www.thekillerknowswhy.com
NEW BOOK RELEASE.
CRIME AND MYSTERY IN GREECE Available by...
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| The writer of the book Yannis Mitsopoulos |
I choose the best killers. Read part of the stories of a just published thriller book. Seven tales with totally unexpected action and script as in a movie.
____Translation from Greek by Phoebe Holland_________
Editing and rewriting by Christina Markanastasakis
Oleander House Story 1
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“Drink this and you’ll feel better,” she told him placing the cup on the bedside table. |
She went to the bedroom and took a beautiful beige mohair dress off the hanger in the closet. She held it up to her chest and coyly looked in the mirror. Then she remembered that she was in mourning for her sister, grimaced and instead reached for a grey wool dress with fine checkered print and a white collar, accompanied by a black jacket.
By ten o’clock she was at Sarakinos’s office, seated in the chair facing his desk that he had indicated to her. He had helpfully pulled it up to her and then sat down himself, facing her. As he busied himself opening and closing his desk drawers in search of a folder, she had the chance to furtively study his face. It was as if there was a magic glass wall between them. She knew who this man was, the man before her, the man she’d been dreaming of for so many years. Yet, he knew nothing about her. He could not even imagine, despite the fact that he was a detective. It was laughable.
“Mrs. Patrikiou,” he said, shattering her reverie.
“Please call me Jilda.”
“Jilda” he said smiling. Then he immediately turned serious. “Your sister, as I told you and as you are already aware, died suddenly. She was found dead by the man she was living with. According to the law, an autopsy was required. The coroner couldn’t diagnose the cause of death, not even from the toxicology report, so he sent the autopsy record to the district attorney. Nothing came up however, and the case was filed away.”
“But didn’t she die of a heart attack?” Jilda interrupted. “At least that’s what my husband, who’s a doctor, told me.”
“Yes, from a heart attack,” said Sarakinos, looking into her eyes “but they couldn’t find any medical reason that may have caused it. In any case that’s really not my department,” he said as he rose from his seat. “The fact is that her companion, whom she had lived with for years, paid me a visit after the funeral to express his concerns ad questions about your sister’s death, and so the case was reopened.
“So why was it reopened, did new evidence emerge?” she asked.
“Yes of course. He came to us and recounted his and his daughter’s rights in relation to the deceased’s promises to leave her estate to his daughter. Then he said that you turned out to be the legal heiress and were left the house and whatever else…and that’s why…” Sarakinos’s voice trailed off as he distractedly doodled concentric circles with his pencil. Jilda felt that he was implying something.
“Whatever do you mean by ‘that’s why’ sir,” she shot back at him.
“I am a suspect in this case because I’m my sister’s legal heir? Ellie wasn’t married and that man had an income from his pension anyway. What can I say?”
“I am a suspect in this case because I’m my sister’s legal heir? Ellie wasn’t married and that man had an income from his pension anyway. What can I say?”
“Hmmm. No Jilda, that’s not quite what I meant. What brought you to that conclusion? But the fact is that he showed us this picture and…”
Sarakinos pulled a photograph the size of a cigarette pack from the folder and turned it towards her slowly, as if he meant to shock her. It was somewhat old, the paper had yellowed and all the shades were in sepia, like all old pictures. He held it steadily in front of her face and pointed his pen at the woman.”
“Do you recognize your sister here?” He asked her.
“Yes, of course, it’s Ellie, much younger of course.”
“And who is this with his arm around her waist?”
“Jilda almost fainted. Her bag fell from her grasp and onto the floor, its contents scattering everywhere.
“Is this your husband Jilda?” Sarakinos demanded, as he bent over the photo to make sure he was pointing to the right figure. His hair almost touched her face.
“Yes it is. But that’s not possible,” Jilda whispered, grasping at her bag and the things scattered around her feet, although what she really wanted was to crouch down and hide.
“One photograph means nothing whatsoever!” she shouted self-righteously. She searched for her handkerchief as her eyes flooded with tears. She felt so embarrassed, so utterly ashamed. She took the picture out of his hands and turned it over. Written on the back was Aegina 2/6/1950. She placed it on the desk and stared at it, trying to remember. Nothing came to mind. Sarakinos took a box of tissues out of the middle drawer of his desk and offered it to her. She plucked out two or three and wiped her eyes with ladylike grace.
“I think that the man who gave you that picture simply wants to do me harm,” she said quietly.
“He simply wants what’s in his best interest, but what am I to gain?” Sarakinos asked.
