Her nose itched and she turned her head so that she could rub it against the pillow. She was sweating. It was airless and hot in the room. She had on a simple nightdress that was bunching up beneath her. If she moved her hips she could just hold the cloth with her first two fingers and pull the nightdress down on one side, a couple of centimetres at a time. She did the same on the other side. But there was still a fold under the small of her back. He mattress was lumpy. Her isolation sharply amplified all the tiny sensations that she would not otherwise have noticed. The harness was loose enough that she could change position and lie on her side, but that was uncomfortable because then she had to keep one hand behind her, which kept making her arm go to sleep.
She was not afraid . But she did feel a great, pent-up rage.
At the same time she was troubled by unpleasant fantasies about what was going to happen to her. She detested this helplessness. No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on something else – to pass the time and to distract her from the situation she was in – the fear came tricking out. It hovered like a cloud of gas around her, threatening to penetrate her pores and poison her. She had discovered that the most effective method of keeping the fear at bay was to fantasize about something that gave her a feeling of strenth. She closed her eyes and conjured up the smell of petrol.
He was sitting in a car with the window rolled down. She ran to the car, poured the petrol through the window, and lit a match. It took only a moment. The flames blazed up. He writhed in agony and she heard his screams of terror and pain. She could smell burnt flesh and a more acrid stentch of plastic and upholstery turning to carbon in the seats.
From the book “The girl who played with fire.”By Stieg Larsson. Translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland
