The Sadist's Bible

by Nicole Cushing

  property. Then, just for good measure, He’d saddled her with a little piece of Himself. A disfigured reminder of a monstrous night.

  Memories, like razor blades, started to slice trails through her brain. ( The sour,

  smoky stench of her own burning holes made her want to faint, but she couldn’t, and each hole would be blistered and scorched from the flames, but that didn’t stop Him... ) No. Not now. She couldn’t think about that stuff now. Not while she was driving.

  She’d freak out if she let all the memories loose in her head while she was driving. She had a Lortab in her glove box. She took it. Then she turned the stereo volume up to the

  highest level. Let the singer scream away the nightmarish past.

  The baby screamed louder.

  This had to end. The trunk wouldn’t be enough to end it. The baby couldn’t suffocate

  that way. It should have suffocated that way. Wouldn’t any other baby have suffocated that way? Was air getting in? Was the trunk closed all the way? She’d hoped she could

  put the baby out of its misery. Let it gradually lose consciousness from lack of oxygen.

  She’d thought the whole thing would be as painless as possible. She hadn’t expected this.

  A brown sign along the roadway announced an upcoming state park. (Which one,

  she couldn’t read through the sheets of rain.) Such places were typically nestled away in sparsely populated areas. No witnesses. She’d drive out there and bash the fuckin’ kid’s brains in. Hell, yeah – just fling it against the asphalt over and over again. Gentle murder wasn’t working. She’d have to be brutal.

  She took the exit and followed the curving road. Drove over fallen branches. Drove

  under a canopy of foliage so thick that, for a moment, there was a pause in the pounding on her car roof before the rain-drumming started anew. There was a blur of road and a

  blur of light and a turn to the left and a turn to the right and then an animal – a fucking animal, the size of a deer but looking more like a goat or a bull; no, having two heads, one of a goat and one of a bull – fuckin’ standin’ there, soaked, in the middle of the road.

  And she let out a shriek and she avoided the beast but then the road curved too sharply

  and she remembered that she’d been needing new tires for a while now and the road was

  too narrow and...

  Her whole world lurching...tumbling. Her stomach wobbling. Then an explosive

  slam against the ground. A cracking against a tree. A scraping of branches. Then more

  slamming ...then finally stopping.

  She tried to breathe, but only drew in about half her usual air. She smelled gasoline.

  She tried to get out, but she couldn’t move. Even though there were no houses

  nearby she instinctively tried to call out for help. She found she could not speak.

  But Josh still screamed. The radio still played. There was screaming and there was

  music and there was night and there was rain. Then a rumbling in the back. Then a

  whirring. Deep, masculine grunts. Murmurs. Someone else – another adult – in the

  wreckage with her. A man’s voice, shushing the baby. A man’s voice, cooing to the baby

  and then mumbling unintelligibly.

  Grunts. Then heavy feet hitting the ground. Steps. Feet limping through the brush.

  More whirring. Then the door flew open, torn off its hinges. More whirring as a flashlight burned in her face. She could only see the man holding it in silhouette. He looked less

  like a man than an eroded statue of one. He took the baby off of his shoulder and seemed to drop it.

  The night air held Josh aloft, though. He levitated. Stopped crying. Grunted. Twirled

  around, weightless, in mid-air. The figure holding the flashlight placed it back into his belt and took a pad of paper from his shirt pocket. In the faint shine of her headlights, Lori saw him get out a pen from behind his ear. Start writing. Whir-whir-whir went his

  hand as he wrote.

  When he’d finished writing, his hand whirred some more as he thrust the sheet close

  to her eyes. Then he got his flashlight out of his belt with his other hand, turned it on, and bent over – illuminating his poorly-scrawled handwriting.

  I WAS IN THE TRUNK.

  WITH YOUR SON.

  OBSERVING YOUR CRIMES.

  I BREATHED THE BREATH OF GOD INTO HIS MOUTH

  SO HE WOULD NOT DIE.

