The Sadist's Bible (5 page)

with speech. If necessary, she would force him to write down his answers to her queries.

She would demand to know why he’d written her such a nasty note. Then she would

complain to the manager. It was all well and good for the restaurant to hire a severely

disabled man to wait tables. Some states gave tax breaks for such hiring, and – in

principle – Ellie was for it. But this man’s handicap clearly didn’t stop with his limp or his speech impediment or his missing hand or the dent in his forehead. It was internal, as well. He was clearly insane and hellbent on forcing his delusions on her.

She fidgeted. Held the note in her hands. Re-read it. Belched. Waited on René to take

her payment.

But the hand that reached down toward her credit card wasn’t a mannequin hand. It

was chubby and attached to a ruddy, husky young man in his late twenties named Ray.

She was about to ask what had happened to René. She was about to demand he be

reprimanded for writing such a venomous note, but when she looked down into her hands

she found no note at all. Just a paper napkin that had been twisted into a miniature rope by anxious hands.

* * *

I decided to give Eleanor a warning – by way of my angel, René. She feared me, you

see. Yes, Lori feared me, too – but her fear was different. Lori’s fear was a fear that
followed on the heels of agreeing to serve as my concubine and failing to fully accept all
the consequences of that status. The sort of fear that came from knowing – not from

theory, but from experience – that, if it were my whim, I could rob her of her arms and
legs. I could change her shape into something incapable of disobedience. If it were my
wish, I could dissolve all of her body except her breasts, her cunt, and her lovely face.

She knew I had the ability and the right to stack one on top of the other and torture each
in turn.

Hers, too, was the fear that stemmed from having given birth to my begotten son. It

was the terror that only came to those who’d carried my seed. Lori wasn’t merely

frightened of me. She was traumatized by me. And that trauma led her to despise me and
attempt to defy me.

Eleanor, on the other hand, feared me – not in my true presence, but on the basis of
my reputation. It was a fear that led her to repress her sexual self for decades. It was a
fear that led her to yearn for the ability to comply with the biblical commandments she
(falsely) assumed were my actual wishes. She’d been led to believe that I loathe

homosexuality because it is an abomination. But – as anyone who has ever taken a

glance at my concubines and children can testify – I love nothing more than abomination.

What do you think attracted me to Lori, in fact, if not for that abominable, deranged mind
of hers? I love abominations so much that I can’t help hoarding them. In my harem.

Among my children. My domain is a Palace of Abominations. This, perhaps, is the

greatest teaching I can share with you: the heavenly and the hideous are not separate.

They are joined together in a coitus so intense it is impossible to tell where one ends and
the other begins.

Each reaches out to the other. The hideous needs the holy. Prays to it. Begs for its
intervention to heal a broken body and twisted brain. The hideous needs the holy because
without the holy it would have no hope for redemption. Likewise, the holy has an interest
in seeing to it that there is a proliferation of hideousness. Happy, beautiful people have
no need of God. It is only when people are debased by degeneracy of the mind or body
that they consciously seek me out. And I desire to be sought out. Worshiped.

For God to be relevant, degeneracy must reign. And it is not enough for the number

of deformities to grow over time. My wish is to bend the human genome in the direction
of deformity. The deformities of each generation must be more grotesque than those of
the generation that preceded it. Each child should be more appalling than its parents.

And so the cycle must continue and escalate until – at the end of history – we arrive at a
destination of ultimate deformity; the place at which humanity has reached the peak of
perversion. I shall perfect humanity in the only way it can be perfected, by making it
perfectly monstrous. By placing it in a position where it can no longer be self-sufficient; a
place of constant need. A place at which it must cry out in constant supplication.

You can see, then, how important Lori’s child is in the vast scheme of things. Our

son – and all my children – are steps along the path to perfection. He must survive into
adulthood. Not only survive, but copulate. Preferably with a conjoined twin, a

microcephalic, or some other genetic wonder. That is my goal for him.

Eleanor planned to commit suicide with Lori because she thought she’d be damned,

anyway, after indulging in pleasures with a woman (and she could no longer restrain

herself from seeking out such pleasures).

She was foolish. My wrath against the adulterers had nothing to do with the fact that
they both happened to be women. It had to do with the fact that Eleanor had chosen the
wrong woman to run off to West Virginia with. Lori was mine. Exclusively. Reserved for
my use as I saw fit. She was my property, and no one plays with my things without my
permission.

No one.

Captured

Trooper Connelly took a deep breath. He’d been called to the Morris house way too

many times over his career. Always for the same reason – the daughter. Hot piece of ass, but nuttier than a squirrel turd. Each time they dispatched him to that house, he took Lori Morris away in handcuffs and dropped her off at the hospital. Didn’t seem to solve

matters, though. He was always called back in a few months. The whole thing seemed

pointless.

The mother wasn’t a bad lookin’ gal herself. Maybe ten years younger than him. Had

the same eyes as Lori, but with crow’s feet along the side of them. The same nose as

Lori, only with a pair of bifocals perched atop of it. The same big boobs (except hers

sagged more, which was understandable). There was now a nasty cigarette burn on her

cheek (courtesy of the nutty daughter). But from a distance, it looked like a beauty mark.

All told
, Connelly thought,
she was a slightly flabbier, more wrinkled version of the hot
daughter
. But Connelly would tap it, if given the opportunity. He’d go after her before he’d go after the daughter, in fact. The daughter might be a seven or eight out of ten, but you had to deduct five points due to her nuttiness. After accounting for that penalty, he reckoned she was only a two or three.

The mother’s voice was hoarse. She would sometimes cry convulsively and it would

sound like coughing. Connelly hated it when they cried. “Ma’am...can you try...try...to

calm...ma’am...”

