The Venus

Chapter 04

Till Death do us part...

He had slept very deeply for several hours without any unpleasant intensive dreams. He had not even taken anything from his rich collection of legal or illegal drugs and medicines. His bedding showed that he had not been tossing and turning too much. He always slept soundly and woke up with a warm gut feeling after he had committed a murder. He had known for years that he had to be careful not to crave that cozy feeling too much. Two or three times a year was enough to temper his craving. In the beginning, it had almost gone wrong, threatening to make him addicted. The killing followed too quickly and began to get out of hand. And what does a self-respecting addict who realizes he has a problem do? Exactly who goes to AA. Lying came easy to him. All he had to do was project his urge to kill onto a so-called craving for a bottle of booze. He had finally found it a successful social experiment when he stopped going to those meetings after six months. They had actually helped, too. He was in control of his addiction to murder.

He stood completely naked in front of the large window that overlooked a south-facing garden. The spring sun was doing its best and it was pleasantly warm behind the glass. No human being could see him like this. The house had not been chosen for comfort alone. Privacy had been the biggest driver in his choice, and it bordered on the extreme possible. That the aesthetics of the house and garden appealed to him was nice. The main thing was that he was spared from prying eyes. In the past, according to himself, he had allowed and temporarily accepted much worse things to appear perfectly normal to the outside world. Two ex-wives could attest to that even though he would much rather have turned their heads into a ceiling lamp. If this game went as planned then it was still not too late to become a lamp maker. Perhaps afterward he would have a note smuggled into Edmund Kemper's cell to let him know that he had actually carried out his fantasy of turning his mother's head into a standing lamp. "Disposable teens" in Manson's banging version blasted through the speakers into the house.

"Ridiculous little lunatics!"

Sounded sternly in his head.

"Where do these so-called experts get it from? They should be able to explain why some people kill but can't empathize for a single second with a killer. And those that do then get a glimpse of that wonderfully dark worldview frightfully retract their tails."

How many times had he heard or read that music such as that of Manson, Metallica, or Judas Priest would be partly behind murderous tendencies or had contributed to the motives of murderers? Perhaps somewhere this applied to previously unstable minds or teenagers who do not yet have a complex self-image. But certainly not to people of his caliber. Killers like Edmund Kemper, or The Iceman, for artists, the masters of death. On them, Manson had as much influence as Bach or Chopin. He heard the soft voice of Hannibal Lecter in his head. The doctor explained why all psychiatrists were idiots.

"Their attempts to crawl into the head of a serial killer are no more worthy than the clumsy attempts of a horny adolescent to grope under the skirt of his first girlfriend. If they succeed at all they, like that adolescent, are dumbfounded and have no idea what to do. Most of them just about piss their pants when their object of study suddenly lets them into his world."

