Authors: Michael Prescott
Tags: #Kidnapping, #True Crime, #General, #Murder, #Suspense, #Fiction, #Serial Murderers
There is a game some people play in which they bring themselves almost to asphyxiation in order to heighten the pleasurable intensity of orgasm. I have not played this game. But I had designed my own variation on it, as you see. In bringing Emily to the edge of death again and again, I was heightening my pleasure.
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not speaking of mere physical enjoyment. Some oaf, in the aftermath of my arrest, editorialized that I had taken a life for only a few seconds of gratification. In truth, sexual gratification was not my motive. These moldy Freudian fairy stories should be laid to rest. There is more to a man than genitalia. Was I erect when I drew the noose taut? Doubtless, I was, but I scarcely noticed. Erections are not so precious to me, or so rare. My attention was focused on higher things. In those final minutes, as I played out the endgame, I experienced what I can only call transcendence. I was lifted up, possibly to the third heaven of which Saint Paul writes. I was transported, liberated. Sex is a mere flicker of sensation in comparison to what I felt and knew. I was more than a man, or perhaps I should say that I was the only true man, the sole man on earth who was at one with his deepest needs and highest passions. Killing Emily Wallace was a religious experience in the truest sense.
I cannot say how long our liaison lasted. Time had stopped, or, more precisely, it ran on but I had stepped out of its stream, had ceased to be conducted by its flow.
Some have speculated that I did not mean to kill Emily, that I misjudged, made the noose too tight for too long, broke my toy by playing with it too lustily. This is incorrect. As I have already written, I was in control throughout the exercise.
I drew the noose tight for the last time, grasping her chin and raising her head to face me. She saw my smile—it must have been radiant—and she knew that there would be no coming back. She did not resist or pull away, but I saw a tear, pearlescent and perfect, expand in the corner of her left eye.
I knew the exact instant when she died. It was when the teardrop shimmered and broke free of the eye that cupped it, tracking down her cheek. The tear moved, but she did not.
Abby put down the book slowly. This was the man she was working for.
Well, at least she hadn’t shaken his hand.
Peter Faust sat limply in his chair at Cafe Eden, his every muscle relaxed. It was a trick he had mastered long ago, the art of complete ease.
“That went well,” he said with satisfaction.
Elise shifted restlessly. She was always moving about, incapable of relaxation. Like most Americans, she had never been schooled in leisure.
“I don’t know,” she said, biting her lip. “There’s something about her I don’t like. She scares me.”
“Everything scares you.”
Elise shot him a darting look, half-timid, half-sly. “You don’t.”
“And yet I am the one thing you ought to fear.”
“Do you think
she’s
scared of you?”
Faust considered the question. “Yes,” he decided. “But she enjoys the sensation. She thrives on fear. It is mother’s milk to her.”
“She looked at me like I was ... I don’t know.”
“Like you were what?”
“A stupid kid. Like I was ten years old. She feels sorry for me. That’s why she took the job. Out of pity.”
“And if this is true, what of it?”
“I just don’t think she should have looked at me that way.”
“It is of no importance how she feels. If you can use her feelings to your advantage, do so.”
“Easy for you to say. You don’t give a shit what other people think.”
He patted her hand sedately. “I am not convinced that other people
do
think.”
Not for the first time, Faust asked himself if he loved Elise
Vangarten
. He could not say. Love, to him, was only a word, like
God
or
virtue
, a sound ritually repeated and apparently invested with meaning by his fellow humans, but denoting nothing to him. Still, he had grown attached to her.
Three years ago they met at a cocktail party hosted by a rising young movie director known for his outré tastes. Faust had provided some
uncredited
but handsomely remunerated technical assistance on the director’s last film, a study in serial murder. For the most part, Faust got along famously with Hollywood people—they were so refreshingly amoral—and so he accepted an invitation to the soiree.
Elise, then nineteen and new to L.A., came on the arm of an independent producer who was endeavoring to conceal his homosexuality. Faust met her at the buffet table. She did not know who he was. Even when he introduced himself, she failed to recognize his name. He found her ignorance beguiling. And he was intrigued by her gauntness, the bony outlines of her undernourished figure, the hollows of her cheeks. She might have been a concentration camp survivor.
At the buffet table she snacked on celery, a food that consumed more calories in digestion than it supplied. A person who dined exclusively on celery would starve to death. Faust was fascinated by her iron self-denial. Wasting away and confronted with heaping platters of cold meats and frosted pastries, she nevertheless chose the celery. It was as if she had no will to live.
He easily coaxed her away from her faux boyfriend. That very night they made love in his house. Her body was as lean and sinewy and flat-chested as a boy’s. It delighted him. And she was so young. He had always appreciated youth. He himself had felt old even in childhood—an old soul, his teachers had called him. He had missed out on the pleasures of youth, but he could enjoy them vicariously.
Faust knew the exact moment when Elise became his soul mate. It was when he showed her a documentary film about his life. When it was over, she asked only, “Did you look into her eyes when you were killing her?” She was unafraid. She simply wanted to know. She had the earnest, uncomplicated curiosity of a child.
They rarely spoke of Emily Wallace. He was not sure if Elise believed that the murder was a singular episode, some breakdown in his normal habits of control, or if she believed him to be capable of repeating the performance at any time. The remarkable thing was that she did not seem to care. She accepted him completely. Perhaps this was love. Whatever it might be, he had found he needed her, and he would not lose her. He would not allow her to be endangered. No human life mattered to him, save hers.
