Fiction: ASPHYXIOPHILIA
By Suphi
I
was only 17 when I murdered my family. I got away with it too. In those days
all you had to do to get away with anything was hop a freight train outta town.
This was right before CCTV became ubiquitous. Before DNA. Before GPS. Before
the FBI even had an N-DEx. The fax machine was cutting edge and cell phones
were the size of bricks that only a few Wall Street types could afford.
That
was the golden age. You could disappear. Drift around in a vast landscape. Just
another anonymous body moving among masses of other anonymous bodies. Truly
detached. Like a phantom. As long as you had no family, no past, no baggage.
That’s why I always tell people. You wanna be free? You gotta do two things.
Kill your parents and move around. They always assume I mean the former in a
symbolic sense. I don’t correct them.
So
anyway that’s what I did. I killed my parents and moved around. But I soon ran
out of money. So I got a job. But I hated it. So I decided to break into my
boss’ house and rob him. Since I’m gonna rob him, I thought to myself, I might
as well kill him too. And since I’m gonna kill him, I further reasoned, I might
as well cuff him to the radiator and make him watch as I raped and killed his
wife. So I cuffed him to the radiator and raped and killed his wife. Then I
strangled him with his wife’s pantyhose, took his wallet, feasted on some
leftover potato salad I found in the fridge and took a long, steaming piss on
their carpet.
The
next day, out of nowhere, I was struck with the sudden realization that I was
destined to be a great artist. I stole a book about Francis Bacon from the
public library. The preface said that it wasn’t an artist’s job to make society
feel good or safe or content. That the job of an artist was to force people to
face our dark side in all its horror. To jolt them out of their self-satisfied
complacency. I figured I could do that better than anybody. I took up painting.
But it was too hard. I got frustrated and bored. Then I took up sculpting. But
it was too hard. I got frustrated and bored. Then I took up poetry. But it was
too hard. I got frustrated and bored.
Then
finally the universe came calling. A zine got stuck to the bottom of my shoe as
I was prowling a sorority house one night. I picked it up. It was about Duchamp
and found art. And right there, just minutes away from a frenzy of sexual
sadism, I invented a whole new art form. I wasn’t only going to use objects I’d
fish out of the trash or scavenged from junkyards for my readymades like
Duchamp did. I was also gonna sprinkle in the souvenirs I kept from my victims.
Pure genius. I broke into the sorority house to collect some.
A
short month later I was ready to share my work with the world. The exhibit was
titled Serial Artist. My favorite piece was the one I called The Mangled
Mannequin. I had found a mangled mannequin discarded in the dumpster behind a
department store. I was strangely aroused by it. So I took it back to my studio
and humped it. Awkwardly. Then I gave it my unique creative touch. I took the
pantyhose I tore off my dead boss’ dead wife and pulled it over its head. Pure
genius.
But
very few people showed up. And those that did show up sneered at me. This is
the problem with people. They’re fucking stupid. They’re too pathetic to create
anything brilliant themselves so they start seething with resentment when they
see a superior being like me do it. But they’re also passive-aggressive
cowards. They dress up their narcissistic envy in the cloak of objective
criticism. They reward mediocrity and persecute the gifted. They reward
mediocrity because they themselves are mediocre. They persecute the gifted
because we remind them of their mediocrity. It’s disgusting! Absolutely
disgusting!!
I
was enraged. Particularly at one snooty piece of shit. A wannabe art critic. I
stalked him. Decapitated him. Boiled his severed head. Put it on a spike and
placed it at the entrance of my next show. The lips and cheeks had boiled off
leaving his teeth exposed. It looked like he was smiling
and
greeting the guests as they were coming in. Everyone was amazed at how lifelike
it looked. But even that wasn’t enough for the simpletons to recognize my pure
genius. I was accused of being morbid. Disturbing. Unsettling. Frightening.
What do they want? Cupcakes and handjobs?
I
was indignant. I started exploding into these tirades. It’s not an artist’s job
to make society feel good or safe or content I barked. The job of an artist is
to force them to face our dark side in all its horror. To shock them out of
their self-satisfied complacency. A few patrons bought it. So I decided to do
something extra special for the opening of my new gallery. I mixed in the flesh
of a pretty little co-ed in the hors d’oeuvre. “Is that tuna?” one idiot
asked. “No, it’s a virgin sacrificed to the god Dionysus.” They assumed I meant
it in a symbolic sense. I didn’t correct them.
I
was slowly beginning to make a name for myself in the art world. But the real
breakout moment came when I exhibited my most daring work yet. It was time to
graduate to performance art and I had just the perfect idea. I was getting
tired of constantly having to go back to the woods to have sex with the corpses
I’d dumped there. So I thought why not transport a fresh one and do it on stage
in front of a live audience?
But
the performance didn’t quite elicit the reaction I was hoping for. One old bag
dropped her poodle and fainted. Some man wearing a beret threw up the hors
d’oeuvres. The whole place cleared out in seconds. But there was a few people
who didn’t believe they were actually witnessing an act of necrophilia. They
thought the cadaver I was humping was just another one of my uncannily lifelike
dolls. So when I was done I turned to them and took a bow. They started
applauding. Slow at first. Then enthusiastically.
