Dead Men (Marie and Lotte Book 1)

Mette Glargaard

Dead M
E
n

thriller

DEAD mEn

by Mette Glargaard © 2016

This work is protected by copyright in whole and in part. The reproduction or communication of this work in any form or by any means without prior permission from the publishers is illegal and punishable. This applies to all acts of use, in particular such as the reproduction of texts and pictures, their performance and demonstration, translation, the reproduction of diagrams, filming, microfilming, broadcasting, storage, and processing in electronic media. Infringements will be prosecuted.

1. edition 2016

ISBN 978-87-998905-2-1

Sometimes Fate takes Justice for his bride;
and when they marry, Destiny changes History.
- Anonymous

When she opened the front door icy winds whipped through the hallway and into the living room where he was standing. He shivered, thinking that winter seemed to go on and on, even though it had just begun.

He gazed at her as she stood there in her beautiful, expensive camel coat, brown high-heeled boots and her black hair dancing as she turned toward him. He enjoyed the view, and relished the fact that she belonged to him. Her innate elegance made his hall look worn and shabby.

Once more knifelike cramps tore through his gut, and he pressed his hand against his stomach, whimpering. For a moment he thought he would faint from the pain, and he called out to her impatiently.

“Marie!”

She closed the gray door out to the landing and took a few brisk steps to the hooks that hung like crooked metal fingers on the wall. She took off her coat as she walked, she didn’t waste any time; a good thing, too. He had spent a lot of time teaching her not to waste any time, when he had missed her so much, and needed her. Even if she was dumb as a doorknob a lot of the time, and didn’t understand the ways of the world, she was his little piece of heaven.

A pain worse than the one before made him bend over; he let out a sound meant to relieve the pain, but also to tell her how much pain he was in, and tell her to hurry, to be there for him.

She hung up her coat, quickly removed her boots, and walked over to him, putting her hand lightly on his back.

“Is the pain worse? Would you like me to get you some Tylenol?”

“Yes!”

He barely managed to get the word out, before falling to his knees in agony. His throat felt dry, his chest tightened, and he knew he would panic if the pain didn’t soon let up.

He had been suffering from stomach cramps for a while now, but instead of getting better, they had gotten worse. Marie had suggested that he see a doctor, but it was just a stomach ache. She was a typical woman and didn’t understand that a man can’t go to the doctor with a simple stomach ache - that’s something you do with kids, but a grown man damn well doesn’t!

“Go to bed, and then I´ll bring the Tylenol to you and get the heating pad, honey.” She sounded decisive and efficient, like a nurse talking to a whiny patient.

He wanted to get up, but he couldn’t. His throat was so tight now, that he couldn’t tell her about it, and his legs were going numb. He tried to speak but could only utter some ‘grahh’ sounds. She must have realized that something was really wrong by now and she had to come and help him. If she didn´t, his vocal cords might be permanently damaged and it would be her fault.

Waves of pain darted through his body; his arms jerked, and he lost his balance and fell down, right beside the dining table.

Lying there, it was as if an elephant sat on his chest and he couldn´t breathe. He was terrified. What was happening to him?

Marie had returned to the living room and looked at him with her face completely void of expression; he waited for her to help him get up, call 911, and take care of him, but she just stood there and gazed at him with an inscrutable expression. He didn´t understand. He had taught her to take care of him! The cramps raced throughout his body, erasing all thoughts. There was only pain. A pain he had never experienced before, that grabbed him and carried him. To his death.

1

Now and again, I feel a strange desire inside me - a desire to share. To share the story of being the one who brings justice into the world. It’s a lonely occupation. It has to be; I realize that. So I shrug it off. The danger of telling anyone, or trusting even one single person is simply too high a risk to even consider taking. It would be nice, though, to come home sometimes like other people do, sit on the couch with a cup of tea, and talk about my work. Like that day with Verner, for example. A poignant emptiness stirred in my chest; a longing for not being so alone.

I looked out the penthouse window. The red roofs of Copenhagen were covered in a light layer of early powdery snow. Behind them, the treetops in the nearby park were naked, stretching their frozen branches towards the sky, as if they were reaching for something that would bring them back to life. I could imagine the clear and frosty air pouring into the apartment if I opened the door to the balcony.

I swept a wayward lock of hair behind my ear, and looked down to see if he was done. His eyes were open, and they looked surprised. Those ice blue eyes that could easily accommodate many of the characteristics of his twisted personality: contempt, sarcasm, lewdness and aggression. But this expression was definitely new - cold and calculating Verner was actually surprised.

Above his wide open and astonished eyes, his eyebrows, which he meticulously preened every morning, had shot up into his forehead. His lips moved, as if he were trying to speak, revealing his straight, white teeth that were slightly too big - the teeth that he mostly showed in a captivating smile or a snarling grimace.

As his head moved around a little, the sparse, curly black wisps of hair performed a dance macabre around his head. With his open mouth searching helplessly for air, he looked like a drowning catfish thrown onto the shore. The resemblance made me smile.

