Magna Jensen was waking up on the morning of the day she would be happiest in all her life. It was 7 am and she would need to get moving in order to be ready and looking her best. She lay there, feeling a rush of excitement tingling through her. This was the day.
She didn’t move, but lay there, arm still extended, two fingers resting on the snooze button, mind spinning, thinking of all she would do. Tomas was at his brother’s, probably just waking up with a hang-over. He could be hung-over and still look hot as hell in a tuxedo without even doing his hair. He was lucky like that.
She would first shower but keep her hair dry. She would wear the black satin and lace thong (she’d worn the first time they’d been intimate), socks and her tracksuit. Then drive to the salon. They’d have kanelbullar rolls from the bakery next door and her cousin, whom was more like a sister, and who owned the salon, would do her make-up and hair. She would be dressed at the salon. Her actual sister, who also worked at the salon, would be there to help her with the dress and train. Her nails had been done 5 hours prior by herself. She was proud of that. She opened her eyes and looked at her nails. Clear coated, white undercoat, French-style, with a dull golden gel at the tips. She had fallen asleep before they were dry and inspected each of them closely. They were perfect. Everything will be.
She had 6 hours until she became Magna Lindqvist. She’d be joined with the person she loved most in the world. They’d celebrate their union with family and friends and they’d make love for the first time as husband-and-wife in a luxurious hotel room. Would it be the same as before?
She was coming down the flight of stairs leading to the garage beneath their building, holding her keys in one hand and a purse crammed with toiletries in the other, with the box with her white Gucci shoes in it balanced under an arm when she noticed someone jogging down the steps behind her on the stairs.
She turned, startled, and he stopped. He stood two stairs higher than her and he had a red-tinted visor and a surgical mask over his face. He was wearing a zipped-up hooded sweatshirt and blue latex gloves. He had an ordinary-looking spray bottle in his hand and it was pointed at her face.
She felt a cold blast of wetness, minty, like a eucalyptus oil on her skin. In a single second it coated her forehead, closed eyelids, nose and cheeks. Then her face began to burn, as if a frying pan full of hot oil had been thrown in her face. Then it became worse.
Her eyelids melted to her retinas and the flesh became foam. wetness spread down her front. She had dropped what she held and put her hands to her face, trying to wipe away the painful substance. She wiped the flesh off her forehead and felt the bone underneath. Now her hands burned. She touched her eyes and felt wet holes rimmed with bone. She was screaming.
The ambulance came 13 minutes later. She had fallen down the stairs and was gurgling when a neighbour had found her. He’d heard the scream. She only remembers screaming. And her cheeks hanging in flaps. The paramedics had sprinkled powder over her and put a tube in her throat. She tried to scream anyway.She was in and out, and always feeling very numb and warm. She could hear voices but couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying. Female voices. The surgeons could not save her eyes. Her face would need many grafts, and her face was coated in a cool, sticky mesh she wasn’t supposed to touch. Then came a male voice. And yelling. She put and hand up and someone close by held it down. She pushed and more hands held her. Then she was strapped at the wrists. Her upper body ached and she moaned. A picture of her wedding dress in a plastic bag swam into view. She felt engulfed by a smothering warmth that made her blood tingle.
The tube was pulled out of her throat and she woke up, still too numb to think. She tried to speak. That’s when she knew she didn’t have lips. She couldn’t swallow, and she panicked. Why couldn’t she swallow? It felt like a soft wishbone caught in her throat. She pulled at her straps and screamed. Nothing came out. Just a metallic-sounding rattle and a wheezing. She thought about Tomas. She wanted to be held by him, where was he?
She heard the same female voices. She could hear her mother talking to her, only saying her name, over and over in a strange tone, like she was trying to coax her into believing something, but not telling her what it was.
Her face was gone. Most of her hairline too. Her throat had been damaged as well. She still had her ears and they looked good. She could still wear earrings.
Her tongue will be fine, it’s already healing. They have harvested grafts from her ass and thighs and have begun to graft them to her face. She will need many more grafts. Then comes reconstructive plastic surgery. She’ll need surgery on her larynx again soon. She’d already had surgery on her throat, she will be able to swallow when it is healed. She couldn’t remember any of it. She’d been in surgeries for a total of 77 hours thus far.
