Teddy As In Bear

Crime Fiction by Lissa Muir

No matter what you think of me, you can’t deny I’m not like the other guys. I’ve worked hard to get where I am. I have a BA in finance, for instance, and graduated with a 4.0 GPA. Others were educated, too, but they were social outcasts with sub-par grades who barely, if at all, managed to graduate. In high school, I was popular, on the honour roll, and played goalie on the hockey team. When I switched from hockey to curling in university, I scored a spot as lead on the team despite barely having ever played the game. At thirty-nine, I’ve had several long-term relationships—as well as a few shorter ones—and every one of my exes remains a friend. It’s true that many of the others have been in relationships—some even married—but their partners were a simply a front for their other activities, and nearly all of their wives reported abuse after the fact. My fortieth birthday is looming, and I still haven’t hit my peak when nearly all the other guys, the ones who have had TV series and movies made about them, are in jail or dead. My name is Theo Froder and I am the best serial killer the world has yet to hear about.

***

Marianne looked at herself in the mirror one last time. She was going on a first date, and she wanted to strike a balance, looking attractive while not surrendering to the notion that the only way to do so was to wear tight and revealing clothing. Marianne wanted to dress for the female gaze—her own—rather than the male. To that end, she wore a long, shapeless, ankle-length dress that made walking and eating and sitting a non-issue but was crafted out of an icy blue fabric that set off her red hair and freckles and had an open back that highlighted the smooth skin of her scapula. Her makeup was light but not nonexistent because those viral videos of men who disdained women wearing too much makeup made her furious. Sure, you do, she always thought, if the woman has perfect skin and a hot body and beautiful hair and is extra good at applying natural-looking makeup. For fuck’s sake. Meanwhile, women were proclaiming their love of so-called Dad bods and if those two things weren’t the best example of the double standard of beauty between men and women, Marianne didn’t know what was. She wasn’t about to bow to the patriarchy.

A text buzzed through, and her stomach immediately flip-flopped like the Pavlovian instrument it was. The text was from T, who said he had arrived at the restaurant. He was ten minutes early, which was unexpected, but at least he wasn’t breezing in after making her sit alone for half an hour like her last date. Marianne texted she would be there in five, slipped her feet into sneakers, and left her apartment. The restaurant had been her suggestion because it was a quick three-minute walk from her building, though T didn’t know that because Marianne followed the rules of modern dating. She met her dates in public places, didn’t give out her address or full name but always got theirs, and always let a friend know who she was with and where she was meeting them. Love and companionship and sex were great, sure, but safety always came first.

“This has been so much fun,” Marianne said. She meant it. The date had not only not been torturous, as many first dates are, but it had been good. Like, really good. T—Teddy—had been warm and kind, asking her so many questions about herself she almost forgot to reciprocate. He was funny, but not frat-boy funny or mean-funny or dad-joke-funny, just sort of pleasantly comedic. When she’d arrived, he had stood and shook her hand and said he was so happy to meet her, introducing himself as “Teddy, as in bear or Roosevelt, but not Ted as in Kennedy and certainly not as in Bundy.” She’d laughed because it was cute and ridiculous, and he’d seemed as nervous as she was. Marianne was even thinking of breaking her ‘never invite them home on the first date’ rule. Teddy was dark-haired and five o’clock shadowed with forearms you’d want to hold onto on a roller coaster. His light grey eyes were rimmed in charcoal, irises flecked with the same deep tone, and it made them seem molten and bottomless and impossible to look away from. He wore grey pants and a marled grey sweater over a black Smiths T-shirt that he apologized for when he removed his sweater.

“Sorry, I know Morissey is kinda problematic these days, but I still like the music. Really speaks to the lonely teenager inside.” He’d lightly tapped his fist over his heart as he said this, and Marianne couldn’t help but feel a tug at her own.

“How old are you?” She had asked. The Smiths and Morissey were ‘80s music, popular when she was a mere baby.

“I know, I know. I’m thirty-nine, but my dad and uncles were rather dictatorial DJs, so all I heard at family get-togethers was The Cure and The Smiths, The Jam and Skinny Puppy.”

“Skinny Puppy?”

“Uncle Matt. Please don’t look them up. They’re a rather niche Canadian band and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me. Or uncle Matt, for that matter.”

She’d laughed and promised she wouldn’t. Then he’d asked her what her favourite music was when she was a teenager and she had to endure his light disdain when she listed NSYNC and Backstreet Boys and Avril Lavigne.

“Boy bands for pining and Avril for letting out all your teenaged angst?” He’d asked, and Marianne had laughed.

“Accurate. You have a sister, by any chance?”

It turned out he had two sisters, no brothers, and was raised by a single dad after his mom ran off with the dentist when Teddy was ten.  

“Four years of therapy and counting, not to worry,” he’d added.

“Oh, I wasn’t worried.”

Could this man be any more perfect, Marianne had found herself wondering. How was it that she had been on multiple dates with immature mama’s boys and sad divorced dads and never-grow-up Peter Pans and never once met a Teddy? Maybe it was the second glass of wine, but she was feeling the kind of warmth she hadn’t felt since Trevor, her last serious boyfriend, whom she had ended things with when he said he didn’t want kids. Marianne was thirty-four and, though it pained her to admit, her stupid biological clock meant that she would have to get on with things if she was to have any biological children. It spurred her to take a chance.