  GOD KNEW YOUR PLANS AND SENT ME.

  YOU HAVE VIOLATED HIS WILL.

  YOU HAVE PLOTTED TO KILL HIS SON.

  YOU HAVE SOUGHT TO LEAVE HIM,

  YOU ARE A FUGITIVE FROM HIS JUSTICE.

  I SHALL TAKE YOU, BODY AND SOUL, BACK TO YOUR HUSBAND

  FOR DISCIPLINE

  AND MATING.

  YOUR SON SHALL LIVE ON,

  SO THAT HE MAY BEAR WITNESS TO THE TRUE GOSPEL.

  NO PLAN FOR NON-EXISTENCE EVER WORKS.

  THE ARC OF THE UNIVERSE IS LONG,

  BUT BENDS TOWARDS DEGENERACY.

  Then the wreckage was no longer wreckage, but instead an unblemished police car.

  Lori’s bones had been pulverized by the impact. Long patches of her skin had been

  ripped off. She lay in the back, behind the metal grating. She’d been there – in that space reserved for prisoners – so many times before. But that didn’t make any of this more

  comfortable. Her baby was tucked away in a safety seat secured to the front. Red and

  blue swirled around her.

  She lost consciousness, coming to only briefly and sporadically in spasms of

  nightmare. First, the red and blue lights became red and blue stars. Then, all was

  blackness again. Then, strange new guides dragged her past fires. Past half-human

  oddities perpetrating the most sadistic varieties of sodomy on one another. Then, all was blackness again.

  Then she was in the throne room of a hideous Heaven, filled with wailing angels and

  amputated wings. She lay broken, paralyzed, and mangled at the foot of God’s throne.

  Then, all was blackness again.

  And each time she blacked out, she lost a little more of her memory. The name of her

  hometown escaped her. Her own name escaped her. This rattled her, and she tried to

  focus on keeping her wits about her. The key was to remember that her plan had been to

  escape God by being sent to Hell. The escape, that was the important thing. Perhaps there was still a way.

  When she awoke again, her husband sat on His throne, holding Josh in His arms as

  He spoke to her.

  Behold the adulteress! The concubine of God does now lay broken before her

  husband. Her crime was that she would not bow before my will, would not accept my

  torture. And now she shall forever dwell with me, prostrate before my glory. And I will know her, in whole and in parts. I have already re-assembled her into a more pleasing shape. A shape incapable of disobedience. She sought to kill herself. But I shall not let her die. Every breath will be torture for her, and I will heap punishment on top of that as oft as I feel the urge. And she shall continue to give birth to my children. Do you have anything to say for yourself, woman? Your new shape does not allow speech. Think the words and I will hear them.

  Lori shunned the pain and fear from her consciousness so that God could hear her.

  Just send me to Hell and be done with it.

  God stepped off His throne. His radiance burned her as He approached. Is that what

  this was about? You wanted to go to “Hell” ? And you thought that killing our son and committing suicide would get you there? Away from me?

  There was a burst of light like an atom bomb in front of her, and suddenly God was

  the height of skyscrapers. He held her in His hand and lifted her up to His face. When He laughed, it was as though a flame thrower shot right over he
r. Yet as much as she begged for it, death did not come.

  * * *

  Ellie felt like a wimp, not driving straight through to the Hillbriar. She’d hoped the

  meal and the caffeine would give her some pep. But instead of infusing her with healthy, wholesome energy, they only fueled her anxiety. And she was old enough to know that,

  once she reached a certain threshold of nervousness, her body tended to react by

  demanding she crash and reboot.

  She’d gotten far enough out into eastern Kentucky that she’d reached the foothills of

  the Appalachians. It was after dark now, and the mountains could not be seen. But from

  past travels she knew they surrounded her. Stood tall, over her, like a crowd of

  disapproving men.