The camera in the parking garage wasn’t working. The neighbour had seen him flee, still carrying the spray bottle. The police wanted to talk to her when she next entered recovery.
She started tapping. She tapped and tapped. Someone said ‘Yes?’ and she began pounding. The voice stepped closer, the nurse asked ‘Are you in pain?’ and touched her right hand. Magna crabbed her hand around an imaginary pencil and scribbled in the air frantically. She couldn’t move her neck. A marker was put in her hand and a pad, she could tell, set under her hand. She wrote, as best and she could, T O M A S, and the huge letters fell to the bottom of the page.
Tomas had seen her, had left, and couldn’t be reached. She remembered their first trip together. Thailand. The bungalow in the cove they’d rented on Koh Phan Ngan. The blue of his eyes. Would their children’s eyes be her brown or his beautiful blue? She had no eyes to cry.
The idea of being blind felt to Magna like a sort of trainer course for being dead. The world was blotted out, and the only way she knew it was still there is by groping for blind shapes. Oblivion would be just a tiny step down from this.
She could speak some months later. And was answering questions about how her face felt. Her tongue was creased with scar tissue and the clumsy new lips made it difficult to make herself understood. She asked if she looked human yet. The question was answered with a scold ‘of course you look human’ and she asked ‘Do I look alive?’
It was June the first and she was still forbidden to touch her face. She would have been married on that March 11th. Her mother and sister came and sat with her to tell her a story.
After fleeing the scene of a drunken driving accident that cost the life of a young woman in the car with him, Tomas had climbed to the top of an immensely tall crane used for the loading of large ships and had jumped to the bay below. Magna was told of this months after the events. She hadn’t been invited to the funeral. She knew why. To spare them the shock. Tomas had died May the Second.
She had a few more surgeries to improve nerve response to her mouth, but denied the operations to install false eyes and improved facial expressions that her surgeons had offered. She had grown weary of anaesthesia.
The man in the red visor and surgical mask sprayed acid on the face of another young woman, 22, and stood over her while she burned in agony for a few moments before pouring a solvent over her head from a bottle. Her face was gone, but her throat and jaw wasn’t as badly damaged as with Magna, as the solvent had neutralised the acid. He had been waiting for her in her home.
By the time the hot weather had set in, she was walking about and feeding herself. She was living in a basement level. She knew the address but didn’t know what part of the city it was in. Her mother lived in the same room. But they were like strangers. Her mother kept the flat tidy and cooked, but also talked incessantly about nothing as if it were the same as breathing. She spoke at length about banalities that she felt were positive and ‘uplifting’, about how her doctors were proud of her but she couldn’t give up on her recovery. About how someday she might see again, that medical science was entering an age of miracles. Magna never spoke. She hated the sound of her own voice. It wasn’t hers. Her mother never shut up until Magna started throwing anything at hand at her. Magna injured her when she threw a rook at her mother’s face. Not bad for a blind girl.
After that her sister and cousin split the week sleeping at her flat and cooking for her. Magna had a more hi-tech electric stovetop installed to replace the gas range. Her kitchen and bathroom were updated for ease. She cooked for herself and washed her own laundry. Her sister and cousin came to visit less, and then hardly at all. An older woman named Kerstin came twice a week to clean, shop and sometimes prepare meals or even teach her a recipe. She was kind and matronly. Magna began talking. Her scarred vocal chords sounded like a brass hasp grating to her ears. She got better at forming her words with her newly healed lips. Her new nose was free of the cotton buds finally and her sense of taste vastly improved. Her mother read to her over the phone.
Another woman was sprayed with acid. She was walking home from a late shift and he came upon her out of the dark in the campus grounds she would cut through. He sprayed her good and fled. She died from the burns.
Magna learned she wasn’t the first of his victims but the second. Kerstin halted a sob when she read that from the news. The first victim had been several months before Magna was attacked. She seemed to be in similar condition, and living nearby. She hoped never to meet her.
Mikael began to come that September. He helped her through object-recognition exercises and mobility training. They would go on walks together and run her various errands together. He also helped her through speech therapy. He was said to be the best specialist in this sort of rehabilitation and his services were costly, but he had been moved by her story and offered his services at a significant discount.
One day he taught her how to exercise in confined space so she could stay fit until she was confident enough to travel out on foot by use of cane. This involved a lot of calisthenics for cardio and yoga to stay limber and combat atrophy. He used his hands to teach her the positions and body movements. That night she began masturbating again.