“Ah you… why don’t you just let it go.” She said finally, as she stole a sideways glance of his unruly hair flopping on his forehead.
“Would you like some water?” He asked, pushing a glass towards her.
“Are you going to keep me for me long?”
“Not for much longer Jilda,” said Sarakinos as he looked through the folder. “Tell me though; did you know that your sister met with your husband on the morning of her death?”
“No I didn’t sir.”
“Shouldn’t you have?”
“Why should I have? He was her doctor and he checked up on her sometimes when she wasn’t well. She trusted only him because she’d seen a lot as a nurse.”
“Yes, why should you have,” pondered Sarakinos. “Perhaps because she is your sister, madam,” he continued, looking straight at her. “And why did your sister call a neighbor first, who then called the doctor? If something had suddenly happened and your husband decided to check up on her, why didn’t he say to you ‘I’m going over to your sister’s because she isn’t well.’ You live together don’t you?”
“Excuse me, but why don’t you call him and ask him yourself? Why does it matter whether or not I knew where my husband was? Are you under the impression that he tells me where he’s going every time he visits a patient?”
As she was speaking, Sarakinos picked up the photograph again with two fingers,holding the edge, and waved it in front of her as if he wanted to say something and but felt she was stopping him somehow. He finally managed to get out the words.
“Let me remind you because it seems that you don’t remember. This picture was taken on a hospital staff trip to Aegina Jilda. Did you go on this trip?”
“No,”she answered with certainty. “But my husband didn’t go on the trip either. That’s what he told me, if I remember correctly, now that you’ve brought it up.”
“Really? Then who is this then?” Sarakinos asked tapping his finger on the picture. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but as you can see, I’m in a position to know that your husband was having an affair with your sister, and for a good many years at that.”
She turned and looked at him, no longer in surprise, as she’d gotten over the first shock, but gazed at him girlishly as she had done at the music school where she had laid eyes on him for the first time. She wanted to cling to him, become ivy and wrap herself around him, ask him to dance to “If you could come for a while…” or even to “Tango Nocturno.” She wanted to explain that things had turned out this way for the best, now that she had finally found him, and that she would make herself available to be with him because she’d been waiting for him a whole lifetime. All of it was right there in the song lyrics “within your arms’ warm embrace.”. She wanted to tell him so many things. That’s why she had come to meet him. But there was the pane of glass that separated them, the awareness that she had while he was still in the dark. Yes, it was there. Or wasn’t it? It was his glass wall, his veil, that now allowed him to render the impression that he was informed, not her. She suddenly realized this as he pulled a bunch of letters wrapped in ribbon from his bag and tossed it onto the desk.
“Here’s the proof, he said. Love letters between your husband and your sister.”
“Are you inferring that Ellie was murdered?”
“I mean to say that there is evidence indicating that your sister led a double life which you knew nothing about.”
Sarakinos looked at her as she nervously fidgeted in her chair, not knowing what to do with her hands, making it obvious that he had put her in a difficult position. Giving a gesture of desperation, he appeared to soften his stance.
“Of couse you’re not responsible for all this, but I happened to run into you yesterday morning at the house, and for the first time…”
“That’s what I mean to say Thanos.”
“How do you know my name?” he asked abruptly, turning the corners of his lips up, as if to smile.
“Well…” she stalled. What could she say to him now? Jilda continued. “Well, you’re from Corfu and since I love music,…” then she artfully changed the subject. “But Sarakinos isn’t a traditional Corfiot surname…”
“My family originates from the Sarakinian pirates who held siege to the island and robbed boats once upon a time,” he proudly told her of his past, forgetting the most vital element.
“Really?”
“Yes. The family finally settled in Kassiopi. I’ve hung my great grandfather’s Sarakinian sword above the fireplace in our house on Corfu,” he told her, sticking out his chest proudly, as if this was proof of his mettle.
“Being from Corfu you must enjoy music,” Jilda said, subtly steering the conversation in the direction she wanted.
“It’s my soul,” he said, switching to the accent characteristic of the Ionian islands. “I wanted to be a composer when I left Corfu. I attended music school after music school when I first got to Athens, but then…necessity caught up with me. How can one make a living from music?”
“Er, we may have met before, Thanos.”
But he was no longer paying attention to what she was saying. He seemed to be absorbed in thoughts of the past that the conversation had stirred up. He continued reminiscing.
“One of my cousins convinced me to join the force…now that was back in ’38,” Sarakinos said, waving his raised palm backward, gesturing to the past.
