"Bullets, Booze and Bastards"

Sample chapter from The Rapist by Les Edgerton

Let me tell you who occupies this prison cell. Perfidious, his name is Perfidity. His name is Liar, Blasphemer, Defiler of Truth, Black-Tongued. He lies down with all members of the congregation equally, tells them each in turn they are his beloved, while he is already attending to the next assignation in his relentless rendezvous with the consumption of souls.

He will inhale you, devour you, eat the pulp of your soul and spit out the husk. Behind his eyes lies nothing save the fevered light of unholy candles. He is black magic without redemption, without even the nethermost quality that could be termed human, or rather, he is not that at all; he is all that is estimated human, the sum total of those values that achieve the color that is the presence of all colors: black. He lacks a center—each of you is his center—and he has sucked the marrow dry of each of those he has visited. Beware of the son of Moloch that paces to and fro in that barred room.

This unholy creature is none other than the author of this narrative, Truman Ferris Pinter, which is the name my parents bestowed upon me, to which the State has added the further qualifier, Prisoner #49028. And these preceding words are but the insidious defamations of the man that unfairly prosecuted me and caused me to be sentenced to die by my own choice of execution, either hanging or firing squad?—hours from now? The summary of the time left me escapes my attention. It is not true that the condemned man savors and counts each eroding second that is left to him.

Perhaps after reading this account you will come to a different conclusion about who I am. Perhaps not…

I will tell you my story in chronological order, for I feel, even at this great distance in time and place, that you are much younger than I and no doubt raised on an insipid diet of television. Your attention span would be a single digit near zero and your comprehension of anything penned less than that, so I will keep it simple and direct. And in order. So as not to confuse you.

I actually saw her the night before the rape.

I was wheeling my bicycle past the town tavern. I had no profession then, never have, before or since, as my father was a prudent man, investing heavily into life insurance to the tune of nearly a million dollars, and my mother had the grace to expire during my twentieth year, leaving the bulk of the estate to me, her only progeny. I suppose I do have a profession of sorts: husbanding my inheritance and making it grow, but that is a job that requires little of my time. Mostly, it involves choosing a manager wisely and then standing aside and letting him go about his job. I do, or did, various things to occupy my waking hours, much reading, some writing, a little angling, taking a beer at the local tavern and so on. A gentleman’s life is what I aspire to, by temperament and situation, and it suits me well. I enjoy an intelligent conversation, and while such is a rare commodity in these parts, from time to time the odd professor or well-read graduate loses his way and ends up at our tavern, and we share a beer. I can turn a phrase or two when the audience is capable, and I know a thing or two of Homer and other savants, and my reticence only extends to yokels and sophists, of which sadly, the world appears filled to overflowing at present. Should Charon flow today, the ferryman would require three shifts, multiple crews, and a six-span bridge besides.

Keeping on, in the night in question, I was on my way home from my weekly marketing and elected to pass by the tavern instead of entering. I am by no means a habitué, setting foot inside, at best, thrice monthly, so it was not unusual to continue past Joe’s Tavern (ingenious name!) as I did that evening.

It was just past nine, and as our orbits around the sun are exact, I am sure you know, as it pertains to this latitude, at this time in the summer solstice, in July, you would realize at once that a full moon adorned the heavens and provided enough illumination to read a standard newspaper held at arm’s length. So it was as I pedaled my two-wheeler past crude and raucous laughter, almost certainly directed at one of Joe’s two buxom barmaids, and, if tavern events were holding to custom, probably in response to some raw remark referring to anatomy, specifically breasts. I grimaced at the sound, disgust washing over me. I had attempted more than one conversation with these waitresses, whose names were Jo and Beth (I sense unrewarded optimism on their mothers’ part in affixing such gentle names on the fruit of their wombs, stubborn, misplaced hope that they would turn out as well-bred and docile as Miss Alcott’s creations) and had discovered that decorum was not the path to either’s heart, each preferring the clumsy advances of what you and I would refer to as “rough trade.”

I digress. That is my nature; I admit the fault. A thought flits by here, then there, and I must follow; it is the curse of the nimble mind. All the while that I am pedaling furiously, however, I can see the main road and know that the path I have taken will lead back to it eventually. If you ride with me, trust me; I shall have you back on the wider highway, sooner or later. Is it not on the smaller trails that we sneak up on truth? Such has been my experience. You may get there faster with your blind drive, but will you know how you got there or even why? I think not. The hermit whom the uninitiated would seek, sits not by the side of the road as the poet would have you think, but by the side of the barely visible path, hidden behind the milkweeds and goldenrod, and you fool yourself if you think he waits for you; he waits for no man and is hard to find for a reason.

