Dead Men (Marie and Lotte Book 1)

by Mette Glargaard

  So, whenever I was back on my hands and knees, scrubbing at the latest stain, until he was satisfied it was gone, I imagined him sleeping, snoring a little, and me throwing myself at him with the biggest knife from the kitchen, thrusting it over and over again into his throat, until his head parted from his body.

  I could almost hear the sound of the blade against the flesh, and see the blood splattering everywhere - covering the walls, the tacky bed, and me - until everything looked like it had been smeared with thick, dark paint the color of crimson. In my imagination I lingered for a while on that first deep slice, when his throat would open like a red flower, and make gurgling sounds while his tongue danced, like a worm in a jar, as life started to ebb out of him.

  If it had been up to me, I would have just thrown the messed-up chair out and bought a new one; I could afford it, but he couldn’t. Instead, he forced me to clean the damn thing, and all I got in return was a promise that he would not beat me up.

  “Clean it up right now, then you can spare yourself making me so furious, that I can´t be held accountable for what I’m driving to do.

  Sometimes, he even demanded that I clean a chair while the guests were still there.

  “If you do a good job, I won’t have to beat you later!”

  But on those occasions, this was said in a sarcastic tone of voice and with a sycophantic smile at the guests, so they, of course, would think that this was just Verner´s oh, so marvelous sense of humor.

  His sense of humor was one of the things people loved about him when he had his reality show on TV. He could be really mean to the other participants, but covered the bile with a smile.

  “Not only is this guy a believer, he even looks like Jesus with that haircut. It’s a real crown of thorns!” That was one of his lines posted on YouTube, which had been viewed an exorbitant amount of times.

  He did the same, when entertaining people who could possibly be good connections for getting him new jobs. He had perfected cruelty into an art form.

  So I would get down on my hands and knees, starting to rub at the stain in the dim light from the huge replica of a Poul Henningsen lamp that was way too big for the room. It was ugly as hell, with its old-fashioned style, like something that belonged in a spaceship in a mid-fifties B movie. It was yet another thing Verner had chosen solely for its bragging value.

  One guest, with an expression of discomfort, once tried to protest, over my having to scrub out stains during a dinner party. But Verner, sounding like a patient father, explained that I myself had insisted that immediate cleaning would be necessary when I had chosen the chairs, against his better discretion. His final pontificating words on the matter were:

  “One must wonder about women’s priorities, because I would have thought that dedicating oneself to the needs of our guests would be the highest priority. But that is obviously not how Marie sees things.”

  Humiliated and ridiculed, I would look down at the floor and nod meekly in agreement before I fetched the stain remover from the kitchen cabinet.

  More and more often, at my expense, his opinions were the only ones heard. When other people were present I was usually quiet and submissive, and when he asked for my opinion on some subject up for discussion, it was mostly just to show people that he listened to it. But, as he growled at me when everyone had gone home, he “didn’t give a damn about what a whore thinks”. Slowly but surely he was approaching his death.

  When I had made my final decision, about when and how he was going to die, I sealed the sentence with a drop of blood. My blood. A drop of justice.

  I pricked my finger with a needle, exclaimed “ouch!” and held out my finger to him. As if in slow motion, I watched him reach out and take it, with the round, red drop like a seal on my fingertip. He parted his lips, and just like all the other times I have offered my finger to a man, he willingly sucked the drop of judgement into his mouth, thereby confirming his death sentence, by my hand. Now we were one - the executioner and the prey.

  Moments after, when I kissed him, there was a faint taste of iron in his kiss - proof that now I was inside him, as he had been inside me so many times.

  The idea for the symbolic drop had come to me a long time ago, when I had pricked my finger and a boy at the orphanage teased me by offering to “lick my juices”. I offered him my finger, and he put it in his mouth, and while the other kids were laughing as he suggestively pulled it in and out, my blood became part of him, and a strange excitement, that had nothing to do with him or sex, overtook me. I became part of him. Now he could never get rid of me. It was so beautiful, so full of meaning, so right somehow and so healing that I later decided that every dead man thereafter would have a drop of my blood inside him.

