A Self Made Monster (3 page)

Tonight, Edward enjoyed his latest hobby: videotaped movies. He turned off the lights, drew the curtains, and loaded the VCR with his newest tape:
Under the Big Top
. Light from the screen flickered across his face, and he smiled. The first image was promising:

A stained leather tarp. On the tarp, a nude woman with a green Mohawk stiff enough to be a broomhead is on her hands and knees. A male voice commands, “Turn around, Blinkey.”

Blinkey faces the camera. She is in white face. Black greasepaint is smeared on her mouth, and red ovals highlight her cheekbones. A hand appears, places a cigarette in her mouth, lights the cigarette. Blinkey takes a long drag, then a second. Smoke rushes out of her flared nostrils. She nods.

The hand removes the cigarette. “Now it’s Corkey’s turn,” a male voice announces.

The production quality of the video is low. When Blinkey looks up, the harsh lighting turns Blinkey’s pockmarks into little craters.

Now a long shot of Blinkey, and the surroundings are clear: Blinkey is inside a circus tent. A male clown approaches from behind. He has a white face, fixed red smile, and maniacally raised eyebrows. He is removing his green suspenders. As he gets closer, he unzips his fly.

Now a close up. On the right of the screen, Blinkey’s face in profile. On the left, an erect penis painted as a candy cane, white with red stripes. Blinkey closes her eyes and opens her mouth.

Edward was rubbing his crotch when the phone rang. He tried to ignore the interruption, but the mood was ruined and he turned off the VCR.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Edward? This is Holly Dish. I’m in the lit class.”

Well come on over, Edward thought to himself. He looked at his crotch. I’ve got a surprise for you.

Holly did not invite herself over. She simply asked if Edward had taken notes from the day’s class. Edward said he did take notes, but he could recite Resartus’s lecture without consulting them.

“We didn’t get through much,” Edward reminded her. He outlined the use of symbol in
Lady Chatterly’s Lover
: the impotent husband in a wheelchair, the restless wife, the simple, passionate groundskeeper. Edward talked twenty minutes without stopping.

Holly’s hand was cramping from taking notes. “I need someone like you.” A pause. “To take notes. Thanks again.”

“Good night.”

Edward did not start the tape. The sobering glare of the flickering fluorescent kitchen light made him feel foolish.

He wondered if Holly was actually interested in him, but skepticism chased the thought away. No, Edward decided, Holly Dish simply wanted notes. True, she had talked with him today in the cafeteria. She was friendly enough, but was simply killing time.

Edward imagined Holly starring in
Under The Big Top
. She sits on the tarp and pulls off a tee shirt. Next she lies back, pulls down her zipper, and shimmies out of her jeans. Her thighs are oiled, cabled. Her rib cage promises power and excitement, like a sports car’s grille. She pulls on yellow clown shoes; they are flat and wide, like the blade of an oar.

Her thighs squeeze and chafe Edward’s face. The clown shoes oscillate.

Edward’s pants were already off. He flipped the light switch, sprinted into the living room, and restarted the tape.

Comfortable in a gray Tailor College sweatsuit, Holly Dish lounged on her bed, reading the latest issue of
Me, Myself, and I
. The feature article exhorted her to “take charge of your own life and the lives of others around you!”

Holly accepted the article’s thesis. As the article advised, Holly was planning her career and “taking the steps that make women winners!” Her phone call to Edward Head had been one such step. With careful teasing–”I need someone like you”—Edward would provide notes throughout the semester. Edward’s notes greatly improved Resartus’s lectures: they filled in the gaps, made transitions between points, and removed the tangents.

With such fine notes, Holly’s chances of passing Resartus’s class increased. True, she hated to read anything but magazines. But as the career articles declared, “You can’t make it to the fast track with a short cut!” Holly resigned herself to try reading most of her homework.

If her plan worked, Resartus might reward her with a “B” (an “A” seemed impossible) along with a letter of recommendation. Resartus’s would be the fourth such letter. The previous three had come from Holly’s advisor, her gym teacher, and her freshman dorm director.

