Killers choice, p.16
Killer's Choice, page 16
Like my larger twin, he tittered.
With two exceptions, he did not torture me personally. I like to watch, he said, and watch he did, from the beginning of each session when I’d be attached to the ceiling hook like a side of beef, until the time when I was allowed to sink into a heap on the blood-, feces-, and urine-spattered floor, my hands tied behind my back, covered by one of the operators, as they referred to each other, or Dr. Bill, with a blanket. Don’t get me wrong: the floor was hosed down, sometimes more than once a day, once I was hanging from the hook, but care was taken to ensure that when I finally lay down it was in my own blood and excrement.
Watch he did, the Monster seated in a leather club chair. Meals were brought to him on a tray. Porridge-like stuff, because he was toothless, just as I had become, and did not use, or perhaps couldn’t use, dentures. Not infrequently, when what was done to me was particularly to his taste, he unzipped his trousers, took his penis in his hand, the palm of which he first smeared with Vaseline, and masturbated. He came noisily and licked the discharge from his hand. He hurt me with his own hands only toward the end. He told me then that the basic work had been done, but he had saved two procedures for himself. The first one was old-fashioned: with a kitchen spoon he plucked out my left eye, let it fall on the ground, crushed it under his foot, and, in mimicking a BBC accent, cried, Out, vile jelly!
The quotation put him into a fit of laughter. He shook and laughed and shook.
My own left eye was also ablated, he observed, once he had calmed down. For medical purposes, of course. This was for fun, and to complete the resemblance between us. Physical resemblance. Otherwise, zero. My intelligence is in the stratosphere. Higher than my beloved Abner’s. You’re a stupid fuck. Your good grades at Yale mean nothing. Grade inflation for well-born jocks. By the way, I’ve thought of castrating you. Not chemically, of course, or by cutting off your balls, but by crushing them. With pliers. Something I’d do personally. I’ve decided against it. Why? To maintain the resemblance between us. The surgeons fucking with me when I was a baby didn’t castrate me. In fact, when they saw I had an undescended testicle, they performed the minor surgery required to make it join its colleague in my scrotum. So, you’re minus your left eye and you’re keeping your balls.
Blood was trickling down from my eye socket. I tasted and drank it. Did I scream when the Monster blinded me? Then or through the uncounted days that came before? I don’t know. Sometimes I did, sometimes I was too tired to scream. I never tried to stifle my screams out of pride.
The next day, or some days later, I was suspended as usual. The Monster walked around me, examined the scars on my back and thighs, the curvature of my legs, my balls, the cobra on my chest, my toothless mouth, the empty orbit of my left eye.
Good job, he said. When you think that the work on me that turned me into what I am was spread over years. And we’ve accomplished this in no time at all. Three months! What do you think, fuckhead?
Why, I answered, why? Why have you done this to me? Why did you slaughter the Lathrops? I know you’re insane. Is that the reason? Your only shitty reason?
You see what I mean? Where is your Yale- and Oxford-trained brain, fuckhead? Overrated. You had the answer at the start. It’s because you hounded my sweet brother Abner to death. And you couldn’t have done it without that whore Kerry, whom Abner told me to kill, or Judas Lathrop, could you? Abner told me to kill them too. I wish I’d done it while he was still alive. You asked me why I love Abner? Because when he found out what my mother had done to me, put me in an institution for malformed, handicapped, and retarded children, he forced her to let him get me out of there. He caressed me, he made me know he loved me, and took me to a school in Switzerland, near Gstaad, where they took care of me and educated me. Educated me, fuckhead! And Abner got the best surgeons to correct what the assholes in Texas had done! Those are the reasons, or what you and assholes like you call reasons. But no reason was needed to kill Judas Lathrop and his broad or to do all that I’ve done and will do to you. If you are bad, if you are like me, if you want to hurt and kill, doing evil is its own supreme reward. It’s like breathing. Eating and drinking the foods and liquors you crave most. It’s the most delicious of pleasures. When Abner realized I was really bad and wanted to do evil, to hurt and kill without anything that assholes like you call reasons, he said, Come and work with me! Be my other self. Already he was founding his black empire, and someone had to be at the head of its enforcers and extortionists and torturers and murderers. But first he put me to a test. He brought me to our mother’s house and said, Show your stuff and kill her. I did! I did! I did! And I still run all the black empire. Killers for hire, extortion—that’s what I like best—human trafficking, drugs, arms dealing, organs for sale from stock or harvested to order! Evasion of North Korean, Iranian, and Russian sanctions. A booming business! But what I like the best is dealing directly with clients like you! And what if I told you a useful secret? Being good is hard. Fuckheads like you have to be taught to be good. Hard work and teaching that don’t always take. But you don’t have to be taught to be bad or cruel or treacherous. You let yourself go and have fun! Great, glorious fun!
