The Teratologist

by Edward Lee

  Westmore was holding a cell phone and trying vainly to get an outside line.

  “Don’t even bother with the cell. They took the batteries out. We’re completely cut off from the outside world. We’re both fucking dead men.”

  “Dead men? What are you talking about? What the fuck happened to you, man?”

  “We’re in trouble, Richard. I mean we are completely fucked.” His hand trembled as he snatched the snifter of brandy from Westmore’s hand and downed it in two quick gulps.

  “Okay, man, now you’re freaking me out. What’s going on?”

  Bryant began explaining their predicament as best he could, stopping frequently to refill his glass and down more of the fiery brandy. He relayed the story of how they had been tricked up here to act as Farrington’s biographers, even telling him about the fake obituary. He then told him about the monk he’d seen locked up in the room with the contorted freak doped up on some kind of steroidal aphrodisiac. Soon they were passing the bottle back and forth and drinking straight from the neck like two hobos.

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me? He’s the guy who’s been putting all that scandalous sex stuff out on the internet? Farringworth? He’s the one who scandalized the Southern Baptist Ministries with that tape of Reverend Willis getting fist-fucked by the werewolf bitch?”

  “It was a girl with hypertrichosis and yes, Farringworth was behind it. And if we don’t help him out then we’ll be the next ones to be fed to his freaks.”

  “So that’s what the angel meant about systemized evil.”

  “The angel? You’ve seen the angels?” The image of Minister Farrahd being run through by the twin’s yard-long penises was still vivid in his mind. He could still see the ecstasy in the man’s eyes as his internal organs were ruptured and displaced by their frenetic thrusts.

  “Just one.” Westmore replied, bringing Bryant back from his grim reverie. “He appeared in my bedroom and told me that God had sent me to stop Farringworth.”

  Westmore looked down at his feet, obviously embarrassed by this admission.

  “Okay, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about an angel and no I’m not drunk, well, not much. He was standing right there at the foot of the bed, and then I saw him downstairs. He looked sort of like Bob Dylan but with darker hair. What angels are you talking about?”

  Bryant relayed the story of the acromegalic hermaphrodites sodomizing Minister Farrahd.

  “Holy shit. You mean that headline hogging Black Muslim guy? What a trip. You think those were the angels that Farringworth was going on about when we saw him on the stairs?”

  “It sure as hell wasn’t any nicotine addicted Bob Dylan look-alike.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “What choice do we have? We go along with it until we can figure out a way to get out of here.”

  “But…but what if it works?”

  “What?”

  “I know it’s crazy, but if God sent one of his angels down to warn us about this shit then maybe Farringworth is on to something. I mean what if he gets that little monk to crack and succeeds in bringing God down from heaven? What if he succeeds in becoming a god himself? Is that the type of guy you want to see with infinite power? Even if this is all bullshit, just think of how many lives he’s damaging with his crusade against religious leaders? How many people around the world look up to the people this madman has got doped up in little rooms getting fucked half to death by his monstrosities?”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying we can’t just escape. We need to try to stop him.”

  Westmore nodded grimly. “But how? We can’t get out.”

  “Not without keys. We’ll just have to find some, and we’ll probably have to kill some people in the process.”

  “Great,” Westmore said, but he knew it was true. “If we don’t take a chance, we’ll never get out of this madhouse.”

  “Right, so let’s not fuck around. Let’s burn the house down.”

  “A place like this?” Westmore objected. “It ain’t gonna be easy to burn down. Look.” Westmore pointed upward, to the sprinkler nozzles in the ceiling.

  “Find a way to disable them, turn the water off or something. That’ll be your job.”

  “My job, huh?” Westmore lit a cigarette, frowning. “So what’s your job?”

  “My job is to find Farringworth and kill him,” Bryant said. “And I’ll whack that British guy, too. I don’t like his face.”

  “Cool,” Westmore approved.