  A relationship consists of compromises until death separates the two parties. For Verner, the box of compromises was empty now, and it was time to say goodbye, after only six months. Humiliation, ridicule and violence rained down on me in ever growing frequency. Every time he began his latest diatribe of superiority, I imagined the feeling I would get when I saw death in his eyes, saw the look of surprise, and the glow that slowly faded and disappeared. I must admit that the thought excited me, but I had to contain myself until the time was entirely right. It was like slow sex, almost tantric, approaching climax, but holding back again and again.

  For one moment, I gazed out of the penthouse window again, thinking of all the humiliations. Then I redirected my eyes and looked down at him. He had stopped twitching now.

  “You didn’t expect this, huh?”

  My voice was neutral and, surprisingly, sounded only a little pleased. The question was obviously theoretical. What man expects to be poisoned to death over a long period of time by the woman he has so carefully and ritualistically manipulated and beaten into submission? As I stood there and gloated over him, the glow in his eyes disappeared, and they became dull and empty. Probably it was the natural moistening of the eyeball, which stopped after death, but it could easily be interpreted as his soul finally leaving his body, beginning its journey into eternity, or hell, in Verner´s case. Down to join all the others.

  Soon, the police would arrive. They would see him, but not understand that this was a place where justice had been done. Hopefully. Preferably, they would just see a man who had succumbed to a heart attack.

  Gently, as I wiped the white froth from his cheek and around his mouth with a napkin, I did feel a tiny sting of sorrow. A part of me thought it was a pity, a waste of life, but a sparkling triumphant feeling soon took over, for I had the legislative, the judicial and the executive power.

  2

  Lotte stood by the sink in the kitchen and stared at the disarray of coffee stained cups and dark brown rings on the counter. Those beautiful blue cups they had bought together in the beginning that couldn´t go in the dishwasher but they had bought them anyway, agreeing that they could easily manage to wash them by hand. So here she was. Again. She couldn’t remember the last time she had come home to the apartment and seen the gray kitchen top without dirty cups on it.

  She felt the irritation, tight in her chest; her jaw tensed and almost made her teeth hurt. Such a huge relief it would be to go in, and throw a cup straight at his head. Just throw it, without a word, and watch it hit his big fat head. Such a beautiful sound it would be. First the sound like when you crack an egg, and then all the little sharp pieces hitting the floor with a tinkling sound.

  Lotte always got pissed off when someone wrote things on Facebook like: “You need to create your own life. Happiness is not something you get, but something you create!” That was all well and good, but if you have to continue to live with an intolerable boyfriend because you can’t afford to move out, then it´s easier said than done. Create your own life? Yeah, good luck with that!

  She punished the cup in her hand with the worn brush, scrubbing vigorously at the stains while feeling the frustration building up in
her body searching for some kind of release. Sometimes she wondered what she might have looked like if she actually had started tearing her hair out back when she’d begun to feel like doing it metaphorically, frustrated as she was with her complicated life. She’d decided that she’d probably look like a coconut that had lost a fight with a lawnmower.

  But even the silliest of fantasies could not alleviate the gut-wrenching frustration of being trapped, of having to live with an irresponsible idiot. No end in sight. She sighed. Of all the irritating things about him, the worst part was still having to look at him when he ate. The way he chewed reminded her of a horror movie she had seen by mistake, where a man was tied to a table and had his mouth sewn shut with electrical wire. She felt a forbidden giggle bubbling inside her at the image, followed by strong feelings of guilt, and a burning sensation in the pit of her stomach.

  What she couldn´t get her head around now was the fact that, at first, she had found him charming, and his gross masticating had seemed ‘cute’! Now, she thought he looked worse than the ugliest of cows. Not that she had anything against cows as such, but they had a funny way of masticating that she recognized in her own personal idiot. His jaw made a small clicking sound when he chewed, and sometimes he slid his lips apart to reveal his somewhat crooked teeth.