“It was ’38 exactly, back when the composer Souyiol…” his voice trailed off, then he continued as if Jilda were not there.
“…All these years the job’s done me in… No house, no family, no children. You can’t begin to imagine what I’ve lived through in here, what my eyes have seen.”
Jilda, having gotten what she wanted from the conversation, abruptly rose to her feet.
“I will be leaving if the interrogation is over, if you no longer need me,” she said, bringing an end to his daydream.
“But what interrogation, what are you talking about? We were just having a little chat. You see, we found something in common, music,” he said as he guided her towards the door with his hand on her shoulder.
So he did actually hear what she was saying, Jilda concluded as she descended the stairs of the police station. Of course, after all, he was a detective and had to be on the ball . Jilda really didn’t care for police officers. It put a bit of a damper on her dream and the ideal image she had created. But this would-be musician, who had for years been her invisible lover, with his exotic Arab - as she had learned - rare and singular beauty, had arrived and turned her life upside down at exactly the moment that everything around her was changing.
What he had told her about Ellie’s sudden death was bothering her now. She could feel a storm brewing inside her. So that’s why Ellie had passed Petros on to her, using their aunt as a ploy. So that she could have him somewhere nearby. Or was it after that they got together? Maybe the “wrong book”, the journal, had made it into Sarakinos’s hands as well, through Ellie’s boyfriend the mechanic? Maybe he knew more about her than he had let on, that Ellie had engineered her marriage to the doctor. God, how embarrassing, what a disaster! She felt that everything was collapsing around her. Some things were only slightly affected, like her fantasy… “if you could just come for a while.” But not like this, she babbled to herself! Other things were collapsing in a more dramatic way, like her marriage. Before she too collapsed into a heap on the sidewalk, Jilda waved down a cab and got in.
“To Vrilyssia,” she instructed the driver and took her little compact mirror out of her purse. She examined herself and smoothed her stylish gray hair. Then, still looking in the mirror, she raised her other hand and with her palm turned towards her face, her fingers splayed, she made the classic Greek gesture toward herself, showing disgust.
“There you are, fool!” she said out loud, causing the driver to give her strange look in the rear-view mirror.
Jilda couldn’t get over the fact that she had found the diary and didn’t read the whole thing, just because she was distracted by the oleander beds which were flooding with water. She could have at least taken it and hidden it somewhere in order to read it later. Her anger and spite had clouded her mind, only this could explain it. Now, yes now, she would set the whole situation right. She would leave no stone unturned… Photographs, bookcases, drawers, closets; she would even look underneath the rugs to uncover her sister’s life. “Ellie led a double life and I had but half of one,” she said to herself.
“Are you alright madam,” the cabbie asked her, looking at her again from the rear-view mirror.
________________________________________The red car Story 2
He found Kety in the middle of the road one day; she had stopped due to a flat tire. He opened up the hood and looked for the spare.
“Isn’t the spare in the back?” she asked him.
“It’s usually in the back,” he said, and a smile escaped his lips.
“But the engine’s in the back,” she said with childlike naïveté.
“In this car, the engine’s in the back, and the trunk’s in the front along with the spare tire,” he explained.
Desire bubbled up inside him, not for Kety, but because right in front of him he had an expensive red sports car, the kind that only singers and football stars drive. The grille was positioned low, almost touching the pavement, its shape resembling a wide, tight smile. Free of lavish embellishments, its sleek lines rose up toward the windshield. With beautifully sculpted grace, the headlights – installed to befit the car’s aerodynamic style - beamed upwards and outwards. Its contour gently ascended, just enough to create space for two passengers, and gradually descended, tapering off into a design that resembled something between an airplane’s wing and an air shaft, that rose and fell according to the speed of the car. It was a work of art! An exhilarating speed machine.
He changed her tire and she did the rest. In other words, she looked on as he got covered in grease.
“Do you want to come over to my house and get washed up? I live just a little further down, in Glyfada,” she said.
And so he went with her. He was impressed by her house. She kept him longer than she had too, until after it was dark. She liked the way that he talked about cars, especially about red cars. Since her car was red, she came to the conclusion that he was really talking about her.
It was getting kind of late when she said: “I’ve got to go now - I have to go to work. I’m a singer at a live music bar with bouzoukia. Do you want me to leave you the car then you can come pick me up around four in the morning?”
Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, but it put him in a good mood, without even having heard any bouzouki music. He wanted to spin around in his joy, as if dancing the zembekiko, a dance usually done to bouzouki music.
