The only reason that Marie had gone upstairs, to the apartment where he now lived alone, was to prevent her mother provoking him; his rage wasn’t limited to her mother but included Marie as a target as well. But now the evening’s events were over and they were alone, her mother definitely wanted to tell him what she thought of his behavior the night before.
“Ignore it now and just pretend nothing had happened”, said Marie.
Now he screamed his frustrations with her mother, his cheeks quivering while his foot crashed into her hip. She screamed in pain as the brutal kick seemed to bring her round from the shock and fright of the slap.
“No more! No more! Stop!” she shouted, but her cries just seemed to excite him even further.
“You inept bitch!” he said almost calmly and too quietly that it reinforced the contempt and ominous nature of his voice. “What have I ever done to deserve to live with some cow as totally useless as you?”
The question remained unanswered, of course, although it was not quite true that they still lived together.
Then suddenly something happened. As if all the muscles in her mother’s body tensed up at the same time, she pulled herself to her feet with blood dripping from the second blow, and her left cheek already coloring from the slap. For a moment it seemed that she would leave the room, but then she turned quickly around and kicked out at his groin. Although her foot grazed his thigh and the kick lost a little power it was enough to get him to stagger backwards and then curl up, while his mouth shaped into an O.
She stooped to get Marie from under the desk and that was her undoing. By the time they were together and moving out of her father’s living room and towards the stairs he had recovered enough to come after them. He tried to grab his wife by the arm, but she pushed him away. Still slightly curled up from the kick in his balls, he was not fully stable and he was not expecting further resistance. His body, which was always trained and tanned, ready to pick up hookers and naive women who thought he was a real man and not a monster, fell backwards with great force, into the bannister at the top of the stairs that led down the floor below.
Marie could only continue to watch, her body now stiff with fear, her heart pounding. Her eyes were fixed at the scene that was unravelling in front of her; this had never happened before. Her mother had always tried to stop the beatings by pleading or yelling, but never had she become physical in return. Marie could feel her gut twisting into one big knot of disbelief as part of her wanted to crawl past them and run away and hide. She dared not plead with them to stop as that would only bring her father’s violence on herself. The problems were being exacerbated by the fact that both her parents were still really, really drunk.
Her father had been to a party two days before and as that one ended he had invited all the other people back to his apartment for things to continue. That had gone on all day before and throughout the night until all his friends had finally left. The evening before he had called Marie to join him and his guests and had shown her to them like a prize. While he held her arm with one hand, he had lasciviously cupped her small budding breast with the other. He had smiled drunkenly and proclaimed:
“I am so proud of my darling daughter.”
Marie had kept quiet, ignoring the fondling hand because she knew that one of his guests would soon steal the attention and they would get back to drinking; except they didn’t. Like some commodity for sale at a market, passed around for inspection amongst prospective purchasers, Marie had been handed around among the guests and her father had proudly announced that they should have a really good feel of her stunning breasts.
“It’s amazing how firm they are and how quickly they respond at such a young age!” her father had announced.
So the rest of the company groped her in turn even though her body very clearly signalled that she did not like it. Her face was pale and her eyes were fixed at a distant point in time that she only returned from when her mother finally came in and saw what was happening. She had grabbed Marie’s arm and pulled her away from the guests.
“Marie needs to go to school tomorrow. It’s her bedtime,” said her mother.
Her father gave everyone a sycophantic smile:
“She’ll stay Mrs. Senior Teacher. Did you hear her complain?”
Her mother had just given him a disgusted look and dragged her downstairs and tucked her into bed without a word. Then, just as she was about to go out of the door, her mother turned back into the room:
“I’m sorry I gave you such a father. He will never treat you like that or touch you again. I will make sure of it.”
She had then left and had actually gone back to her estranged husband’s party where she was soon talked into drinking with the others and they had been boozing heavily until the early morning. Marie got up to go to school, but she could sense that there was trouble in the air after the guests left the house. Her mother was staggering around the kitchen and then decided to go upstairs again; she told Marie she had to deal with the promise she’d made the night before.
Now her mother let out a cry like a banshee wail and launched herself towards her father. Her whole body would have slammed into him, but he managed to move away at the very last second and this time it was the turn of her mother’s body to crash into the bannister and, seemingly weakened by the first blow, it cracked and broke and a piece of it tumbled down the stairs; followed by her mother. The woman’s body behaved like a discarded rag doll as it bounced and rolled its way to the hallway below. She lay there looking dazed, but Marie hoped her mother’s drunken state would he have made her more supple for the fall.
Marie now started towards the stairs to go and see her mother, but, surprisingly, her father was faster. He grabbed a piece of the broken of handrail, staggered down the stairs and with his mouth twisted in a snarl, he swung the piece of heavy wood with a whoosh sound and it hit her mother’s face with a resounding crack. Under the force of the blow, her mother’s head twisted to the side and slammed into the floor, blood splattering through the air and onto the wall.
