by Willow Rose
"That'll show them," she said, sniffling, while staring at the closed iron door at the top of the stairs.
"He'll come for me, won't he?" she asked, and her voice echoed into the small room behind her that was lit only by a lightbulb hanging from under the ceiling. Of course he will. Of course.
Astrid drew in a deep sigh. She looked around and spotted the big flashlight on a shelf in the corner among blankets, water bottles, and canned food. She pulled the flashlight out and held it in her hand. Then she sat down again, waiting for someone to come and get her. Not just someone. Him, the boy of her dreams, the love of her life. Not just anyone.
Astrid sighed and calmed herself down. She always did this, her mother would say; she always made herself uneasy or even anxious for no reason at all.
1
2012
The man was looking in the windows of the French doors leading into the kitchen. It was dark inside the mansion by the ocean. A small light under the door revealed that there was someone in the other room next to the kitchen. Just as he had hoped.
The man lifted his gloved hand and smashed it through the small window, then reached through and unlocked the door. He opened it without making any sound at all. Smoothly, he slid through the door and into the woman's kitchen. Carefully, he closed the door behind him, while stepping on the broken glass strewn underneath his heavy boots.
The man turned and looked at the perfect kitchen. Knives were hanging on the wall. He grabbed one and looked at it in the moonlight that poured into the room. Then he sighed with a deep feeling of satisfaction while putting it back. He reached into his own sports bag and found his own set of knives rolled up in their bag. Like a professional chef, he unfolded the bag and rolled the knives out on the table.
What a beautiful sight to his eyes. Clean blades, sharpened to perfection. Almost a pity he had to mess them up. Cutting through meat and bones always made them dull. The man picked one out and put the rest back in his bag. Then he approached the door leading to the adjacent room, where he could tell the TV was on.
The man had studied the woman's daily routine for weeks now and knew she always dozed off to her favorite show, The Sopranos, before she awoke and went to the bathroom at exactly ten-thirty. She was as precise as a clock. Then she would go into the kitchen and grab a glass of water to put next to her bed for the night. She seemed to have a hard time sleeping lately and he speculated that this made her thirsty.
The man walked out of the kitchen door and into the hallway as he heard the theme song for The Sopranos, and then the TV went silent.
The man sat down on a chair in the corner of the guest bedroom and waited, listening to the woman performing her routines, like he had done many times before, but this time was different. This was the big finish, le grand finale, as they said in French.
The man glanced at his reflection in the mirror on the dresser. He touched his pale skin and followed one of the veins with his finger. Then he smiled at himself. He had been looking forward to this moment for all of his life. He had prepared for it, dreamt about it, arranged it into details, just waiting for the right time and to be in the right place.
And the best of it? He was just starting out.
2
2012
Old Mrs. Heinrichsen let out a small shriek. The spider in her bathroom sink had startled her. They always did. She shook her head and turned on the tap. The spider tried to fight the river of water, clinging on to the slippery side as the water was threatening to flush it down the drain. Mrs. Heinrichsen watched its struggle with great joy and turned the tap to speed up the water. She grinned and sang while watching the spider fight for its life.
"The Itsy Bitsy Spider crawled up the water spout.
Down came the rain, and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain,
And the Itsy Bitsy Spider went up the spout again."
Finally, the spider gave up, lost the fight, and disappeared with the water into the drain. The old woman liked these small displays of power over nature. She had always enjoyed them over humans as well, but in recent years, respect for her and her status on the small island had diminished. No one seemed to care who she was or who she had been anymore.
There was a time when it wasn't only spiders that had struggled to stay alive by her mercy. Oh, how she missed those days. How she missed seeing the fear and terror in people's eyes as she drove down the street in her new car, or went for a stroll showing off her newest fur brought in from Paris, or a new jumpsuit from Milan. Those were the days. Those were the times she had cherished and would remember as her golden years.
But these days, no one cared anymore. No one respected her in the manner they had back then. To them, she was just an old lady. Someone whose time was ticking down. Someone who was close to the finish line of life. The youngsters of today didn't have any respect for status or title anymore. It was all just the same baloney to them. They didn't care about her position; hell, most of them hardly knew her name anymore.
Mrs. Heinrichsen finished brushing her teeth and walked back towards the bedroom. The old wooden floors of her villa creaked underneath her weight, even though she could hardly make it past ninety pounds anymore. She was still a strong woman and she expected to live at least twenty years more.
"Gotta make it past the one hundred mark," she always said. "Get the letter from the queen before you go."
