Terra Insanus Read online

  Terra

  Insanus

  Edward

  Lee

  DEADITE PRESS

  P.O. BOX 10065

  PORTLAND, OR 97296

  www.DEADITEPRESS.com

  AN ERASERHEAD PRESS COMPANY

  www.ERASERHEADPRESS.com

  ISBN: 978-1-62105-190-9

  “The Stick Woman,” copyright © 1997 by Edward Lee. Originally published in DARKSIDE, a mass-market paperback anthology by ROC, Dec., 1997.

  “Shit-House,” copyright © 1999 by Edward Lee. Originally published in THE USHERS AND OTHER STORIES, Obsidian Press, May, 1999.

  “The Ushers,” copyright © 1999 by Edward Lee. Originally published in THE USHERS AND OTHER STORIES, Obsidian Press, May, 1999. Revised on April 30, 2013.

  “The Sea-Slop Thing,” copyright © 2015 by Edward Lee. Appears here for the first time.

  Cover art copyright © 2015 Alan M. Clark

  www.ALANMCLARK.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Printed in the USA.

  The Stick Woman

  “I certainly didn’t become a millionaire by wasting my money, so why waste good money on toilet paper, hmm?” he’d told her that first night six years ago. “ You, my dear, are my toilet paper now, and that’s what you will continue to be unless you want me to kill your son.”

  Would he really do that? “No,” Priscilla said. She didn’t believe him. Even a sociopath like Fenton wouldn’t kill their only child. And of the request he’d made? What kind of deranged person would want such a thing?

  The answer came that same night, however, when her loving husband had piped down some video clips onto the television, one of hundreds she would have no choice but to catch glimpses of over the next half a decade. Snuff films, she guessed they were called. Homemade. Men in masks beating children, then raping them, then killing them. Priscilla felt certain one of the masked men was Fenton. Anyone that...sick, she realized, must be capable of anything.

  “Okay.” The word scratched out her throat, like a nail against stone. What could she do? Call his bluff? Ricky was all she had left in the world, even this world, this basement prison Fenton had consigned her to, this chamber of dementia that would make the Marquis de Sade hurl his lunch. “I’ll do anything you say,” Priscilla Brentworth had agreed the next day. “Just don’t... hurt...our son.”

  Moments later, Fenton was bent over, his Italian slacks at his ankles. Priscilla’s face wilted, but she did it, and she knew now she would always do it. He’ll kill our son. He’ll kill Ricky. So do it! Do it!

  “Good, good, that’s a good dutiful wife,” Fenton chortled. “Nice and clean....”

  ***

  A psychopath, but a rich one. Priscilla had discovered Fenton Collins Brentworth’s pathological quirks only after her own greed allowed her to marry him. Too late, she thought.

  For fifteen years, she’d been his pretty piece of country club furniture, the ex-model socialite wife who’d given him a beautiful child. She could not account for Fenton’s sickness, only snippets of an abnormal psych course she’d taken at Maryland. Emblematic rectal fixations. Stage sociopathy. Transitive oral-analism with conative misogynistic-obsession-syndrome. Fenton’s perversion lay deeply rooted in a multi-faceted hatred of women, and by making her do this, the symbol was made flesh. Hence, her imprisonment in general, and the anal thing in specificity. One night, she’d merely awakened in the basement with a bump on her head. “I told everyone that you left me for another man, went back to your hometown.” It was so flawlessly simple. With no living relatives, no friends to speak of? Who would inquire? Why would anyone suspect something so utterly depraved of a multi-millionaire loved by all?

  The basement had a toilet, a 4K Ultra Sony 50-inch flat screen, and a chair. After the first year, the chair had been replaced with a wheel chair, to accommodate her sudden lack of feet. She’d tried to kick him one night. Big mistake. “Next time, I’ll cut your hands off, darling. If you ever try to hurt me, ever again. And if you ever even so much a hesitate to tend to my need, I’ll kill Richard. He’s a freshman in college now, Princeton. Marvelous grades, just like his dear old dad.” Over the years, Fenton would pipe down other video clips onto the TV : Richard’s first car, Richard in a tux before the senior prom, Richard’s high school graduation, etc. Priscilla wept.

