Metro (3 page)

Through the front window I spot the lights from the station closing in. I inhale, preparing myself, feeling every muscle in my body as I risk a quick glance at the girl and my doppelganger. Her jacket is open now, and her shirt is pulled up to show her tiny, firm breasts. He pinches the nipples, making her moan with pain.

As the train slows down and stops at the platform, I am on my feet, ready to sprint for the doors as they open, but they don’t. Instead, the train starts moving again and I collapse to my seat, feeling low, as the girl’s skirt is being pushed up, her panties torn to pieces, the knife pressed hard against her throat. He spits at his other hand, needing the spit to make her wet.

I look away. In shock. What now? Next station? Or do I jump him, take my chances as he approaches his climax and hit him hard with my suitcase?

The train halts for no reason at a dark spot of the tracks at the exact second he enters her. His voice is a constant hum as he keeps talking to her, holding her hair, licking her tears as his tongue dances down the side of her face towards her ear.

“The train is waiting in line at the moment. An alarm has been activated at Norreport station making all trains stop between Christianshavn and Norreport.”

I realize that I am crying. Big, heavy tears roll down my face. Forceful, but silent sobs form inside my chest, making my body tremble. I finally get it—there is nothing I can do. I am trapped inside this train with my destiny, my mirrored doppelganger. I am lost, stuck here, no longer capable of even turning my eyes away from the rape happening only a few meters away, unable to intervene.

I am paralyzed for good, frozen in time and place—and so I have been all along. I finally understand. I am controlled by forces so much bigger and stronger than me, and it was never meant for me to get the opportunity to run for the station to raise the alarm. Neither would I have been able to use my cell phone. Not here, not anywhere. I was allowed to believe I could do it only so I would turn around to face the abuse instead of merely glimpsing it in the blurred reflection in the front window. Destiny wanted me to watch.

I understand this now.

I, who never used to believe in destiny, God, or anything at all greater than man, I understand this now. And I watch. I see everything. I look as the girl is forced on her knees, her face shoved up against the glass wall between our separate compartments. I see the terror in her eyes, the begging for help, but I am caught up in this nightmare as much as she is. Believe me, I would stop it if I could.

I would.

That poor girl, that poor, poor Ellen-Marie.

He is taking her from behind, hard, her head banging the glass wall. Soon blood from her nose and mouth mix with the smeared mascara, transforming her face to a mask of black and red, leaving long, greasy tracks on the glass.

Above her, I see my doppelganger smiling at me like he just gave me a present. I see his face through the features of my own dim reflection in the glass between us, like he must see my face through his reflection on his side of the glass, like we are merging into one person at that moment. Us. The reflections. The mirrored doppelgangers. Pushing up inside her, slowly gaining speed as the train starts to move. It is almost like those hard thrusts inside the poor girl’s vagina are pushing the train forward like some kind of enchanted handcar. Shoving it in—faster, harder, faster, harder. The train is gaining speed; a station passes like a blurry sea of light in the dark oblivion; the train is not stopping. The speed increases and so does the ferocity. We are a long way down the tunnel by now, deep under the city of Copenhagen.

He finally concludes it all with one last slamming thrust as he reaches his climax, the sound of his howling voice echoing through the empty train. He pulls out and zips his trousers with a satisfied smile as the girl collapses against the glass wall, dragging a glob of snot, blood, and mascara down the glass.

I almost fall from my seat when the train suddenly slows down; I have to grab the back of the seat to avoid tumbling to the floor.

The deceleration doesn’t seem to affect my doppelganger. He is standing firmly on the floor, looking relaxed. He tilts his head to me and smiles. I see his big knife flickering in the cold light as he grabs the girl by her long hair, pulling her head back. There is even something affectionate in the way he lets the knife find its way through her hair to the large, round earring dangling from her tiny, beautiful ear. He pulls her hair, forcing her head to the side, making sure I see it all as he swiftly cuts off her ear.

“NO!” I scream, and to my own surprise, the word actually comes out of my mouth, breaking the trance in the exact moment the train finally stops at the station and the automatic doors open to another deserted station.

My doppelganger wraps the ear in a handkerchief and shoves it into his pocket as he leaves the train with a nod of his head in my direction.

I am instantly on my feet, rushing for the girl, pulling her into my arms, mumbling comforting words, but she pushes me away, shoves me, even kicks me.

“I want to help,” I say, trying to stop the bleeding from the side of her head where the ear used to be, using my own handkerchief.