Holly’s advisor, Dr. Blake, learned that Holly was in Alex Resartus’s class.

“Professor Resartus is semi-known in the literary field,” Dr. Blake told Holly. “I think that if you do well, a letter from him would help your career plans.”

“What kind of stuff does he write?”

“I don’t know. Some kind of writing.”

Her advisor’s ignorance did not concern Holly. A published writer was a published writer.

Holly finished the article and reluctantly began reading
Lady Chatterly’s Lover
. She was asleep in ten minutes, the book gently falling and rising on her stomach.

Alex rarely received personal letters. His mail was typically bills and ads, and he waited until Saturday to unpack his mailbox. He dropped the mail onto the kitchen table. Electric bill. Numerous department store ads. Car insurance renewal form. Several credit card solicitations.

But underneath a pizzeria ad was a business envelope.

The envelope’s upper left-hand corner featured the logo of
Guns, Blood, and Shovels
, and Alex laughed.
Guns, Blood, and Shovels
was a quarterly pulp of mystery, murder, and horror stories. Guns had published three of Alex’s short stories over the last four years.

The note inside the envelope was from Tim Skillet, the editor.

Dear Mr. Resartus:

Our accountant—well, okay, we hire an accountant once a year to evaluate our health!—discovered an error in payment made for a story of yours, “Orville’s Lesson in Love.” Seems we underpaid you by twenty dollars. I’ve sent you a check, along with an extra fifteen. We at Guns hope that the extra money will inspire you to contribute more of your work. “Orville’s Lesson in Love” was a hit with our readers. They’d like a follow up! Hope to hear from you.

Yours, Tim

“How kind of you, Mr. Skillet,” Alex murmured, recalling the story. It was about Orville, a rapist. One night, Orville was working in his garage when a woman approached. She lived down the road, she said, and had lost her dog.

Orville raped her.

Afterward, he lay on his back smoking a cigarette. “You think that sex and violence are the same,” the woman accused through bloody lips. Orville agreed. He stabbed her a hundred times then buried her in his back yard.

The next night, someone knocked on his front door. The murdered woman, her ribboned throat glazed with dried blood and moist viscera, stood under his porch light. She pleaded with Orville to let her in. When Orville refused, she threw herself through Orville’s living room picture window.

She chased him through the house. She screamed repeatedly that Orville equated sex with violence. Finally she cornered Orville in his kitchen. She grabbed a carving knife. He covered his face with his arms, weeping. “I’m sorry! Sex and violence are not the same! They’re different!”

The woman laughed. Her upper lip was nearly sheared from her mouth, and it dangled over the side of her jaw. “Just so you won’t forget.” She drove the knife into his stomach.

As Orville died, the woman’s voice deepened into that of a man’s.

Orville awoke in prison. He had been convicted of murdering a woman while she searched for a lost dog. As Orville lay on his cot, sweat-soaked prison garb clinging to his skin, his cellmate slapped him. Orville’s eyes widened. A six foot five con with watery blue eyes and a decorative nail through his earlobe winked. “Turn over. I’m gonna learn you the difference between rape and love. Just so you won’t forget.”

“Orville’s Lesson in Love” was published two years ago. The story was simple, yet Alex enjoyed the crude justice that the pulps demanded. And these days, Alex was grateful to see his name in print on more than bills and junk mail.

Alex wondered if he still had a readership, as the editor claimed. For macabre vignettes, yes. For a novel? Did the readers of
The Best Year His Life
ever wonder why Alex never wrote another book?

Alex walked down the hall to his study. He leaned against the door frame, looked at his desk. On the desk was his computer. Next to the computer, a notebook with several ideas for a novel. The notebook was mostly scribbling and doodles.