  “So,” he’d clarified for her, “you will lick the feces off of my rectum whenever I desire you to.”

  “Why? Why?” she’d sobbed, convulsing. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Why?” He’d chuckled. “Because I’m insane.”

  So here was Priscilla Brentworth’s plight, in order to keep her son alive. Two, three, even four times a day, Fenton would unlock the basement door, come down, and have a bowel movement in the toilet. Then he’d lean over, standing in front of the wheelchair, whereupon Priscilla would bury her face in his bulbous buttocks, licking him clean. And he had a knack for amusing little comments during her ministrations. “Sichuan Beef Proper last night. Can you taste the peppers?” or “Pardon the diarrhea, dear. I’ve been a little queasy of late.” On feisty nights he’d haul her out of the chair and sodomize her, coming into her bowel and then instructing her to fellate him. “It’s only proper you have a taste of your own on occasion.” And sometimes he’d urinate into her bowel too, filling her up till she bloated. “Don’t worry, darling. That was nearly an entire of bottle of Montrachet ‘57. I only piss the very best up my wife’s ass.” Afterward, of course, she’d struggle to the commode and void it all in a forceful, still-warm stream.

  ***

  After so many years, her clothes had rotted, leaving her to sit naked in the wheelchair, mindlessly watching soap operas and talk shows. Once a Jerry Springer clone had hosted a coterie of adults who belonged to a “Diaper-Wearing” Organization. Yes, seemingly normal adults who would come home from their respectable jobs and then don diapers and sit in playpens with their spouses. “It’s perfectly healthy,” the club’s chairman insisted. “It reattunes us to our childhoods, reformulates infant ideals to relieve the stress factors of adult life.” “You’re sick!” an audience member bellowed in reply. But all Priscilla could do was shake her head. Buddy, if you think he’s sick, you ought to meet my husband.

  ***

  The worst part, of course, was the taste of his excrement in her mouth. Semi-sweet, with a creamy sheen that lingered for hours. All she had to wash her mouth out with was toilet water since Fenton had deliberately neglected to supply her with a toothbrush, a sink, Listerine, etc. Priscilla’s teeth had corroded to black, furry pebbles by the fourth year, each of which she’d spat out like malformed pills.

  He fed her when he remembered, an opened can of spaghetti and a tumbler of water, generally twice a day. Every so often, however, he’d forget, sometimes for days such that, by now, her physicality had reverted to something akin to a living skeleton; less than ninety pounds, her head a skin-covered skull. The once ample breasts had shrunk to empty flaps of flesh. The lines between her ribs reminded her of death-camp footage, and her hair, long-since gray now, had grown to the floor. Clumps of hair under her arms, a clump of hair between her legs like a rat’s nest, hair tracing her legs all the way to the bulbed stumps where her feet used to be. And not being able to bathe for six years only provided the finishing touches onto the horror show that was now her life. Her own smells appalled her. Every night she dreamed of herself in Bosch’s Hell: a stick-figure cretin with jutting hipbones and fleshless buttocks, being eaten by beaked demons.<
br />
  ***

  The television couldn’t be turned off, nor could its volume be turned down, and anytime Fenton desired to sicken her further, he’d pipe down still more underground pornography. Images that beggared description and only increased her conviction that she had married quite possibly the most depraved person to ever live. One minute she’d be numbly watching Big Bang Theory, and the next it was some new excursion of disgust. Where does he get these movies? And who makes them? It was hard to imagine even the worst sort of human scum purveying such tapes, but then there was always Fenton himself proving the validity of the market.