Familiar voices broke into his thoughts. At the cafe, he and Elise were always running into people they knew. This time it was Edward and Dieter, both of whom worked in the fashion industry—Edward as a hairstylist. Dieter in set design. They had met Faust through Elise and had quickly become attached to him. Perhaps overly attached. Faust found their adoration tiresome. But Elise liked them, and he tolerated their company for her sake.
They sat at the table. Dieter garrulous and voluble as always, Edward characteristically reserved. Both were Americans; Dieter’s name was an affectation no less artificial than his bleached blond hair. Since meeting Faust, they had both somehow managed to acquire traces of his accent, as if they were remaking themselves in his image.
Dieter joked that they simply must stop meeting like this. It was like that awful American sitcom where sex-crazed, aimless young people sat around at a coffee bar.
“Only we’re not like that,” Edward added.
“No,” Faust observed, “we are not young.”
This observation was greeted with laughter. Faust was much admired for his wit.
Dieter had picked up a religious booklet somewhere and was having fun with it. He was amused by anything he considered mundane and common—religion, television, sports, fast food, backyard barbecues, holidays, the obituary pages. Edward shared his contempt but not his humor. Elise encouraged them in their talk, while Faust leaned back, taking his ease in aloof splendor. He did not speak for a long time, but when he did, the others fell silent immediately. There was a magnetism he exuded that drew them closer, as if he were a fire and they sought to huddle around his heat.
“We had a companion at our table before you arrived. A business associate. She does not approve of me.”
“Who does?” Dieter ventured, earning a laugh from Elise and a disapproving shake of Edward’s head.
“She was appalled by my criminal past. The taking of an innocent life.”
“No one is innocent,” Edward said soberly.
“Quite true, in which case it follows that no one is guilty, either.”
“There is no guilt or innocence. There is only this.” Edward rapped the table with his fist. “What is real, what is immediate. Nothing else.”
“I declined to engage her in such metaphysical speculations.” Faust smiled. “You know these Americans—they have no head for philosophy.”
“What
did
you tell this cunt?” Dieter asked.
“That I am an artist.”
Smiles bloomed around the table.
“An artist?” Dieter arched an eyebrow. “I don’t remember hearing that one before.”
“I am sure I made reference to it somewhere in my book.”
“Who remembers your book?” Dieter laughed, but no one joined him. A line had been crossed. “Only joking, of course,” he amended hastily.
Faust showed him a cold smile. “Of course. There are times when it is helpful to portray myself in an artistic light. I have taken this approach in some of my interviews with the media.”
“But you don’t suffer for your art,” Elise teased.
“He makes others suffer!” Dieter said, to be rewarded by a warmer smile from Faust.
“You see,” Faust said, “it can be inconvenient to have people regard me as an enigma. People need explanations. Explanations comfort them.”
“Was this bitch comforted when you said you were an artist?” Edward asked.
“I think so, yes. She feels now that she understands me, at least to a certain degree. What she understands, she can tolerate. It is only an insoluble mystery that is unbearable.”
“You
could
have been an artist,” Elise said.
“I could have been anything. Instead I am ... everything.” Faust sipped his coffee while the others pondered this statement.
“Hitler was an artist,” Edward said finally.
Faust frowned. “Herr
Schicklgruber
,” he said, using Hitler’s family name, “was a gauche little man with a loud voice. Nothing is so annoying as a tiny man who commands a big spotlight.”
“And he was a shitty artist, anyway,” Dieter observed.
“Even if he were a genius,” Faust said, “do you think anyone in today’s world would be fearless enough to admit it?”
Elise patted his arm. “
You
would.”
“Yes, I am the man without fear.” The others could not tell if this was a joke. Smiles flickered uncertainly on their faces. “As a child, I did feel fear at times, and I hated it. Hated myself for that weakness. Then one night I learned never to feel fear again.”
“One can’t just talk oneself out of fear.” Edward spoke with the certainty of a man to whom fear was an intimate and constant companion.
“It was much more than talk,” Faust said slowly. He shifted into what he thought of as his storytelling voice, languid and rhythmic, almost hypnotizing. “When I was ten years old, I vacationed with my parents in the Black Forest.”
All of them had heard the tale in one of his numerous interviews, or read it in his book, but they listened anyway, attentive as schoolchildren.
“We rented a cabin in the woods. One evening when my parents were asleep, I crept outside, alone, to see the night sky. There was a full moon. In the moonlight I saw a silver shadow among the trees, creeping nearer. It was a wolf, wild and solitary.
“When I recognized it for what it was, I felt a rush of fear. My childish head was filled with stories of evil wolves, like the one who devoured Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. I was sure I would be eaten alive. My one hope was to race for the cabin. But I could not move. I was frozen in place, a statue of a boy.
“The wolf moved closer. His eyes gleamed. I gazed into those eyes. And suddenly I was unafraid.
“All concern for my safety vanished. I was certain that the wolf would not harm me. I knew this—because he and I were one. At some deep, unfathomable level we shared the same spirit. We were of a single will, a single heart. We were, both of us, wolves. Wild things of the night. And neither of us knew fear. Fear is not the predator’s way. And that is what I am, a predator. I knew it then, for the first time. I watched the wolf until he turned and prowled away. Then I crept back to my bed. But I was not the same child I had been. And I have never felt fear again.”
“That must be something,” Dieter said wistfully.
“It is a state of mind available to any of you. All that is necessary is to realize that fear and ecstasy are the same emotion, the same chemical broth. It is only our lying conscious mind that stigmatizes the one and celebrates the other. Fear is a ruse, like guilt or shame, a manufactured feeling. In its pure state, fear is exhilaration. One must make up one’s mind never to be tricked into regarding any emotion as negative. There are no negative states of mind, except those arbitrarily defined as such by social convention.”