  Decent accommodations were scarce, this far out. But there was a state university in

  Morehead. She could find a hotel there where she could stop for the night and get some

  rest. She could use her phone to see if Lori had sent her another message. If she had, then that would encourage her to move ahead with their plans. If she hadn’t...well...who

  knew? Maybe she would have a “come to Jesus” moment like people were always

  discussing in their testimonies at church. Maybe she would go to the nightstand, pull out the Gideons’ Bible that had been tucked away there, and find new comfort in the onion

  skin pages. Maybe it would be like when she was a teenager, when she closed her eyes,

  opened the Bible to a random page, and discovered a message there that seemed meant

  just for her. Maybe she would live.

  So many possibilities. She had to stop thinking about all of them. They only made

  her feel more exhausted.

  Few cars traveled this stretch of Interstate late on a Tuesday night. The traffic was

  mostly tractor trailers – all of them mammoth and slow, most of them adorned with some

  Christian slogan or symbol. (Mudflaps bearing the name of the savior, the sign of the fish appearing under the hauling company’s name, warnings that “Heaven is ‘Real’ and So is

  ‘Hell’!” painted on the back of trailers so that they would face following drivers.) She’d only gone to community college, but she knew enough to be aware that the quotation

  marks had been placed there by mistake (that proper writing didn’t work that way), and

  this gave her a feeling of superiority. Soon afterward, though, guilt replaced the

  arrogance.

  They may not know how to use quotation marks, but at least they’re making sure

  they’re going to Heaven. They’re not running away from their spouses to commit acts of abomination. They’re not the ones who feel lost even though they know exactly where

  they’re going. They’re not the ones who the church women disapprove of. Can I say the same? For Christ’s sake, they belong here, in this part of the world. Can I say the same?

  There were the tractor trailers, and there was the black road, and there were the white

  dashes in the middle of the black road, and there were – rarely – the green signs telling her where she could leave it. When Ellie was this tired, her vision lost its focus. The

  colors of the Interstate all started to twist and bend past their former boundaries, bleeding into one another, threatening to become one white-black-green fusion that would prove

  utterly unnavigable.

  She pushed the button to lower the window and let in some air. Shook her head.

  Slapped herself, lightly, on the cheek.

  Not much longer to go. Stay awake.

  A sign told her Morehead was five miles away. She veered over into the right lane.

  Slowed down to fifty. This gave her better control over the vehicle. Her vision unblurred, but in a matter of moments was re blurred. Signs told her of several hotels along the roadside. None of them offered luxury, but she picked the one that seemed – based on

  reputation alone – to be the least-ratty. According to the sign, it was less than a half-mile from the Interstate exit. Another point in its favor. The less driving she did, the better.

  There was a brief interruption in her worry – a sense of temporary relief – offered by

  the arrival of the exit ramp. With no vehicles behind her, she could go as slowly as she wished. Ten miles an hour, five miles an hour. The road dipped lower and lower as it

  curved in a semicircle into the town. She felt a gentle, soothing rock-a-bye sensation as her body tilted first one way in reaction to the turn, then another.

  She paused at a red light. During the day, this would have been a major intersection

  (at least, as major as intersections were, in this part of the world). Yet, late at night, it was all-but-deserted. Still, there were more streetlights in Morehead than there had been on I-64. That helped make things less blurry. Most of the stores were closed for the evening, but she saw the hotel up in the distance. There was a gas station and Cracker Barrel

  restaurant adjacent to it. Good. She could refuel her car and her body in the morning.

  She pulled up to the hotel’s entrance. Put on her flashing hazard lights. It seemed like an empty gesture, given how abandoned the town was. But it was the polite thing, after

  all. It indicated that she knew she wasn’t allowed to park there indefinitely, that she was only parking there while she checked in.

  She nearly fell out of the front seat. It felt good to stretch her legs. It would feel even better to get into bed. She slung her purse over her left shoulder and walked to the front desk. No one was there. The scent of cleaning solution was obnoxious in the air, and the tile near the entrance appeared not-quite-dry from a recent mopping. A television was

  mounted to a wall in a lounge area across from the front desk. A late night talk show was on. Ellie recognized neither the host nor the scantily clad celebrity he was interviewing.