“I need a driver anyway,” she added, tossing her keys in the air.
Nasos snatched them and clenched them tightly in his fist, looking her in the eyes. She was very impressive! She was stylish, with a perfect figure, and a face that reminded him of an Italian starlet. An Italian starlet? A shadow suddenly engulfed his features. Something was bothering him and it was spoiling his good mood. He sprang up, shedding his doubt and agreed.
At four in the morning he waited for her outside of the night club where she sang. She came out practically running and flung herself into the seat next to him.
“Let’s go to the beach!” she sighed. “I want to feel the fresh air.”
With the raging horsepower of the car’s engine, he veered out onto the route he already knew. Kety had the window open and the air was whipping her hair back, revealing her porcelain face, free of imperfection. She hadn’t noticed anything about him not even his jacket, on which, embroidered with red letters, were the words “THERE’S ONLY ONE RED.” And how would she notice, drunk as she was? Sloshed! Despite the cool air, in no time she seemed to have fallen asleep. He laid off the gas, turned very slowly onto a side road that went downhill, and stopped next to the sea. So close that the waves could be heard lapping onto the shore.
He left the engine running, took his bag out of the back, and got out of the car. He opened it up and took out two plastic hoses. He shoved one end of one hose into the first exhaust pipe and the end of the other hose into the second exhaust pipe. He then pulled the free ends of both hoses and inserted them in the half-open windows on each side of the car. He took off his jacket and used it to plug up the gap in the partially-opened window on one side and did the same with her jacket to the other window. He took her leather purse and wedged it over the gas pedal causing the car’s engine to let out a reverberating rumble. He closed the doors quietly, so as not to wake her up. Then, using a ratchet strap that he pulled from his bag, he extended it underneath the car and pulled it all the way around, strapping the doors closed and tightening it as much as he could, so that the doors couldn’t be opened from the inside.
And that was how he looked on as she inhaled the exhaust fumes, until both she and the car had expired.
“An Italian starlet?” he wondered. “It wasn’t Italian, she wasn’t Italian!” He muttered to himself, as he left.
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Inspiration Story3
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Inspiration Story3
He returned to the house, went up to the bathroom and found Maria, dead, floating in the bath water. He bent down, putting his arms around her naked body and carefully lifted her out of the water. Only her fingers remained stiffly curved, from her final instinctual attempt at survival. He carefully moved her into the bedroom and laid her body on the bed. With the edge of the sheet he wiped her face dry of the remaining drops of water and combed her hair with his fingers. He stood back and observed her naked body on the bed, in the way that an artist looks at his work, examining its angles. Phil Collins voice could still be heard from her studio, he was now singing “too many people/too many problems.”
He brought a large wheelbarrow from the workshop, which they used to transport clay. He put Maria in it and took her down to the ceramics studio. He lay her down on the bench after having cleared off all the half-finished pottery. He turned her head so that she appeared to be looking upward and opened her mouth. He positioned her arm in the same way that it was just before she took her last gulp of air and moved her fingers so that they were outstretched in a gesture of terror. He wanted her to be in a similar position to the one that the captain’s wife had had when he and his father had watched her drown.
He ripped some sheets that he had taken from the bedroom into strips, wet them and began to tightly and attentively wrap the dead body, as if it were a mummy. He left only the head uncovered because he wanted to be able to see the facial expression…Then he took a few buckets of clay, from a pile that had been covered with wet linen rags so that they wouldn’t dry out, and emptied their contents into what looked like a meat grinder. They used this to soften the clay. He removed the softened clay and began working it like dough. With the help of a rolling pin, like the ones cooks use, he rolled out the clay into thin sheets.
After having made enough, he deftly rolled and stacked them, then brought them over to his dead wife’s body. He lifted her body and carefully placed the first sheet underneath her. He then unfolded a few over her chest, her stomach and her buttocks. He painstakingly pressed the soft clay onto the contours of her body so that it would take on her shape. The damp strips of cloth helped the clay stick to the curves of her body. He melded the upper sheets together with the layer that he had placed underneath her so as to enshroud her completely in a clay cocoon. It took him a while to complete the process. He tried to smooth down all of the points where the pieces had been joined together, so that the body would appear to be a single, uniform piece of clay. He used a rib for this task, a tool that resembles a spatula, which he mainly used when working on the wheel. With this and a damp cloth he made every fingerprint disappear and smoothed the clay until the surface was perfectly uniform.