Once again, he laughed. I thought he’d never stop.
You forget that I know this disgusting story about your mother, you hyena, I said when he finally stopped. You posted it on your website. You’re demented as well as criminally insane.
Forget that I’ve told how I did it? That I posted it? I never forget. I tell that story over and over and over and each time it’s as though it were the first! And now, fuckhead, since you’ve been insolent, you will be punished.
No preparations were required. I was naked and in position. They used leather whips that cut the skin. I fainted or went into shock, and this time Dr. Bill did not wake me.
XIII
Count slowly to one hundred before you take off the blindfold, asshole. You touch it sooner, I kill you.
Was this a threat or a promise? I knew that voice. From sessions on the hook. On the electric bed. Fuck that shithead. He doesn’t know that now more than ever it seems rich to die. I counted slowly and untied the cloth. Intolerable sunshine, so brilliant it blinded my remaining eye. The first daylight, first sunshine, since however long it was, since that day I gave myself up to the Monster. Shading my eye, I looked around. Manhattan, the Battery. How had I gotten here? Had they sedated me? I had no memory of anything since the session on the bed frame. That was some time after the whipping. Not too much time could have passed, though, because the wounds on my back and on my thighs still oozed some sort of gooey exudate. The Monster himself had turned up and lowered the current. It was worse than anything that I had yet experienced. I fainted, and I suppose the good Dr. Bill revived me.
The Monster had spoken: Say please, nice Mr. Monster, please no more, please no more today.
I remained silent.
He laughed, fiddled with the switches, and gave the knob a turn. The current hit my balls.
I screamed, Pretty please, pretty please, stop!
He laughed again and gave me another shot.
I must have passed out. When I came to, the Monster had been right there, having a drink.
Dom Pérignon, he said, I like to have over ice. Too bad you can’t have any. The electric did wonders for your brain. You should have tried being polite sooner. Now it no longer matters. Pretty soon we will be saying so long, kiddo. I’m going to send you out into the great world so that you can discover the pleasures of life when you’ve been turned into a pale copy of me and have no Abner at your side. But no worries! I’ll keep my Cyclops eye on you and make sure you’ll never forget Abner or me. And now one more for the road. Ciao!
Was it possible that this time the pain had been even sharper? I can’t tell, any more than I can tell what happened between the moment he administered the shock and when I awoke at the tip of Manhattan.
* * *
—
Carefully, tentatively, I got up on all fours. Then, even more slowly, I stood up. Really, that was some job they’d done breaking my legs and my feet. Staggering toward State Street, I wished I had a stick to lean on. My progress was so exhausting and so painful that every few steps I let myself down to the ground and rested. The street was empty. Early morning, I figured, the sun being so low in the east. In the glass door of an office building on Whitehall I saw my reflection. A caricature of the Monster, dressed in rags: pieces of burlap sewn together or fastened with safety pins. The trousers had a pocket. It was empty. A homeless couple was asleep, huddled in the doorway of a Starbucks that had not yet opened. Was not this the solution: hunker down in some other doorway, under a bridge or in a subway entrance? Let it all end. I was so tired, in such pain, so ashamed of what I had been turned into. Why not sink into the Hades of homelessness and folly? My reverie, if one may call it that, was interrupted by the screeching tires of a taxi that didn’t slow down sufficiently quickly to avoid knocking me down. I made no attempt to get up. It was too hard and pointless. Had I been hurt? I told the guy I had no idea. He helped me gently to my feet, swearing all the while about worthless bums and drunks.
