Dead Men (Marie and Lotte Book 1)

by Mette Glargaard

  “This is Lotte,” she said with a timid voice.

  “Hey, it’s Lars. I’m sorry that I didn’t manage to answer your call. I know people hate talking to an answering machine. Thanks again for your company over dinner. So how are you?”

  “Oh … err … I’m well, thank you,” she mumbled and managed to remember something about good manners. “Yes, thank you too. How are you?”

  Lars ignored the question:

  “Now that I’ve heard from you, I feel much better. I was almost about to give up.”

  “I’ve been busy,” she hastened to say to apologize.

  “Oh never mind beautiful, we’re talking again now. So would you like to come to the theater?”

  “Yes, if it’s a day where I can ...”

  “Oh, she’s such a busy lady,” interrupted Lars with a laugh. “Could you possibly fit it in on Friday of next week?”

  “Oh sorry, I can’t make that. I have a bachelorette party for a friend from work. You’ll just have to find someone else.”

  Lotte was surprised how disappointed she felt and wished she could tell her friend she was sick.

  “Well, why don’t I see if I can get them swapped at the box office? How about the Saturday? Is that better? “

  “Oh yes, that would be fine actually. Thank you.”

  “Well I’ll try and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Is it okay if I call tonight? Right now I have a server problem that’s making me crazy!”

  “Yes, that’s okay; thanks” replied Lotte and surprised herself by how buoyed she felt with the idea of the upcoming date.

  “Good, then we’ll talk later. I’m sure I’ll be able to sort the tickets out and I’m already looking forward to it.”

  They hung up and the rest of the day Lotte got as much work done as she usually did on holidays. She sat and looked out the window or stared at her computer screen while she dreamed of her theater evening with Lars. She had to wear the right clothes, so she would look nice but not as if she had tried too hard and was too keen. High heels were not an option; they were too dressy and she guessed she might end up being taller than him. And what if she didn’t like the play? Would she dare tell him or should she just pretend?

  So many questions that were about making a good impression or not, filled her head, but not just that day; it was every day until Saturday arrived. She hardly slept at night and decided she was acting like a love-lost teenager again. On the day the theater finally came around she called Marie after breakfast and told her about the past week; she needed distraction that day or it would pass far too slowly.

  Marie immediately took action and after they met for coffee took Lotte off for a massage in a beautiful health club. The massage caused her to fall asleep and when she woke up, they had let her sleep for a half hour. She was embarrassed and felt bad because she had wasted Marie’s generous gift, but Marie would not hear of her guilty conscience. It was exactly what the point of the massage was - to get her to relax and get her to sleep so she could be fresh. A long and leisurely lunch followed that and then Lotte was led to a beautician who took control of her face with masks, scrubs and creams and ended the treatment by putting on, what Lotte thought, was too much make-up. Marie said that when it was evening, make-up could not be seen so clearly; especially in a theater. When Marie also wanted her to go to the hairdresser, but Lotte put her foot down.

  “I will probably look totally completely different from what I normally am! It’s no good that the man will regret for the rest of his life that he kissed me because he thought I looked like a million dollars tonight and then I look like a frumpy housewife for the rest of our time together!”

  “It’s nice to hear that you are ready to be kissed again,” smiled Marie as she sat beside Lotte and they both studied her changed reflection in the beautician’s mirror.

  Lotte blushed since she obviously hadn’t succeeded in appearing disinterested and cool. She had never actually been good at it and felt she was always flustered and went about things like a bull in a china shop.

  “I’m sure that I can’t live up to the standard he is used to…”

  She knew she sounded really discouraged and that it was because she was nervous and so wanted the evening to go well. She studied herself in the mirror again, still surprised how different she looked. Her blue-gray eyes were enhanced with a beautiful blue color with a slight pearlescent sheen that pulled the blue up in her iris. Her cheekbones were highlighted by a brownish blush and her lips were the epitome of an enticement to kiss. The reflection made her sad and happy at the same time. She was surprised to see herself look so.... delicious.... and at the same time as if she was close to tears. She could never make herself look like that and it reminded her of how incredibly boring her own appearance normally was.

  Marie’s perception meant she read Lotte’s look and mood perfectly and laughed.

  “Oh Lotte, you are just so unaware of how beautiful a woman you really are! It’s very nice that you are modest, but sometimes it’s really tiresome to see and hear how low your self-esteem is!”

  They laughed now because Lotte knew that Marie meant well. In the months they had known each other, in Lotte’s opinion, they really had become really close. Although Marie almost never shared anything about herself, Lotte had no doubt that she was a generous and nice person that would go a long way for those she loved. Lotte felt that Marie had perhaps suffered something uncomfortable in her childhood that made her take a long time to open up or perhaps she never would. Lotte had no need for Marie to talk about herself in any detail; Lotte had no doubt that what she saw was real.