The cold began to set in. Her 27th birthday came. She asked for large-lensed sunglasses. The darkest possible. She received a pair costing €300 from Chanel. She wore them to the restaurant with her mother, sister and cousin where they ate curry. A small child at a table to her left asked his mother ‘What’s wrong with that lady’s face?’ and was shushed. A silence fell over the conversation and lasted for a very long moment. Magna was horrified to wonder at what she might look like. She didn’t sleep well for a couple weeks thereafter.
She wore the sunglasses her every waking moment. She loved their heft. She began knitting clothes for the coming winter, not caring about the colours of yarn she used, but selected yarns by texture. Nor did she care about shape or pattern, but cared only for the fit and the feel. A clash of textures. She began to have episodes where she would feel life was worth living, then they would pass. She began to play a synthesiser. She got better at typing and using software. She got a smart phone. She toyed with the idea of painting. Blindness was like early retirement. Then the darkness wouldn’t leave. And it would whisper to her. That she didn’t belong in this world of darkness and disappointment. Against that sort of darkness, death would be a welcome shade. Blindness meant she was already living in the lands of death. But she was not one to give up, she always had more fight. Tomas had said that he both loved and hated that about her.
Magna and Mikael had met twice weekly for six weeks before he came a third night in October. It was not a professional visit. He’d brought a few radio plays and offered to cook dinner. He made a smoked salmon pasta sauce on wheat penne, a baby leaf salad with croutons and miso dressing. They struggled some with conversation, but she was getting quite verbose with her new lips. They were constructed from fats, harvested nerve endings and tissues from her vulva. She wanted them to be kissed. They shared a bottle of wine (she was on much less medication now) and talked for hours on her sofa (as the wine limbered her scarred vocal chords) about favorite novels and authors before she got very sleepy. Their bare feet were touching. She awoke from a doze to find he had left. She was wrapped in a woven blanket from a nearby closet. The thought of him leaning close and wrapping it over her made her wet. She didn’t know how old he was. She had no idea what he looked like. She never asked. She liked it that way.
When they walked together to do their next scheduled twice-weekly shopping she abruptly took his hand. He squeezed. They walked more slowly. After leaving the market they shifted grocery bags to shoulders and held hands for the walk home, more briskly this time.
After arriving they set the bags down in the entry, and as she removed her boots she listened to him take the groceries into the kitchen. She heard the cupboards opening and cans sliding on shelves. She peeled off her knitted woollen tights and socks. She followed the sounds. When she felt the linoleum under her feet she paused, slid her hands under her felted skirt and slid her underwear to the floor. She stepped out of them, still listening to him putting away perishables in the refrigerator, and scooped them up off the floor, wadding them up into her hand, her fingers wringing dampness from the cotton underwear slicking her palm when she squeezed them tight in the clench of her fist.
She reached out for him, caught the movement of his jacket and tugged. She sensed him stand and turn to face her and she extended her fist, offering it. She felt his palm cup the underside of her fist to receive and she released the moist wad of cloth.
A moment passed where she listened intuitively and suspected he was smoothing her wet panties over his hand to see what it was, and realising. She wished she could see the look on his face.
She sensed him take a step closer and could feel his breathing. They were both breathing heavy. She lifted her skirt with one hand and pressed two fingers over her dewy slit, wetting her fingers. Her left arm found its way up his shoulder, pulling him in, and she used her slippery wet fingers to moisten his lips before she kissed them.
She wanted to lick his teeth and learn their shapes.
They pressed together, kissing with lusty exhales for a time. Then she began to worm her fingers through the buttons of his fly and his fingers made a reach to her vulva. She had his cock in her hand as it sprung up once unfettered. It was hot to the touch. She felt his arms take hold of her in a fierce grip, and he gently lowered her to the cold linoleum. His cock pressed against her thighs. He lowered his face, kissing down her neck and pulling her cardigan, sweater and four t shirts over her head between kisses. ‘It’s like burrowing through fabric’ he had remarked and she had laughed. She had not laughed in a very long time.
Once she was bare he kissed her breasts, making his way down. He sucked on her hood and found her opening with his tongue and played there for a few minutes, exploring with his tongue, teasing against her clit, down her vulva and darted the tip of his tongue tracing the ring of her anus.
