This was my first truly extreme horror story. Upon publication, Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance Magazine said "This tale is much darker and nastier than your typical Ronald Kelly story", and he was right. I broke past some personal barriers, fiction-wise, with Diary and I haven"t let up since.
August 21 They want to know why I killed those people in Tennessee. They want to know why a no-account b.u.m like Jerry Weller crossed paths with the All-American family and systematically tortured, raped, and slaughtered them, one by one. They seem very insistent for answers. But I give them none. I only counter their questions with questions of my own. Why did Satan drive me to commit such atrocities? Why did G.o.d allow such atrocities to take place?
They think they have me pegged. They brand me a violent psychopath and spout their psychiatric c.r.a.p, but they"re still missing the point. If they weren"t so d.a.m.ned stupid, they would be able to look into my eyes and see the squirming, maggot-infested soul that lies decaying within.
You see, perversity is my forte.
It is normality that drives me insane.
August 29 My parents didn"t tell me for a very long time that I once had a twin brother. When they did, they only said that he had died shortly after birth. I knew they were concealing all the gory details. Eventually, they told me the whole story ... and, boy, was it a doozy!
It seems that there were once twin brothers named Jerry and Jamie. Shortly after their arrival home from the hospital, Mom and Dad went out for a night on the town, leaving the little ones in the care of teenaged babysitter Caroline. An hour later, Caroline"s beatnik boyfriend, Rodney, showed up with a big bag of goodies. There was much drinking and pot smoking and airplane glue sniffing. Soon, Caroline and Rodney had gotten wildly high and thought it would be incredibly funny to put little Jamie in the kitchen oven. They chug-a-lugged vodka and reds as they turned the flame to the max and cooked the squawling infant like a meatloaf.
Supposedly, I witnessed the whole thing, but I don"t remember. h.e.l.l, I was only three months old at the time.
Those freaking junkheads had the right idea, but they made one mistake.
They baked the wrong gingerbread boy.
September 5 How about a nice bedtime story?
Once upon a time there was a clean-cut, All-American family. They never fought with one another, they attended church regularly, and lived by the Golden Rule. They lived in a cozy, suburban home, drove a Volvo, and sent their children to public school ... just like those perfect television families of the fifties and sixties-the Nelsons, the Cleavers, the Brady Bunch.
One summer, this family decided to take a trip to Smoky Mountain National Park. They took snapshots of the sights, watched the Cherokee Indians do their rain dance, and found a secluded campsite so they could commune with nature and enjoy the great outdoors. They sang songs, roasted marshmallows over the campfire, and swapped ghost stories. They had a wonderful time.
Then the man showed up out of nowhere, wearing a friendly smile and a stolen park ranger"s uniform.
September 12 When I was six years old, I would visit my grandmother. She had this sweet, little canary named Penny. Penny would fly right out of its cage in the corner of Grandmother"s sewing room and land in the palm of your hand. It would sit perfectly still and sing you the most beautiful song.
One day, while Grandmother was out working in her flower garden, I slipped into the sewing room and opened Penny"s door. It flew out of its cage and lit lightly in my hand.
"Sing me a song, Penny," I said, but it remained silent.
I took a straight pin from Grandmother"s sewing basket and shoved it into Penny"s little, black eye. It pierced the bird"s tiny brain and emerged out the other side.
Penny sang me a song then, a very loud and frantic song ... but not for very long.
September 23 Bedtime story. Part Two.
The park ranger said h.e.l.lo, sat down beside the fire, and drank a cup of coffee offered to him. As pleasant conversation was exchanged, he studied the All-American family. Father, mother, gray-haired grandmother, and two children, a boy and a girl. He enjoyed their company for a while, as long as he could possibly stand it. And then that d.a.m.ned urge crept into his demented mind ...
October 7 They sent me to reform school when I was seventeen for cutting off my girlfriend"s b.r.e.a.s.t.s with a pocket knife. After all these years, I still haven"t figured out what my true motive had been. Maybe someday I"ll call her up at the state asylum and ask her if she remembers why I did such a horrible thing.
October 14 Bedtime story. Part Three.
Father went first.
The friendly park ranger took a hunting knife from his belt and, with an upward thrust, drove the point up under Father"s jaw. The razor-honed blade sliced effortlessly up through his tongue, the roof of his mouth, and into his tender brain. He fell forward into the campfire and burnt his face off while the ranger rounded up the rest of the All-American family ...
October 19 My attorney wanted me to go for an insanity plea. I fired him and got myself another lawyer with a less attractive track record.
I keep telling them what I want, but they don"t seem to take me seriously.
I want to fry.
I want the juice to surge through my body until my veins pop and I begin to sizzle like a slab of raw meat on a hot griddle.
October 31 Bedtime story. Part Four.
My, Grandma, what big eyes you have ... lying in the palm of my hand.
November 4 Boy, do I miss Nam. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep, I miss it so.
I volunteered to go, you know. Not because I was patriotic, but because I heard there was a lot of weird s.h.i.t going on over there. Some of the other grunts thought I was nuts for signing up, but they didn"t understand. They all hated the Nam, while, for me, it was pure paradise.
