I knelt, gagged and bound, and waited to be beheaded. I remember hearing the songs of the birds and the terrified whimper of my friend. I remember a bright light; a machete glinting in the sun. Beauty and the beast, sanctity and savagery. I can never forget this. I had never contemplated being brutally murdered. Who does? At only forty-six years old even death had barely crossed my mind. It was half an hour of madness so debilitating that even the moments necessary for preparing myself for death were strangled by the dread of the manner of my imminent execution. I recall looking to Heaven and begging the sun not to set, and seconds later witnessing the unthinkable: A human being hacked to death before my very eyes. I was no longer afraid to die, but I was terrified of giving up. I wanted the police to find my body so that the sons of evil would be caught. I wanted to choose my own grave, I wanted that last autonomy. Somehow, gagged, bound, barefoot and bleeding to death, I managed to get up and walk a mile through the forest. I sustained thirteen machete wounds in my lungs and diaphragm, six compound fractures in my ribs, thirty additional fractures, a dislocated shoulder, a crushed sternum and a broken shoulder blade. I found no comfortable grave. Instead, surprisingly, I found help—a couple of families who saved my life.
My friend, Kristine Luken was robbed of her life.The butcher’s knife chopped away the future generations of an innocent woman. It ripped apart her family’s heart and tore my innocence to shreds. His blows smashed my bones, slashed my flesh, decimated my soul and shredded the person that I once was.
Kay was tattooed during Healing Ink Jerusalem by Israeli artist Razzouk at the Jerusalem Museum of Art on October 20, 2016