It was her goal, and Mrs. Heinrichsen always reached her goals. This was something she had tried to teach her son, but in vain. Today, people didn't seem to care about setting goals and reaching them, or about doing what it took to make it, no matter what the cost. Working to accomplish something. Nowadays it was all about how to get out of working and how to get the state to pay for everything. She saw people like this down by the harbor, down by the boats leading to the mainland. These people who could just as well be working, but here they were instead, drinking their beers, hanging out with their dogs, and sporting dirty clothes. Mrs. Heinrichsen knew they got paid from the state to live that kind of life. Destitute was the nice word for them. People who couldn't take care of themselves, so the state had to step in. Freeloaders, Mrs. Heinrichsen would call them. In her book, they were nothing but people who didn't want to work. And lately, with all those newcomers, all those brown people who had almost invaded the country, even their small island, and were all being paid huge amounts from the state to get all their relatives up here, it was about to destroy the small paradise, destroy Denmark with all their demands, under the pretense that they just wanted to be equal. How those dirty faces could ever get the thought that they were equal to the proud hardworking Danish people, she never understood. It was an atrocity. The beautiful country had been invaded by these…these foreigners…and Mrs. Heinrichsen certainly didn't like what they were turning this country into.
Mrs. Heinrichsen entered her bedroom and sat on her bed wearily. It had become increasingly difficult for her to lie down with her breathing troubles, and she wasn't looking forward to yet another night sitting up and sleeping. The nights had become long and painful to her lately and even though she did take a small nightcap, it never quite helped her through the entire night.
"Oh, John. You bastard," she said, and looked at the empty side of the bed where he used to sleep. "I bet you're up there somewhere enjoying seeing me suffer through these nights, aren't you?"
The silence from the room was answer enough. Mrs. Heinrichsen leaned back on her stack of pillows and hugged her arms around her body. Barely had she closed her eyes before she heard a sound. Mrs. Heinrichsen got out of the bed again with much discomfort.
"If it's that neighbor's dog again, I'm sure I'm gonna…"
She never made it further than that. As she fought to get out of the bed and up onto her feet, she watched the door to her bedroom open quietly. Then she gasped.
A face appeared in the darkness.
"Hello, Agnes," the man said.
3
&n
bsp; 2012
"I can't believe you inherited a real house, Mommy."
I looked through the rearview mirror at my seven-year-old son, Victor, sitting in the back seat of our old Toyota. He was smiling and his small eyes sparkled. He had been so excited ever since we received the phone call telling me that my grandmother, my father's mother, had passed away, and much to my surprise, since I never knew her, that she had left her house to me.
My oldest child, my daughter Maya, was less excited, to put it mildly. But then again, at thirteen, not much was exciting, especially if it involved me, her mother, or anything remotely grown up and boring.
"Of course she inherited it, you doofus," Maya said to her younger brother. "She's her only grandchild."
"Well she could have left it to grandpa, her son," I argued, while finding my exit from the highway. "That would have been the most normal thing to do. But for some reason, she wanted me to have it."
"Why?" Maya asked with her lips curled, making her look like she was extremely annoyed.
I shrugged. "I don't know. I never even knew her. Grandpa says I met her once when I was just a small child, but I don't remember it. Maybe I chose to forget because she was too scary," I said, and made a funny face.
Maya looked mad. "You're so…so pathetic."
"Wow. Well, thanks."
That seemed to be the end of that conversation. It had been a long ride from Copenhagen to Esbjerg, and my children hadn't exactly been talking much. It was getting dark outside the car's windows and would be way past their bedtime by the time we arrived at our new house.
Victor had slept most of the way and Maya seemed to feel it was beneath her dignity to talk to me for more than three minutes at a time. She was pissed because I had made the decision for all of us. I had decided to move there, to my grandmother's house on Fanoe, a small island in the North Sea outside of Esbjerg. I knew it wouldn't be popular to make a decision like that on my children's behalf, but there was no way around it. I was broke and couldn't afford to keep our apartment in Copenhagen. I had been fired from my latest job as a writer for a fishing magazine, simply because I had pissed off the chairman of the Danish Fishing Federation, DFF, by asking him about the many bottles of expensive wine that the Federation had deducted on their taxes this year. Needless to say, it wasn't the kind of story that the magazine was looking for, so they kicked me out. Well, that's just the way things go. I wasn't exactly looking for a long-term career in fishing journalism anyway, but it had been a paying job, and it had allowed me to bring home enough money for the rent and expenses that my ex had left me with when he decided it was more fun to be with a twenty-five-year old intern at his TV station than to stay with his family.
"Are we there soon?" Victor asked with a slight whimper.
"Why?" I asked. "You need to go?"
Victor nodded heavily. "Badly."