  Bestiality seemed a Fenton Brentworth favorite, some even complete with coy titles like Makin’ Bacon, Horsin’ Around, and Dog Day Afternoon. Here was another one called Natal Attraction, in which several men fornicated with a drug-gazed woman clearly late in her third trimester. Their intercourse grew so frenetic that eventually she broke her water. Men urinating on women, vomiting on them, inserting any conceivable object, including dead snakes, eels, and fish, into their rectums and vaginal barrels. More women, obviously drug addicts, chugging down goblets of urine, eating excrement with a spoon, shitting on each other as they twitched for their next fix. In one film, a woman extracted yeast and chlamyidiotic effusions from another woman’s vagina, with a spoon, then ate the dollop of paste without a flinch, while yet another woman sucked pus from herpetic rectums and gonococcal penises with equal disregard. More films proved even worse: gang rapes, beatings, torture. Restrained women screamed bulge-eyed as long needles were calmly inserted into breasts, nipples, clitori, and even their open eyes. And of course, the aforementioned snuff movies. In one film a woman was skinned alive, in another rectal retractors were utilized to distend a woman’s anus to a wide open whole; she screamed and vomited as hooks were inserted, her lower g.i. tract slowly but surely dragged out in pink loops. Women strangled, knifed, shot in the head, women forced to eat parts of themselves and eventually bleed to death via the wounds. In one film, a woman’s head was cut off with a coping saw, whereupon some demented soul inserted his penis into the open esophagus, to copulate.

  No, there was no end to the movies, and obviously no end to the absolute evil of men.

  And, just as seemingly, there was no end to Priscilla Brentworth’s travail as a living host to that same evil.

  ***

  It was not until late in the fourth year that he cut off her hands. She’d been watching some cop show, where a tactical officer had cited the dangers of human hands. “Only twenty-six pounds of pressure is required to break a human neck,” he’d gone on in this supreme expertise. “I once saw a dealer take out a trooper’s eye with a single swipe of the thumb. I once saw a tweeked up girl in an ER kill a doctor merely by slamming the heel of her hand upward into his nose. We’re talking a one-hundred-pound junkie taking out a healthy man twice her size. The blow pushed the sinitic filament straight into the brain...”

  This dissertation enthralled Priscilla—the hope of the damned, and she’d followed the good officer’s advise to the letter, with all her might. But, alas, the faltering blow had only bloodied Fenton’s nose. He’d said nothing, leaving the basement only to return a few moments later with some string and a hacksaw. Then he’d choked her unconscious. She awoke to find stumps at the ends of her arms, the bloodflow staid by tourniquets. Her hands, tossed into the corner next to her feet, decomposed to a state of mummification. Over time, she noted that the fingernails continued to grow minutely.

  Eating came with much more difficulty now, but eventually, she learned to utilize her stumps with at least enough proficiency to keep from starving. She now had chopsticks instead of hands. Like an insect wielding its appendages, she would upend the spaghetti can with the nubs and shake out the contents, then eat it off the floor. Grasping the tumbler of water proved harder but she learned that too. A resilient woman, in other words, sheerly adaptable. The nodelike carpel bone on right wrist enabled her to change TV channels, and getting onto the toilet soon became nothing more than a little inconvenience.

  Now she was a true stick woman: sticks for legs, sticks for arms, a death-camp scarecrow with skin white as a trout’s belly.

  And at least she noted a consolation. What else could he cut off without killing her?

  “Ricky graduated from Princeton today,” Fenton proudly announced as Priscilla rose from a starvation-induced unconsciousness. “I flew up for the ceremony—that’s why I wasn’t able to feed you for several days.”

  Like an animal, then, Priscilla jacked the spaghetti out of the can and sucked it off the floor. Fenton, next, had his expected bowel movement and turned his buttocks to her attentions. “God, I missed this,” he informed her as she licked up the residue. Then he raped her, pissed voluminously up her vagina, and ejaculated in her hair. “And I have more good news, darling. Our son is officially engaged!”

  Priscilla nearly passed out again as her husband hoisted up his suit pants and further enthused. “The DePiester girl, you know, from Potomac? You used to go to bridge club with her mother. They’ll make a lovely couple, won’t they? Soon we’ll have grandchildren, honey! Isn’t it marvelous?”

  Tears burned Priscilla’s eyes as she looked up at the grinning monster. Then she passed out again.

