The Lady Says Read online

  The Lady says: Die

  The Lady says: Die

  The Lady says: Die

  Excerpt:

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  The Lady says: Die

  The newspaper rustled in the hands of the man sitting next to Petra Nuß as he flipped to the next page.

  She peaked on the new pages headline. Something about micro plastic. More bad or alarming news.

  Petra turned her attention back to the novel in her hands. She would rather read steamy romance novels than the newspaper for this very reason.

  Newspapers always seemed to be entirely made of bad news. Her romance novels on the contrary finished with a happy ending.

  She preferred them over the media. Reality was tough enough. Even without bad headlines and constant warnings screamed into her face by bold letters in the headlines every day.

  The seat of the ICE 4 she sat on was soft and new. Even the air in the train still smelled of freshly made plastic and glue. A nice variety to the other trains which often smelled of too much sweat, stalled air and fast food.

  Petra saw the hills of the outside countryside fly by through the bit of the window not hid by the newspaper of her neighbor. She had some more hours to travel until she reached her destination. In Stuttgart, she would go sightseeing, enjoying her holiday, looking into the famous building site called Stuttgart 21, the new main station of Stuttgart.

  She had heard quite a lot of negative news about it. The project was over budget and over time. That sounded a lot like a description of work at her work as software developer, only on a huger, more public scale.

  Yet, she found the architectural images of the finished main station appealing. More space to meet, to live and to enjoy one’s free time, with the main station underground.

  Aside from the building site she was interested in the vineyards of Stuttgart. Maybe she could taste a grape or two? It was late summer, they surely were ripe by now.

  Petra’s travel guide had told her, that the city on the waterfront of the Neckar had many vineyards inside the city area. A hop on hop off bus tour was recommended to discover some of them, together with a wine tasting. An event, she wasn’t looking forward to, because she deemed wine a waste of delicious grapes.

  She loved eating grapes during her work in front of a computer screen. Mixed with walnuts and hazelnuts they helped her stay focused for a day’s work. Even in the late afternoon hours, when she preferred to daze off instead of working another hour.

  The train rattled on and on. The constant rocking felt like a lullaby.

  The hills outside flattened and houses appeared between the green sights.

  Petra heard scuffles of shoes, clattering of suitcases being pulled from the racks and pushed down the aisle towards the doors. The next station was approaching fast. A man brushed past her.

  Hopefully, the man with the annoying newspaper would leave soon too. His constant flipping of pages with ugly headlines on each of them made her feel bad.

  How could she enjoy her holiday with so much trouble around the world?

  Her mother always told her she couldn’t save the world.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t forget it either as most people seemed to. She still picked up rubbish from the sides of the street to trash it correctly. She even did her best to avoid plastics and bought organic whenever possible.

  Sometimes she wished she could work magic. Like conjuring the plastic and the fertilizers away and make the world a better place. Sadly, she couldn’t.

  Petra watched a woman, followed by three girls and a man, probably her husband, walking past her. Behind them the scent of apples lingered in the air.

  Petra felt her stomach growl. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast in the early morning. If one wanted to call half a slice of dry, hard bread a breakfast.

  With her three-week travel ahead, she had used up all food in her fridge and storage room that couldn’t be stored for so long. She refused to trash food only to eat fresh things on her last morning at home.

  She decided to buy some snacks in the onboard bistro after the next stop. Then, she tried to focus on her novel again.

  She couldn’t.

  Eating at the onboard bistro would mean, adding to the plastic trash mountain.

  “Stop fighting the world. Enjoy it”, had a friend once told her.

  Petra knew she made her life harder than necessary. Yet, she couldn’t change it. It felt wrong to her to choose the easy way out.

  Convinced to wait until she reached Stuttgart, she read the next sentence in her book. Soon she was back in a world of wonderful long dresses, parties and buffets stacked to the ceiling with delicate food.

  “Did you say anything?”, asked the man sitting at the window next to Petra.

  “No.” Petra shook her head and ignored him.

  Half a page later, she wasn’t even back in her book, he asked again: “Did you say anything?”

  Petra ignored him.

  Then, the man folded his newspaper vigorously and hit it on his upper leg. “You said ‘DIE’!”

  Petra sighted at the accusation. Stupid people all around her.

  The man behaved like the project manager wanting her to do one thing and a day later wanting the opposite requirement.

  She put her left hand’s index finger on the page and closed the book over it.

  “I said nothing. You heared ghosts.”

  She looked at the man. His eyes became huge and round. His sight glided sideways.

  He stared past her.

  She heard nothing behind her. The people either all left the coach or stood waiting instead of walking.

  Petra turned around on her soft seat to see what frightened the man.

  At that moment the train drove into a bend. She was pushed back against the back rest of her seat.

  Petra looked at the aisle.

  There stood a woman with a black, tight dress. The shirt slotted on one side to her upper leg, falling down to her feet. Showing one of the legs spread for balance.

  Petra looked upwards. Her gaze hold at the sight of a knife in the black dressed woman’s hand.

