Folie à Deux E-Book

Katharina Stertz

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 180

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Can you still trust your own perception? How far would a fan go for their idol? Luc Morel, a famous musician adored from every angle, and fan Chloé, a wealthy artist, grow closer after his concert. Behind the scenes, they begin a secret love affair like in Chloé's most colourful collages. The stronger the pull, the blurrier the line between reality and illusion becomes. What if Luc is her fate? What if he needs her just as much as she needs him?

Leseprobe

Trigger Warning: This novel contains sensitive content including mental disorders (psychosis), violence, suicide, murder, eating disorders (body dysmorphia), psychiatric hospitalisation and other themes that may evoke discomfort for some readers. Please read with caution and if you believe that certain topics could be triggering for you, consider seeking support.

If you are going through a difficult time, struggling with zour mental health, or feel that you need support, please don‘t hesitate to reach out help. You are not alone. There are people who understand and want to support you.

Talk to someone you trust or reach out to professional contact points who can show you a way out of the darkness. You are worthy of receiving help.

‘Yes, L. came into my life and turned it upside down: profoundly, slowly, surely, insidiously. L. came into my life as though she were stepping onto a stage right in the middle of the play, as though a director had ensured that everything around her dimmed to make way for her; as if L.‘s entrace had been prepared for so as to communicate its importance, so that at this precise moment the spectator and the other actors on stage (me, in this case) would look only at her; so that everything around us froze, and her voice carried right to the back of the auditorium; in short, so that she would make an impact’

Delphine de Vigan - Based on a true story

Prologue

There I saw him again. He passed me by. He almost brushed me by, floated by, flashed by. His costume glittered under the light. He merged with the crowd and stood out. I have always imagined that he was taller. Suddenly he stopped next to me and I was the person who was the closest to him in this moment, in this room for some seconds. A surreal moment occurred, a short memory gap, a bypass, a blackout, when our eyes met. For a moment everything disappeared.

I was present when I unlocked my phone to make a video of how he sang, how he stood in front of me. I remember how bad I wanted to touch him just to ensure that him, the person, the idol whom I was obsessed with, whom I have seen on TV and whom I followed in the media for years, was real and neither a hallucination, nor a delusion. I watched him through my phone and thought: ‘Look at me! Please look at me! I am here!’

The lights were turned on. The show was over. The people around me saw me, smiled at me, even grinned. I guess tat they recognised me from the moment before. My environment was estranged, depersonalised. Like I don‘t really belonged here.

A small breeze flew and the lanterns glowed in the darkness. I was wearing my favourite dress, the dark blue one with the stars. I smelled the floral note of my perfume whose name of the brand was also carried by the main character of my novel. I put it on today in the morning to be closer to her, to become her today, to transform myself into her. And when I was waiting for the tram I played the video over and over again until I couldn‘t stand it. I was alone in a foreign city, in a foreign county. I wasn‘t scared but I felt invincible. I was happy. I have never felt so alive. And then a new chapter would start, I thought. It would come full circle.

The next day I woke up normally, as though nothing happened, as though it was just a strange dream that just evaporated. But the day was real. The video exists. Even he has seen it. And yet I doubt my perception, my sensations, the events if they really happened or if my brain just tricked me for the whole time.

And when I say that the following story is fictional, it was a lie.

The lights go out and I am imagining how I am in a story. I am the main character and the destiny is the author. Or it is about him, about Luc, the misunderstood artist who is standing there on the stage. It‘s our story that is beginning right now and will take its course.

The first notes are being played. Everyone is lifting their phones collectively so I can see small duplications of his face on the hundred displays in front of me. Fog around him. I can see how the dancers are moving slowly and gracefully with the music. The crowd is listening to his voice. I am standing in the centre of the room, jammed between strangers.