  “We can either be prisoners here for the rest of our lives, or we go for broke. Get those sprinklers turned off and start torching the house. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to get somebody’s keys and maybe even get some of those fucked-up people out in the confusion.”

  “Yeah, and what if we’re not lucky?” Westmore couldn’t resist asking.

  “Then we both die. But I’m willing to take the chance.” Bryant looked around. “This place should not be allowed to exist.”

  (XI)

  Sharon shuddered in the crush of confusion and unknown sensation. She wasn’t really smart enough to think, What’s happening to me? But at least in some circuitous way, she was aware of the inclination. The yawning gulf between her legs seemed aflame in urgency; her clitoris was an ember that needed to be stoked. Her condition, regrettably, would not allow her to touch herself in any masturbatory manner, so she kind of squirmed with her bowed legs together, rocking back and forth, which caused a blaze of pleasure in her sex. She needed that blaze to explode but she also weakly realized that that would never happen if the little bald man refused to touch her. She wanted him to touch her the way Louie did back at the care center. If she had the mental capacity to put her rage of desires into words it would be that she wanted the bald man to ball her to kingdom come, to pound her like sod, to just purely and simply fuck the living shit out of her. She didn’t care about anything else, couldn’t care. Sharon was insane now, with unmitigated lust.

  She shimmied in the bed, the overhead lights blaring in her malformed face. She was a heaving, flesh-colored pretzel, her curled limbs and runneled rib cage quivering. Meanwhile, the bald man—the monk—looked insane too, the unrelieved cock drooling. If anything, Sato Masaaki was now something more than human, an embodiment of the power of will over nature. Yes, his own will was stronger than anything else on earth at that moment, as he measured his agony along with Sharon’s and still was able to say no. No to the physical. No to pleasure. No to lust.

  Yes to the power of spirit.

  Then a technician walked in and injected him with more Metopronil…

  (XII)

  Westmore watched the Englander leave the room and disappear down the hall. Bryant had suggested they split up, their goal being to find a weakness, the one bad link in the chain to exploit. Sure, the house was a fortress, but there had to be a way out. Westmore was determined to find it, but…

  The vibes again.

  He just had a bad feeling.

  I don’t think I’m gonna get out of here alive…

  He didn’t know if he even wanted to live. After what Bryant had told him, and after what he’d seen in some of those rooms? The angel was right. There’s some heavy shit going down in this house. He’d only taken a few nauseated peeks when he’d snuck down one of the upstairs hallways. Religious figureheads being chemically forced to rape invalids and deformees. Who could think of something like that? Who could possibly want such a thing?

  Farringworth, obviously. Truly a madman, but then the most unpleasant notion of all struck Westmore.

  What if he’s NOT a madman? What if he’s for real?

  Westmore was no crusader. He was a busted, forlorn drunk. But he had to do something.

  Good God almighty, he thought when he slipped into the room that the Brit had just left. A control room sort of place, full of video screens. At first he thought it was a security room, but he quickly noted that the monitors w
eren’t hooked up to any security cameras. They were recording the sexual atrocities taking place in the rooms on the other wing.

  Each monitor was an eye looking into hell.

  Westmore threw up in the corner; he almost collapsed. No, no, no, he thought. This ain’t makin’ it. Bryant’s right. We have to burn this place to the fucking ground and take Farringworth OUT…

  Westmore couldn’t look at the screens anymore but he did notice a panel of buttons. He pressed a button that said GARAGE, and a monitor switched to that: a garage facility somewhere on the premise. A Rolls Royce White Shadow, several BMW’s, and a couple of those pharmaceutical vans. Another button read UTILITY. Westmore pressed it, looked.

  Then he had the answer.

  He left swiftly, and it’s a good thing he did. Otherwise he might have seen what was going on in the room with the bald monk.

  (XIII)

  Just when Sato Masaaki had reached the ultimate level of spiritual perfection—the point where the power of his will defeated natural drive—the next dose of Metopronil kicked in. It seemed like a dream, or a vision from some very high place. Was someone with him? A barely embodied light seemed to whisper to him, grinning.