  The young lady was quite attractive, though. Big breasts well-presented in a floral-print top. Short, spiky boyish purple hair. Tight, tanned legs sticking out of a knee-length green skirt. Demure but punky at the same time.

  Yum.

  “...you, ma’am?”

  The kid behind the counter looked like he was in high school. Like he could have

  been one of her Sunday School students.

  “What’s that?”

  He cleared his throat. “I said: ‘Can I help you, ma’am?’”

  “Oh, yes...I need a room.”

  The boy started typing into a computer terminal. “How many nights?”

  “Just one.”

  The television in the lounge area erupted in applause. A saxophonist, drummer, and

  guitar player started playing a segue to the commercials. The boy didn’t bother looking

  up at her from the computer terminal as he began to run down a list of additional

  questions and concerns.

  “Smoking or nonsmoking?”

  She’d given up smoking ten years ago, but decided she might indulge while she was

  there. “Smoking,” she said. The word felt heavy and tasted sour as it crept out of her

  mouth. She knew smoking wouldn’t kill her immediately, but it still felt (however

  irrationally) like she’d just taken another step toward suicide and damnation.

  “I’ll need to see your driver’s license and the credit card you’ll be using.”

  It took her longer than she’d hoped to fish her wallet out of her purse (and longer still to fish the appropriate cards out of the wallet). It was awkward, yes, but in a matter of minutes it was done and she was lugging her suitcase out of the car. She wheeled her

  granny panties and pajamas and bras and toothpaste and noose over cracked asphalt and

  speed bumps and into the lobby.

  In the lounge area, the late night talk show host was now interviewing an athletic-

  looking young man. The demure punk
sat silent on the far end of the couch, looking

  appropriately ornamental as she listened to the young man talk about a recent success on the playing field. Behind the front desk, the boy who had checked Ellie in was eating a

  donut and sipping an energy drink as he glanced at the screen.

  The suitcase wheels made a dull whirring noise, occasionally punctuated by dips in

  and out of tile grooves. Ellie didn’t remember pressing the up button, but the elevator

  chimed, nonetheless. She walked in and noted that it was far dingier than the lobby. Tiny bits of graffiti, scrawled in pen, festooned the walls.

  Jimmy Henderson Farted In This Elevator, September 24th, 2007.

  Trust in “GOD”

  Homosexality is an abbamination

  My boyfriend has bigger tits than your girlfriend

  All you need is (my) COCK

  A crude drawing of a thick, stiff, ejaculating penis accompanied the latter. It was

  drawn with heavy, dark lines that seemed to have been traced repeatedly – perhaps in an

  effort to make it extremely difficult to wash off, perhaps because the artist was (for some reason) enraged at the time he drew it.

  It’s all a trick, she thought. They show you the freshly-cleaned lobby to lead you to think it’s a decent place. But they don’t bother cleaning the elevator because they know that once you see it, you’re already stuck here.

  At least the room itself wasn’t as flagrantly tainted. (No dick graffiti.) She’d chosen

  a smoking room, and so she knew to brace for the smell. Everything was – technically

  speaking – clean. But the furnishings showed signs of heavy wear. The bed spread was frayed. The fake-leather chair near the work desk had two cigarette burns in the cushion, revealing yellow stuffing underneath.

  She unzipped her suitcase, retrieved her charger and set to getting more juice to her

  smartphone. She wanted to call Lori’s cell. She wanted confirmation that she’d left

  Portsmouth, or maybe even that she was already there at the Hillbriar. She wanted to talk dirty to her. She wanted to exchange photographs, the way they had done so often in

  recent weeks. She opened up the social network, but found no message after “Have you

  leeft yet?” In fact, there wasn’t even an indication that Ellie’s response to that message had been seen. When Ellie tried calling her, nothing happened. She heard no dial tone.