Then he began to apply his sculpting talent. He worked on the details of her face and hair. He focused all his energy and managed to bring her back to life through the clay. He even filled her open mouth with clay and etched the same eerie look of terror onto the exterior surface. It took him all night to do this, but by dawn he was finished. He had crafted a true sculpture out of clay, a sculpture of his wife. But at the same time he had made her disappear. He still had a lot of work left to do. She had to set and dry for a day. He carefully wheeled the bench out onto the sunny veranda, which had been created outside of the workshop for this very purpose.
He had enough time left to take care of some of the details of his plan. He made a few phone calls to tell his close friends that he and Maria had had another fight and that she had left for Italy as she usually did when they fought. But then he realized that no one would have seen her leave on the morning ferry, so he told everyone that friends of hers had come from Italy and that she had probably left with them on their yacht. He called the office that was organizing the symposium and told them that his wife wouldn’t be at the event because something had come up and she had to leave. As of today he would be in charge of everything. He informed them that he would be exhibiting a piece in the show and that they were to promote it in the catalogue.
“What title are you going to give to your work Mr. Takis?” enquired the head of the PR team.
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The Epidavros Code Story4
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| "My husband is Agamemnon, my son Orestes and Electra my daughter. What I am really?" |
Orestes, in the absence of clarity, with his mind clouded by the obsessions that were churning within it, fell into deep thought. He began to make connections and started to contemplate all that he had learned up until now about how to judge and ascertain human character. It was Kyveli who led him to the solution that he was looking for, as it was contained in her teachings about destiny and fate. What he discovered shook him to the core. It was so devastating that it damaged his feelings and values toward people who had exercised a defining influence in his life.
Why? What was it that he discovered?
He realized that Kathy, Electra, Eurydice and Kyveli all shared the same zodiac sign: four Capricorns. The four women in his life, the four seasons, the four elements that all followed the same pattern. His mother, his sister, his wife and his lover. The same number as the number of times that he pounded his sacred staff onto the ground as a hierophant. He fell into his intellectual coma once again. He leafed through his secret books. They were Capricorns with the sun in the same astrological house. Their horoscopes were in Leo with Jupiter in Aquarius. He tossed aside the books. He turned his focus to Chinese astrology. He entered their birth dates; they were all born in the Year of the Monkey and shared a western horoscope in Capricorn. He was born in the Year of the Snake. “This dominating woman will not cope with the association to his own astrological position and will leave,” said the wise book. He didn’t want to believe it, but his mother had abandoned him, his sister had left him, his lover, his wife…they all had. How can one explain this if astrology is a fraud? How was it possible? What else was in store for him? He visited Christian churches and saw the zodiac cycle painted on the walls between the saints. In the church where Kapodistrias was assassinated in Nafplio, a five-pointed star was etched into the marble floor of Saint Spiridonas. He had seen the star signs on the thymele circle in the temple of Asclepius in Epidavros.
He began thinking even in his sleep. He wasn’t exactly sleeping, but rather in a state of hypnosis, or as we call it nowadays a state of self-suppression. The more he read, the more convinced he became that the Oedipus complex had governed his entire life. He reached back deep into his subconscious, accessing his childhood, where it all began. And what did he find? Nothing more than years of innocence. The people who raised him – without guilt and just like that – had always tried their best. In following their own destiny, they contrived this story that had now become his. His mother and sister taught him love, affection, and intimacy. This intimacy, which pervaded Kyveli’s glance and embrace, had naturally drawn him to her and kept him by her side. He now realized that this bond had been his most disastrous mistake. Eurydice shared the same quality – the wrong criteria on which to choose a life partner and the love of one’s life. It was certainly wrong to marry one’s mother the first time, definitely still wrong the second; it would always be wrong. What made him feel desperate was the fact that he believed that it is impossible for one to escape one’s destiny. Did this mean that his mother wasn’t crazy to believe that she was a descendant of the House of Labdacus? Who was she? Jocasta? It couldn’t be possible, history doesn’t repeat itself. After all, he hadn’t killed his father. He wasn’t Oedipus but he did carry the complex that she had instilled in him. He was a conscientious adult equipped with the power and tools to change his life around. He could change his choices, even his basic principles. The new conclusion he reached was, “we are each responsible for our own luck and destiny.” He wrote, “to hell with my ancient ancestors” on a piece of paper and stuck it on his desk where he would see it every day. It was time for him to get back to work and see his patients, whom he had let fall by the wayside.
