Night on an island. The well behaved and polite demon will come from the woods and ask you for your name. If you answer, you are left without a name. Can anybody live without it? Even through that single night?

Max was trying to remember where the light switch was. Somewhere on the right, he was sure. Leaning on the door he slowly started feeling towards the wall.

He could feel the dried-out wood under his fingers, from time to time a tiny splinter would bend under the pressure of his skin.

The doorframe. The tips of his fingers slid into a crack, he pulled them out and started sliding them again across the solid wood. Over a slight curve on the edge of the frame towards the wall.

He was overcome by a desire to hit the wall haphazardly until he found the switch and turned on the light. But he controlled himself, he could not afford to make a noise.

He had to continue over the centimetre deep edge of the frame and onto the wall. The rough plaster stuck to his fingers.

He stopped. Could he hear something? Breathing?

He held his breath as long as he could. There was nobody there. But he still tried to breathe slowly without making an audible noise.

He moved his hand again and he could feel every tiny lump in the plaster. His hand began to slip down and slowly he directed it up again.

Another noise. This time a recognisable one. Somebody was opening the front door, the creaking could not have been anything else. He stopped breathing as well as moving.

After a long spell of silence, he continued to move his hand up the wall. He had to be very near.

A feeling that he was not alone in the room came suddenly and very clearly.

Again, he failed to hear any breathing. Just once he thought he could hear something but it sounded like a rustle, the origin of which he could not establish.

It was all too much for his nerves. He would turn on the light and have a look.

He swiftly slid his palm up along the wall, found the switch, put his hand on it and...

... paused for a moment.

Will I?

I will, he said to himself, taking the switch between his thumb and index finger.

I'll turn it now.

A gentle palm lay on his hand.

Max felt his urine trickling down his thighs. He did not move, just pushed his head low between his shoulders.

Waiting for a blow. It did not come.

That gentle hand resting on his. He could hardly feel it, there was no pressure, he was sure it could not stop him moving his hand away. Again, he tried to make out somebody else's breathing.

The waiting went on and on. The hand did not move. Max's two fingers on the switch started to hurt.

He only had to turn them and he would see everything.

Was that what he really wanted? Or should he try to remove his hand and run for it? Very slowly, he started to move his fingers but the hand increased the pressure accordingly. It was still very gentle.

He did not dare go on.

"I give in," he whispered but even that sounded piercingly loud.

"Please, please!"

There was no reply.

Do I really want to see, he asked himself. Do I?

I'll turn on the light and what happens happens. He remembered Alfonz's grinning face and changed his mind. He could not take that.

How much longer could he stand there, motionless?

What would his father do? He would grab that hand without a body, without a face, push it away, turn on the light and give whoever was there three good punches. Max bitterly and clearly realised for the first time that he was not his father. He did not have a book of prescriptions, a catalogue of solutions for every conceivable situation, which decision to take in every dilemma - you just turn the pages until you find the appropriate advice, clear and short so that you can read it in a hurry.

Would such a book describe the situation Max was in? You are standing in impenetrable darkness, holding the light switch with somebody else's hand resting on yours. Gently and patiently.

He started crying without moving. He pleaded and begged.

Nothing happened. No ruin, no salvation. The urine had cooled down and his thighs began to feel cold.

He pulled himself together slowly, stopped crying and tried to make out as much as he could about that hand. It was small and papery. Yes, that was the right expression. It was not damp with sweat or smooth. He remembered from school - where was Raf? - that the pores in the skin excrete grease or something like that to make the skin smoother. That hand was not like that.

It was inevitable. He knew that sooner or later he would find out whose hand it was. It had to happen. It was just like going to a dentist, a visit he always delayed beyond the first aches right to the swelling and the puss. In the end he always gave in. Dentists were inevitable, just like this thing waiting for him in the darkness.

It was better to do it now than torturing himself endlessly.

He screamed and turned the switch.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Everything was red. Why was that?

It only took a split second before he realised that his eyes were closed and that they had probably been closed in the darkness, too. And then he thought that all the waiting and agonising would have to happen all over again before he opened his eyes. He overtook his thoughts: he had to ride on the wave of decisiveness, he could not afford to repeat all the suffering he had just been through.

He looked.