The Sadist's Bible (7 page)

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.

No busy signal. No static. No disembodied voice telling her the phone had been

temporarily disconnected.

Nothing.

She double-checked her reception, fearing the mountains had cut her off, but the

phone had three bars. Desperate, she tried the land line (an ancient, avocado-colored

device with gray buttons and faded white numbers).

Nothing.

Minutes ago, her brain had demanded sleep. Now, her brain demanded answers. Was

Lori blocking her calls? Could that really be happening, after all those late night heart to hearts?

She felt like a fool. That must be exactly what was happening. In her head, the

jigsaw pieces started to come together to form an ugly picture. No wonder Lori (if that

was even her real name) would never tell Ellie that she loved her. It was a subtle signal, but a signal Ellie should have picked up on nonetheless. A hint that, despite all

indications to the contrary, the Internet play was just play. A hint that all of this talk about sex and death was just talk. Just empty fantasizing.

Ellie imagined a future confrontation: someday, a month or two from now, Lori

would show up again. Lori would message her, flirt with her, maybe even try to start

some cybersex...all as though none of this had ever happened. And Ellie would unload

her anger about having been stood up, and Lori would affect astonishment at the very

notion that Ellie had taken any of this seriously. Would explain that even her insistence it had been real had been part of the fantasy. How dense could she be?

It had been like that, before, online. Three years ago, Ellie had engaged in another

dalliance on the social network – someone who’d told her she was an eighteen year old

girl from Alabama (“...just had my birthday yesterday...”), but who turned out to be a

fifty year old man. He only admitted his deception when she pressed for more contact.

After a flurry of intense cybersex chat sessions, she felt herself falling in love. Asked for a phone number.

She slipped down to the basement, late at night, to make the call. Oh how her heart

pounded when she entered the number in her cell phone! Oh, how disappointed she was

to hear a mincing, gravelly falsetto on the other end. She dry heaved. Started shaking and crying. Then, as quietly as she could, she cussed him out.

She’d let her guard down in those chats. Confessed desires she couldn’t confess

anywhere else. There had been something like intimacy shared. When she called the man

a perv for impersonating a woman online, he dropped the falsetto and called her a perv

back. Said he might like to pretend to be a woman online but that
she
had a fantasy about sleeping with a “barely legal” girl. “Who’s the bigger perv, sweetheart?” he said in a

Southern, smokers voice. “The way I see it, you’re basically a child molester!” Then he

hung up.

She’d felt like a fool and felt her soul scourged by deep and abiding shame. She’d

asked herself the question, over and over:
am I a child molester?
She’d come to find out she hadn’t really been talking to a “barely legal” girl, but she’d
thought
she’d talked to one. She’d fantasized about having sex with her, and the girl’s youth (only one day

removed from seventeen!) was undeniably part of the appeal.

And the transvestite had seemed so damned convincing, online. Had acted so lost, so

hungry for a strong hand to guide her. Maybe Ellie had been attracted to her because she was one of the few people (online or in real life) who seemed more fragile and clueless

than she was. Learning the truth had been a disappointment. And that was something

Ellie had to reckon with, she’d been disappointed she hadn’t had cybersex with a barely

legal girl.

She wondered again now:
Am I a child molester?

A voice, scratchy and Southern – the voice of God, or the voice of the transvestite, or

both mixed together – answered her: “Thou art an abomination.”

She had to pee. Before she squatted on the toilet, she looked in the huge mirror over

the sink. She was too pale and too thin. She was glassy-eyed and straw-haired. She didn’t look like a human being. She looked like a cheap, dollar store doll. Not a Barbie, but an imitation Barbie. An inferior knock-off. A copy of a copy.

She washed up and went to dry off on a hand towel. But the maid had “neglected” to

supply her room with towels. Her wet hands dripped over her shirt and jeans as she made

her way to a small utility closet next to the bathroom. Therein, she found an iron, a small ironing board, a coat rack, and hangers. On a shelf over the coat rack, she discovered six towels of various sizes and – to her great surprise – a pack of Marlboro Light 100s and a Bic lighter adorned with the logo of the Cincinnati Reds. Maybe the maid had taken a

smoking break and had forgotten about the Marlboros. Maybe the last occupant had been

trying to quit smoking and placed the pack there as a way to hinder easy access. However they got there didn’t matter. Now the pack was in her hands and, moreover, it wasn’t

empty. Four smokes remained. She immediately pulled one out, lit it up, and sucked in a

lungful of calm.

She tapped ashes into a glass ashtray, then brought it over to the nightstand. She felt

better. She wasn’t yet beginning to rest, but the gears in her mind sufficiently slowed so that she was now
eligible
for rest.

She clicked on the TV, looking for the same talk show that was playing down in the

lounge area. Looking for that same sexy celebrity with the short, spiky boyish purple hair and the lovely breasts and the delicious legs. She caught a glimpse of her, but only a

glimpse, before the hotel’s satellite reception started fading in and out. She took a deep drag off her cigarette. Turned off the TV. Tapped more ashes into the ashtray.

The quiet wasn’t good for her. The road had been exhausting, but the necessity of

paying attention to traffic had offered at least some mild distraction from negative

thoughts that crawled around her brain like ants through spilled sugar. Now the thoughts were fully unrestrained, and held dominion over her. Lustful, shameful thoughts followed by thoughts of self-disgust. Then came the cheerleading thoughts – attempts to fight off the shame by reminding herself that, outside this corner of the world, a woman wanting