Even darker | Loki

Chapter 1. xxx

   She opened the dating app and checked again if her date had sent a message even though the lack of notifications clearly implied otherwise. Fifteen minutes late on the first date. She let out an annoyed sigh and looked around the place. It was a fancy looking pub/bar with attractive bartenders, all in their mid to late twenties. The walls were covered by leafy green hanging plants on wooden floating shelves with old phones and radios. That reminded her what it was like to grow up in the good old nineties. There were no mobile let alone smart phones, you had to call your friends on the phone or from public booths or – God forbid – walk over to them to ask their parents if they could come out and play. There were no dating applications. You had to work up the courage to talk to the guy you secretly liked or if you were lucky, he made the first move sparing you from the possibility of rejection. It was more personal, definitely less effective, but required more effort on both ends. These days you just match, send a few messages and if you like each other you go on a date. Whether you stay if you don't fancy yur date or leave sneakily saying you need the bathroom – that is another question.

She was always a hyperactive, loud kid with a vivid imagination who suddenly started to shoot up towards the skies, stretching seven centimetres when she turned twelve and kept growing. She discovered books early on and as a teenager she was devouring them. Peter Pan and Wendy fuelled her imagination and she quickly moved onto Roman and Greek myths. She was dreaming with goddesses and gods walking and mingling with mortals who are just as human as their worshippers; they too love and hate, make mistakes. She read the Greek Myths and Legends over and over. First, she wanted to be Artemis, then the wise and fierce Athena who sprang from Zeus' head, then she had a crush on Hades, the taciturn and dreaded ruler of the Underworld. She felt he was misunderstood who did not really want the dominion over the land of the dead, but bowed to the draw with his siblings and ruled over it sternly, unmoved by the sacrifices and prayers of humans who rarely uttered his name in fear of him. He was formidable, but fair with a sort of cunning that made him more relatable to her.

After the ancient myths she moved onto the books of J.F. Cooper and Karl May, imagining herself roaming the prairies of North America with Winnetou and Hawkeye. She often played with her friends pretending to be Indians with make-pretend bows and arrows. At high school she was introduced to further literature: Jayne Eyre, The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Man with the Golden Touch and her all-time favourite: Crime and Punishment. By that time she was writing her own little poems and short stories, reading it to her best friends.

She was always drawn to mysterious and powerful male characters just the way she liked her men as she later realized. Brooding and complicated, but yearned to be loved. Her first boyfriend was three years older. He had no family, squatting in abandoned holiday homes near Budapest with his friends. Handsome and smart, abandoned by his mother as a boy, growing up in the system that cared little about the mental and physical safety of its wards which abused and scarred him for life. Adored by many other girls, struggling with drug addiction and his own demons, he inevitably broke her heart into pieces, but he was her first love and lover. Before him she wasn't really interested in sex, she was content with her innocent fantasies and childish crushes, but this boy had a physical effect on her, waking her carnal desires. She tried to resist it, embarrassed and uncomfortable about the new direction of her thoughts, so she ignored them. She laughed at his flirty comments, talked back to him, their quick, snarky repartees quickly becoming infamous. He grew tired of it, of course, dated other girls with less piercing tongues and she was suffering in silence until she couldn't bear it anymore and confessed one time as he went away to his first rehab. They wrote to each other, kept in touch and after he got clean, they became an item. They were so happy in the beginning. She lost her virginity to him. It was just after her eighteenth birthday and their relationship lasted for almost two years, stained with break-ups, reunions and heartache. She often wondered why bad boys seemed to be better in bed? She concluded it was about their ego. They pride themselves to give pleasure, get their partners addicted to it, so they are caught in their web, making it harder to get out. They broke up during her second year at uni and it paralyzed her for almost a year.