White, bubbly froth seeped out of the corner of his mouth; he opened and closed it, as if he had one last speech to deliver. His heels kicked lightly on the beige shag-pile carpet, and his eyes narrowed, while a tear found its way from the corner of his eye; probably because it hurt to die. His arms flailed in the air, like a boy having a tantrum - hysterically, angrily, aggressively. I had to move one of the very expensive, suede covered dining chairs out of the way so his spasms wouldn’t knock it over.

He looked straight up into my eyes and tried to reach out to me, but I simply took a step back and watched his face, where the shiny tear trickled through the wrinkles by his eye and down to his neat sideburns. They were still mostly black, but with the silver threads that he thought gave him a look of a man of the world, which women found irresistible; or so he thought.

I just stood there, patiently, with my arms crossed, as if waiting for an ill-behaved child to calm down. His blue shirt had spittle on the collar, and his trousers were wet around the crotch, he had pissed himself when it dawned on him what had happened. He was pathetic. For once he was helpless and powerless. He had never suspected, not for one second, what I had been planning. It was just so easy… and so enjoyable.

There was a new smell in the room now, beneath the usual penetrating odor of Pierre Cardin, a scent left over from the eighties and a symbol of the hopeless idea that, if it worked back then, it would also work now. The new odor was a strange mixture of urine and the smell of fear that all animals get, in that moment when they realize that they are going to die. The smell blended into his own, the smell of a ladies’ man from the eighties. Maybe it´s one of nature’s bright ideas that the stench of terror can obliterate the smell of cheap cologne; a final attempt to scare away a predator.

Most of the abusers I have killed in the course of my life have, at some point, suspected something, but not Verner. Even though he was a predator, he was a really stupid one, and I had my fun, pretending to be submissive, all quiet and demure, with eyes cast down, and only provoking him when I wanted him to screw up and fall over his own feet. Like a cat that plays with a mouse before killing it, letting it believe again and again, that it has gotten away. I made him believe that he had taken full control of me, and that he was the one with all the power in our relationship. As if.

I had looked at him with false admiration, cooed in a low voice that he was fantastic, big and strong, and he had ravenously gobbled up my words, as if I could speak no others. As I gazed down on him now, I could see the mean and vicious ego in his beautiful ice blue eyes with the strands of amber that became more intense when he was angry; such a familiar expression.

I knew that when I praised and admired him, he felt like a complete man, the typical indispensable male. But on the inside, I laughed, seeing only the comical side of his pathetic attempts to display his version of so-called love. The first time I saw him, I knew that he was going to be my next project, to nurture and manipulate, until I was ready. He was going to be the next dead man, with me as the judge, jury and executioner; in control of both his life and his death.

His apartment was on the fifth floor, with a decent view of the city. There were still chimneys on most of the roofs, even though it had been almost half a century since anybody had to heat their homes with the tall black cast iron stoves with claw feet and ceramic tiles on the wall behind them. The tiled roofs were a sharp contrast to the very modern and square building I was standing in, which was built from gray concrete, with no soothing details.

Sometimes, when looking at modern architecture, I think about how the personality of the architect shines through, in his or her work. That’s probably true of every artist. But the personality of the creator of that building certainly couldn’t arouse anyone’s curiosity or interest, certainly not mine. Those architects that build square and boring structures are usually nice people on the surface, but very sexually frustrated underneath. They emanate an odor of stress, a vibrating smell that can almost be tasted; a contagious tingling on the tongue. The smell of anxiety can´t make me keep my distance, but the stench of stress will get me running for cover in a matter of minutes.

Verner kicked again. His shoe had fallen off, and his stockinged foot made a ‘fuuusch’ sound against the carpet, while the very last spasm signaled that the end had come. One final fierce kick against a chair almost knocked it over. It fell into the chair beside it with a muted sound when it hit the upholstered wood, and I had to grab it and set it upright.

“Marie, you are my queen. My muse. I can’t bear to be without you. Move in with me!” he said, only a month after we had met.

And I had blushed and gazed modestly at the floor, playing the part of a flattered woman, so much in love that I could not resist. He needed me to be close to him, I was his road to happiness, and for a while it was pure joy. He had a beautiful ceramic door sign made with our names intertwined: ‘Marie Tofte-Nielsen & Verner Damgaard’. He said our names were made for each other, that sometime in the future we would marry, and then we would have only one surname. One name to symbolize the eternal bond between us. Him and me against the world.

He treated me like a queen, as if I were a unique gem that had not yet been discovered. He brought me little gifts, small sweet cakes and pieces of jewelry, presenting them to me like a boy to his mother. He expected praise and recognition for his efforts, but the gifts weren’t about me. They were about him, and his hunger for validation was morbid and exorbitant.

After three months, hell set in, and his personality began to show its true colors. I seldom saw the charming and courting side of him. He didn´t reach out for me and put his arm around me when we went out. I no longer saw only his Dr. Jekyll side but more and more the abusive Mr. Hyde. I knew it was there, of course. It takes one to know one.