Marie was down the stairs in seconds, crying out for her father to stop, but now he really was like a man possessed. Again and again, the handrail rained down onto her mother’s face and head and, with each strike, her features disappeared into a bloody pulp of torn and ragged flesh. He finally delivered his last blow and stepped back as Marie collapsed and fell to her knees by the body; she knew that her mother had to be dead. The life had been beaten from her by her husband because he wasn’t allowed to touch their daughter’s tits and give her to his friends.
She finally made herself look up at him and then he saw and understood what he had done. The wood dropped from his hand and fell to the floor, more drops of blood flew from it and one landed on Marie’s check. She let it run down and as her father’s eye caught sight of it he flinched. She could see the shock in his eyes and then the expression changed; there was no regret, only fear.
“Oh my God, what have I done?” he said quietly.
He fell to his knees and looked at Marie across the body, putting his bloody hands on her cheeks and he started crying.
“It wasn’t on purpose. It wasn’t on purpose. I love you. I love you.”
Marie felt paralyzed by the whole situation. Her father dropped his hands, turned from her and grabbed her mother’s arm, shaking it fiercely.
“Don’t die. Don’t die. You can’t do that to me. You can’t leave me like this. You can’t blame me. It wasn’t my fault.” He cried like a scared little boy who has done something terrible and is trying to escape the blame; and Marie realized how very much she hated him.
In one split second, like a vision that hit her from out of nowhere, she knew what she had to do. She got up and took her father’s hand and yanked it slightly to make him look at her.
“Dad, you’re going to bed to get some rest and clear your head. We can find a way to get you ou
t of this. I will tell the police that there was an intruder; he could have done it. Let me handle it, okay?”
Her father looked at her with an expression of disbelief and self-pitying relief in his eyes.
“You would do that for me?” he asked and she nodded. Still in a daze he got back to his feet.
“You’re going to make it look like an intruder?” he asked again with wonder as if she were the parent. Marie nodded again.
“Don’t worry Dad, I’ll fix it. I won’t let you down.”
He put his face close to hers and snarled: “You’d better not!”
Then his boyish expression found its way back and he cried again. She took his hand and led him back up the stairs to his bedroom, where she pulled the covers over him. He kept asking: “Are you really gonna fix this?” and she would confirm the fact and soothe him. His eyes got sleepier and just before they closed and he dozed off, he reached out and touched her breast again and said:
“I love you, Marie. You’re Daddy’s girl.”
Then he was out, but Marie poked him a few times to be sure, but there was no sign of him waking up. Now she ran as fast as she could to the bathroom downstairs, cleaned her face and hands so no blood was left on them, then went to her room where she changed her clothes and got her backpack ready for school. Going back up to his apartment she went into the kitchen where the table was full of empty and near empty bottles and over-flowing ashtrays. She hunted around the bottles until she found what she was looking for and filled a glass with the contents; she’d remembered seeing brandy being used in cooking on TV.
She found her father’s half full pack of cigarettes and a lighter and ran back to the bedroom. She just stared at him for a few moments and then she poured the alcohol over the bed linen, his hair and the carpet. She pressed the empty glass into one of his hands then she lit a cigarette. The smoke almost made her puke, but once it was burning properly she put the cigarette between two fingers of the other hand so it would reach a wet spot on the linen just a few minutes later. She had no idea if it would work so, just in case, she also put a lit cigarette on the carpet, placed so that it would creep up to the brandy she’d spilled. Then she stood and studied the scene for a few seconds until the hint of a smile touched her young face.
8
The Christmas season snuck into the city, which always began quite innocently, with a few gnomes in a supermarket at the end of October. But by November it was clear that there was a massive plague, and the radio was inundated with Christmas songs. Every shop had seasonal decorations and parents across the country went into permanent stress mode to live up to the expectations nobody had actually pronounced, but they lay like a deep coding in the majority of the population. It came out as a commandment from all the commercials, which overflowed with tinkling and expectations of joy whilst seeking to pry hard-earned money from purses and wallets.
There were lots of seasonal parties with beer and schnapps and the somewhat forced Christmas cheer. But all the false togetherness was a pleasure for me, since Christmas is a time when I investigate and gather information, nothing more. Or so it was once. I have been doing this for so long now that I rarely come across something new, so in a way Christmas shopping followed by a mulled wine in a cafe, is almost like visiting an old aunt. Well-known and slightly smelling of death yet at the same time, a little cozy, somewhat boring but still a must. I particularly cannot resist the smell of the stress and there’s only myself to buy presents for.
I sit by the window in a cafe in the city, the air heavy with the scent of cinnamon, melted butter and chocolate. To the strains of ‘Last Christmas’ I study the crowds, consider all those who have been indoctrinated and faithfully follow the orders given out by the TV commercials.