  In the beginning, it had seemed strikingly novel, even a little artistic, that he seemed to grind his food rather than chew it. With his mouth he almost drew a figure-eight that combined both lateral and circular movements, while his gaze became distant and glassy. Now she felt like puking at the sight, but there was a time when she could sit and lovingly watch him while he ate and feel pleased when she could see how much he enjoyed her attention. Now, with love gone, in her mind, she was too nice to say it out loud, she called him ‘The Ruminant’.

  That she had ever thought it was charming, testified to the fact that it is not an exaggeration to compare infatuation with insanity. She was quite certain that if a psychiatrist had seen her while her adoration of this ‘being’ was at its height he probably would have gotten a worried look on his face and a tight twitch at the corner of his mouth. And as he pushed his glasses back on his nose, he would promptly have diagnosed her with moderate to severe schizophrenia. Not that she knew what the diagnosis really entailed, but she imagined that it aptly described her shift from infatuation to repulsion. She most definitely had to have experienced some kind of split from her normal personality to even have liked him, let alone feel that she loved him. Now, while staring intensely at the cup she was washing, she shivered at the thought of the things she once enjoyed doing.

  They met on the internet and he told her that he was living temporarily with his parents, after a failed relationship that she came to learn had been very hard on him. She had not asked about why the relationship had failed, she was just happy to feel his interest, and reveled in what she perceived as him being at peace with himself. She had been licking her wounds, too, after the end of a relationship, and had not really been prepared to meet ‘the One’, or someone who temporarily might resemble ‘the One’ anyway. Until he morphed into The Ruminant, that is.

  Within six months of meeting, they had bought an apartment together, everything apparently bliss, but another six months after that she had realized the huge mistake she had made. Because she had been so hungry for love again after the previous ‘catastrophe,’ an abusive man. She had not given herself time enough time to process and to heal. Instead, she had thrown all reason overboard and, with no thought for the consequences, given her heart to him. He, on the other hand, lived well enough at his parents’ house after his failed relationship. Once again, he was cared for by his mother, who washed his clothes and served him his food. The ‘temporary’ arrangement he had first mentioned to her, had in fact lasted two years, and Lotte soon began to feel like a surrogate mother. One he could have sex with.

  So now, here she stood, pseudo-single, childless, poor, and stuck in an apartment that she cared less and less about; mostly because she had to stare at The Ruminant every day. Every time he finished eating, he pushed the chair away from the table with a jolt, as if to finish typing a sentence on an old typewriter with a decisive stab at the full stop key. He just had to push a chair with metal legs over the varnished pine floor, and every time it made her stomach clench and her jaw tighten. She wanted to scream into his face, hurt him, and make him feel as useless, annoying, and inconsiderate as he really was. She felt a stab of guilty conscience at the very thought.

  But she desperately wanted him to see himself as she did, to make him feel small and insignificant. Maybe she should make a video and put it on Facebook; the idea put a rare smile on her face. A seldom occurrence in his company. The guilty conscience increased and she sought to banish the thought of hurting him as she washed another cup and dried it with the dish towel.

  Normally, Lotte saw herself as a very positive and optimistic person. That was probably one of the reasons that he had fallen for her. She did her best to be a person who was easy and pleasant to be around, someone who brought smiles and joy into every relationship, even though, in reality, she was not very outgoing. She never made waves, never caused any problems, and even when she felt hurt or angry, it quickly passed, giving way to more smiles, more joy, more ‘niceness’. There was something a little hippie about her even though she had short hair and was somewhat shy and reticent.

