American Psycho
Page 124Elizabeth, naked, running from the bedroom, blood already on her, is moving with difficulty and she screams out something garbled. My organ had been prolonged and its release was intense and my knees are weak. I'm naked too, shouting "You bitch, you piece of bitch trash" at her and since most of the blood is coming from her feet, she slips, manages to get up, and I strike out at her with the already wet butcher knife that I'm gripping in my right hand, clumsily, slashing her neck from behind, severing something, some veins. When I strike out a second time while she's trying to escape, heading for the door, blood shoots even into the living room, across the apartment, splattering against the tempered glass and the laminated oak panels in the kitchen. She tries to run forward but I've cut her jugular and it's spraying everywhere, blinding both of us momentarily, and I'm leaping at her in a final attempt to finish her off. She turns to face me, her features twisted in anguish, and her legs give out after I punch her in the stomach and she hits the floor and I slide in next to her. After I've stabbed her five or six times - the blood's spurting out in jets; I'm leaning over to inhale its perfume - her muscles stiffen, become rigid, and she goes into her death throes; her throat becomes flooded with dark-red blood and she thrashes around as if tied up, but she isn't and I have to hold her down. Her mouth fills with blood that cascades over the sides of her cheeks, over her chin. Her body, shaking spasmodically, resembles what I imagine an epileptic goes through in a fit and I hold down her head, rubbing my dick, stiff, covered with blood, across her choking face, until she's motionless.
Back in my bedroom, Christie lies on the futon, tied to the legs of the bed, bound up with rope, her arms above her head, ripped pages from last month's Vanity Fair stuffed into her mouth. Jumper cables hooked up to a battery are clipped to both br**sts, turning them brown. I had been dropping lit matches from Le Relais onto her belly and Elizabeth, delirious and probably overdosing on the Ecstasy, had been helping before I turned on her and chewed at one of her ni**les until I couldn't control myself and bit it off, swallowing. For the first time I notice just how small and delicately structured Christie is, was. I start kneading her br**sts with a pair of pliers, then I'm mashing them up, things are moving fast, I'm making hissing noises, she spits out the pages from the magazine, tries to bite my hand, I laugh when she dies, before she does she starts crying, then her eyes roll back in some kind of horrible dream state.
In the morning, for some reason, Christie's battered hands are swollen to the size of footballs, the fingers are indistinguishable from the rest of her hand and the smell coming from her burnt corpse is jolting and I have to open the venetian blinds, which are spattered with burnt fat from when Christie's br**sts burst apart, electrocuting her, and then the windows, to air out the room. Her eyes are wide open and glazed over and her mouth is lipless and black and there's also a black pit where her vagina should be (though I don't remember doing anything to it) and her lungs are visible beneath the charred ribs. What is left of Elizabeth's body lies crumpled in the corner of the living room. She's missing her right arm and chunks of her right leg. Her left hand, chopped off at the wrist, lies clenched on top of the stand in the kitchen, in its own small pool of blood. Her head sits on the kitchen table and its blood-soaked face - even with both eyes scooped out and a pair of Alain Mikli sunglasses over the holes - looks like it's frowning. I get very tired looking at it and though I didn't get any sleep last night and I'm utterly spent, I still have a lunch appointment at Odeon with Jem Davies and Alana Burton at one. That's very important to me and I have to debate whether I should cancel it or not.
Confronted by Faggot
Autumn: a Sunday around four o'clock in the afternoon. I'm at Barney's, buying cuff links. I had walked into the store at two-thirty, after a cold, tense brunch with Christie's corpse; rushed up to the front counter, told a salesclerk, "I need a whip. Really." In addition to the cuff links, I've bought an ostrich travel case with double-zippered openings and vinyl lining, an antique silver, crocodile and glass pill jar, an antique toothbrush container, a badger-bristle toothbrush and a faux-tortoiseshell nailbrush. Dinner last night? At Splash. Not much to remember: a watery Bellini, soggy arugula salad, a sullen waitress. Afterwards I watched a repeat of an old Patty Winters Show that I found on what I originally thought was a videotape of the torture and subsequent murder of two escort girls from last spring (the topic was Tips on How Your Pet Can Become a Movie Star). Right now I'm in the middle of purchasing a belt - not for myself - as well as three ninety-dollar ties, ten handkerchiefs, a four-hundred-dollar robe and two pairs of Ralph Lauren pajamas, and I'm having it all mailed to my apartment except for the handkerchiefs, which I'm having monogrammed then sent to P & P. I've already made somewhat of a scene in the ladies' shoe department and, embarrassingly, was chased out by a distressed salesperson. At first it's only a sense of vague uneasiness and I'm unsure of its cause, but then it feels, though I can't be positive, as if I'm being followed, as if someone has been tracking me throughout Barney's.