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The mermaid Story 5
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| “They are not women; they are witches, malicious sea spirits. They’re not going to drag me down to the bottom of the sea, not if I send them first! " When they got back to the “Mermaid,” the party was over and everybody had left. Juliette suggested that she stay for a while and offered to bring him something to drink. At times like these Jimmy drank non-alcoholic beer. She opted for something a little stronger. She grabbed a bottle of champagne that was left over from the party and started drinking straight from the bottle. Jimmy went to get the cannabis goodies, which he always had on hand. “I want to stay here with you all night long and leave at dawn,” she told him passionately, biting into her first cannabis cookie, as she rubbed up against him like a cat. “Did she really say that she would leave at dawn?” Jimmy wondered. This was the mermaid disguised as a woman! His anticipation was building. He told her all about the mermaid’s home he had created at the bottom of the sea, underneath his boat. “If she sees it she’ll want to stay. Then she’ll reveal her fishy tail,” he thought as the cannabis cookies started to take effect. “Can you take me there?” Juliette asked him. He didn’t waste a moment. He turned on the lights he had on the bottom of his boat, put her in a mask and flippers, and slipped a tank onto her back. He put on his own equipment and grabbed a battery-operated underwater flashlight and in they dove. He watched her swim like a fish underwater. In his mind she had already transformed into one. He was unable to speak; in the depths of the sea, all he could do was move. She was everything he had dreamt of and believed in. Her body movements and her silhouette seemed blue due to the rays of the spotlights, her naked breasts pulsed with the sea current and her dark hair swayed like seaweed. Words were not needed to convince Jimmy that she was his sea goddess. Juliette seemed impressed by the sight that met her eyes. She sat in the sunken armchair and examined the objects which decorated the room. The stone sculptures, the urns, the dishes and glassware, the curtains that moved with the underwater currents, which made the room even more otherworldly. It was really quite extraordinary, a manifestation of Jimmy’s imagination. Juliette pulled Jimmy onto her. She pressed her naked body against his and started beckoning him to make love to her underwater. They thrashed together like orgasmic fish. They embraced like fighting eels. Victims of their passion and the sea, they tried to hold onto anything as they sank deeper into their pleasure, surrendering to their passion. They ended up sitting on the metal bed. Jimmy suddenly pulled out a chain that was attached to the iron headboard at one end. He slipped the other end around Juliette’s wrist and locked it in place. She didn’t resist, thinking that it was a part of their lustful tryst. But when Jimmy wrenched off her mask and took away her oxygen tank, her survival instinct took over; she began to fight back to free herself. She really did resemble a dying fish, flailing around wildly. Her every movement released air from her lungs, allowing the sea water to enter her. In a few seconds she stopped moving. Her two final spasms freed the last bubbles of air from her mouth as her soul left her body. She stayed like that, almost lying down, illuminated by the boat’s spotlights. Her hair floated in the dark depths of the sea, both her body and soul hovered. Jimmy approached her; he undid the chain and took her lifeless body in his arms. He slowly floated her towards the coffins. With some effort, he managed to push aside the heavy stone top of one of the coffins. He placed Juliette gently inside before pushing the lid back in place. He only left a small opening so that he could see her. He turned off the flashlight and rose to the surface. The sun had begun to rise. He turned off all the lights on the boat and sat at the stern, staring into the deep. He chewed on a few bites of his magic cookies. “No, I won’t let her leave before dawn,” he told himself. “If she’s a mermaid, and I know she is, she is about to reveal her tail. Then she’ll be mine for evermore.” He took a bite out of the second cookie and kept gazing into the sea, trying to discern any movement in its depths. *** |
The Teacher Story 6
The Teacher had found an easy way out. If he was ever in a tight spot and couldn’t find anything else to say, he would come up with the wise words of someone else, a saying, or a line of poetry and would end up giving another life lesson. He overlooked his own life and his own actions, conveniently forgetting his mistakes and vices; he slithered around the issues he didn’t want to face, like a snake. Mimis remembered that he had told them that the mind “had to be agile and quick,” mimicking the movement of a snake with his hand as he spoke. He had said, “don’t punch a knife because you’ll hurt your hand.” He was just as loathsome and dangerous as a real snake. Once he had bitten you with the poison of his mind, you didn’t know if it would cure you, or kill you. “Oh god, where’s my little Moroccan dagger now so that I can stab him in the heart and be done with it?” Mimis thought. “I loved him up until now because the others loved him but I can’t stand watching him play dumb. No, it has to stop! I didn’t know who to kill with my little African dagger but now I do. I hate him. He deserves to have his heart ripped out of his chest, if only just to see if it’s filled with blood or oil like the kind he squeezes out of the olives. I need to see if it works like a human heart or like a ship’s engine instead – humming and thumping inside of his chest!”