“Beat it! Leave me alone!”
She yells so hard that spit and blood sprinkles my face.

I need to call an ambulance.

I spot my doppelganger. He is standing on the other side of the platform, looking all relaxed as he waits for the train in the opposite direction. I must stop him. Suddenly I understand the meaning of it all. This has happened because there is only one person who can stop him, and that person is me, his doppelganger. Me, the good half, the white part. I
must
stop him.

The girl’s pink suitcase is lying on the floor. Unlike my own soft canvas suitcase, this one is made of hard plastic. I grab it, feeling the weight. Holding the suitcase in both hands, I rush out off the train to the platform as I lift the suitcase high above my head.

My doppelganger neither sees nor hears me coming, and I smash the suitcase down on the back of his head using everything I have got. He collapses at my feet as I once again lift the suitcase over my head. Then something hard hits me from behind, making me fall on top of him, slamming my face down the platform. I feel the shocking pain of a broken tooth. Blood fills my mouth. Another blow hits my head as I fight to get back on my feet. I stumble, lose my footing and fall to my back. I see Ellen-Marie coming at me with her pink suitcase.

“Ellen-Marie,” I whisper, blood and pieces of teeth spraying out of my mouth. “Why, Ellen-Marie? I was trying to help.”

***

“I have questioned Maja,” the detective says with a stern frown on his face.

I am lying in the hospital bed where I awoke a few hours ago. I am told that I have been in a coma for three days. This is the third time the detective has been around. I still can’t seem to remember his name, though. What I do remember is repeating to him every last painful detail from that night of horror over and over again.

“That’s good,” I say, touching my forehead. I have this terrible headache. Pain flashes through my skull as I speak. “Maja is in control of my calendar. She can confirm that I wasn’t even in Denmark Monday night. She—”

“She says she hasn’t spoken to you for more than a year,” the detective tells me as he pulls a small screen from his pocket. “She explained to me that you were fired two months before your divorce. You haven’t been working for the company ever since.”

“But…that can’t be…”

“We have been checking up on your cell phone. You haven’t received any calls in the last five days. So neither Maja nor anybody else called you on the night in question.”

I don’t even bother looking at him. Why is he saying such nonsense? I know this is not true. I have been working around the clock the last year. Maja knows this as she…

“You don’t think that I—”

“Your hands, face, and clothes were covered in the victim’s blood. You had it everywhere. So yes, we do think—”

“But I got it on me trying to help her!”

“We found her ear inside your pocket…wrapped in a handkerchief. This morning, we found five other severed ears searching the rented room you have been living in since your divorce.”

I stare at him. Speechless. “That’s not true. I would never harm Ellen-Marie.”

“Ellen-Marie?”

I don’t answer. I lean back against the pillow. After a few silent minutes, I recall something. “The surveillance camera in the Metro! Get the recordings and you’ll see for yourself. Everything’s as I’ve said.”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to show you,” the detective says, handing me the small screen. He uses his index finger to press play. The screen lights up to show a blurry black and white recording of the rape. Everything happens as I have been telling him.

Only with one small difference.

I am not sitting at my seat by the front window of the Metro.

I am not there at all.

My suitcase is where it should be. It is like I have been erased from the recordings.

“Then he finally got me,” I mumble, pushing the screen away.

Steen Langstrup

Award winning Danish author of more than 15 books so far.

Steen Langstrup lives in Copenhagen, Denmark, with his wife and two kids. He has had several works translated and published in foreign languages. His books have been filmed and made into radio plays.

...

I enjoy my readers as much as they enjoy my writing. Stop by my blog,
www.langstrup.com
or email me at
[email protected]
, I answer all emails.

Other ebooks in English by Steen Langstrup:

The Informer
,
World War II Crime Noir Novel

In the Shadow of Sadd
,
Crime Noir Novel co-written with Sara Blaedel, Gretelise Holm and Lars Kjaedegaard

More titles coming soon ...

Colophon

METRO

Copyright © Steen Langstrup, 2009, 2012

The English translation copyright © Steen Langstrup, 2012

First published in Danish under the title
Metro
as part of the Edgar Allan Poe tribute antology
POE
by 2 Feet Entertainment, 2009

1. English edition, ebook, 2012

ISBN 978-87-7994-202-8

2 Feet Entertainment

Dalgas Have 14, 4. tv

DK-2000 Frederiksberg

Denmark

[email protected]

Table of Contents

Metro

Colophon