The first time he hit me, I came really close to killing him, but I wanted to find out what it is that make women stay with their abusers. Deep down, perhaps I wanted to understand why my own mother didn’t take me with her and run for her life. This was a subject that had often come up in my therapy sessions, and made me curious.

Is it some kind of feeling in the women? Are they so accustomed to abuse that it feels familiar in a morbid way? Or is it the manipulation from day one that makes them believe it’s their own fault, that they are to blame and therefore must put up with it? Maybe I should try walking in their shoes to understand it, I had thought. But in my relationship with Verner it dawned on me quite quickly that I didn’t need to understand them, or my mother. But in life I act the same way as if I´ve started watching a movie. I don´t stop watching halfway through just because it´s a bad movie; I have to see it to the end.

The day after the first beating he eagerly kissed me with his soft wet lips and apologized profusely. He told me how wonderful and important I was. He suggested that we buy new furniture for the dining room, together, as a symbol of commitment and what we meant to each other. In a mournful, low key voice he explained that he’d had a terrible childhood but if only I would give him some time, he would come to feel safe with me and give me all the love I deserved. He did his best to look as though he meant every word. And maybe he did in that moment. He looked at me pleadingly with his black eyebrows raised, with the expression people have when they want you to believe them. He probably believed it when he said that buying the furniture was just the beginning of all the things he promised to do for me.

I didn’t fall for it. To me, it seemed like a stunt designed to distract me. A more naive woman would probably have fallen for it, but I just pretended to, and smiled understandingly at him, looking flattered and forgiving. In reality, all I wanted to do was give him a swift kick in the balls with the sharp end of one of my high heeled shoes, and make him swallow a large kitchen knife. Slowly.

On the grounds that it didn’t really suit the style in the rest of the apartment, I had tried to talk him out of the necessity of having such expensive furniture. We argued, and I pointed out that it might soon get soiled and damaged, and that it was a waste of his limited amount of money, but he insisted over and over again that he just had to have it, infuriated that I brought his finances into the conversation. He accused me of doing it on purpose, of throwing in his face the temporary challenges he was facing with his popularity, which affected his financial status.

He just had to have that furniture. Suddenly, it wasn’t about us, but about his home. He started wandering around in small circles, wildly gesticulating and arguing loudly and insistently.

“I feel so much better, when my home is a nice place. That shouldn’t be so hard to understand, even for you? I’m much more motivated, to keep working proactively on my career, with nice things around me, but maybe that means nothing to you?”

Without waiting for an answer he continued; his voice even louder now.

“You just don’t get what sort of person I am. It´s like you don’t even want to understand me.”

He sighed.

“You make it really hard to love you, Marie, when you choose to act like a fool!”

He smoothed a few sparse strands of hair down on his head and looked around the store, checking if he should nod reassuringly to any shocked customers who might have recognized him and were wondering why his woman was so impossible that he had to raise his voice in anger.

He chose the table - it had plaster-like legs, painted to look like old Roman columns, and a tabletop of heavy green glass that had to be polished several times a week.

In return for him choosing the tacky table, he allowed me to choose the chairs; in theory anyway. But the possible choices were in fact limited since I had to choose something beige that would match his precious carpet – the beige, shag-pile carpet that was rare, expensive and utterly impractical.

He pointed at some chairs in beige suede, and I ‘chose’ them, to a great degree encouraged by him. As soon as he had paid for them he informed me that it was my duty to keep the chairs clean since I was the one who picked them. I looked into his eyes as he said it, and I could see only disdain in them - nothing but contempt and hatred for the woman who, on the surface at least, devoted herself to him and showed him only trust and admiration. Under the pretense of creating a home together, he had invented one more excuse to beat me when we got home.

“You make me so mad! Here I am, trying to make a nice home for both of us, and you don’t even appreciate it.” He hissed the words out through clenched teeth and slapped me hard across the face. “Why do you do that to me? I deserve better that that!”

A frustrated sound from the bottom of his throat was followed by his fists battering against my chest, while I moved backwards to lessen the effect of the blows.

His voice had become thin and squeaky with desperation. It was obvious that I, just by existing in the world, had forced him over the edge of what he could handle. Poor guy.

As he often pointed out himself, it must have been something in his childhood that made him react so violently, but actually, I didn´t care. A bad childhood is no excuse for not facing responsibility. He was not a victim. To me he was just a man asking to die; he had already condemned himself with his own actions. Mr. Piece of Shit Arrogance was just a sadist, covering his torture with sugar frosting.

Of course, during nights with lots of booze and fun, boisterous party guests would spill red wine on the chairs, drop ash from their cigarettes, or wipe their greasy fingers on them, instead of using the matching beige cloth napkins. And Verner took it out on me, along with the mess made by his guests. But all of this simply fueled my desire to kill him.

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.