The first day there, the platoon sergeant took us cherries out behind a quonset hut. There were four dead gooks lying in a ditch, riddled with bullet holes and flies. The sarge made us get down into that ditch and kick them in the head. He said it was to drive the squeamishness out of our systems before he turned us loose in the jungle. He made us kick and kick and kick until their skulls split open and their brains covered our combat boots.
Some of the guys puked their p.u.s.s.y guts up. I would have been down in that ditch all day if they hadn"t pulled me out.
Be all that you can be ...
November 8 Yesterday, some big guy named Alfonso tried to pull a caboose on me in the jailhouse showers. I was all lathered up and too fast for him, though. I backed him into a corner and, finding him to be an attentive audience, did one of my favorite impressions to entertain the sonuvab.i.t.c.h.
By the time the guards got there, poor Alfonso was lying on the wet tiles of the shower stall, clutching at himself as he bled to death. Me, I just stood there and watched with a bloodstained smile as they searched for the missing part of Alfonso"s anatomy ... one that they will never find.
You know, I do a lot of neat impressions-Bogart, Cagney ... the Donner Party.
November 11 Bedtime story. Part Five.
Hey, kids, let"s pretend that it"s Christmas time!
That pine tree over there can be the Christmas tree and we can decorate it, too ... with pieces of dear, old Mom.
We can use her fingers for tinsel and her organs for ornaments. It"ll be lots of fun, just you wait and see.
Deck the halls with bowels of Mommy ...
November 28 After coming back to the World, I spent some time in Mexico, smuggling drugs and wetbacks across the border. The money was good and kept me in tequila and cheap wh.o.r.es. Then I met up with this guy and we started making movies.
We would lure some chick off the street and take her back to our motel room. We would get her half drunk and give her a snort of c.o.ke laced with Spanish Fly. By the time my partner had his camera set up, she would be hot and ready.
Then I would come out of the bathroom, naked except for one of those weird, leather bondage masks. I would then proceed to make love to her. When she opened her mouth to scream in ecstasy, I would take the linoleum knife and, reaching between our heaving bodies ...
I had that snuff film stashed somewhere in my van with all my other sc.r.a.pbooks and trophies, but I didn"t have an 8mm projector to watch it with. I once considered taking it to a Fotomat to have it transferred to DVD ... but I chickened out at the last moment.
December 1 Bedtime story. Part Six.
How about a nursery rhyme for the children?
This little piggie went to the market.
SNAP!.
This little piggie stayed home.
CRACK!.
This little piggie ate roast beef.
SNAP! CRACKLE! POP!.
December 13 I robbed a gas station in Tucson once and made the attendant eat a t.u.r.d out of the men"s room toilet, promising to spare his miserable life if he would only perform that one, simple act.
He did.
I didn"t.
December 22 Bedtime story. Part Seven.
Oh, did I forget to tell you? The All-American family had a baby with them.
I was going to let it live, honest I was. But then I figured, hey, what kind of life is the kid going to have if I do? He will probably be shuffled off to some sleazy orphanage and be adopted by s.a.d.i.s.tic parents who will beat and abuse him and he will grow up to be a sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d ... just like me.
So I took him down to the campground trash cans and left him there.
You know, where all the hungry bears hang out for breakfast.
January 7.
Well, it"s official now. The jury handed down their verdict and the trial is over. The death penalty. I get off just thinking about it.
In some states it is lethal injection, in others the gas chamber. Here in Tennessee it is Old Sparky ... the tried and true electric chair.
As for my journal, this will be the last entry. The wire that I pried from the springs of my bunk is getting dull and the words are barely legible now. For, you see, the exploits I have penned have not been committed to paper ... but to human flesh. I am a living tome; all my sins and atrocities have been carved into every inch of skin, or at least the places that I could reach.
Perhaps, following my execution, the grisly accounts of my life"s work will be made public. Perhaps some unscrupulous individual will bribe a morgue attendant into letting them take photos of my body and they will end up in a sleazy tabloid or on some off-beat website. Then all the world will be privy to my pursuit of barbarity and perversion.
So, if you are browsing the internet during the late hours of the night, and come upon me ... please, indulge your morbid curiosity.
Come ... read my diary.
Abed.
Elizabeth Ma.s.sie.
"Abed" first appeared in Still Dead, edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector and published by Bantam Books in 1992.
Elizabeth Ma.s.sie is a Scribe Award-winning and two time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of horror novels, short fiction, media tie ins, historical novels, contemporary mainstream fiction, and units and features in American history textbooks, among other things. Her first love is horror, and since 1984 she has had over 100 horror shorts in numerous magazines and anthologies as well as 5 horror collections and 7 horror novels published by Berkley, Simon & Schuster, Carroll & Graf, Leisure, and others. Recently, some of her works have begun appearing in e-book form through Crossroad Press and Necon E-Books. These include her Stoker-winning Sineater, her collections The Fear Report and new collection Afraid, and a new mainstream novel, Homegrown. Currently she is hard at work on a new zombie novel (as of yet unt.i.tled) set in the wild mountains of western Virginia. Beth lives in the Shenandoah Valley with the talented ill.u.s.trator Cortney Skinner. She loves hiking, camping, chai, and World"s Softest Socks. She thinks cheese is the food of nightmares. I mean, come on. It"s old, rotted, coagulated milk. What"s not to fear? Her website is: www.elizabethma.s.sie.com.