  ***

  Every so often, Fenton would bring her what he referred to as “treats.” Bums, vagabonds, homeless persons. He’d bring them down blind-folded, then show her to them. “A thousand dollars, just as I promised,” Fenton would announce and give the money to the bum. They never said a word as they raped her right there on the floor, their bodies reeking, their skin pocked with all manner of sores, rashes, eczema, etc. All the while, Fenton stood aside, glee in his eyes as he watched the degradation. Performing fellatio proved the worst part, a stench like she could not imagine: sagging scrotums unwashed for years, foreskins heavy with smegma which dissolved on her tongue as she gagged. “Oh, don’t be such a whiner, darling. A little dickcheese never hurt anyone. If you’re good, maybe next time I’ll bring some crackers to go with it.” Her stumps askew, she’d lay paralyzed on the floor as they left, covered in atrocious glue-like sweat, flecks of crust, scabs, and dandruff, and drying semen. Once he’d brought in a vagabond whose penis was so large she felt gored. “I found him just for you, darling. Women always want the big dick. Well...here it is!”

  Her rectum had bled for days.

  ***

  Suicide was beyond her means. With what could she kill herself? Breaking the television screen was impossible; it was mounted in the wall and covered with Lexan. Drowning herself in the toilet, bashing her head on the floor in hopes of a hematoma? No, even in her hell, she couldn’t bring herself to attempt it, for if he caught her, and she survived, her tortures would be worse. But deep down, even though she may not have been consciously aware, there was indeed some potential happenstance she was living for.

  Fenton’s death.

  ***

  Another day with no food or water. Priscilla knelt at the toilet to drink, as the TV blared. In the water’s reflection, she glimpsed her face, and her heart missed a beat when she realized that she was the creature looking back.

  “—by U.N. estimates, at least another 10,000 Rwandan Tutsis reported murdered by militia members as they attempted to flee,” a wooden-faced newscaster dryly recounted. Then, more news:

  “—charged with forty-four counts of child abuse over the three years he served as pastor. Authorities claimed that Father Winherst would regularly molest the children in the confessional.”

  “—eventually found the one-week-old infant in the bag of the family’s trash compactor.”

  There’s evil everywhere, came Priscilla’s harried thought. And what kind of god can there be to allow all of this?

  “An angel came to me,” a woman boasted tearily when Priscilla changed channels. “I saw her, standing right in front of me. She was all glowing in light and smiling, and she told me to that Sue Ann’s cancer would disappear
overnight. And it did! The next day the doctors MRI’d her, and it was all gone, as if it had never been there at all! There really are angels! There really are miracles!”

  Angels? Miracles? Not here, Priscilla thought.

  But when she changed the channel again, her gaze locked on the scene. An ambulance parked before a great posh outdoor display. A huge white cake, long tables draped in pink linen. Grim-faced men in tuxedos and over-dressed blueblood wives looking on. Two more looked on as well. A pretty girl in a white bridal dress. A tall, handsome young man whose worried face looked all-too-familiar. It was her son. It was Ricky.

  EMTs rushed the stretcher to the ambulance.

  On the stretcher lay Fenton.

  “—a untimely tragedy as multi-millionaire Fenton Collins Brentworth, respected businessman and frequent donator to charity, collapsed of a heart attack during his son’s wedding ceremony.”

  Priscilla stared dumbstruck. She thought of angels. She thought of miracles. If there really is a god, she thought, if there really are miracles...

  “—entworth’s estranged wife, a beauty pageant queen and former model with the renowned Kinion Agency, could not be found for comment.”

  Please, die.... Please say that he died....

  “Mr. Brentworth died while in transit to South County General Hospital. Services will be held—”

  She didn’t need to hear any more; her prayer had been answered, her miracle had arrived.

  Priscilla’s heart raged. Someone will come to the house soon—Ricky, lawyers, auditors—someone. If I can get to the top of the stairs and pound on the door...they’ll hear me...

  I’m...I’m...I’m...

  Priscilla’s skin prickled in something akin to new life.

  I’m free.

  ***

  It seemed like a week that she waited there, though it was only a day and a half in actuality. Time dripped like tallow. Her wrist-nubs had bled pushing the infernal chair’s rubber wheels to the end of the malodorous room. On her forearms, then, she’d struggled up the stairs in the fashion of an inchworm, dragging hair-veiled, tinderlike legs behind her. Three times she’d had to repeat the trek, in order to drink from the toilet.