We live in the false as long as we have not suffered. But when we begin to suffer, we enter the truth only to regret the false—EM Cioran
I've got squid video on the monitor behind me. I'm forcing Kimmie to touch her pussy, to slide two fingers inside herself like an octopus. Her wetness is all over her hand—that's why I put on the squid video. Kimmie's crying, but doing what I'm saying, and I'm telling her:
"Good girl. Who's a good girl for sticking her fingers up her pussy. You look like an octopus with two fingers up that slippery no-hair pussy and I like that. I like to think of putting my dick inside you just like you put those two fingers inside you..go ahead..slide 'em on in."
She slides 'em in and I'm just enjoying thinking of her as a sea creature.
Anna leans on the door of the crate.
"How's it going, octopus pussy?"
"Great. We're playing and Kimmie's the squid."
"I think part of you never grew up," Anna says.
"What, the part that likes to play with octopus cunt?"
"No, but it is the part of you that likes to play..somehow."
"Like I never learned the difference between serious and play?"
"Yeah. That's it. How did you guess?"
"That's no guess. I psychoanalyze myself, baby."
"Well, you want some coffee?"
"It's unsafe. I'll get some in a minute."
"How 'bout I bring it to you in a Pyrex measuring cup?"
"How 'bout a plastic sippy cup?"
"You have those?"
"Top shelf. Above the stove."
Anna leans back into the crate.
"Why do you have plastic sippy cups?"
"So I can drink coffee out of something that's not heavy—so no one can throw it at me—and that has a lid—so I don't spill it on someone. Don't you have sippy cups at home?"
"For babies, yes we do."
"Are you trying to help me out or are you trying to lecture me?"
Anna thinks.
"I was trying to help you out. Now I'm trying to lecture you."
"Why don't you just forget the coffee."
"No, no. I'll bring you your sippy cup."
"And don't bring any mugs in here."
"I know."
Anna leaves.
I tell Kimmie to keep moving her hands like a squid.
"Yeah, good girl. Make me think you're a sea creature. Your slime is really appealing to me right now—I don't know why, but—you have beautiful slime. I should prob'ly get some video of this while you're still alive."
I pull out my iPhone and video her pulling her fingers out of her slimy, slimy pussy and pushing them back in. It really looks like a squid.
"I wish you had those little sucker things on your fingers so it was like an octopus was fucking you. Anna!"
She leans into view with a coffee pot in one hand and a sippy cup in the other.
"After you're done with that, see if we can get a squid off the internet. I want a purple one. Just big enough to get two tentacles inside Kimmie's vagina. Would you be a doll and do that for me..please?..please?"
Anna's pouring the coffee.
"I thought we were going to kill her tomorrow."
"We are. See if you can get one overnighted."
"You want a purple octopus overnighted. I'm sure that will be no problem. I'll just check Amazon Prime."
"Why don't you check your sarcasm first."
Kimmie looks down at me.
"I give your relationship 50/50," she says.
"What me and Anna?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well that's better than most married couples—I'll take those odds!! Anna, will you take those odds?"
"I can't hear you!" she yells.
"Are your parents divorced?" I ask Kimmie.
"Yes. And they fought way less than you two."
"Well they prob'ly weren't in a stressful situation like this one."
"You've chosen to be in this situation."
"There, I think we have what they call a philosophical question. Did you want to have a philosophical discussion with me right now?"
"Not exactly."
"Then just keep moving those fingers in and out, in and out like a jellyfish. Hey Anna! Can we get a stinging jellyfish delivered to the house by tomorrow?"
She comes in with the coffee.
"I'll check."
Anna hands me my sippy cup.
"Thank you."
"Oh," Anna says, looking at my iPhone screen. "That really does look like a squid. YOU HAVE A BEAUTIFUL SQUID PUSSY," Anna says, really loud, like Kimmie was deaf.
Kimmie says, "You two have mental problems."
And I say, "Actually—in a technical sense—we don't. We just have really weird ways of entertaining ourselves."
Kimmie was in that day-before-death mode: completely given up, willing to do anything without much convincing, totally believing that nothing really mattered.
She had attained object status with me: the aesthetic value of using her pussy to create a video that looked like a squid was worth as much to me as her life—or more, since I would get to keep the video.
I didn't even fuck her anymore.
I just masturbated on her face.
"Lick it up."
Her tongue peeked out of her mouth.
"Lick it up."
Seeing her swallow my cum gave me more satisfaction than the orgasm itself.
"Here you missed a spot."
I wipe a large blob of cum into her mouth.
"Swallow. Good girl. I'm gonna come back in a minute and shoot all over your lips..are you gonna be ready to swallow it all again?"
