge. But what was she going to do with a jigsaw?
She slammed it against Palandt’s leg, but he hardly felt a thing through his thick trousers.
‘You’ll pay for that,’ he cried, punching her square in the face with the fist gripping the knife. As her head jerked back Emma finally lost consciousness, dropped the jigsaw and, paradoxically, was revived again by the pain when her head hit the edge of the tool box for a second time.
Emma could taste blood and felt as if the skin on her head had torn. Palandt’s hand was grabbing her hair. She heard a click. Opened her eyes. Saw the utility knife hovering right before her pupils. The edge of the blade was only a tear-width from her eye.
He’s going to scalp me, she thought, her mind instinctively turning to Le Zen… Get out. Before it’s too late… In the same breath she could have screamed because she didn’t want this dreadful image of the hotel mirror to be the final memory with which she exited this world.
There were so many nicer, life-affirming moments. Such as Philipp’s crumpled skin in the morning, when the pillow had left a wavy impression on his cheeks overnight.
The tiny pair of lamb’s fleece boots, size four, that had stood on her dressing table for a while in preparation for having children – light brown, because they didn’t know if it would be a boy or a girl. Even the dent in Philipp’s company car, which she’d deliberately made with her foot getting out, after a silly argument about I’m a Celebrity (which he found funny and she thought was inhuman). Yes, even this ridiculous attestation that she couldn’t control her temper sometimes would have been a better final image than the mirror in Le Zen.
Fuck, I don’t want to die. Not like this.
Palandt drew his hand back then lunged.
How strange it was, Emma thought, that now should be the moment – for the first time in weeks – when she felt free of anxiety and perfectly calm. It was probably, she concluded, because finally she had proof that she wasn’t as paranoid as she’d secretly feared. But maybe she had just given up. Her next thought was her surprise at how utterly painless death was.
‘So this is how it is,’ she thought as the blade sliced open her forehead and the blood created a waterfall before her eyes. A red veil, behind which Palandt vanished.
Emma closed her eyes, heard her own breath, but this sound strayed from her, mingling with a deep, guttural scream.
Palandt’s voice had changed since he’d readied for the second thrust. It was deeper, as if he’d gained weight.
‘Emma!’ he cried from what seemed like further away, while an unbearable weight fell onto her body.
Her head rolled feebly from the toolbox and for a surreal moment she feared it had been severed, but then, in a near-death experience, she saw Palandt floating away from her.
Her neighbour, who had just (for whatever reason) lain on her, thus expelling the air from her chest, was moving away from her.
Or me from him?
Emma’s eyes saw a light, not in the distance as people always claimed, but close and blazing, edged with red. It was shining straight into her eyes.
Then the light moved to the side. Presumably now came that part of the afterlife when you saw the people who’d been most important to you in life, although Emma wondered why this particular man should be the first to appear.
‘Salim?’ she said to the delivery man.
Who was kneeling beside her.
Who asked if she could hear him.
Who wasn’t her final vision.
But her first responder.
And who was shining the torch in her eyes, the torch he’d knocked Palandt out with from behind. Now her neighbour lay beside the waste bin with the female corpse and looked as dead as Emma had thought herself to be only moments before.
‘Everything’s going to be okay,’ she heard Salim say, and with this lie she passed out.