I was past the tavern and entering the small wood that sprawls just past it, situated between the tavern and my own modest house, the same house I was born in and grew up in. Did I mention that? There is a small path, negotiable only by foot or bicycle, that is a shortcut to home. Midway into this copse, which means fifty yards into the wood, I heard voices and laughter. Curiosity aroused, I laid down my bike safely off the path and stole back through the trees to see what goes. I was naturally furtive in my movements, not wishing to disturb what I honestly thought to be unknown persons engaged in innocent and wholesome activity.

I was wrong . . . oh, how I was wrong! There were several persons, to be sure, but innocent was not the name of their game. They were engaged in the act of sexual intercourse, one by one, three men and a girl. They seemed to be just beginning, the girl still removing clothing and the men standing in a respectful semicircle, watching her.

Propriety suggested that I leave at once, but as I’ve stated before, I’m human, and I gave in to my venal side, opting to remain where I was secreted and watch, like Fabian. I am ashamed, I admit it, but would you have done otherwise? I think not. There are certain things we are all bound up in together, regardless of class or station, and this is one of them. I think certain weaknesses will always be with us, no matter to what plane we evolve.

I didn’t mark the time I stood there, concealed by a dead oak of magnificent girth.

Initially, I wasn’t aware of what was happening. It was just three men and a girl. Two of the men I recognized as being regulars at Joe’s Tavern—common drunks. The third looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him in the dark, not being able to see his features clearly. The woman kept running back and forth from man to man, giggling as she’d peck one on the cheek and then another, her hand flying to her hair after each buss. I could hear her juvenile giggling, and she’d shriek when one reached out to take her by the waist, squirming free to skip up to the next one, breaking away from him as well and on to another; round and round she went. One of the loose women whom I’d also seen at Joe’s many times, cadging drinks from fawning men as she flitted from table to table. I couldn’t recall her name.

Then they began to encircle her, and she was in the midst of their circle, still giggling but now with a somewhat hysterical sound to her laughter. They all stopped in their tracks to stare when she reached behind her, unhooked the tube top she was wearing, and released her breasts. She tossed the top, and one of the men reached out and plucked it out of the air and brought it to his face and buried his nose in the material. I could hear the sharp intake of one of the men and realized I was holding my own breath.

Her breasts shone with perspiration in the moonlight. I forced a moan back from my own lips and felt my member become turgid and painful against the prison of my trousers.

One of the men approached her and knelt in front of her. He reached up and put his hands on each side of her shorts and tugged them down. She helped him by shimmying her hips, stepped out of them when they hit the ground and lifted them with her foot, flinging them in the face of one of the other men. The men laughed raucously, and she shrieked again and giggled as the man who’d taken her shorts off rose and bent over, kissing and sucking on one of her breasts.

And then they had their carnal pleasure with her. I saw each of the three insert, in turn, his penis into the girl and fuck her, twice each. It was interesting to observe the various lovemaking styles of each, and I was amazed at the difference in the size of each man’s organ. One was so small as to be laughable, as indeed the girl did, her hooting causing him to redden and tremble, observable even in the darkness, but her scorn didn’t appear to deter him as he thrust into her with short, violent strokes. The time he gave her was as thrifty as his weapon, and the girl only looked mildly disappointed when he withdrew, but not much so, as I’m sure she realized there were better moments to come from the others.

She moaned from time to time, from deep inside her belly, a low, almost savage and bestial sound that, I confess, aroused me to the precipice, again and again.

At the end, with the last man, she must have been exhausted. She turned over on her belly and, with great effort it seemed, lifted her buttocks, glistening with her moisture, into the air and allowed the last man to enter her from behind.

This seemed to renew her energy and her libido as she began to growl, a sound mindful of a bear or other feral creature, and thrust back at the man. I could plainly see the expression on his face—a mixture of terror and passion—as he desperately tried to keep up with her, but it was plain that she was in control of both him and the situation, and I realized she had been in control all along. Of her. Of the men.

Of me.

To complete this story, after a bit, one of the men produced a bottle of wine or whiskey—it was difficult to tell which at my distance—and they all sat on the grass and talked among themselves in loud voices. The slattern, who I recognized now as Greta Carlisle, at last jumped to her feet, seemingly none the worse for the experience, and began walking back toward Joe’s. The others sat there a moment until she disappeared, then stood up, voices lower now than when she’d been there, and two of them went in the direction Greta had gone and the other turned and went though the wood to his left. I could hear him crashing through the underbrush as he made his way to who knows where.

Later, at home as I lay abed and recalled the event, I relieved my sexual pressure yet again.

That was the night before I raped her. You can decide if my action on that day was warranted or justified. Or, if it was even a rape.