Copenhagen Noir by Bo Tao Michaelis Page A

asleep in front of the film I’d rented, a few empty beer bottles on the coffee table. Tomorrow I’d have woken up, watched the rest of the film while eating breakfast, fed my two birds, and went to work.
    The door opens. I recognize him from the video, a sunkenchested young man in a T-shirt and jogging pants. When he sees us he tries to slam the door. He doesn’t stand a chance, the door rams his head. He stumbles back a few steps.
    Then I see the knife in his hand. It must have been there in the hall, on the little table under the mirror, ready in case. He smiles for a moment, raises the knife. Then it happens. I wake up. No longer underwater, I feel the blood in my veins again. The world is suddenly hard and sharp. I can feel my hands, feel my legs, feel the air flowing in my nostrils and filling my lungs. I toss the sports bag full of tools in his face. Before he hits the floor Nabil has started hitting him. I was never hooked on amphetamines. At least not only. This was what I needed. What I was trying to snort up, to no avail. Now, in this moment, I know it. When I hear Christian close the door behind us, and we drag the guy through the hall and into the living room.
    We’re the boys from the block again. The boys from the high-rise on Swallow Street. We’re together again.
    I don’t know how long we keep at it. Not just an hour, a lot longer. With the stereo turned way up. We sweat, we laugh. I lose my sense of time. Remember only short flashes. Postcards of violence. One where I’ve raised the hammer above my head. One where I hold him and Christian sticks the handle of the screwdriver down his throat. One where Nabil jerks the guy’s pants down and reaches for the monkey wrench.
    We might have been easier on him, stopped earlier, if the room hadn’t reminded us of the images from the video.
    At some point he starts screaming. Screaming so loudly that he drowns out the stereo. This is after we’ve got his pants off. Which wasn’t easy, because he kept twisting, kicking. Nabil goes into the bedroom. He’s laughing when he comes back out. He’s holding a gag, a pink rubber ball hanging by two leather strings. In it goes, into the guy’s mouth. “One of the rough ones!” Christian yells, while he holds him by the throat. “This here is going to be one of the rough ones!”
    There’s not much left of him when we leave. He’s barely alive. It’s hard to determine which sex he is. We destroyed him. How do you destroy a man? Keep at it. Just keep at it.
    Early morning. It’s quiet in the car again. I drop the two of them off. Stop a few times on the way home and throw the tools in various trash containers. Then the sports bag.
    I take a shower before going to bed. Stuff the clothes in a garbage bag that I’ll throw out on the way to work.
    I lie in bed and listen to the quiet. My eyes are already heavy. I know that as soon as I wake up the hangover will check in. Far stronger and different from any I’ve had before. The first few minutes I’ll think it’s something I dreamed. A nasty dream I can blink away, that will be out of my body when I’m done pissing. A dream I’ll have forgotten when I smell the coffee flowing through the machine. But then I’ll remember that it wasn’t a dream. I’ll grab the duvet or sheet and try to hold on. I’ll sit there like it’s a bad movie and make a face and keep holding on until the alarm clock rings again. Telling me that the day has begun.
    First I’ll drive out and buy some new tools. Then to work. Be on time. Old Nielsen will be waiting with a new record player or transistor radio that should have been thrown out but some old lady has insisted it be repaired. The next few weeks I’ll jump up whenever the doorbell rings. Every time I’ll think it’s the police. Whenever I’m about to forget what happened, my sore muscles will remind me. But that’s not the hard part. Not at all. Time will pass. A new day will begin. New days always begin. The hard