I’m taking you to emergency at Bellevue, he told me.
He wore a green turban. Sikh, I supposed.
Don’t, I said, I’m probably all right. I really need to go home. I have no money on me, but if you take me to where I live you’ll get paid and you’ll get a big tip.
I gave him the address.
You want to go to the Metropolitan Museum?
I want to go home. Up the avenue from the museum.
All right, let’s go.
He got me into his cab, one of those cabs with sliding doors I didn’t begin to have the strength to open. We were on the way.
Probably because there was no traffic, he didn’t take the FDR Drive. Broadway, then Third Avenue. Somewhere in the thirties, he turned west and took Park Avenue. I read the hour on the clock over Grand Central. Five after seven. At Eighty-Fifth Street, he turned west again and then south on Fifth Avenue and stopped at my building. Emil, the loquacious doorman I once thought might be the Monster’s snitch, got up from his perch inside the entrance and ambled over to open the door of the taxi. Seeing me, he recoiled.
It’s Mr. Dana, Emil, I managed to say. I know I don’t look like myself. Please pay this nice driver and tip him fifty dollars. Let’s go! What are you waiting for?
Yes, sir, Captain Dana, sir! He shook himself as though to wake from a dream and held out his hand to help me alight.
Thanks again, I called out to the driver.
The elevator man hadn’t come on duty. I pressed the number for my floor and wondered whether Feng was awake and would hear the doorbell.
* * *
—
Careful, sir, careful, Feng warned me. Don’t let Satan be rough with you. That was later, when I was seated on a chair in my bathroom.
When he had opened the front door, he said simply, Welcome home, sir! Perfect manners. He allowed no hint to show of shock or surprise or revulsion. Offering me his arm, on which I was glad to lean, he led me to the bedroom.
Would you like juice or tea, sir, before you have your bath?
Juice, please, Feng. Any kind of cold juice.
He appeared with a glass of orange juice on a silver tray so quickly that I hadn’t had time to try to urinate.
I’ll go to the bathroom first, I told him.
This would be the first time since May. I had been pissing and defecating under myself whether suspended or collapsed on the floor of the cell. Would I be able to piss now, as it were on command, into a toilet? My bladder was full, but I wasn’t sure. I let my trousers fall and took aim. There was a period of hesitation, and then a normal flow. A bowel movement was coming on too. I sat down and although constipated relieved myself. A look at the toilet paper in my hand confirmed what I suspected: my rear end hadn’t been cleaned since I didn’t know when—unless being hosed with ice-cold water after the last whipping could be called a cleaning. My buttocks must be caked with feces. I’d take a bath, I thought, but first that orange juice.
I put on my trousers and sat down on the wooden chair in the bedroom. Feng would disinfect it. That was when Satan jumped into my lap.
I think he knows me, I said. How very strange! Through the stench.
Of course he knows you, sir. He has missed you very badly. Every night he sleeps across the door to this bedroom. He doesn’t allow anyone, including Miss Heidi and me, to approach your desk in your study or sit in your place on the sofa in the library.
What a good boy, Satan, I said. You wouldn’t have a treat I could give him?
Of course he did. In a plastic envelope he took out of his vest pocket.
Had I forgotten Heidi? Now that he had pronounced her name, I said, Really! And how is Miss Heidi? I asked.
Very well, sir. Very busy. She has a new job she will want to tell you about. This being Saturday, she is in East Hampton, at her parents’. She wanted to take Satan, but he lay down and wouldn’t budge. He was waiting for you, sir!
Oh, I said, and thought, So it’s Saturday. Another reason the streets were empty.
May I run a bath for you, sir?