  “You didn’t”, said the woman calmly. “I said, DIE.”

  Petra stared at the woman surprised from the unexpected appearance.

  A killer in the train. She couldn’t wrap her thoughts around it.

  Why was nobody screaming?

  Petra gulped, cleared her throat and screamed: “HELP! A KILLER!”

  The intense smell of roses filled Petra’s nose.

  Too sweet and too much to leave any pleasant memory of it.

  The woman moved. Her black dressed arm pressed against Petra’s face.

  Petra wound her head to free herself. She grabbed the arm that was pressed against her face and tried to push it up and away from herself.

  The arm moved not a millimeter. It felt like heavy, hard, old bread.

  Petra’s fingernail splintered. Her hand hurt from pushing.

  She heard fabric rip. A yell of pain.

  But she didn’t feel pain.

  Only a need for air.

  Fresh air, not the air tainted with too many roses.

  Petra saw little white sparks dancing in front of her eyes.

  She felt the train move into another bent. She got some more air again. Still, pestered with the stench of roses.

  The woman was gone.

  Around her was turmoil. People shouting, crying. She didn’t understand a word of them.

  Next to her, the man with the newspaper leaned at his seat, sunken into himself. Whimpering.

  A new scent added. Hot and wet.

  Sun rays glinted on r
ed jewels on the man’s chest.

  Petra couldn’t remember the man wearing a necklace before. Especially not a flashy one.

  She looked twice.

  It was the handle of the knife she’d seen in the woman’s hand instants ago.

  “If police is on board, please come to coach number seven”, said a female voice over the loudspeaker.

  “Sit down. Keep calm”, ordered a male voice from behind Petra.

  She still stared at the man next to her. His breath was ragged. She saw red drops running from his mouth. That surprised her. Why would he bleed from his mouth, if the knife was in his chest?

  Rough hands grabbed her arm. She let go of her novel, heard it hitting the carpet floor.

  “Move”, ordered the male voice from before.

  The man pulled her out of her seat.

  Petra was too stunned to think a clear thought.

  She stared at the man with the pinstriped blazer and dark blue trousers, as he looked at the man and called something about an emergency doctor down the aisle.

  The yelling around her became a kind of background noise.

  Like the constant rattling of the ICE, thought Petra.

  She felt crazily floating, as if she didn’t belong here.

  Then, she realized the change. The ICE wasn’t moving anymore. How had she missed the train stopping?

  A man wearing in blue clothes, with Police written over it, ran down the aisle. Train attendants behind him cleared the coach. The shouting ceased.

  A woman with the dark pinstripe uniform of a train attendant led Petra at one end of the coach.

  “Please sit down and wait a moment”, she said. “Are you hurt?”

  Petra felt numb. The stench of roses didn’t lift. Neither did the wet smell of blood.

  “Are you hurt?”, asked the train attendant again.

  Petra shook her head for she couldn’t determine any injury on herself.

  The man next to her had been attacked.

  With a knife.

  In a train in the middle of the day!

  With no one screaming for help beside her!

  Petra saw men with white and red clothes stomping past her seat now. They brought a scent of fresh air with them from the door.

  Petra couldn’t determine what was happening. But she hoped for the man that they could help him, even when she had hated his newspaper before.

  “Where is the woman?”, asked Petra.

  She saw the shoulders with the white blouse and the pinstriped blazer move up and down. “Which woman?”

  “The woman who said die”, said Petra. “She said it multiple times to the man, yet I heard it only once.”

  Petra leaned back on the hard wooden chair.

  Normally she sat in soft office chairs with high back rests. This ones’ back rest ended in the middle of her back. This chairs edge dug uncomfortable in her back and made it hurt.

  The cold light in this white room wasn’t made to comfort her either.

  She laid her elbows on the table in front of her. Too tired to care being brought to this room and left alone by the doctors assistant and a police officer.

  What an awful way to start a holiday. And she was sure, the thing wasn’t over yet.

  The train attendant had heard nothing of a woman. But she had looked at Petra with a lot of suspicion in her eyes.

  Petra thought at the knife. She hadn’t touched it. They couldn’t find a way to accuse her, could they?

  The tabletop was hard against her arms. A long linen shirt couldn’t help against a cold surface. Her backpack went missing somewhere along the way. Probably back at the train, together with her romance.

  A rustle at the door caught Petra’s attention. A woman dressed in white clothes of a doctor and a second one dressed in police uniform entered.

  They brought two chairs with them.

  The police officer left and returned with a bottle of water, glasses and some paperwork applied on a clipboard.

  “Well”, said the police officer. “My name is Scharff. I hope you recovered a bit from your shock.”

  Petra stared at Mrs. Scharff. She wore rectangular, unframed glasses that made her brown eyes look huge and tired.

  “Of course, she hasn’t”, said the doctor. “She witnessed a crime and shouted for help. You got that already from the other passengers.”

  The doctor sat down, poured water in a glass and slid it over the tabletop towards Petra.

  Petra read, Renate Esslinger on the doctors name tag.

