The Teratologist (10 page)

“
In God’s name—yes. How ironic. You’ll understand in due time. Oh, and I hate to tell you this, but…” Michaels smiled, then held up a piece of paper that Bryant recognized at once as a blueline, an editor’s proof. “Can you read this? Is your vision blurred from the skirmish?”

“
What is it?

“
Your obituary.”

Bryant’s heart thudded as he read.

—
The editors and staff are saddened to report the deaths of finance journalist James Bryant and photographer Richard Westmore, both well known in the field. Bryant and Westmore worked together often, interviewing some of the most successful financiers in the world. They were both killed Wednesday in a taxicab accident near Metro Detroit airport. They will be sorely missed. Services will be held at—

This is crazy,
Bryant thought. “My boss knows we’re here, you idiot. I talked to him yesterday on my cell phone—from this house.”

“
Mr. Bryant—” Michaels wagged the sheet of paper. “This is a blueline for the next issue of
Blue Chip,
the magazine you and Westmore work for. This was all planned well in advance, and I’m happy to say that your boss was all too cooperative.”

Bryant struggled against the restraints, swamped in confusion. “He’s agreed to run an obituary when he knows we’re alive?”

“
Oh, yes. In the past, wisdom has been power, but today it’s money. And Mr. Farringworth paid of a lot of that to your boss to go along with this ruse. The bodies, of course, were burned beyond recognition, and further palms were greased, so to speak, to insure the proper placement of falsified DNA reports. To the rest of the world, Mr. Bryant, you’re dead.”

“
So…what? Now you’re gonna kill me? That’s ridiculous. You don’t know me, I’m no threat to you, and neither is Westmore!”

Michaels didn’t move, just kept looking down, hands behind his back. “No, no, we’re not going to kill you. We
want
you. You will be the chronicler, Westmore the photographer.”

“
Chronicler for what! Photographer for what!”

“
For Mr. Farringworth’s life, of course. And his work—or I should say, not his financial pursuits—that’s just his hobby. His real work, the work he does here. You and Westmore will never leave this house again. You will write Farringworth’s biography and philosophical study, and your colleague will compile the photographic archive.”

“
Of what?”

“
Mr. Farringworth’s endeavors, to be released long in the future, when he dies. It will be the mark he leaves on the rampart of history. You needn’t worry. All your needs will be taken care of—” Michaels turned at the sound of a door clicking open. New tragedies were being wheeled in to the bed: a seven-foot-tall woman with acromegaly, a two-headed conjoined twin, a Thalidomide woman…

“—
Including your sexual needs.”

Gagging and other strange noises came from the beds. Several men were led into the room, faces flushed, a rage in their eyes, erections gorged. They looked crazed with lust. They climbed onto the beds and began to…

Aw, Christ,
Bryant thought, stomach tensing. But then his brows shot up when Michaels came around behind. The British attendant was unbuckling the straitjacket.

“
You’re thinking that I’m either very confident about my abilities to defend myself,” Michaels began, “or I’m very stupid. I’m taking this straitjacket off and giving you full reign of the house, to move about as you please. And when you find your friend Westmore, please advise him of the current situation.”

The jacket’s canvas straps came loose. Bryant—a very large man—shrugged it off, stood up, and turned, preparing to destroy Michaels in place.

“
Here’s why you
won’t
lay a hand on me,” and then the Englander handed Bryant a stack of photos. Bryant flipped through them, getting sicker with each snapshot.
All my relatives,
he realized. Candid outdoor shots—as if taken secretly from a car—showed him his parents, his Uncle Eddie and Aunt Amelia, his sister, his nephew and niece.

“
So you can see, Mr. Bryant. If you fail to cooperate with us in any way, or if I don’t walk out that door in a few minutes, all of your loved ones will be killed. We’ll kill them slowly and gruelingly. We’ll bring them here to do it. We’ll make you watch.”

Bryant’s shoulders drooped. He’d never felt more defeated in his life.

“
And you’re overlooking the best part. Consider your new alliance with us as a privilege, an adventure, not imprisonment. You see, if you’re lucky, perhaps Farringworth will succeed.” Michaels’ grin seemed to hover in the harsh lights. “You may get to meet God.”

Bryant sat back down. “You’re insane.”

“
No. I’m not. But Farringworth is.”

(IX)

Later.

The horror had become an accretion. This was Bryant’s research, watching this.
This is what I have to write about,
he thought. He tried to focus, to be objective, however impossible that prospect seemed. “How can they? How can they have sex with these freaks?”

Micheals smiled wide.

“
Drugs, Mr. Bryant. The most potent aphrodisiac ever produced. It’s called Metopronil and the pharmaceutical company that Mr. Farringworth now owns developed it. It increases activity in the limbic system of the brain, most specifically in the amygdala, the rage center or visceral brain, which also controls sexual impulses. It raises serotonin levels dramatically causing violent sexual impulses, actually altering normal brain activity giving the subject the brain patterns of a serial rapist. In fact, it was by studying the brain activity of rapists, signature sex killers, and other sexual predators that we were able to develop the drug. ”

“
That is truly fucking sick. So all those trucks we kept seeing coming back and forth. They were dropping off more of this stuff?”

“
Some of them were. Some of them carried more of our guests. Would you like to see the rest of our home?”