It
was all over the newspapers the next day. By the following week I was mentioned
in every respectable art column in the country. I was praised for pushing the
envelope. For shattering society’s taboos. I was approached by an agent. A very
reputable one. The fashionable crowd were all clamoring to see me do it again.
Before I knew it I was banging dead bodies all over the country to adoring
spectators. After a while I started running out of corpses. And the celebrity
factor made it more and more difficult for me to go out hunting for new ones.
One potential victim recognized me just as I was sneaking up on her. She
promptly asked for my autograph and offered to blow me in a public
restroom.
Then
one day the parents of a missing girl recognized their daughter in a tabloid
photo. One that was taken during an especially heated performance. They went to
the cops but were dismissed as delusional. Everybody thought it was the grief
talking. Then more people started coming forward with identical claims. They
too were met with disbelief. It was simply too outlandish to investigate. The
police chief went so far as to call it a “moral panic.” He even offered to give
me around the clock protection. I didn’t think I needed it but the irony of the
police protecting a serial killer from the loved ones of his victims was simply
too delicious to resist. So I accepted.
Turns
out I did need the protection. There were riots breaking out outside the
gallery every night. I remember being shocked that anybody would be emotionally
attached to others enough to remember and search for them after they
disappeared. I had always imagined America to be a place where people darted in
and out existence with no trace. Once you were gone it was as though you were
never really there to begin with. Like a phantom. But apparently not. These
pesky little families just would not let go.
The
whole media circus was also beginning to take the joy out of the whole thing.
And to make matters worse I received the weirdest fan letter ever sent in the
history of fan letters. This crazy bitch was begging me to kill her and use her
body for my next show. She said she wanted to be immortalized as the
first real human prop that I performed on. I didn’t correct her. I
accepted the offer only because it spared me from having to go hunting for new
prey. It had now become all but impossible with all the groupies and
photographers following me around. Plus the irony of a prey volunteering for me
to skip all that effort and work from the comfort of my own home was simply too
delicious to resist. Perhaps I should be grateful. No serial killer ever had it
this good.
She
came over. Said she had run away from home with dreams of becoming a movie star
in Hollywood. The only part she ever landed was of a prostitute getting stabbed
in the opening scene of some cheap slasher flick. How fitting. Anyway she took
off her clothes and wanted me to have sex with her. Per her instructions I was
to choke her to death just as she started to cum. But the whole consensual
role-playing thing was a huge turn off. I could barely get it up. She, on the
other hand, was too ecstatic to even notice. I got annoyed by the whole charade
and chocked her out early.
But
it happened again during the show that night. Right in the middle of the act… I
went limp. The whole place went silent. I tried to get going again but nothing
worked. The inauthenticity of it all killed my boner and my art
career. The press had a field day. “Performance Art Anxiety” blared one
headline. But my rapidly vanishing celebrity status got the worst possible
boost with another headline. Apparently the crazy bitch had also sent a letter
to the papers. She wanted to make sure the whole world knew that she was the
first real human prop that I performed on. Thanks to her letter the
world found out that she was the last.
My
arrest and subsequent trial was an international sensation. I got on the cover
of Time magazine. “Pure Genius or Pure Evil?” asked the title of one of my many
unauthorized biographies. T-shirts with the plea “Kill Me Next Please” written
across the chest became a fashion craze among busty women. Psychologists were
lining up to interview me about my childhood. Scores of female admirers were
camping out in front of the prison just to catch a glimpse. I had so many
panties mailed to me that I started giving them out to guards and fellow
inmates. My art was fetching record prices at the most prestigious auctions.
I
turned the courtroom into my own larger-than-life stage. My ultimate
performance art. And I managed to split public opinion right down the middle.
Half the country was chanting for me to be fried on Old Sparky. The other half
worshipped me. I milked it for all it was worth but in the end the former won.
The latter were getting bored and moving on to the next scandal anyway. So
after a million stays, appeals and escape attempts my execution date was
finally set in stone.
As
my last meal I had medium-rare steak with eggs (over easy), double hash browns,
toast with butter and jelly, milk and juice. Then a priest came to my cell
mumbling something about repentance. I told him to go suck Satan’s cock. I
don’t believe in Satan or God or anything like that but I couldn’t think of
anything else to say that would make him instantly leave me the fuck alone.
Then
the guards came and took me to the scaffold. Tied the noose around my neck and
my hands behind my back. A few relatives of my victims and other petty
bourgeois do-gooders there to witness my hanging were all staring at me with
squinted eyes and self-righteous smirks. When asked what my last words were I
turned to them and said “Oh just go and fuck yourselves.” I wondered if the
drop and snap would cause an accidental decapitation. Then thought how cool it
would be if Andy Warhol made a series of silkscreens of my skull if my head did
get severed. That brought a smile to my face.
The
trap fell open. The snap didn’t sever my head but it was sharp enough to drop
my khakis down to my ankles. And as I was quivering at the end of the rope I
got an enormous hard-on! It was so huge that I heard some of the women
shrieking and gasping. Then came the most explosive orgasm of my life. I was
facing the witnesses and my body started to twist and turn as I was coming. It
was like I was spraying the front row with a hose. The shrieks and gasps turned
into the screams of people stampeding away to avoid my last cum shot.
I
died with a big grin on my face and an even bigger woody pointing right at my
executioners. My final fuck you to the world. What a way to cum, what a way to
go.
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