“Walk me home?” She had looked up from under her lashes with what she hoped was a charming coquettishness.

“You live nearby?”

“Yup, I picked a place close to my apartment because you need to be able to get into bed with a pint of ice cream ASAP after a shitty date.”

“Is that what this is?”

“C’mon Teddy-like-the-bear, walk me home and find out.”

***

Teddy found the coffee grounds in the freezer—a spot mistakenly believed by many to preserve their freshness—and measured out six level tablespoons plus one teaspoon to a make half of a pot of perfectly-bodied coffee. In the fridge, he found half-and-half, not as good as real coffee cream, but it would do. He also found Greek yogurt and fresh strawberries, which he placed on the counter while he searched for some kind of crunchy topping for the yogurt parfait he planned on preparing. A cupboard to the left of the fridge contained slivered almonds as well as the chichi granola that he knew cost ten dollars for a small bag. Marianne, he thought, either had taste as fine as his or had planned their post-dinner night-in more than she had let on. Teddy didn’t care if she had. All that mattered was the outcome and, well, it had been a good outcome. “Outcome,” he said under his breath and chuckled before he could stop himself. He shook his head. That was crude, and he wasn’t a crude man. His father and uncles had been positively indecent, their collective sense of humour like a Jackass movie, a ‘70s porno, and a drunken boys night put together. No wonder his mother had left. Why she hadn’t thought to take him and, especially, his sisters, was the only question. Well, Mom, wherever you are, he thought, you reap what you sow.

After breakfast, Teddy cleaned up, putting the dishes, including the knife he’d used earlier, in the dishwasher on the “sterilize” setting. Before he left Marianne’s apartment, he’d do the same once more, but for now, he had other chores to do. He walked down the short hall from the kitchen to peek in at Marianne in her bedroom. She lay starfish-style on the bed like the single woman she was, facedown and naked like the day she was born. After a moment of fond observation, Teddy moved on to the rest of his tasks. He stripped down to his own birthday suit, donned the latex surgical gloves he had brought with him, and found the cleaning supplies. Carefully, he cleaned the bathroom first, where he had only used the toilet hands-free, flushing with his socked foot, and the sink to wash his hands. Nonetheless, he scrubbed the entire room until it shone. With one last satisfied look, he moved on to the kitchen, doing the same on the whole space even though he knew he hadn’t touched most of its surfaces. Finally, he moved on to the bedroom.

There was nothing to be done about the bed itself, especially since Marianne still rested there, but he cleaned the rest of the space with the spray bleach he had found under the bathroom sink before vacuuming the carpet and parquet flooring in the entire apartment. In the white kitchen garbage bag he had brought with him, he placed everything he’d used to clean as well as the condom from last night, the pillowcase he’d slept on, and the wine glass Marianne had insisted he take a sip from even though he’d said he didn’t want any. He smiled to himself; it made life so much easier to allow women their small victories. Taking one last walk-through, he caught sight of something glinting under the IKEA sofa in the living room. Reaching underneath, he pulled out a tiny chip of a diamond stud and put it in his pocket. He didn’t usually collect souvenirs from his dates, but this one practically begged to be taken.

After he started the dishwasher again, he took one last indulgent look at Marianne. She was beautiful, her pale limbs like white marble, her red hair fanned out like a halo around her head, her round white butt rising like a dune on a Caribbean beach. You would be hard-pressed to know she wasn’t asleep, the only indication of her status—dead—was the too tightly tied black silk scarf bisecting the white column of her neck. And the blood. Marianne wasn’t a sex worker or a runaway or indigent. She wasn’t a throw away woman no one would miss. No, Marianne had a sister and parents and coworkers and friends who would miss her. Who would cry when they learned of her fate. Teddy thought back to the previous night and smiled. She’d been surprised when he flipped her over onto her stomach, but she was game. He knew she would be because girls like her always knew their place. Knew their role in that kind of encounter. Teddy had caressed her softly, drew light circles all the way from her ankles to her thighs and from her shoulders to her lower back until he could feel her buzzing with anticipation. Then he wrapped the scarf around her neck and pulled it taut. She had sounded like a whimpering baby, a mewling kitten, before her cries turned into truncated gags. Before they stopped altogether. The knife he had saved for postmortem fun; screams attracted too much attention from the neighbors.

Forcing himself to turn away from the scene, he walked down the hall to the entryway, where he put on his shoes, turned the knob on the door and closed it after himself before placing the used gloves in the garbage bag. If he ran into anyone at this early hour, he would look like a resident taking out the household trash, like a good husband or boyfriend doing the duty his wife or girlfriend liked least. He pulled his black toque onto his head, placed his aviators on his face, and wrapped his cardigan around his neck like a preppy frat boy resurrected from the past. He saw no one on his way out of the building. Still carrying the white garbage bag, he walked behind a dive bar you couldn’t pay him to set foot in and threw it into a stinking dumpster. Out of his pocket he withdrew a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer, spritzed it on his palms, rubbed them together, and breathed the familiar alcohol smell. He was Theo Frodor and he was the best serial killer the world has yet to hear about.

---

Bio: Lissa Muir is a Toronto-based writer whose short stories have appeared in After Dinner Conversation, Grande Dame Literary, and Agnes and True. When not writing, she listens to true crime podcasts while going on increasingly slow walks with her fourteen-year-old Newfoundland dog, Molly.

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