“G-go after h-her...” the mother said.

Connelly stretched. Took a pad of paper out from his shirt pocket. “We’ll find her.

We always do, don’t we?”

The mother blew her nose and gave him a few slow nods as an answer.

That was good...calm her down. Let her stop bawling before taking her statement.

“You and I, we’ve known each other for a couple of years now, haven’t we?”

“The baby...”

Connelly nodded. “I know...The dispatcher said there was trouble brewing over here.

But I need you to answer some questions before we go and start causing a commotion

about all this. I mean, you have to understand. We get calls about custody disputes all the time, and you said yourself that she’s the mother.”

The woman shook her head, as though disgusted. “You need to go now. We have

custody. I’ll show you the papers. She’s only allowed to see him
here
, when we can be around to supervise her. And she took him. And he’s not like other babies. Go...go
now
. I, I think she hurt him. I heard things snap when she...when she left here.”

“She hit him?”

The woman paused. Blew her nose. Rubbed tears away with liver spotted hands. “I-

it’s hard to explain, but I think he’s hurt, pretty bad. And I think she
meant
to hurt him!”

Shit. This wasn’t a routine take-crazy-hottie-to-the-hospital call. She wasn’t just

breaking dishes or windows this time. This was gonna be an actual investigation. Time to go from calm-witness-down-mode to get-witness-talking-mode.

“And you heard bones snap?” Christ, this wasn’t good news. Connelly didn’t know

the whole story, but he remembered something about the kid being all messed up

somehow or another. Lots of birth defects. Probably caused by the hottie smoking dope.

(
But maybe
, Connelly thought with an uncomfortable quiver down his spine,
caused by
all the crazy pills she’d been prescribed
.)

“Y-yes I did. Please, go now. You can get my statement later. Just find her!”

“Is your daughter armed?”

“No. She’s no threat to anyone except the baby.”

“Looks like she was damned sure a threat to you, now.”

The mother brought her hand up to cover the cigarette burn. Her face started to take

on the same crimson shade that her nails had been painted. “What I mean is, she’s

mentally ill but guns aren’t her style.” Then she took her hand away from the cigarette

burn – maybe catching on to the silliness of trying to hide it, at this point. She now

pointed to it. “
This
is her style. This and raking her nails over your face and maybe, with a man, giving a kick to the groin. Nasty stuff, but not lethal. So don’t you go shooting at her, you hear? Just catch her. Put her away for a good, long while this time.”

“And, of course, there’s the boy.”

“Why, yes, of course. I mean, that’s the main point. To get him medical attention.

He’s...fragile.”

“What’s the child’s name?”

“He’s only a baby. He doesn’t answer to his name yet.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m aware of that. But, for the paperwork I have to know. His name.”

“J-Joshua.”

“And the baby’s last name?”

The mother coughed. “It’s...Morris. Joshua Morris. Lori never told us the name of

the father, and no one ever came forward to claim paternity.”

The cop scribbled in his notepad. “You said the baby was fragile. What do you

mean? In detail, that is?”

The mother shifted in her seat. Fidgeted.

She was embarrassed. Of course she was. No one wanted to talk about shit like this.

But Connelly knew this kind of thing tended to get taken more seriously if the kid was

handicapped. “Isn’t he, well, you know,
special
in some way? I hate to put it like this, but it might help get more sympathy for your situation, with the courts and with the media, if they know all the details.”

“He has several…conditions. Probably the worst one is called anencephaly. A birth

defect. He’s quite vulnerable. His brain didn’t form right, in the womb. The skull
and
the brain didn’t form right, that is. So he only has a tiny bit of brain tissue, and most of that is actually outside of his body because there’s no skull to cover it.” She bit her lip. Blew her nose some more. “He’s too young, right now, to get any corrective surgery done. So he’s

supposed to have a special covering on his head, where the skull should be, to make sure his brain doesn’t get injured – kind of an artificial skull. They have to keep his arms

restrained so he doesn’t mess with it. He takes several medicines each day for this, you know? When she took him, she didn’t even take those with her.”

Connelly nodded. Scribbled in his pad.

“The one thing I don’t understand is why she injured the kid if she was wanting to

kidnap him. I mean, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so, that doesn’t make much sense.”

She smirked. “It’s not complicated, officer. Really, it isn’t. She’s a lunatic who

claims Josh is the result of God raping her.”

Connelly cleared his throat. Coughed.

“Yes, I know it’s bizarre. But since she kidnapped her son, it probably will be good

for you to know the whole story, no matter how embarrassing. She wanted to get an

abortion because of this delusion. Obviously, we made certain that didn’t happen. To be

honest, I think she came here today wanting to kill her son. She was vague, but she said she wanted to do something she should’ve done a long time ago. And I wouldn’t let her

take him, you know? Anyway, I think that’s why she didn’t care if she injured him. My

gut tells me her ultimate plan is to kill him.”

“That would have been a good thing to say to the dispatcher.”

“Didn’t I? I don’t know. It was all so upsetting. I thought I’d mentioned it. Maybe I

didn’t, maybe I ...” She whimpered, hunched over, and started to cry once again.

“Ma’am...ma’am...I’m sorry...I didn’t mean to upset you. Now, listen...was he still

alive when she left?”

“Yes.”

“But injured?”

“Yes.”

Connelly looked up from his pad and examined everything he’d written. Ran an

anxious hand through his bristly flat top. Cleared his throat. “Any idea where she took off to?”

“None. She just said she was going on a trip.”

“What kind of car does she drive.”

“A white ‘89 Camry.”

“Christ. Can’t be going too far, in that.”

“The car only has 100,000 miles on it. We bought it for her from a widow who only

drove it to church and back for the past twenty years.”