The notebook beckoned. He flipped through it, pausing every few pages to review his notes. The notes were mostly character sketches, based on people he knew at the college. As he reviewed the sketches, Alex was angered for the thousandth time. He had written his first novel in three months, filling four yellow legal pads. He wrote standing up, fifteen hours a day, quitting at midnight to sleep on the floor. Alex had been afraid that if he quit writing, he would lose his train of thought: just as when he was a teenager, he read novels in one day, stopping only for lunch and for whatever psychosis medication was in vogue.

Now, staring at his desk, Alex’s anger soared. The anger demanded satisfaction, but the satisfaction had to be gained carefully, without mistakes. He straightened out his notes, filed the letter from
Blood
, then went for a drive.

He took highway 40 south, past Pine Lake. After a half hour on the highway, Alex turned left onto an unnamed gravel road. He cruised at 45, enjoying the soothing hum of tires against black road.

As he tossed his fifth cigarette butt out the window, the headlights revealed the blue windbreaker and red cap of a hitchhiker. Alex slowed, as if to pick up the hitchhiker; as the hitchhiker smiled, Alex stomped the accelerator. The hitchhiker dropped to his haunches and raised his hands, as if praying.

Alex parked the car on the road’s shoulder, and walked the twenty feet that separated the collision from the body. The hitchhiker was on his back, yet his face was flattened into the road. Alex could not see where the bony gruel of the hitchhiker’s face ended and the gravel began.

After studying the body, Alex removed a notebook and pen from his jacket pocket. “This is probably a futile gesture, but the way you landed…Jesus!” In his note book, Alex recorded the geometrical perfection and skeletal perversion with which the body rested.

Alex leaned on his lectern, trying to sound professorial. “Come on. We have to proceed. Come now. Review is important. Who can tell me what rank Mellors held in the army?”

The students shifted in their chairs. A few made no pretense of interest and slept. Holly Dish glanced at her watch, bored, but knew she had to make a good impression. She raised her hand.

Alex nodded.

“Indian,” Holly announced.

“Indian?”

Holly repeated herself, then looked at her classmates. Several were laughing. Damn, she thought, he asked what rank, not what army.

“He was an officer,” Holly nearly shouted.

“Good,” Alex said. “As long as we’re on it, what nation?”

More shifting in chairs.

Edward Head rolled his eyes. He waited for someone to answer. Finally, almost wearily, he spoke. “Mellors was an Officer in the Indian army. And as long as we’re on it, his father was a miner, just like Lawrence’s.”

Deciding that only Edward had read the novel carefully, Alex continued with his lecture, often turning to his notes. Whenever he lectured, Alex was grateful that his secretary, Mrs. Mathews, was well organized. She kept all his notes on file. They were cross indexed by title, genre, and author.

Alex wanted to discuss the novel’s ground breaking eroticism, but he ran out of time. “Let’s break it off now. Next time, we’ll talk about the real reason the book is famous.”

A few students smiled.

As Jimmy Stubbs watched Holly walk out of the room, he stifled a lust driven groan. She was wearing a skirt today.

Jimmy’s unabashed stare amused Alex. The little guy wants to wrestle her, Alex thought, and she’d pin him in ten seconds. Edward was watching Holly, too. But he was sly. He fumbled with his books and stole glances at Holly’s buttocks, coiled under her skirt.

“Must be animal magnetism,” Alex said as Edward passed the lectern.

Edward stopped. “I’m sorry?”

“Don’t be sorry. I understand. How can I compete with her?”

“What–?”

Alex smiled, nodded at the departing Holly.

Edward looked toward the door, but Holly was gone. “Must be all that talk about Lady Chatterly and Mellors,” he joked.

“We haven’t talked about it yet.”

“Anticipation,” Edward conceded. He stood awkwardly, not knowing how to proceed. He wanted to build rapport with the professor. His attempt to talk about Resartus’s novel had ended quickly. “I very much like Lawrence,” he asserted, trying to sound scholarly.

Edward began rambling about D. H. Lawrence’s home in Taos, New Mexico. Alex walked toward the door, but nodded, indicating that Edward should follow.