“Do you want a little more wine, Mimis?” the Teacher asked, after seeing that Mimis’s head was tottering from fatigue.
“No, I’d better go to bed, Teacher” Mimis said, getting up abruptly.
He pushed away the chairs and took a few of the plates and glasses into the kitchen. He fell fast asleep, without taking off his clothes or saying goodnight. He was thinking of snakes and he even dreamt about them. He stepped on their bodies and they wrapped themselves around his arms and neck and everywhere. They had shiny eyes, poisonous forked tongues and sharp fangs, but they spoke to him. They spoke in human tongue, like the parrot. The same thing, over and over…but he couldn’t understand what they were saying. Roula suddenly appeared among them, holding some of them in her hands like an Egyptian goddess. She whispered the words softly in the hiss of a snake, and then he understood.
“Don’t let others poison you…”
He woke up from his nightmare, his eyes wide with fear. He knew that phrase – his mistress had said it to him. He looked around in the dark, trying to figure out where he was. His head hurt from drinking too much wine. He looked down at his watch. It was past three in the morning. He slowly got up and gently pushed open the door, which separated his room from the Teacher’s. He saw him sleeping motionlessly on the bed.
“Snake,” he whispered with hatred, through clenched lips.
He looked around once more, standing there in his socks before softly stepping outside into the garden through the kitchen door. He went over to his car and took the basket that held the African mamba out of the back seat. He brought it into the kitchen and set it down in front of the door that led to the other room. He silently pushed the basket into the room where the Teacher was asleep. He grabbed a long-handled wooden spoon from the kitchen and opened the lid of the basket. Then he quickly shut the door.
He wouldn’t have to wait long. The snake’s neurotoxin would cause paralysis and asphyxiation within ten minutes of its injection into the bloodstream. The nervous system shuts down and the heart stops beating.
He sat in a chair and rested his head on his hands while he waited. There snake made no noise as it slipped out of the confines of its basket and began to slither across the floorboards of the next room. It searched the room with flicks of its tongue, twisting its head to the left and the right, its shiny, icy gaze revealing the death that lay within it. It didn’t sense a threat so it proceeded slowly, very slowly, forming consecutive “s” shapes with its two meter long body. Its instinct led it to the bed where the Teacher was sleeping. The human scent and warmth of the body became its target; it moved decisively toward the bed. It reached the iron leg and prepared to wrap itself around it and slither up to reach its prey, but the cold of the metal deterred it and it slipped back down to the floor. It glided over to where the Teacher’s head lay. Midway to its goal, it smelled the edge of the sheet and began to raise its body into the air. At that exact moment a little mouse scampered in front of the lethal beast. The startled snake stopped in its tracks and slipped back down to the floor underneath the bed where it chased after the mouse at lightning speed.
The frightened mouse scampered along the baseboard at the edge of the wall to escape, racing towards its burrow, causing the snake to change directions as it followed in hot pursuit. They reached the corner of the room where the snake would surely have caught the little mouse, had the mouse not dived into the little hole that it had gnawed through the wood earlier. It squeezed itself under the floorboards and the snake continued its chase, as it too slid under the wooden floorboard. The wooden floorboard had a hollow area underneath; the mouse found a hole somewhere along the stone wall, darted into it and scurried out into the adjacent kitchen. The swift mamba chased his furry prey through the same gap under the stone, and pushed its scaly head out into the kitchen. By this time the mouse has already managed to disappear behind the pots and pans underneath the sink.
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Mr. Harmless Story 7
She found herself at the little beach at the end of the road in Rafina, just as the caller had described. It was past midnight and even though it was summertime, the beach was completely deserted. She drove her car through a narrow pass and started to bounce along the soft sand towards the other side of the beach. Her headlights illuminated a big old house, just like it had been described, built right next to the sea on a foundation of big boulders. “This is it,” she thought to herself and stopped the car. She saw the glowing screen of an open laptop to her left, sitting on a stone bench.
She called Billy on her cell phone. She told him where she was and gave him directions to the other side of the beach.
“Billy they’re going to kill me out here in the dark as soon as they get my money,” she said fearfully. “Billy, you’re all I have left…” she told him anxiously. She hung up the phone and got out of her car.
She approached the laptop computer, looking all around her to make sure no one was there. The green screen had the words SOURCE ACCOUNT written across the top in big letters. Leda typed in her bank account number.
