"I think it is all a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes." — Vladimir Nabokov —
"A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory." — Mark Twain —
Sunday
Security was lax. No one knew how the man had got in, but once inside he was persistent. He crawled his way down, one row at a time so as to smother the sound of his footsteps with the blaring chants of the crowd. His self-restraint had as much to do with being in pain as it did with being inconspicuous. He had not seen daylight for a while and his eyes struggled to adjust to this brilliant Sunday afternoon, while he clenched his teeth as the soles of his bruised up feet burned every time they touched the ground.
He stopped 16 rows short of ground level. Behind him was a stairway leading down into the belly of the stadium. To muster all his remaining strength for the final charge, he stepped back and sat down on the steps of the stairway with his back toward the pitch. The crowd began singing, completely oblivious to the man massaging his soles.
By the time the third song was finished, the man got up. He watched the game as fervently as any other spectator, closely observing the run of play. The fight now was in the centre of the pitch. Tackles, passes, interceptions, tackles - until the home team’s defence mopped up the loose ball and abruptly fired it high in the direction of the opposition goal.
Mateo Carrasco, the home team’s star attacker, rocketed forward. The Spaniard kept his head up to calculate the ball’s trajectory and brushed past opposition defenders with ease. The man from the stairway took a deep breath. He grunted in pain as his feet hit the stairs, but he accelerated despite his pain and reached the bottom row of the stadium by the time the attacker had darted past the goalkeeper to slide the ball in the back of the net. The attacker cupped his ears and ran over to the home section. The man jumped past the cameras and intercepted the wild-eyed attacker who stopped dead in his tracks.
The cacophony of laughter, gasps, and shouts propelled the cameramen to zoom in and click away at the scene. The man who had invaded the pitch had his arms locked around the unresisting footballer and was frantically moving his lips as though he had some message to convey. If there was indeed a message it was challenging to discern the success or failure of its delivery, as the hitherto negligent security guards rushed to tackle the intruder and drag him away. But perhaps the man had failed, because he never ceased twisting and turning violently in the arms of the guards, squealing and screaming in an indecipherable language. He would find himself squealing and screaming again a week later.
At that point in time, the man would be gagged and tied up to a chair in the middle of the woods. Despite the tranquilliser numbing his perception, the fear of death functioned as a capable antidote to jolt his senses back to life. The headlights of the car looming over him blinded him, causing him to hallucinate while the revving engine played the drum roll to execution.
When the bumper first rammed into his knees, he felt his body soar in the air as the chair flew backwards. He landed flat on his neck and felt his spine split in two. The pain was beyond anything he had ever felt, but no howl came out of his gagged mouth. With his body and the chair lying at an angle, his vision of the car was obstructed. But the drum roll sounded once more.
Then he heard something crack. Simultaneously he felt two tons of metal delivering its weight through the tyres now pulverising his legs. The tyres backed up, then ran over him again. And again. And again. He was almost unconscious now when a pair of hands grabbed him and the chair - or what was left of it - to set them upright again. The savage drum roll pierced his ears, but for the briefest of moments the sound faded ever so slightly as the vehicle seemed to crawl back into the woods.
But in the blink of an eye a deafening screech filled the air as the beast flung itself full speed onto its target. This time, the body was airborne for much longer.