He suddenly heaved up and she felt the head of his cock press against her slit. She opened her legs to receive and he pressed the head in slowly. It felt amazing, the warmth and pressure, and she turned her hips up to him and he slid all the way in. They began pumping against each other and eventually his thrusts overtook hers and a rhythm was set. Once the thrusting began in earnest she really got a sense of his age. He was a bit older, he was still muscular, but entering his dottage soon. He was sensuous to touch. He had nestles of hair that were coarse against her skin, the dense thatch of pubis, the glassy smooth line to his collarbone she traced with her mouth as they fucked.
He came before she did, and she could feel his cock pumping hot splashes inside her. Her sunglasses had slid back into her hair. He licked her eyeless sockets. She used his semen to wet her clit while she rubbed to climax. She could feel him watching her.
They lay, saying nothing until the yearning stirred them again. A half-hour after that she came first, with her on top of him and the cock pressing into the just the right place inside her. He turned her onto her back and spent his lust into her in violent motions. She licked his sweat from his chest and raked her nails over his skin.
They fucked a third time before her clock chimed four. Then he left. She dressed and made dinner. When she stripped for bed she could smell him on her. Before she fell into sleep she smelled him, and she dreamed of his tongue in her eyes.
They did not contact each other until his next scheduled session. They would fuck for 4 or 5 hours. He’d then leave, and only his spent spoor and skin under her nails remained of him. Until their next twice-weekly session. And it went like this for four years. She took birth control.
Mikael ceased all pretense of therapeutic help, grew distant in how they conversed, but remained ever attentive to her desires. He sprinkled her bathroom with these tiny, empty plastic bags. His body once supple, grew hard, thin skin taut and no longer smooth, his sweat acrid. His body was now cragged, like the intense beauty of a great mountain fading into dusk and then a silhouette in darkness. Hipbones jutted at angles, ribcage felt frail in Magna’s fingers and tracing the line of each rib was sensuous.
They would lay with their legs interwoven in her bed with their lusts quenched and they would talk into the night. She appreciated his time and continued to pay him. Kerstin would cluck her tongue when changing the sheets.
The man in the red visor and surgical mask attacked a 19 year old girl by spraying her five times in the face, clearly seen on surveillance footage caught in a parking lot adjacent to her dormitory. Moments later he was hit by a car fleeing the scene. The injured man was taken into custody and identified as Mikael Larsson, and Magna felt silly for having not known. The girl was pronounced DOA.
Her mother sat on the couch and poured them tea. Magna could have made and poured the tea but her mother always insisted it was dangerous, saying her skin was getting too thin. In addition to the income she generated, Magna had been receiving a generous stipend, which had ended by a final check from the dissolution of Tomas’ firm, and it was a founder's share that greatly extended her means. She then purchased the nearly vacant building she lived in, making several renovations. When these were finished she had consolidated three smaller efficiency units on the top floor into a sort of townhouse apartment for herself. Her mother was anxious to see the renovations before the paint had even dried. They were having their customary tea and a game of chess. Magna was working up to offering a flat in her building to her ailing mother, rent-free, then their conversation turned in such a way that Magna disavowed the idea.
Her mother set the tea cup down and Magna could hear her foot tap against the floor for a little while as the silence became menacing. ‘Kerstin told me how it was with you and Mikael Larsson. I think you should go into therapy’ and Magna threw her cup at her mother’s face and wished it was filled with acid instead of Darjeeling. She hasn’t talked to her in years now.
When her sister and cousin came to talk to her soon after, they first asked Magna how she was. News had come out that Mikael had been directly involved in rehabilitating all of the women who had survived his attacks, and reportedly claimed he was in a romantic relationship with all three women, that he had ruined them so he could return and collect them.
What they had really come for was answers. She heard it in their fidgeting. She sometimes heard faintly mouthed words as they tried to converse secrets around her. Not enough to know what they were saying, just enough to know they were saying it. So she told them.
‘I was fucking him. I don’t care that he was fucking those other victims too. I don’t care that he took my face. Or my eyes. I would give all my money, sell my body, if it would buy his freedom.’
And they asked why.
‘Because when I die, I want my body left to rot in the hot sun. And I want you all to watch my body blacken and bloat and raise a cloud of insects. I want you to look at that and breathe in deep, savoring the stink of my decay. Let that sight and smell tell you what love means, in the end.’