Hundreds of eye-pairs are following his movements focusedly. And no one dares to sing along, to move or to escape the trance. He is a god and we are worshipping him in unison. We let us allow ourselves to be guided by his voice, as though he hypnotised the crowd, as though he casted a powerful love spell. I am trying to balance on my tiptoes. My shoes are hurting. I am trying to recognise something in front of me between hundreds of heads and silhouettes in front of me, a small gesture, a look. There he is. Indeed. He looks so much better in real life than on all those photos on the internet, on television or even on the retouched billboards that are glued on those advertising pillars and on the walls everywhere in this city. Here on this stage, under this light which underlines his most attractive facial features and under which his dark red paillettes on his costumes are glittering magically, he looks like a real artist who is confining in the crowd, who is telling his story, who is unclosing his soul for us. Even if I am standing here in the back, I believe to feel that he is only singing for me as though he could feel my presence. As though it was predetermined that I would show up here.

The admiration fades. Slowly I get used to his presence and I am observing the other spectators. Most of them didn‘t even finish school, needed to drag their parents with them. He is looking at them, at all those blinded and maniac fans who are wasting all of their precious time and energy for an idol. And I heard them screaming, I see them almost fainting. But he seems not to see me as if I am invisible. Or as if he is looking through myself, like I don‘t even exist. And he will never know what he means to me. He will never know about all those things he makes me feel and how he turned my life upside down.

I am standing outside, in front of the concert hall and I am lightning a cigarette, mulling over the show, like a movie on repeat.

I cannot believe that I have really seen Luc. Luc Morel. Luc, whom I have admired for so long, who made me the person who I am today. Luc, who gives colour to my art, who gives words to my texts. Luc, my inspiration, my muse, my meaning of life. The longer I think about his name, the more bizarre it gets.

I am looking gratefully in the black sky. The crescent moon is shining on me so mystically. It reminds me of him, how I admire him from afar and how he is following me whenever I make a small step and yet he remains unreachable.

What if he saw me too? Maybe he is thinking of me. I will never know it. I am standing alone under the night sky, romanticising my melancholy. It calms me. I am feeling at peace with myself as though nothing and no one could bring me in a bad mood, until shrill voices interrupt my daydreams.

I look to the parking lot and I am watching a group of teenagers. Around ten, fifteen people. They all look alike under this yellow lamplight, with their almost identical clothing style, those cardigans, the same cuts of their trousers, the dyed hair and the way they painted their faces too look older or more mature. I am wondering how old they really are, if they are still allowed to be outside at this late hour.

‘Oh my god, there‘s Luc!’, I hear one of them shouting.

She wears braces. Like possessed they are chasing a black car, make photos and videos with flashlight, scream slurred things to each other. No one notices me. I am standing here in the back and watch that scenario like through a window as if I am outside this scene. A spectator.

One of the girls is holding a poster but I can‘t read what is written on it. Someone is closing the darkened window on the backseat. The car starts moving and leaves the shrieking crowd behind.

‘Do you think he saw us?’, one of them asks. One girl breaks down and hysterically starts crying. Some other girls approach her and try to comfort her. I see how those little, pathetic schoolgirls are hugging each other. I feel embarrassed, raise my eyebrows and put the cigarette out.

Midnight. Four zeros on my display. A new start, a new chapter. I am walking through the streets, passing neon lights. Smoking people standing in front of restaurants. I imagine how he would walk beside me, how I would hold his warm hand while walking and talking. I don‘t know about what we would talk. Maybe he would tell me stories. I would listen. He would make a joke and try to make me laugh certainly. I don‘t know how he would do it but I can imagine it so naturally as if it was real, like a memory I tried to suppress. I look down to the orange lighted footpath and listen to my own thoughts that whisper things like: Luc doesn‘t even know me. A phantom is following me. And I accelerate like I escape from my own thoughts, like I run away from the negativity.

Suddenly I feel something brushing my arm. It wasn‘t a usual touch. It felt like a small electric shock. I see white lights in front of my mind‘s eye as if I am about to faint. The floor is soft.

‘Soulmates always find their way to each other. The universe always brings them together’, is a quote I just needed to think of. Just in this moment this quote popped up in my mind. I heard this one but I don‘t know when and who told me this. I turn around and stare at the person who is surprisingly observing me.

‘Sorry, have we met?’

‘No, I don‘t think so’

Pause. I am analysing him. Up and down. He looks like Luc. I think I blushed. Never let him know that I recognised him. He smiles.

Everything happens so fast. One follows the other. There we are sitting facing each other on bar stools. On the wall stands a shelf with glass bottles that are shimmering under the soft light. Waitresses with dinner trays in their hands are running around that doesn‘t really matches the atmosphere and the mellow piano music on the background.