Underneath was the word BANK. She filled in the space with ΝATIONAL BANK OF GREECE.
The next line she had to fill out said AMOUNT. After hesitating for a moment she typed in 6.000.000 and after the word CURRENCY added EURO.
A line across the middle of the screen separated the page. Underneath the line the screen was blue and the words DESTINATION ACCOUNT: **************** appeared in big white letters.
She desperately wanted to know what the account number was, if only she could just remember a few digits she might be able to trace her mysterious blackmailer’s identity, but in the place of the account number only fifteen asterisks appeared. She was standing undecidedly in front of the screen when her phone received a text message. She opened the text and saw the words “press enter.” Shaken, she let her cell phone fall into the sand and quickly hit the “enter” key, looking around nervously to see if anyone was there, watching her in the dark. When she glanced back to the screen the words TRANSFER PROCEDURE COMPLETE were flashing on the screen.
She couldn’t take it anymore. She picked up the laptop and hurled it into the sea with a cry of desperation. At that moment her cell phone rang. She clawed through the sand to retrieve her phone. She found it and put it up to her ear. The distorted voice said, “thank you, I no longer needed it.”
Leda interrupted him and angrily said, “I’m going to find you. Do you understand? I’ll find you even if it takes me ten years to hunt you down.”
“That won’t be necessary. I will come to you as I said I would,” the monotone voice replied.
“Where are the pictures you asshole? Where the hell are they?” Leda asked, exploding with rage.
“Go to the port of Rafina and buy four seabreams off the fishing boat “Rofos.” When the girl gives you your change, she will also hand you an envelope containing the photographs of your husband.
Leda leapt into her car and started driving. As soon as she was off the sand and onto paved road again, she called Billy as she was driving.
“Where the hell are you?” Leda yelled.
“Calm down, nothing happened. I’m right behind you,” Billy said.
“Do you call my wiring six million euros to a stranger nothing?”
“Look, at least your alive,” he said.
“Listen, Billy, get over to the fishing boat “Rofos” in the port of Rafina and buy four seabreams. That’s the signal. Pay for them and they’ll hand you an envelope with pictures inside. I’ll give you a call and meet you there.”
Billy arrived at the Rafina harbor first. He pulled up in front of the “Rofos.” Leda arrived a few minutes later; she stopped her car on the outer side of the pier, near the sea, and watched the transaction from afar. She saw Billy being handed a bag of fish and an envelope along with his change. He turned around to step off the boat, back onto the sidewalk. At that moment, a man dressed in a black body suit wearing a ski mask over his face rushed at him out of thin air and tried to snatch the envelope away. Billy tumbled over onto the sidewalk, caught off guard by the surprise attack. The man in black crashed into the tables of the little seafood ouzo restaurant next to him and tumbled onto the ground in a heap. The envelope containing the photographs flew out of his hand, causing the pictures to scatter all over the sidewalk.
Billy pulled out the gun and took aim. Then it slipped from his hand onto the sidewalk, triggering it; a shot was fired into the air. Everyone around them panicked and many people took cover or threw themselves flat onto the ground. The masked man scrambled to his feet and tried to amass the scattered photographs. That’s when Billy threw himself onto him and began to pummel him. He slipped out of Billy’s grasp and knocked him over the head with a chair causing him to fall to the ground, before bending down to pick up the rest of the pictures.
In that moment, Leda placed the gun, which she had picked up off the sidewalk, against his temple and said, “don’t move or I’ll shoot.”
He slowly got to his feet, looking at Leda through the eye opening in his ski mask, which covered the rest of his face. Leda flipped her hair away from her face and in one swift movement she grabbed the ski mask and pulled it off.
What she saw left her speechless.
“Tasos,” she roared, full of surprise, as she continued to point the gun at him.
“Darling, I thought you’d gone out on a date and I followed you,” her husband stammered awkwardly.
Some of the curious bystanders had picked up a few of the fallen photographs and had huddled together, examining them and laughing as they pointed to the couple engaged in the throes of passion. When Leda realized what was going on she snatched the remaining pictures out of Tasos’s hands and looked at them. Her face fell as she made a futile gesture of anguish.
Two police cars screeched up behind them. The police officers jumped out, their weapons raised. They ordered Leda to lower her weapon. She let it drop to the ground and one of the officers slipped cuffs around her wrists, behind her back. They also arrested Tasos and Billy. As they were guiding Leda into the patrol car she finally found the courage to yell to her husband: “I want a divorce. Do you hear me? I want a divorce right away.”
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