Yes, please. I’m tired and not at all well. Oh, and this is a stupid question, but I really don’t know anything. Am I right to think that Miss Heidi is living here?
No, sir, she has gone back to her apartment on Lexington Avenue, but she has left almost all of her things here. She told me it felt odd to live here without you. She comes a couple of times a week, though, to play with Satan and have a meal. She claims she can’t get good Chinese food elsewhere.
And another stupid question. What is today’s date?
Fourteenth of October, sir, 2017, Feng replied. You’ve been gone almost five months.
Almost five months! It’s hard to believe that’s how long they held me. And that I have endured it and survived. I would not have thought it possible. But then, think of the guys in Auschwitz. Or wherever Pol Pot kept them. Or in our own Guantánamo. Some guys held there now for fifteen years, perhaps longer. In Auschwitz and other German camps Jews and perhaps groups like queers and Gypsies were there on the way to the gas chamber. Others were worked and starved to death. I don’t know what went on in Cambodia. But in Guantánamo the torture was to force the prisoners to reveal information. Anyway, that was the rationale. The Monster tortured me for the sake of torturing. For fun. Ha! Ha! Ha! Was that harder to endure? I had no idea.
And Heidi—it was surely a good thing she had moved out. I mustn’t let her near me. Not now. Perhaps never. I loved her—that was the fixed notion in my head. But what did that mean in my circumstances? The question Am I still capable of love? was stupid. It mustn’t be asked. But if it were asked, could an answer be given? I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure I recognized myself—neither the image I saw in the mirror nor the dull absence of feelings other than pain and fear of more pain. Satan was OK. Warm and strong and so alive. Feng was OK. He’d protect me. Did anything else matter?
Sir, your bath is ready. Warm, but not hot. Would you permit me to assist you?
Yes, please, I answered. I doubt I could get into that tub or get out without your help.
A long while later, after he had washed me very gently and yet very thoroughly, Feng said, If you permit me to make this observation, you have been horribly mistreated. I believe you need medical care as well as a great deal of rest. Do you remember Dr. Yan, sir?
After a moment of blankness, I said, Yes, I do. The doctor who took care of my arm after my noncom Eric cut me, that time when you saved my life.
Yes, the doctor who stitched up your arm. He would be helpful. May I ask him to come?
Yes, I would like that.
Feng dried me, dressed me in flannel pajamas and a wool bathrobe, and asked, Will you have breakfast in the dining room or in bed?
In the kitchen, please.
He gave me scrambled eggs, which I could eat easily, and porridge.
This is so good, Feng, I said. I’ve been eating garbage. Real garbage. Rancid scrapings of the Monster’s and his people’s plates, I suppose. Or rotting garbage they collected elsewhere. I’d like some more.
I am so very sorry, sir, but you need to take small portions of nourishment until we accustom your stomach to eating real food and normal portions.
I understand. Could I take a look at the paper?
He put before me the first section of The New York Times.
I picked it up. Trump’s face on the first page. That had not changed. Saying he will decertify the Iran agreement. Why not? Another brilliant move toward a general war in the Middle East. Perhaps beyond. I pushed the paper away.
Meanwhile, Feng was speaking over the telephone in Chinese. Dr. Yan will be here at one. You have time, sir, to rest before his visit.
* * *
—
The doctor had Feng undress me and examined me on my bed, front and back, poking and pinching. Every part of my body he touched hurt, the pain sometimes so sharp that I couldn’t help crying out.
Each time he asked my pardon, with elaborate courtesy. His diction was not unlike Feng’s. Stiffer perhaps, although he had lived in the United States much longer. When he’d finished, he asked Feng to give me a cup of tea and said, With your permission, I will state my opinion.
Please do, I said, by all means.
You are quite unwell, sir. The wounds on your back have closed, but they are infected. I give you an injection of antibiotic and put antibiotic ointment on the wounds. I must apply light bandage that protects wounds and allow them to breathe. Feng or I will change the bandage as needed.