Michaels began walking across the room towards a door on the far end of the hall. Bryant had no choice but to follow. He didn’t want to spend another second in that room.

“
This way to our guest suites. This is where we place our new arrivals until they learn to cooperate.”

They walked down a hall lined with locked doors before entering a small room that looked like the security booth of a major casino. Video monitors dominated one entire wall with DVD recorders documenting every thrust and moan. Michaels sat down before the bank of monitors and took hold of the tiny red joystick that controlled each camera. The largest screen showed a diminutive Asian man with a shaved head sitting naked in the lotus position. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be deep in meditation but his face was anything but serene.

Sweat bulleted down his face and his jaw muscles clenched and unclenched. From between his crossed legs an erection was clearly visible. He’d obviously been injected with the Metopronil, but he was fighting it. The effort seemed to be draining every ounce of his strength. Bryant could see him tremble and shiver as if stricken by fever. Across from him lay a woman whose limbs were twisted and bowed like curly fries. She too was nude and her eyes gleamed with want. They both sat silently in the little room, delirious with desire.

“
That’s Sato Masaaki. He’s a Zen Buddhist monk and founder of the Temple of Enlightenment, with followers all over the world. He has enough Metopronil surging through his veins to start an orgy in a Mormon Temple. He’ll break soon.”

“
How long has he been like that?”

“
Mr. Masaaki has been with us for a little over three weeks.”

“
Trapped in that room? With that freak? Doped up on aphrodisiacs? My God.”

“
Yes, poor Sharon is no doubt suffering more than he is. She doesn’t have his will-power and the hypo-osteopesis which has curled her bones has left her incapable of self-satisfaction.”

“
You mean you doped her up too?”

“
But, of course. If it was just his own suffering he had to deal with then that wouldn’t be as much fun. Now though, his obstinacy is causing someone else to suffer as well. She can’t speak, but he can still hear her whimper and groan. He can imagine how difficult it must be for her to cope with the drug because of his own painful struggle to resist it. It’s a hundred times worse than heroin withdrawal. Reproduction is one of your most primary biological drives. Every cell in your body has the desire to reproduce. By resisting the drug he is at battle with every fiber of his being just as she is. And, being a Buddhist, he has no choice but to empathize with her. In his mind she and he are one, just as he is one with all things. Her suffering is his own, magnifying his pain twofold.”

“
But why? Why are you doing all this?” Bryant asked, eyes wide in utter disbelief. In his wildest dreams he could never have imagined anything so sadistic.

“
Just as Mr. Farringworth has said. In order to enrage an omni-benevolent and very vain and jealous deity. To make him angry enough to reveal himself.”

“
But that’s insane! That’s never going to happen.”

“
Perhaps not, but if anything will do it, it would be breaking that monk. He’s the most pious human being we’ve yet to come across. All the rest of them had sins on their hearts, hidden lusts that the drug could bring to the surface. But not this one. He’s as pure as the driven snow in his heart and his soul. Getting him to fuck that crippled freak until she cries out for Jesus, or Buddha, or whoever, would be our greatest achievement yet. Ah, here’s Minister Farrahd.”

“
Minister Far—? You mean the Black Muslim leader!”

“
One in the same. It will be interesting to see how he enjoys our angels.”

“
Angels?”

“
Just look.”

Michaels pointed to another screen. He swiveled the joystick until the camera landed on the two pale willowy twins. They were so tall that their heads nearly scraped the ceiling. Their ghostly white skin glowed with an unearthly luminescence beneath the bright fluorescent overhead lights. Waist-length platinum hair swirled around the two gigantic twins as if animated as they approached the bald black man whose cock was already urgently erect and glistening with pre-cum. His eyes were wild and he was sweating and twitching with the effects of the Metopronil.

Bryant couldn’t take his eyes off the twins, the angels. With an audible gasp, he took notice of their confusion of oversized primary and secondary sex organs. He’d never seen more beautiful breasts and their cocks were a porn director’s dream, so long and heavy that even fully erect they were too weighty to stand upright but rather leaned to the left or right swaying like divining rods. Beneath their penises, where testicles should have been, swollen pink labia blossomed like roses around yawning vaginal pits, wide enough to fit two fists and probably the forearms as well up to the elbows.

“
Who the hell have they been fucking?” Bryant wondered, then he answered his own question when the two elegant creatures turned and kissed each other, their tongues lashing out like adders, striking and constricting.

Their eyes gleamed with an animalistic lust that was truly frightening on creatures so huge. The two hermaphrodites’ massive penises would easily disembowel the helpless Minister. He could see why they called them the angels. They could have been descendants of the Nephilim, the gigantic hybrids of humans and angels that were said to have once walked the earth before the great flood. Bryant found himself both sickened and intrigued.

“
Do you dope up all the freaks too?” Bryant asked, staring in awe at the angel’s tremendous sex organs.

“
Only sometimes, when it’s necessary. Most often it isn’t. They’re usually quite delighted with all the attention they receive from our guests. Not these two though. They aren’t very receptive to others.”

The minister knelt naked on the floor weeping as he stared up at the two pale devils standing above him. He turned to the east and prayed for Allah to rescue him from temptation. Still, his erection bulged shamelessly as he took in the two beautiful titans.