Phillip Margolin - Sleeping Beauty

Terri was nervous that her manuscript would be the subject of the first critique. The other students looked just as worried. Maxfield squared up a short stack of paper that lay in front of him. He picked up the first sheet.

“I am a God. Not The God. I am from one of the lesser pantheons but a God nonetheless. I don’t make a practice of announcing the fact, and those that discover my powers never tell. On a balmy spring evening in mid-May I introduced myself to the Reardons of Sheldon, Massachusetts.

“I chose the Reardons because they were so ordinary, the type of people who occupy space while alive and are not missed when they die. Our experience together would be, by far, the most amazing event in their boring lives.

“Bob, a short, overweight man who was losing his hair, was an accountant. Margaret sold makeup at a department store on Main Street. I imagine that she had once been attractive. She still worked hard to keep her figure, but her skin was beginning to wrinkle and her legs were marred by cellulite. Their only daughter, Desiree, was seventeen, a junior in high school. She was of normal intelligence, and her looks were average, but she was physically advanced. I’d caught sight of her when she visited her mother at work. Her tight shorts showed off her taut buttocks and long firm legs. Her T-shirt was cut to display her flat, tanned tummy and sensual navel. Oh how I desired to lick it.

“With my appetite whetted by my first sight of Desiree, I laid my plans. Entering the Reardon home was easy. They were living from month to month and could not afford a security system.

“The master bedroom was down the hall from Desiree’s room. I subdued her parents with ease but I did not kill them. I had no interest in Bob but I wanted him to know who had taken his life force. Gods should not work in anonymity. I taped Bob’s mouth, hands, and ankles and arranged him on his side so he could watch me play with his wife. After Margaret was bound and gagged, I stripped her naked. Then I left them to contemplate their fate and went to Desiree’s room.

“The object of my desire was lying half-covered by a thin sheet. Because of the heat, she wore only a pair of bikini panties and a thin cotton top that revealed her taut nipples and the tops of her firm breasts. I wanted her to experience sheer terror, the appropriate response of a mortal in the presence of a God. I approached her stealthily. Then I clamped my gloved hand across her mouth. Her eyes sprang open and she stared at me with pure horror. The reaction was very satisfying. Her body actually arched off of the mattress as if electricity had coursed through her. I bound her quickly. She was small and no match for my supernatural strength. My arousal was immediate but I restrained myself, rejecting immediate gratification so that our experience would be more intense.

“After caressing various parts of her nude body, I left Desiree and returned to her parents. As Bob watched, I slowly dismembered his wife. He struggled and wept through it all. She screamed as I heightened her pain. It was wonderful and, as a prelude to the main course, thoroughly satisfying. With Margaret on the edge of death, but still conscious, I turned my attention to Bob. His eyes widened when I spoke to him of the journey he was about to take to the next plane of existence. I explained how birth began with pain and how pain was a necessary part of the transition he was about to make.

“My knife was very sharp, and I wielded it slowly and with precision. Each cut would have pleased the most skilled surgeon. Bob stayed conscious even after I opened his belly. He was screaming still when I began to remove his internal organs. It was only when I crushed his beating heart in my gloved hand that he passed from this life to the next.

“I returned to Margaret. Her transition was quicker and less satisfying. She slipped away after I had drained no more than a quarter of her psychic energy. There was an armchair in the room, and I sat on it to gather myself. I had been thinking of Bob and Margaret’s passage from life to death as I worked, but now my attention turned to my corporeal body. It was exhausted from its exertions, and I was hungry. I did not want to undertake the most exciting part of my adventure in this condition. I did walk down the hall to check on the sweet Desiree. I could hear her weep from frustration as I approached her door. I assume she’d tried to free herself and found the task impossible. The weeping stopped abruptly when I entered her room. She grew rigid with fear. I watched her from the door, exploring the curves and valleys of her body with my x-ray eyes. Then I stroked her forehead and told her that I would be returning to her soon. After planting a kiss on her cheek I left her room and went to the kitchen. I was famished and prayed that the Reardons liked to snack. I was in luck. In the back of the refrigerator I discovered a carton of cold milk and a slice of apple pie.”

Maxfield read with his eyes on the page but every once in a while he would focus on one of the students to gauge their reaction. The faces of the others varied from fascination to horror. Terri had grown pale during the reading, and when Maxfield read the part where the killer ate the snack in the victim’s kitchen, she nearly threw up.

“Any comments?” he asked the group when he finished. Terri tried to compose herself, terrified to show her true emotions.

“That was…very gruesome,” Harvey Cox managed. “I mean, if the writer was trying to gross me out he succeeded.”

“Why he?” Maxfield asked.

“It’s got to be a man,” Cox said, casting a quick glance across the table at Brad Dorrigan. “Women don’t write like that.”

“That’s not true,” Lori Ryan protested. “Some of today’s women authors write very grisly scenes.”

“Let’s get back to your comment, Harvey,” Maxfield said. “Was this really gruesome? Does the writer describe his murders in detail or leave the details to the reader’s imagination?”

Lois Dean raised her hand.

“Lois?”

“Before I say anything, I’ve got to tell you that I don’t like books like this. I don’t read them. So I’m biased against it. But I see your point. There are a few graphic parts but most of the violence isn’t spelled out.”

“Is that good or bad?” Maxfield asked.

“Good, I think,” Mindy Krauss answered. “It’s like in Psycho. You don’t really see Norman Bates stab the woman in the shower but you’re sure you did see her stabbed. Hitchcock makes you use your imagination.”

Maxfield nodded and looked at Terri Spencer.

“What do you think, Terri, more details or less detail? Do you prefer it when the writer leaves nothing to the imagination or when the writer forces you to be part of his fantasy?”

Terri had all she could do to keep from racing out of the room but she made it through the rest of the class, even supplying intelligent answers on the two occasions she was asked a question.

As the discussion droned on, Terri tried to make sense of what had just happened. She told herself that the incident in the chapter was a coincidence, but she knew that was impossible. Milk and cake, milk and pie. It was too close to real life. But there was one possible explanation. Some writers fictionalized real events to make their stories seem authentic. Maybe the person who wrote the scene had read about the killer’s snack and used the incident because it was so horrifying. For a moment, Terri felt relieved. Then she remembered the newspaper accounts of her tragedy that she had read. She didn’t recall the snack being mentioned in any of them. Had the police held back that information? She had to know.

And who had written the scene that Maxfield read? She was pretty certain that Lois Dean was not the writer. Dean was working on a historical novel based on her ancestor’s diaries and she had told the class that she didn’t like graphic serial killer books. Mindy Krauss and Lori Ryan were working on a mystery novel, and Lori Ryan had not been upset by the grisly nature of the scene. Lori was even acquainted with women authors who wrote this style of book. But Terri leaned toward one of the men as the author. Which one, though? Harvey Cox had told the group that he was writing science fiction. That left Brad Dorrigan.