Dead Men (Marie and Lotte Book 1) Read Online Free

watch him while he ate and feel pleased when she could see how much he enjoyed her attention. Now, with love gone, in her mind, she was too nice to say it out loud, she called him ‘The Ruminant’.
    That she had ever thought it was charming, testified to the fact that it is not an exaggeration to compare infatuation with insanity. She was quite certain that if a psychiatrist had seen her while her adoration of this ‘being’ was at its height he probably would have gotten a worried look on his face and a tight twitch at the corner of his mouth. And as he pushed his glasses back on his nose, he would promptly have diagnosed her with moderate to severe schizophrenia. Not that she knew what the diagnosis really entailed, but she imagined that it aptly described her shift from infatuation to repulsion. She most definitely had to have experienced some kind of split from her normal personality to even have liked him, let alone feel that she loved him. Now, while staring intensely at the cup she was washing, she shivered at the thought of the things she once enjoyed doing.
    They met on the internet and he told her that he was living temporarily with his parents, after a failed relationship that she came to learn had been very hard on him. She had not asked about why the relationship had failed, she was just happy to feel his interest, and reveled in what she perceived as him being at peace with himself. She had been licking her wounds, too, after the end of a relationship, and had not really been prepared to meet ‘the One’, or someone who temporarily might resemble ‘the One’ anyway. Until he morphed into The Ruminant, that is.
    Within six months of meeting, they had bought an apartment together, everything apparently bliss, but another six months after that she had realized the huge mistake she had made. Because she had been so hungry for love again after the previous ‘catastrophe,’ an abusive man. She had not given herself time enough time to process and to heal. Instead, she had thrown all reason overboard and, with no thought for the consequences, given her heart to him. He, on the other hand, lived well enough at his parents’ house after his failed relationship. Once again, he was cared for by his mother, who washed his clothes and served him his food. The ‘temporary’ arrangement he had first mentioned to her, had in fact lasted two years, and Lotte soon began to feel like a surrogate mother. One he could have sex with.
    So now, here she stood, pseudo-single, childless, poor, and stuck in an apartment that she cared less and less about; mostly because she had to stare at The Ruminant every day. Every time he finished eating, he pushed the chair away from the table with a jolt, as if to finish typing a sentence on an old typewriter with a decisive stab at the full stop key. He just had to push a chair with metal legs over the varnished pine floor, and every time it made her stomach clench and her jaw tighten. She wanted to scream into his face, hurt him, and make him feel as useless, annoying, and inconsiderate as he really was. She felt a stab of guilty conscience at the very thought.
    But she desperately wanted him to see himself as she did, to make him feel small and insignificant. Maybe she should make a video and put it on Facebook; the idea put a rare smile on her face. A seldom occurrence in his company. The guilty conscience increased and she sought to banish the thought of hurting him as she washed another cup and dried it with the dish towel.
    Normally, Lotte saw herself as a very positive and optimistic person. That was probably one of the reasons that he had fallen for her. She did her best to be a person who was easy and pleasant to be around, someone who brought smiles and joy into every relationship, even though, in reality, she was not very outgoing. She never made waves, never caused any problems, and even when she felt hurt or angry, it quickly passed, giving way to more smiles, more joy,