Maya sighed and rolled her eyes. "You could have gone when we stopped for snacks."
"I did," Victor said.
"But that's only, like, ten minutes ago. How can you need to go already? We’ve stopped twenty times for you on this trip." Maya shot him an annoyed look.
"Maya. Your brother…"
"Has a nervous bladder. I know. There’s always something with him, isn't there?"
That shut me up for once. What was I supposed to say? Yes, there is always something wrong with your brother? Yes, he suffers from anxiety attacks, light autism, strange seizures, occasional loss of bladder control, and maybe some other stuff that the doctors are just waiting to throw at us? Yes, he hasn't been well ever since his dad just took off and only wanted to see him every six months or whenever it suited him? Yes, I could say all those things, but I didn't. What's the point anyway? She knew. Maya knew Victor hadn't been well and she was suffering too, suffering because every hour of my attention went towards him. She was a big girl, now. She was supposed to be able to handle it.
"What's that smell?" she asked, and wrinkled her nose.
"That, my friend, is the smell of Esbjerg," I said and smiled, as I could see the town rise in front of us. "We'll take the boat out to the island from there. It'll be fun once we're on the boat. Just wait and see."
"Yay!" Victor exclaimed. "I love boats."
"It smells like fish," Maya said, and held her nose.
I had to admit, the smell was pretty bad, and opening the window only made it worse. "It’s fish," I said, trying to sound cheerful. "Fish guts."
4
1977
It didn't take Astrid many hours to lose track of time, but she guessed it was getting closer to nighttime, since she was beginning to become tired. She decided to lay down a little bit and closed her eyes, and soon she was sound asleep.
It wasn't until the morning that the panic erupted inside of her. She woke up and realized she was still trapped in the bunker and now she was beginning to feel hungry. She got up and walked to the door again. Then she started hammering it.
"Help!" she yelled, but then felt bad. Her mother always told her not to raise her voice.
"You're always so loud, Astrid. And shrill. You should learn to keep your mouth shut. You don't have a pretty voice, and boys like pretty voices, so you stick to what you can do. You cook, alright?"
"Yes, Mom."
Astrid took a deep breath and decided to try again, even if she didn't like to be loud. "HEEELP! I'm in here! I'm trapped! Christian? Can you hear me?"
She stopped and listened for footsteps, or maybe even voices. But still there was nothing. Nothing but the terror of silence.
She tried again. This time she clenched her fists and hammered with all her strength against the iron door, and continued till the pads of her hands became numb. Then she managed to put her fingers into the small crack and tried to rip the door open, but it was stuck.
"Help!" she yelled, while the feeling of utter panic grew.
What if no one hears me? No, you stupid fool. Don't think like that.
She tried to scratch the door with her fingernails, but had to stop because it hurt. Astrid sat down on the step and covered her face with her hands. She was so hungry now. She looked up at the ceiling.
Maybe there was another way out? There had to be an air vent somewhere. Astrid got up and went to the end wall with the shelves. She removed some blankets and touched the wall behind it, felt it, scanned it for anything that could indicate that there was some secret passageway or even a small hole that she could get through.
But there was nothing. She went through the stuff on the shelves meticulously, in the hope that she could find something to use to break the door open. But there was nothing but the flashlight. She rose with it in her hand and ran towards the iron door, swinging and smashing it against the door, but it didn't even make a bump.
She cried as she swung it again and again and destroyed the plastic casing, but it never harmed the door in any way.
Astrid fell to the cold stairs.
You really are no good, are you? She heard her mother's voice say. Got yourself into trouble again. I knew you would. He's not going to take care of you. Be a damned fool if he did.
No, no, Dr. Jansen says I'm okay, remember? I'm good and healthy and strong. My man doesn't care about me being smart or anything. He loves me, he said.
You fool. No one loves a retard. No one, I tell you. No one!
Astrid wiped off her tears in disgust. Why did thinking of her mother always do that to her? Why did it always make her feel so bad about herself? No, there had to be a way, there had to be. Astrid stared at the canned food on the shelves, then sprang up and pulled one down. Luckily it was one of those you could pull open. She didn't even need a can opener. This was good, she thought to herself as she pulled the tab and the sweet smell of ravioli hit her nostrils and tricked her deep hunger even more. This was very good. Astrid searched everywhere and finally found a bunch of plastic spoons. Relieved, she sat down and started eating.
Things always looked better on a full stomach, mother used to say
. So as soon as Astrid finished this can, she would find a way to get out of there.
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Contents
Important message from the Author to Kindle Unlimited readers
Prologue
Untitled
Untitled
Untitled
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part II
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29