  Then this being, this entity or whatever it was—touched him, not so much physically but in some discorporate way, and then all the evil of history poured through his mind like a black waterfall. From the beginning of time, he saw it all, the endless dark kaleidoscope that was true human nature. Lust, greed, gluttony, wrath. Hatred.

  Yes, he saw it all, the true realities, the true components of mankind. But if those were the true components, where did that leave his own ideologies? Did that mean his own truths were really lies?

  Sato Masaaki no longer cared. His resolve collapsed like a demolitioned building.

  He would spend the next several hours fucking the hypo-osteopetic girl to pulp.

  (XIV)

  This is too easy, Westmore thought. He snuck about the house for over an hour before he actually found the utility room he’d seen on the monitor upstairs. The mansion was labyrinthine, under-rooted by a basement level running with narrow corridors. Eventually he found one door that read GARAGE and was not surprised to find the steel-framed door deadbolted. I’d need a fuckin’ howitzer to get through that. But then he found the utility room and almost did a rebel yell.

  It was right there staring him in the face. A red-painted valve and a plaque that read MAIN WATER SHUT-OFF. Yeah, this is too fuckin’ easy, he thought again and lit a cigarette. There was even a convenient fire ax in a glass case right by the door. He smashed the glass, removed the ax, and hefted it in his hands. If Bryant doesn’t get Farringworth and the Brit, I will. They’ll have the keys to that exit door, he knew. I’ll cut both their fuckin’ heads off if I have to, but I’ll GET those keys.

  The plan was simple and the only one available. In a moment he’d close the valve to the central water main, which would render the sprinkler system useless. Then he’d start to light the place up. Sure, it was risky, and, sure, the chances of escaping were ultra-slim, but after seeing what was going on here? Westmore agreed wholeheartedly with his associate. They couldn’t let this go on. A place like this should never exist, and Westmore would be pleased to help remove it from the face of the earth.

  No time like the present, he thought.

  He reached for the main water valve, was about to grab it with his hands, but—

  Two other hands grabbed him.

  Westmore didn’t have time to shout. He was thrown to the other side of the room as if he were a bag of packing curls. Above him, the deformed shadow loomed.

  At first, Westmore thought his attacker must be the Devil himself, but if anything it was uglier. It was Billy Meyers: huge, naked, sweat dripping off his misshapen muscles. Jacked up on madness and jacked up even more on Metopronil, his warped eyes beamed. His elephantine penis was gorged as if fit to burst, big as a tube of chalk with veins stout as I.V. line. The extra teeth crammed in the grin looked caked with shit. The neurofibromotosis had turned his head into a turret-like growth with eyes, one blue, one green. He reached down with his elbowless left arm and pawed Westmore’s face, leaving a smear of excrement.

  Billy’s intentions were all-too-clear. He was all over Westmore, the gorged cock thumping against the photographer’s chest, testicles heavy as plums. The thing continued to paw Westmore’s face, dry-humping him. But Westmore was pinned to the floor by the other hand, which easily girded his throat; the grip felt like a slowly tightening clamp.

  Not like this, not like this, Westmore pleaded, but who was he pleading to? God? The angel? Or his own bad karma? He knew he was going to die, and he didn’t really even care. He just didn’t want to die like this. Sex-fodder for a genuine monster.

  Now Westmore couldn’t breathe. His vision dimmed. This was it, this was the end. In a moment he’d be dead…

  He heard a thwack! And then a high, whinnying sound that couldn’t possibly be human but was nonetheless. The monster rolled off, shuddering, feeling desperately for something at his back. In his last moments, driven more by reflexive instinct than volition, Westmore had managed to grab the fire ax and sink it into the small of Billy’s back. The pillars of muscle that were his legs thrashed on the floor. Westmore pulled away, but the malformed hand found his collar and yanked.

  Clack, clack, clack!

  Billy’s double row of teeth snapped, just a half inch away from Westmore’s face, then he yanked him closer. Westmore jammed a thumb into the green eye a split second before he would lose chunks of face.

