James Ellroy - Silent Terror

You have been unconsciously trying to relive killing the dog;

You have been doing that because the excitement made you come;

You have been taking needless risks in order to achieve sexual gratification;

If you continue taking those risks, you will be caught, tried and convicted of burglary;

You must stop.

My brain-typewriter flashed a series of huge question marks in response to the last statement, and as they struck blank paper they felt like blows to the heart. I gripped my gouger harder and harder, and my mind flailed for the answer to the most self-destructive dilemma known to man. Then another set of statements hit:

Cut it off — don’t let it be the death of you;

Hold it in like Shroud Shifter;

But he has Lucretia;

Make yourself have dreams that will give you release;

But that is betraying myself;

Do what everyone does to them self;

No;

No;

No

Touch yourself, maim yourself or kill yourself; but do it now.

I stripped, and walked to the full-length mirror on my bathroom door. Staring at my image, I saw a tall, bony boy-man with pasty skin and fierce brown eyes. I recalled the sleep-time explosions that had come not from dreams but from an accumulation of hateful images from my brain-movies, and I thought of how shameful it felt when I awoke to proof of what I secretly desired. My heart pounded, and shortness of breath made my whole body flutter. I held the sharp edge of the gouger to the underside of my genitals, then to my throat. I drew thin trickles of blood at both places, then gasped at what I was doing and hurled myself away from the mirror and onto my bed. There, with the handle of the burglar’s tool making brushed-steel indentations in my groin, I wept and gave myself release — the bitter price of being able to continue.

My brush with self-annihilation filled me with a resolve to fantasize less and steal more. The diminished mental life hurt, but the boldness I gained in its backlash staunched the festering of the wound. In a week I pulled five jobs, each in the jurisdiction of a different police department, each with a different form of entry, netting a total of seven hundred dollars and change, two Rolex watches and a Smith & Wesson .38 that I planned to file down until it was completely ridge-surfaced — the ultimate burglar’s weapon. Then fate bonded me to history, and my ascent and descent began at the same time.

It was June 5, 1968, the night after Robert Kennedy was shot in L.A. He was lying close to death at Good Samaritan Hospital, the place where I was born. The T.V. news showed huge crowds holding a vigil outside the hospital, and huge crowds meant empty dwellings. Walt Borchard had told me that residental areas surrounding medical facilities were loaded with nurses — good places to “patrol for pussy.” The combination of factors spelled “burglar’s heaven,” and I drove downtown with visions of big empty houses dancing in my head.

Wilshire Boulevard was a constant stream of horn-blasting cars, a premature funeral procession. The sidewalk in front of the hospital was packed with gawkers and premature mourners weeping and waving placards, and hippies were selling “Pray for Bobby” bumper stickers. There were a number of women wearing nurse’s uniforms in the crowd, and a nice solid feeling started to grow in the pit of my stomach. I parked in a lot on Union Avenue, several blocks east of Good Samaritan, and went walking.

My initial fantasies about the neighborhood had been inaccurate. There were no big houses, only ten- and twelve-story tenement-type buildings. I lost my solid feeling when I tried the outside doors of the first three red brick monoliths I came to and found them locked. Then, at the corner of Sixth and Union, I looked back on the block I had passed and saw floor after floor of dark windows, in building after building with identical side-access fire escapes. I retraced my steps and began squinting upward for open windows.

The third building on the east side of the street caught my eye; it had a half-open window on the fifth floor, within an arm’s length of the fire-escape landing. I looked around for possible witnesses, saw none, and dragged an empty garbage can over to just below the fire escape’s drop rungs. Swallowing a teeth-chattering burst of fear, I stepped on top of it and hoisted myself up.

The night was clear but moonless, and I pulled on my gloves and forced myself to tiptoe like Shroud Shifter did when he approached a victim. At the fifth-floor landing, I looked out and down, again saw no one watching me, and tried the fire-escape door. It was unlocked, and beyond it there was a long, threadbare hallway. It was the safer access route — if my target door could be easily snapped. But the window, with three feet and a sixty-foot drop between me and it, somehow seemed more powerful and sinister.

With my right leg stuck out to full extension, I tried to lift the window. It stuck, but as my foot gained purchase, I was able to push it open all the way. Squatting down, I flung my leg into the dark space beyond it, anchoring myself. Then, before I could panic, I pushed off the landing with my other foot, grabbed the wooden window frame with both hands and executed a perfect silent entry.

I was now standing in a modest living room. As my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I saw mismatching sofa and chairs; brick and board bookshelves stuffed with paperbacks; a hallway off at a right angle directly in front of me. A strange sound was coming from the far end of it, and I went tingly with the thought of a possible watchdog. Pulling out my gouger, I treaded down the hallway until I saw an open door spilling candlelight and what I knew immediately to be the sounds of lovemaking.

A man and woman were on the bed, entwined. They were covered with sweat, and were moving snakelike, in counterpoint movements: him relentlessly forward, up and down, in and out; her sideways with her hips, jabbing outward with crossed legs wrapped around her partner’s back. A candle sitting atop a bookshelf acted in concert with a light breeze blowing from an open window, sending long flutters of light through the darkness — a flame dance that ended at the point where the lovers were joined.

Their moans rose, subsided, became half-verbal gasps. I watched the candlelight illuminate him inside of her. Each flicker made the point of bonding both more beautiful and more gutter-explicit. I stared, transfixed, oblivious to the risk I was taking. I don’t know how long I was standing there, but after a while I began to anticipate the lovers’ movements, and then I started moving with them, silently, from a distance that seemed vast but intimate. Their hips rose and fell; mine did also, in perfect synchronization, brushing an empty space that felt alive with growing things. Soon their moans escalated in unison, reaching toward a point where they would never subside. I caught myself about to cry out with them, then bit down on my tongue as Shroud Shifter sent me professional caution. At that point my whole being rocketed into my groin, and the two lovers and I came together.

They lay gasping, clutching each other fiercely; I pressed my back into the wall to hold down the residual shock waves of my explosion. I pressed harder and harder, until I thought my spine would crack; then I heard whispers, and a radio voice filled the bedroom. A somber-voiced announcer was saying that Robert Kennedy was dead. The woman started to sob, and the man whispered, “Sssh. Ssssh. We knew it was going to happen.”

The last three words startled me, and I moved back down the hall to the living room. I saw a pair of cord trousers draped across an armchair and a purse on the floor next to it. With one eye on the candlelight glow emanating from the bedroom, I pulled a billfold from the back pocket of the cords and a wallet from the open purse. Then I eased myself out the door before the beautiful candle magnet could draw me back to the lovers.