‘What‘s your name?’, asks my counterpart.

‘Chloé, and you?’

‘I‘m Luc’

‘Nice to meet you’

Two glasses of white wine are brought to us. We touch glasses, look each other in the eyes, take some sips. The people around us are talking all at once, clashing on their plates but I can understand every word he says. It‘s easy for me to blind out the ambient noise. And all the time I am wondering if it‘s just a dream, if I wake up soon. Nothing really fits together here.

He notices my dimple on my right cheek and finds it ‘cute’. I smile, I am a bit ashamed and I don‘t know why. My heart is starting to beat faster. It seems so weird to me to have a normal conversation with him, my idol which I only experienced in my dreams.

I start to ask questions about him, his personality whose answers I already know by heart. I really try to not expose myself, I try to seem surprised and amazed when I hear that I have the same views and opinions like him. Our conversations are always interrupted by ‘I have exactly the same thoughts’ or ‘It‘s unbelievable but I experienced the same thing’ and ‘Oh, really?’ or a ‘I feel like I am talking to someone who really gets me’.

Briefly, I look yearningly to the couples on the dance floor, moving with the music.

‘Come on, let‘s dance’, he suggests suddenly as though he could read my thoughts. I look amazed.

‘I can‘t dance at all. I would only embarrass us’

Still, he offers me his hand.

We dance a waltz, turn in circles. The surroundings get blurry slowly. No one notices us like we are alone. Just him and me. His face is more beautiful under this warm light. How much I would like to touch it, just to know how his skin feels like.

The alcohol starts to mix with the happy hormones in my blood. Then we starts to make jokes, to laugh together which happens so simply and naturally, as if we know each other forever. Not even the silence is awkward. Luc seems like a friend to me whom I haven‘t seen for so long as if we drifted apart and needed to learn to know each other again.

After some hours of talking to him, I have this feeling that he would never judge me and understand me like he understands himself, like he is the person I shouldn‘t disguise or hide myself from. As we go along, I feel safer, lighter so that every traces of my insecurities disappear. I start to forget that I did not even know him yesterday.

The guests leave the bar bit by bit so it gets quieter and emptier like those two glasses on the table. You can only hear calm piano sounds in the background.

‘I can imagine, it‘s not very easy living this life, having so many fans who always want something from you’, I say.

‘I chose this job so I would have needed to expect this sooner or later. But who am I without them?’

He looks down the floor.

‘Can I be honest?’

I nod.

‘Basically, I never wanted to be admired, I only wanted to be understood. I wanted that someone sees me and says ‚wow, there is someone out there who is going through the same things as I do‘. I only wanted to show what happens in my mind, I wanted to share my thoughts, to create something and I have never believed that this would go down well.’

It sounds like I wrote down these words somewhere, like I thought the same things some weeks ago.

‘That‘s why I also make art. I paint, I write, I make collages. I do it only for myself. Art doesn‘t have trends. It‘s the best to be authentic and true to yourself. The most successful people are the ones who do something that others can‘t do.’

I show him photos from my last exhibition, swiping through abstract paintings, black and white collages with paper-snippets from newspapers, notes I wrote about my obsession to him. Luckily he couldn‘t recognise my handwriting.

‘I sold this for forty-thousand’

His facial expression changes. He raises his eyebrows as he heard the amount.

‘Wow, really? Forty-thousands?’

I affirm. He starts giving me compliments. Luc Morel, my idol, is giving me compliments. Then I switch off my phone.

‘You do everything right. I would like to create something without someone telling me what to do. Without the audience that is putting me under pressure, always waiting for something new. I am tired of pleasing others all the time and tired of reinventing myself. I would like to create my own little world where I can be who I want to be. I just want to be like you. No one would know me, no one would want something from me and at the same time I had everything I desired to have. ‘

I can’t hide my laugh.

‘Haha, yes. Like me…’

I am about to confess what is going on in my mind, how obsessed I am, that I admire him for years. I almost told him how I doubt myself, and how much I wanted to be like him, that I could never reach his level…

I can barely manage to hold myself back. Instead, I am holding my hand in front of my mouth, to signalise that my laugh just slipped out and I didn‘t mean it like that.