  14

  I can recall a situation where I’m standing in a cage-like crib. I hold on to the side - and I cry. Loudly. Desperately. I must’ve been around a year old. I have a white cotton tank top and matching diaper pants. My legs are not fully extended, but still have that baby light wheel pin shape.

  On the floor in front of the crib is my mother in a red and white floral terry bathrobe and red clogs diligently in the process of trying to break away from my father, who was holding her by her hair, which cascades like a waterfall down her back, curled and gypsy black. He snarls something to her between his teeth, which are clenched with the lips pulled back in a grimace. She screams his name and the word ‘no’ over and over and over again. Without any effect.

  While he holds her hair, he talks to her face in a way as if he has a point she should understand and only being really close to her will make it be possible for her to understand. Then he looks at her, as if to see if she understood the point. She has obviously not, because she continues to resist and shout no, then he beats her again. Pushing her, so she goes up against the wall with such force that her lungs let go of the air in them and lets out a whooshing sound and briefly everything stops. I grow silent, awaiting, holding my breath, as in a quiet life, when the whole world is frozen in a silent situation.

  Then she reaches her hands out in supplication and says something with a pleading voice. He asks her a question, but it takes too long before she answers and he takes an aggressive step towards her and puts his hands around her neck and begins to choke her. She squirms desperately. She has no doubt that he can do it if he decides to. She looks at me with death anxiety in her eyes. Then she gives in. Breaking down in tears, nods and says something that softens his face up. He gives her a final push towards the wall, says something and turns around and leaves. She slides down the wall, crying in spurts until she hits the floor, where she for several minutes just sits with her hands to her face silently crying. I cry, but not desperate, more complaining and calling. I need my mother.

  That is my earliest memory.

  “What do you feel when you tell me about the incident?” the therapist asked me.

  I looked at her face, trying to guess what she wanted me to feel. I felt rage and hate, but also the feeling of ice-cold revenge,
which cooled my rage.

  I was trying to say that I was very angry with my father. She expressed that she can understand that it was not fair to any of us that he was so violent.

  “Where is the feeling in your body?”

  “I feel anger like a second skin outside of my skin. As something that wraps me in, protects me and cleanses me.”

  “What does it protects you from?” she asked.

  That surprised me. What does it protect me from? The world in general I thought, but if I had gone down that path she would have asked me what’s so dangerous in the world and I would have said: “Men like my father.” Then she would have started to dig into it and that was no good.

  I had read that anger is often used to cover up the sadness, so I said that anger protected me from noticing the grief.

  “How is grief dangerous?”

  “It is dangerous because it tears me apart.”

  “What happens if you get torn apart?”

  “I will never be reassembled. I become a nervous wreck without hold of anything. “

  She continued to ask about grief and I could tell that she really wanted me to cry. I asked her if my feelings associated with the memory would be less important in my life if I allowed myself to grieve over it and she confirmed that grief is redemptive. The memory would always be there, but by letting out the grief, it would go from feeling like an open wound to be like a scar instead - less painful and less emotional.

  So I started crying and it was great. I lay down on the couch and curled up like a baby in mother’s womb. She sat down beside me and stroked my hair. This was what I really paid her to do, but I couldn’t just come in and ask her to do that, it would cause too many questions. A hooker could have done it, but it would have been expensive and she wouldn’t have meant it the way the therapist did.

  15

  I met Lotte’s new boyfriend for the first time in early July in a small café. He was not so tall, but tastefully dressed, a nonchalant elegance that radiated money and confidence. He smiled a big smile like the cat in Alice in Wonderland as he offered me his hand. He said he had been looking forward to meeting me because Lotte had spoken so highly of me and that he could see that she not only had good taste in men, but also when it came to girlfriends. Then he winked, as if to underline his subtle flirtatious humor. I had wondered why I had not been allowed to meet him before, Lotte spoke almost nothing but how amazing he was and how lucky she was that she had met him.

  But it dawned on me that the truth probably was that he had not liked it. My guess was that he had told Lotte that they should spend time together and grow their love and know each other before friends should be involved. He said something else, that he had been so busy and that they had been so in love that they were lost to the world when they were together. Lotte looked totally enraptured with him, like if he had just given her a super compliment and not actually flirted with me.

  All my alarms went off. It was like standing right under a fire alarm bell - so violently deafening I needed to block the sound with my hands. I tried to give him a smile, but it was fake and I could feel every muscle in my body tighten up … as the predator does that discovers prey in the immediate vicinity.

  Lotte saw it and asked if I was okay and I excused myself with a mention of a tension headache. Immediately Lars offered to massage me a little and Lotte got another loving look in her eyes and enthusiastically declared that he was really good at it and I had to try it. But I was not in the mood to be touched by anyone, let alone him. It would be like two hunting spiders trying to fondle each other. Not gonna happen.