  The last of the cups had been sitting on the counter all day with a little coffee in it and the stain was particularly stubborn. She put a little detergent and hot water in it, and stood for a moment with her hands on the sink and stared into space, while she imagined a sunlit spot in a world where she could breathe freely. Her secret world where she would have burned her bra and danced around a fire with feathers in her hair and myriads of beautiful pearls on her clothes, while the drums beat in rhythm with the voices. People would sit around, telling tales of joy and excitement, like larks singing high on a bright blue summer sky. They’d smile at each other, everything was safe; and in the morning the air was filled with a scent of vanilla and cinnamon. Everyone was nice to each other, listened attentively, washed their coffee cups when they were done, and hugged each other tenderly at every opportunity.

  Lotte sighed. So wonderful it would be to actually live in a world like that, not just in her imagination. She was aware of the fact that she often succumbed to social standards and unwritten rules that dictate what you can get away with. Extreme love and extreme anger were totally unimaginable emotions. There were more of those restrictions in her life than she cared for, but she felt that she could not change that. What would people think? She couldn’t possibly openly dare to act like a hippie, and the thought frightened her so much that she went to the other extreme, and thus became a bit boring to look at in her usual gray, beige and black outfits.

  On a brave day she might use a scarf or a necklace to spray a little color on herself, but they were rare occasions. She would rather be invisible than be judged and she almost felt like a rebel when she wore a small pink scarf around her neck, but, if she had dared, she would have loved to surround herself with many more colors. So, she sometimes felt a little boring in the eyes of the outside world. She thought she looked like someone whose life was slipping away. Like sand running through fingers on the palm-shaded beach she’d never go to; because she had to spend her money on him.

  Lotte was now thirty-five and felt herself standing on the brink of middle age. However, she didn’t panic when something didn’t go quite right like she did when she was twenty-five. She could be quite a relaxed and deliberate, thoughtful person. She thought that in the outside world she was possibly perceived as bland and totally insignificant. And that felt just fine, safe and protected.

  But inside herself when she could put her low self-esteem to one side there was a wealth of fantasies to be found. She could make up stories and find adventure and create strange worlds. An ability which she mostly used
when she was with the children in the family. And also, Lotte knew, there was another secret side to her that yearned for excitement and adventure - perhaps even danger.

  She imagined she was in Venice by all the wide canals. She saw herself in tight black clothes and light sneakers, a focused expression on her face, running around a corner from pursuers before jumping into a boat, starting the engine, letting go of the mooring and hearing the owner yell furiously in Italian. He’d try to get to the boat before she shot away from the dock but he didn’t make it, and the boat sped out into the water with a roar from the engine, just as the pursuers turned the corner, guns in hand, ready to shoot and stop her. She had to live out that fantasy in her next life, one where she was not washing coffee cups on a daily basis.

  During the time they had been together his finances had gone downhill—if they had ever been good that is—and she seriously doubted it. He had his own coaching business that was not doing well, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out why; he hardly ever left the apartment. But in her usual ‘don’t-rock-the-boat’ style, she failed to point that out to him. Lotte also stayed quiet because she was not self-employed and, therefore, he would think she couldn’t possibly have an opinion about it.

  They talked less and less to each other and their home became a silent and cold mausoleum for a relationship that should never have evolved beyond the kissing stage. But she had been so blinded by the way he had seemed to really want her. It was like a magic potion and completely irresistible - to feel so wanted and coveted. That feeling had nourished and sustained her for a long time, and even when it disappeared, she stayed with him, hoping that it would reappear if only she loved him enough.

  As time went by, it didn’t seem as if he was particularly interested in the few customers that he did have. When he talked about his sessions with them it sounded as though he had a number of standard questions that he always used, whether they fit the customer’s situation or not. She had initially thought she could benefit from some coaching from him, but he seemed annoyed when she asked questions and didn’t understand what his coaching terms meant. Soon she stopped asking for his help. It was as if he had a special language he expected her to understand and even in everyday conversation, he would throw words around like projection, deflection, retrospective, and egotistic. At first, she had thought that it was probably because she was just too stupid to understand his magnificence, but as she got to know him she was not so sure it was her who had the problem.