  Another whinnying howl, when the photographer dragged the ax out of Billy’s back and heaved the blade into the monster’s crotch, dividing the balls. Blood poured. Another thwack, and Westmore cut Billy’s cock in half. The blood that blew out of the massive erection looked pressurized.

  Westmore jumped up, sucked in a deep breath, and drove the ax a final time into Billy’s rock-formation-like forehead. Speckles of blood blasted back, dotting Westmore’s face.

  He leaned back, paralyzed with exhaustion. He looked down at the mess on the floor—the cleaved corpse, the long chunk of severed cock, the pool of blood—and almost passed out. Then he staggered to the water valve and cranked it shut.

  He took one last look at Billy’s body, then thought, Fuck this shit, man. I need a drink… But there was no time for that. A can of cleaning solvent sat on a shelf. He grabbed it, grabbed the ax, and walked out of the room. It was time to start burning this motherfucker down.

  (XV)

  Bryant hid out a while, ducking back into the monitor room. In truth, he knew neither he nor Westmore stood much of a chance against such odds, but that realization actually revitalized him. When you wrote off your own life, you had nothing to lose. At first, he thought it must be his imagination when he thought he smelled smoke. Then he looked at one of the screens, saw that it had been switched to the utility room, and saw the hacked corpse of the neurofibromotosis victim. It wasn’t pretty, but Bryant was amazed. I don’t believe it, he fucking did it, he turned off the water and turned that thing into cold cuts. He could see the arrow on the water main valve turned to the closed position. He peeked out the door and saw the faintest veil of smoke hanging in the air. Westmore was taking care of the house, now Bryant needed to take care of Farringworth, wherever he was. Guess I’ll just half to go on a tear-ass, kill Farringworth, get his keys, and try to find Westmore and get out.

  Then he thought: Wait a minute!

  There he was right there.

  Bryant caught movement on one the screens. The bald monk was copulating viciously with a defected victim, and sitting in the corner of the same room, watching it all, was Farringworth. The billionaire sat naked and perfectly still, gazing intently at the horror on the bed, and propped upright between his legs was an obese woman with no arms or legs. She was slowly fellating Farringworth.

  Bryant remembered the room, it was where he’d been originally taken after they’d straitjacketed h
im, when Michaels had let him know the full score. The room was just down the hall.

  But when he opened the door to leave for that room, Michaels faced him from the doorway, a pistol in his face. Bryant edged back into the room.

  “Where is your associate, Mr. Bryant?”

  “I got no idea.”

  “It seems he’s running about lighting fires. It’s a waste of time, though. This house has a multimillion-dollar sprinkler system.”

  Don’t count on it, Bryant thought.

  “I do hope you’ve been paying attention,” the Englander said next.

  “To what?”

  Michaels pointed to the screen. “To the festivities. The monk broke. His spirit is gone. He’s destroying that poor woman. Look.”

  Bryant didn’t look; he’d seen enough. “You really think God’s going to show up?”

  “Who knows,” the response seemed to float in the air.

  This was a stalemate. Bryant already knew what he had to do so he didn’t deliberate. He simply did it.

  He spun, offering the least target space to Michaels, knowing he’d probably be hit. The movement did indeed cause the Englander to fire, then:

  Snap!

  Clink!

  —The small silenced pistol cycled. Bryant was so charged with adrenalin, he didn’t feel the pain. The bullet caught him in the right arm, but with his left he clotheslined Michaels. The gun flew out of his hand when he hit the ground, and by the time he regained his senses, Bryant had retrieved it. Now he was pointing the gun in Michaels face.

  “Give me a reason,” Bryant said, feeling the British man’s pockets. There was nothing, no keys of any kind in any of them. “Every exit door in this place is locked from the inside. Where are the keys?”

  Michaels smiled triumphantly. “They’re voice-printed. Only my voice and Farringworth’s can open them. Look’s like you’ll have to take me with you, hmm?”