The man stretched once more with every muscle in his trained body tensing. He had an impressive black and white tattoo that took up his entire back. From the shoulders, just below the hem of the shirts he always wore in public, to just above his buttocks. It was the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse, Death on his horse. He had the artwork done in Japan. By a true master who counted mostly members of the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza among his clientele. Not with one of those modern tattoo machines with electric needles. No, his ink was applied the ancient way. With bamboo sticks cut into needles. That traditional way of getting tattoos was a kind of rite of passage for new Yakuza members because it's damn painful. Putting the ink had hurt so terribly at certain times that he seemed to hover between consciousness and unconsciousness at times. Seven hour-long sessions spread over seven days. Long hours filled with pain that at times seemed so sensual, so erotic and so liberating that he was at times euphoric. He felt like Doctor Lecter had come to live inside him as the tattoo progressed. He had not intended to kill in Japan. Senseless killing is not in Japanese culture. That is something Western, barbaric. A senseless lust killing of a hooker would have unnecessarily drawn the attention of the police and he really didn't need that. Added to that was the fact that the sessions demanded too much of him. That he was therefore unsure if he would be lucid enough to cover all his tracks. Doctor Lecter, however, insisted that he show how he normally killed and showed him a way to do it that would make no one crow about the victim. He pointed out where he was, surrounded by Yakuza and money opens doors. A member of the Yakuza with whom he had been to one of these so-called gentlemen's clubs a few times had granted Doctor Lecter's wish. The Yakuza had simply sold him a young Chinese girl from the countryside. With her he could do whatever he wanted because, after all, she was now his property. For a few thousand dollars extra he was guaranteed a virgin and she would be neatly taken away afterwards. Her panties he had kept as a trophy but then those were the only trophies he kept. That is also why profilers who had been chasing his alter ego for so long overlooked some of his murders. His victims were not limited to young girls and young women. Yes of them he kept a trophy. But he had also killed boys and men and not taken a trophy. Therefore, his alter ego immediately fell by the wayside. The profilers had taken it as a given that his victims were female and that he always took a trophy. He had killed in various ways which further contributed to the profilers' general confusion. Brute force, a knife, a gun, a baseball bat. Even an industrial mincer he had used once just for fun to see its effect. He had put the victim in there alive with the feet first so the victim could see his feet and lower legs being ground up. With an IV, quite a bit of pain medication and a properly applied tourniquet, he had managed to get the man to witness three times that part of his body simply disappeared. A remarkably successful experiment, he thought to himself. In Japan, however, he had been impressed himself. He had witnessed a socio-cultural annex economic phenomenon. When there is a surplus of something, the price collapses because there is more supply than demand. Such was the case for poor young girls and boys who stood drumming from the Chinese countryside to be taken out of the country via container as contraband. Their lives were therefore not worth much in the eyes of the Yakuza, and they had long since ceased to be seen as human beings. Perhaps as animals a small step above a thing. He had shown Doctor Lecter how he brutally raped and treated the girl before strangling her. At the appointed time, they had come to collect her body like a highly efficient garbage collection service. For a moment he had wondered how many boys and girls had disappeared that way into one of the large garbage incinerators owned by the Yakuza. For a moment he had considered staying in Tokyo for that reason. He was rich enough to use the services of the Yakuza whenever he needed them. However, it was the doctor, who by the sixth day of the painful trial, had found his voice that dismissed that plan. He had made it clear that killing that way was not an art because no one could enjoy his work. But the doctor also wanted to travel to all those places Tom Harris had linked to him in his books. Now that he was freed from the pages, he wanted to see, hear, feel and taste the great art. They had gone on a kind of world tour. He gave the doctor what the doctor wanted through his own body. The doctor gave him what he wanted. He went into therapy with the doctor. In his mind, he lay on Doctor Lecter's couch and confessed all his darkest secrets. He often cried because it was the first time he could talk to another person about the demons that dwelt within him. For evenings they did nothing but talk and enjoy each other's company. He was grateful to the doctor because step by step he was completely freed from all social rules, laws, and taboos. Until he fully followed the philosophy of the infamous Marquis De Sade as a religion; DeSade believed that the true freedom of the mind was not the way of God, but that natural instinct was the true outcome. This was reflected in his later work in which he advocated an amoral society with sex maniacs and their victims. No in between, you were either a victim or you took and did everything to satisfy your sexual urges. Indeed, the state had no right to intervene here. The natural urge for pleasure, well-being, and domination was to become man's highest good in De Sade's world. Doctor Lecter was grateful to him for freeing him from the prison that the books and movies proved to be after all. Together they had killed, cooked and planned for an ultimate masterpiece. Lecter had made him see things, feel things, smell things, taste things while killing. Divinely provided him with inspiration to start creating art. Instead of applying cheap sexual violence. And that was what he had begun to do last night. Never again would anything be as it was before.

He turned with a jerk and walked to an antique writing desk. He had set it up fairly centrally in the living room. Antiques weren't really his thing. It was meant as a gift for the doctor. He took a cigarette-thin cigar, lit it, and inhaled deeply. On the writing desk was a package he had carefully wrapped just before he went to sleep for a few hours. The idea that his latest victim's panties were in the packet caused the movie of what he had done only a few hours before to begin to replay itself in his mind. He could once again see every inch of her beautiful young body. Again he could feel her heat, smell her sweat. His penis became hard again as he penetrated her again in his mind. But his excitement came mostly from the moment he had seen the look in her eyes change. From ecstasy one moment to pure naked fear the next. The moment of realizing that he would not be satisfied with the body she had given him. He had slowly strangled her as she lay pinned beneath his body. Slowly he had watched the life drain out of her until suddenly the light went out completely.

"There is no greater ecstasy."

He thought:

"Than to cum at the moment the light goes out forever. The moment when I am simultaneously a giver and taker of life."

He shook off the images. He had other things to do first. Important work. Had they done well to involve Captain Paschall in their artwork at this point? Of course, because Paschall had something he and Lecter wanted for a variety of reasons. Of course, the satisfaction would increase exponentially as the artwork progressed. But he knew something the doctor didn't. He knew experimentally how dangerous Paschall could be. That behind those usually soft green eyes lurked the killer look of a bloodhound. That once Paschall had smelled prey he would never, ever give up. If they wanted to play with the captain, it had to be thought out slowly step by step, and long in advance. It was not simply their freedom that was at stake. He was not afraid to spend the rest of his life in a cell. He had the doctor for company. He had done enough in his life to spend years in his head traveling, wandering, and killing over and over again.