  Instead, I asked about him, his job and his family, and eventually I was able to relax a bit and said that it had helped with the headaches to get some coffee. Lars smirked and said that it’s always the same with women; they often don’t even know what they need. With a voice like a cheerleader, Lotte confirmed that it was jolly well good that women had men in their lives. I was ready to pick up a bucket and puke.

  Suddenly a thought struck me that now Lotte’s and my friendship would quietly slip away like fine sand through one’s fingers. I had no doubt that I was right about what type of man was sitting opposite from me and he would spend a long time trying to lull Lotte into his web so she did not suspect anything. Then, when friends began to complain about not seeing her, he would convince her that they were jealous and did not deserve her friendship, thus planting seeds to destroy her confidence in others and make her depend on him.

  Once he had her where he wanted her and she felt special, admired, loved and understood, he would slowly but surely begin to break down her personality again, and she would be a shattered nervous wreck without any friends to support her. There would be no on to confirm that it was not her there was something wrong with.

  The talk around the table was sluggish and I could barely stand the awkward feeling, so I excused myself with the fact that I was busy. Lotte seemed surprised and Lars just smiled the insane cat-smile.

  For two weeks I did not hear from Lotte and tried to get in touch with her, but it was almost impossible. Pictures of her in the clutches of the devil continued to appear in my mind’s eye. I had already tried it, but Lotte was not me. She was an innocent victim, one of those women who trusts in the psychopath and later pays the highest price for their gullibility.

  It occurred to me that I could easily beat Lars to death, but Lotte would not understand. She would be unhappy and angry at me, but that was because she could not smell the predator in his expensive cologne. She could not see the killer eyes behind his smiling facade … yet. And when she saw it, she would be spun so emphatically in his net that she would not believe it. She would excuse him with being stressed or whatever twisted explanation she could find.

  I became more and more preoccupied with thinking about it. It became an obsession for me and finally I decided that since Lotte’s and my friendship was on its way down the drain because of Lars, I had nothing to lose by telling her what was happening in her life. She would not believe me, that I knew, but she would hopefully remember it when she started seeing the demon rearing its head and maybe - maybe it would help her to get away in time.

  I prepared myself thoroughly, I thought about how I could articulate the conversation so Lotte did not go on the defensive too quickly, but would listen to me. It had to be based on something that was almost true and then make up something that suited the occasion.

  I sent her a text message that I needed to talk to her and that we should meet just the two of us. It was suddenly very difficult to find time in her schedule, but we managed and ten days later, we met, in Lotte’s new apartment, which I, without her knowledge, had given her.

  16

  When we sat down with the coffee on her new couch she looked compassionately at me and asked what I needed to talk about.

  “Lotte, you have been a great friend and have respected that I didn’t want to talk about Verner, but I feel that it would help to share it with someone close to me. This is a tough story, so you must also know that you can say no if you do not want to hear it or stop me if it becomes too violent for you.”

  “Oh, Marie, I’m just honored and touched that you want to share it with me! It is a huge vote of confidence. And though I have not really had time for you because of Lars, I really want to listen to your story, Marie. Need I say something along the way? How do you want it?”

  “Just listen. Ask if there is anything you do not understand, but otherwise just listen. Okay?”

  “Okay!”

  “Verner and I met in the city. It does not really matter how, but we were immediately attracted to each other. He was a little crazy and funny that night , but later he was gentle as a lamb. He was charming in a way, so I got to thinking that I did not deserve such a man. He was gallant, courteous, gave me gifts, opened doors for me and treated me like a princess. When we were together he was constantly awa
re of me, even in bed, where he could really get me to let go and reach new heights because he made me feel so at ease with his gentle manner and his undivided attention.”

  The last was a lie, because I saw through him right away, but I knew from books I had read on the subject that it was typical of the women who fell for the kind of men that they experienced indulging in the feeling of heaven to start with.

  “We were always together. Although we regularly planned to see friends, both his and mine, there was always something that prevented it. He was tired, had overtime, his friends wrote and cancelled due to illness and so on. Every time he apologized and seemed contrite and said things like, “It’s not because your friends are not important to me, but you are the most important thing in my life and when we two are together, then all is well. I don’t know why you don’t feel that way.” I was so in love I did not put more into it than what was said and just felt lucky because he wanted me.”

  Again a lie, but it was very important that Lotte understand how the psychopath slowly isolates his victim because I saw that Lars was doing it to her. In her eyes I saw recognition, but she didn’t say anything.

  “On the other hand, I was invited out by him quite often and we went to all sorts of concerts and operas, to do things that I really wanted to do. Sometimes I saw the side of him that I had also seen that first night, but in the beginning it was not me it was all about. He could, for example, be so annoyed about to stand in line that he jumped it and demanded to talk to the boss. When he did, he was gruff and irascible, seeming arrogant and he acted as if the whole universe was about him.

  In the beginning, I thought it was great to have such a man who took action, got us special treatment and was not afraid to step out from the pack. But just as slowly, so insidiously that I cannot even say when it began, he started taking his frustrations out on me.