As small ants they run hither and thither; they know they have a goal, but cannot quite remember what it is or where they are supposed to be going. I can see the stress in their bodies and eyes, and the dangerous preoccupation with what they think is pleasure and joy, deceived as they are by advertising tools. I look at them with disdain; they have little or no insight into what causes them to behave as they do.
Basically, you have to remove yourself from the swarms of people, take a step back to see the big picture. If you are part of it then it’s hard to get that overview; I discovered that quite a long time ago. To get the true insight I needed to create the life I wanted, I had to step out of the picture and become an observer and hunter instead of being part of the tableau. I could not just be one more product of society like the others. I could have my cake and eat it, as my mother would have said. I choose to keep myself watching on the sidelines.
As a teenager, I could sit for hours and work on a painting or read a book while I considered and analyzed other people’s behavior down to the smallest detail. While I was moving around in different environments, I was aware of their reactions and learned from them, structuring my observations for future use. I put the actions and reactions to actions into a mental database, so that I can quickly find the appropriate reaction to something that happens - or anticipate my victims’ reactions.
I went on to practice different strategies I had devised. I was busy seeing which buttons to press with different types of people, learning how I triggered the positive and negative reactions. At the same time, I continued my observations and refined my technique until I reached a point where I felt I had complete control over the reaction I would get. You could probably call me a behaviorist. There may be people like me in high-paying positions in some of the leading marketing agencies; they use only what they see and follow up on it. It must make them deeply sad and lonely people.
In the beginning it was just a game that was about achieving the desired and specific reactions and the results would only be used for my own research, but as I became more practiced and refined my methods, I began to think about what I really was getting out of it. Could I start using my newfound skills to actually achieve what I truly wanted?
As time passed, it became almost a sport to win the trust of others before I hurt them. It was easy and it felt natural for me, even when I was only 16 and a boy at school said he loved me. In the beginning I was very pleased that I had caused him to fall in love with me, but there was something missing. So I tortured him with rejections; and finally I said to him that he would get a real kiss if he drank a carton of coffee creamer all at once.
One evening he showed up outside my window in the apartments where I lived and began to drink the cream. But when he was only half-finished he had to give up and threw up right in front of me, humiliated and deprived of his burgeoning manhood; that was what I really enjoyed. I felt pride swell in my chest as I considered the power I possessed to manipulate another human so far as to get them to demean and ridicule themselves ... for me. Some years later I found out that the experience was even better than sex.
So my Christmas present to myself, every year, is to go to the Christmas gatherings and play my own Christmas play while I used my connections. I explored the terrain for a possible exchange, but then it was not about wanting anyone to die. I just wanted them to be sad and angry when I hurt them; only very special people in my life have deserved to die.
No one knew what I really did, they saw only that I was good for getting in touch with the right people and I had a good network. There was a sharp division between the people I showed my smiling, extroverted side to, they could be used to make useful connections that I later toyed and played with. These subsequent victims of my manipulation constituted the substance from which I downloaded my power and domination, the ones who aroused the feelings I cultivated and enjoyed when I was alone at home. It was particularly interesting to observe how my victims rarely stood up for what I had done to them. Shame is a really powerful means of control.
I was a cheerful, social and tactful woman, but also the icy, calculating hunter, with complete focus on my prey, determined to use all means to
achieve my goal. After my husband died, I discovered some abilities which made it unnecessary to take part in much socializing. Now I could smell the predators, select them and focus solely on them. It was like going from wandering around in the dark to getting night vision glasses and suddenly being able to see the contours of the things that moved.
Among a group of people I could, by going close to those I suspected to be predators, simply and clearly smell if it was true. Often I could spot them from a distance, not because of my sixth sense, but because they often had an extremely neat appearance and a tendency to use too much aftershave or deodorant. I found they were very much of a type, looking smooth with perfect straight white teeth and not a hair out of place. They always wore the right clothes, had beautifully manicured nails and a body language that exuded confidence and tranquility. I lost the desire just to hurt others and make them sad, and began to focus on my real goal in life.
Later I became aware that a slick appearance was not always a guarantee the person would be a predator, but that a person could be a neurotic perfectionist without any desire to hurt others. A predator could be scruffy and messy to look at, but it was rare. My own statistics say that the chance that a predator has a sophisticated image is around 80%.
As I sat there in my favorite cafe shortly after Verner’s demise, with a glass of mulled wine in front of me, it dawned on me that I missed the hunt. I was very pleased with myself over the success of his death, but now there was a void to be filled. I wondered if you can get addicted to the hunt, or was it the actual killing I had become addicted to?
I decided I had to check on the internet, there would certainly be articles and comments on the topic. I had, at one time, visited a forum for people who claimed to be serial killers and I lurked around for a couple of days before I found that they were much more likely to be thrill seekers who’d run a mile before they actually killed someone.
Dead Men (Marie and Lotte Book 1) Page 6