‘You know, I wanted to be well-known. I wanted to have the world on my feet. Today I have everything I wanted but slowly I am scared that one day I will forget why I started this. And I think that destiny guided me to you so I could see why I do what I do.’

Nothing really fits somehow. He pauses and unexpectedly, he says: ‘I dreamt of you, Chloé’

I am watching the sunset which dyes the sky into warm and vivid colours. The waves of the sea are rushing, giving the air a breeze of salt. The wind is blowing through my hair. Sand on the beach towel which I am sitting on. Slowly it gets colder and I am pulling Luc closer to me so it gets warmer.

Everyone is interested in him, where he is but no one knows. Only I know. And no one knows about me. No one knows about us.

Last week we spontaneously parted to escape from our routines, just to be alone, far away from all those people who could recognise him. He approached me with two plane tickets which he impulsively bought. He said that he needed to think about a new album or novel or whatever. He talked so fast, I couldn‘t understand everything. I didn‘t want to interrupt him. He just tried his best to convince me, to persuade me. I remember he mentioned things like:

‘Promise me that you will come with me! I don‘t want to spend any second without you!’ and ‘Let‘s have fun as if no one knows us.’

It‘s like I am part of a cheesy love story where everything is going way too well, too perfect. Like in a movie, a romance just without obstacles, without schemes. In the morning we are walking hand in hand through picturesque alleys of a Mediterranean old town. The morning sun makes his blonde hair look golden. We show ourselves and no one recognises us. We are invulnerable. Here, we are feeling so free like a normal couple out of many that can love each other in public, whose names are unknown. Then we are sitting on a terrace of a café, watching people who are hurrying to work, who are holding their conversations on foreign languages. Coffee is brought. The scent is reaching my nose. It smells like luck. And I have the luck to know Luc, to love Luc and to know that he loves me back. I can‘t imagine to love someone as much as him

Then we go to the beach. He brings me to places where no one else is staying, where the water looks so clear and seems unspoilt. We go to museums, visit modern galleries, where I show him my favourite artworks. We are outside until late at night and talk under the moon light.

‘We are one team’, he says.

‘We belong together’ and ‚With you my life is perfect’.

‘I can‘t remember how I could live without you’

‘I will never leave you’

‘I will always take care of you’

‘I would do anything for you’

Isn‘t it weird? You wish something from the bottom of your heart and then, out of the blue, when you just blink, when you expect it the least, then it comes true.

And in the end it is even better than you could have ever imagined. I am perfectly happy. There is nothing else I would like to accomplish. I achieved my goal.

Not everything stays forever. On a rainy day we fly home, carrying black suitcases with us and need to hide under dark clothing. I refuse to walk next to him or our relationship could be exposed. The lovesick teenagers could tear me to pieces like hungry wolves. Just a glance could reveal it.

I hear our frantic steps rushing home, that want to isolate from the outside world. The noises mix up with a quiet, unclear whisper under my shoes.

‘Chloé’

‘You don‘t deserve him.’

‘You clearly know that.’

Time passed by. Step by step the magical moments fade. Our love is almost like a memory. I spend my time alone at the mansion. In a huge, modern, cuboid building with tall windows, a quadratic pool in the garden where the water sparkles under the sunlight, a majestic fountain in front of the big front door. A big gate that mostly remains closed. A massive fence isolates us from the outside world.

The spark is almost dead. Luc arrives home late sometimes. Then he has no time. He is there and then he disappears.

I am pondering. I am overthinking things that no one talks about. I invent something. I invent a second Chloé, a better, prettier Chloé who is looking very different than I do. I invent another woman with him.

My heart is so heavy. But everything is fine as long as he comes back to me and doesn‘t leave me. That‘s what I tell myself. It means that I am still important, I think, even if it hurts, even if I deeply know that it‘s not true.

Then the door opens and he reappears as if he heard my thoughts out loud, as if he sensed that I felt bad like he didn’t want me to doubt him, me and our connection. He asks me how I am doing. He comforts me, hugs me, kisses me as then. He is so close to me again. He gifts me flowers again and infects me with his optimism and soulfulness again.