Danish film

It's a night like many nights before (not recently though). Harry, Mark, and John are out, as in: not here. But let's pretend we're with them and can listen to what they have to say. That is, if they have, wait: if anybody actually really has to say something anyway.
Was that too much? If so, I'm sorry. So, here's the deal. The boys have just been to a movie, something foreign, subtitled. Not the cool kind, nothing Asian. Something European. Danish!
The scene: post-movie drinks at a shady, basement kindof place. Illegal activities likely to be going on nearby. One of the guys, could've been Harry... but I don't remember, recommended the place. The other two are somewhat pissed off about the place, but since alcohol is mandatory, its source and environment in which it is consumed are secondary at best.
"You guys, you know what?" (stupid question, indeed) Mark asks, while John gulped down what was left of his badly mixed cocktail. He didn't seem to listen and given the circumstances, listening to Mark's forthcoming little speech about ...whatever didn't seem too necessary, or promising, or... anything.
Mark: "I think Danish film, in general, all this not-really-funny-still-you're-supposed-to-laugh-stuff-- is awfully overrated." At this point, realizing his not so high expectations fulfilled John puts down his glass to leave for the men's room, without another word. Harry, in need of a refill, is looking around for the barkeeper who is busy at the other end of the bar.
"Harry! Come on! You know I'm right. After all, the most famous Danish director is now making American movies... with mixed European casts, but still American movies..."
"Dude, I could not care less. What I want now is Dutch beer. Not Danish film."

Girl from the North Country

(Notice: this is an alternate and extended, stand-alone version of an earlier entry)

It was a hot and humid day; the sun was nowhere to be seen, hidden behind thick layers of clouds, heavy with the promise of forthcoming rain, a purging thunderstorm. Mark woke up in a strange way. He did not slip out of sleep, regaining consciousness before even properly opening his eyes (as he usually does, as you probably and I most certainly do, usually); neither did he wake abruptly as you do from a nightmare.
When Mark woke up, he found his eyes already open; sweat was slowly running from his receding hairline down his forehead. It might have been sweat burning in his eyes that woke him up. It wasn’t the noise coming from the street, because, strangely enough, he couldn’t hear it until some two or three seconds after waking up.
He spent these two deaf seconds wondering why or how sweat could go down his face until he realized that he’d been sleeping in a sitting position his back almost upright, leaning against the headpiece of his bed. Now he could hear the noise, cars jerking downtown, stop and go, like any other morning. Mark’s lower back was in a state of slight but persistent pain. Even worse was his right arm. He couldn’t feel it and for some reason he thought he’d misplaced it, lost it somewhere on his way to bed, earlier this morning. His right hand did not move. Anxious to find it gone he turned his head.
Looking back, we might say that only then Mark was really awake. In the twilight of the drawn curtains, that hid the half-open window, he saw that his hand and half of his arm were stuck underneath something or somebody. Well, it was a body, not a person. Not anymore. A fucking corpse. “Fuck!”, Mark thought.
She was a girl. Well, it had been. It was dressed in a somewhat outdated summer dress with some kind of flower pattern. It was probably outdated enough to be fashionable again, but Mark couldn’t really think too much about that. He did not know her, hadn’t known her, that is. At least he did not remember. She still looked kind of good, a bit too much make-up though. Well, and there were those ugly bruises around her neck, which suggested that she’d been strangled.
Mark pulled his arm from under her, which unfortunately caused the body to roll over and drop to the floor, noisily knocking over several empty beer bottles. He got up and carefully climbed over the girl, narrowly avoiding stepping on her, while he was alternately rubbing his sore back and his numb arm. He realized he was still drunk. A slight feeling of dizziness forced him to drag along the wall, and he struggled to make his way through the door and beyond, down the hall, to the bathroom. He could hear music playing in the next room; apparently, one of his roommates was listening to something that sounded vaguely familiar, especially the lyrics. Was that a cover of a Bob Dylan song?
“She once was a true love of mine” – Mark could hear the vocals clearly, regardless of the droning guitars, when he left the bathroom. The door to John’s room was open and his roommate was standing in the hallway. John turned to Mark, his arms were crossed and his facial expression suggested he had seen what Mark had woken up to. “I heard something and figured you were up. You left your door open”, he said. He didn’t seem shocked, just amused in a very weird and somewhat inappropriate way. But which behavior is best, when you find a corpse next to your roommate’s bed?
It took some time to evaluate the situation. John recalled Mark bringing the girl the night before. Both of them had been drunk, just like John. How could anyone get away with a corpse in their bed and without an alibi, or any kind of explanation? You couldn’t possibly just say, “I don’t know her, I found her like this, I didn’t do it.” Given the situation, they decided to get rid of the evidence. This involved using an eight-piece knife set which one of them had bought after seeing one of these infomercials. The presenter had said, “Unbelievable! This cleaver cuts through bone like butter!” It actually did. John put the pieces in two black garbage bags, while Mark was cleaning the bathtub. He didn’t really question why his roommate had had several pairs of surgical gloves and a gallon of bleach ready, as though he did stuff like this on a regular basis. Together they carried the bags to the elevator and down to Mark’s car. They carefully placed them in the trunk.
“Dude”, Mark said, when he started the engine, “Thank you so much for helping me. I have no idea where I’d be without you.”
“What do you mean? You are helping me”, John replied, smiling. Distant thunder was rolling nearer behind the dark skyline and few drops of rain fell on Mark’s windshield.