  “Mrs. Nuß, how do you feel?”, asked Mrs. Esslinger.

  Petra stared at the neatly braided hair, the beautiful red lips, brown eyes and even nose of Mrs. Esslinger face who sat across the table. The white light from the ceiling mirrored in the water surface, split and sparkling lighters projected on the table’s white surface.

  “Like the white lights on the table”, said Petra. She found it hard to voice her feelings. “Floating”, she added.

  Mrs. Scharff opened her mouth. Petra heard her hard intake of air.

  “No, you won’t bother this woman”, said Mrs. Esslinger with a sharp voice. “She’s in no condition to answer questions.”

  “Hrmp”, made the police officer. “I need as much information as possible about the murderer to”

  “Murderess”, interrupted Petra. “A woman, dressed in a black, tight dress. Slotted up to her hip.”

  The pencil of the police officer scratched quickly over the paper. “Anything else?”

  “She said die to the man. Multiple times”, said Petra. “He heard it. I heard it only once.”

  Petra turned to Mrs. Esslinger: “Can you open a window? The stench of roses makes me sick.”

  “Sure.” The doctor stood and walked to the window, opened it wide.

  The warm afternoon air, filled with heat entered the cool room. Slowly the stench of roses left Petra’s nose.

  Her eyelids dropped. She heard Mrs. Scharff ask another question with her tired voice.

  “Can’t we sleep?”, asked Petra. Her voice sounded slurred to herself.

  Bright sunshine falling right into her face woke Petra the next morning.

  Thankfully the stench of roses was gone. Instead, she smelled disinfecting agent. Which wasn’t any better. And the bed she laid in wasn’t hers.

  The bed with the white sheets was as wide as a hospital bed. There were the triangular hangers above her together with a rectangular box and buttons on it. She recognized the red one as the button calling for help or an emergency.

  She was in hospital! But why?

  Petra searched her memory and found only a void. What had happened to her?

  Her fingers searched her body for obvious injuries and bandages. She found none. Not even a needle in her arm leading to a bag of liquid hanging around.

  She felt whole.

  A knock at the door put a halt to Petra searching for a reason for being in the hospital.

  Shoes squeaked on the gray linoleum floor. A doctor dressed in white entered the room and sat on the brink of her bed. The mattress sunk a bit to the side.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Nuß”, greeted a familiar voice. “I hope you remember me. My name is Renate Esslinger. I’m the doctor responsible for shock victims.”

  “Shock?” She couldn’t remember this doctor. Something was different compared to the doctor Esslinger she met before.

  Petra stared at the woman with the blue eyes and the warm smile sitting at her bed.

  Her head hurt at the word. She wasn’t a victim of shock, was she?

  Slowly flashes of a hard table, the doctor and a police officer returned to Petra’s memory.

  “The knife had red jewels on the handle”, said Petra.

  Mrs. Esslinger nodded. “We know.”

  “Did you catch the attacker?”, asked Petra.

  “I can’t tell”, said Mrs. Esslinger. “You have to talk to Mrs. Scharff, the police officer. She’ll come later to ask questions. My duty is to make sure you are
able to answer them.”

  To Petra the whole speech flashed past her like a blur of sounds. Only one fact stood out: She wasn’t accused guilty, like by the eyes of the train attendant did who made her sit the day before.

  “What do I need to do?”, asked Petra.

  She had no idea how police investigation worked or what she could do to feel better.

  “Start telling me how you feel”, said Mrs. Esslinger. “Does anything hurt?”

  Petra shook her head. “No. Am I injured?”

  “Not physically”, said Mrs. Esslinger.

  The doctor looked out of the window with void eyes, staring absently minded at the trees there.

  Petra let herself sink back on the bed and placed her head on the pillow. Relief washed over her for not being hurt. But something was wrong with her brain.

  “I feel dizzy. And have a hunch of void trying to remember yesterday”, said Petra. “There was this woman. The man asked me twice why I said die, but I hadn’t. She did. How could I overhear it?”

  “That’s totally fine. Human brain works that way. Forgetting things it doesn’t like”, said Mrs. Esslinger.

  As if, wondered Petra. In that case she would forget all the nasty requirements of Stefan whose programming tickets were the worst of all. He might be perfect as a project manager, but his technical understanding was awful. That showed in all development tickets with lacking corner cases and straight definition of what should and shouldn’t be done by the system.

  She pushed the thought away and concentrated of the attack in the ICE. Talking loud to order her memory to herself.

  Petra felt like babbling on and on. She heard the pencil of the doctor run smooth with a low scratch over the paper.

  “What are you writing down?”, asked Petra. Suddenly worried about the conclusions the doctor might draw.

  “I note your words. Think of it like a dictation”, said the doctor and turned the clipboard to show Petra.

  She read. Word for word what she had said. Even her thoughts of the hero in her book. She couldn’t remember talking about those a minute ago.

  “That’s awful. I sound like an idiot drinking too much alcohol remembering nothing”, said Petra after reading.