She nods.
"You're a good girl, Kimmie. I'm gonna miss you when you're dead. I might have to cum on your dead lips after you're gone. Is that ok with you?"
She nods.
"Good girl. Do you mind if I fuck your slimy squid pussy after you're dead?"
She shakes her head.
"That's good 'cause I think I might want to do that. Is it ok if I cum in your squid pussy after you die?"
Kimmie nods.
"Are you sure?"
She nods again.
"Does it make you feel good, knowing that you're a good girl?"
Her eyes well with tears.
"Does it?"
"Yes," she says.
"Do you like being my good girl?"
"Yes I do!"
"You know that even good girls die when they get shot in the face, right?"
Kimmie nods.
"You know what makes my dick hard, Kimmie?"
"What?"
"How good you are. Some people like bad girls. But me..give me a good girl any day. You're really a good girl deep down, aren't you?"
Crying, she says, "Yes."
"I can tell."
"How? How can you tell?"
"I have a nose for it. I can sniff out a good girl versus a bad girl. It's like a sixth..no a seventh..no an eighth..no it's like my ninth sense. I've had it since I was a kid. My first girlfriend was a good girl."
"What did you do to her?"
"You mean like did I kill her or something?"
"Yes," Kimmie cries.
"Don't get overdramatic. This was in the first grade. All we did was jump on her trampoline together and kiss on the lips."
"How did you know she was a good girl?"
"Aside from my ninth sense? It was the way she dressed and the way she did her hair and the way she walked and the way she kissed—in secret, like she was afraid to get caught. I was afraid to get caught, too. I was a good boy."
"What happened?"
"I was taught..systematically..that what I was..and how I acted..could be entirely different things."
Anna asked me that night:
"Don't you think these girls you kill have a soul like your wife?"
"Some of them do, some of them do."
"With the ones that do, don't you think you could love them? Or somebody could love them?"
"You trying to put me out of business?"
"I just know that you're not a..psychopath or sociopath or whatever."
"Yeah, I know what you mean—they're always changing the definitions of those words. Useless terms, really."
"I mean you know the difference between right and wrong."
I look at her.
"Like you know it's wrong to shoot a girl up her pussy and kill her with internal bleeding—"
"Tell you the truth, Anna, I don't really think in terms of right and wrong."
"But do you feel bad about what you do?"
"I don't like to waste my time with guilt, remorse..feeling 'bad.' What I do makes me feel good. That's why I do it."
"But you know it's wrong."
"I know you think it's wrong."
"That's very different," Anna says.
"Yes," I say. "It very is."
That shuts her up a while, then she comes back at me:
"But I mean one moment, she's alive, she's aware, she's breathing, she's pumping blood, she's having thoughts, she's talking..and the next moment..she's not..and that's because of you."
"Again the idea that consciousness is sacred. What if we had uploaded this girl's consciousness to a computer?"
"That's so theoretical."
"Oh ho! No it's not!! Government's had that technology for years. So let's say we upload her. Do both of them still matter? If that one never dies, then what difference does it make if this one does?"
"You can't upload consciousness."
"Anna. Yes you fucking can."
"But that girl you shot up the vag and watched bleed to death. Didn't she—"
"There have been several of those."
"Well didn't they have the same right as you to live?"
"The same right?!!"
"Yes!"
"First of all, I don't have the right to live. And no, those girls I shot up the vag and watched bleed to death didn't have the same, more, or less of a right to live as me. They had no right to live either! Equal rights is not the same thing as having a right. Ok? The fucking Constitution guarantees you equal rights to pursue happiness but I think the part you're getting confused about is that all men—or all people—are created equal. Is that what you're thinking? That somehow those girls who I shot up the vag are equal to me? Because they're not. Know why? 'Cause they're dead and I'm still here, lecturing you. So what exactly is equal about us? I have the same right to pursue happiness as a guy with an 80 IQ but are we equal? Hardly, Anna—hardly. There's nothing fair about nature. Or culture. Or humanity. Do I have the same rights as a billionaire? To travel? To eat? To own a yacht? No. He has more rights than me and we are not equal, regardless of what the Constitution says. You're lucky I don't shoot you up your vag right now 'cause you're pissing me off. Equal rights."
I laugh.
"I swear to god, don't ever say that word to me again or I'll shoot you up the vag and give you this same lecture while you bleed to death."
"I'm sorry."
"God fucking damn, woman, you really stepped on the dog's tail with that one."
And my use of such an antiquated metaphor reminds me I'm speaking to a woman half my age, and for that—if nothing else—I feel terrible.