The Serpent (1)
Simon King

 

14th January

As he sat in the crowded café, slowly sipping his third cup of coffee, he had already decided which of the three waitresses he was going to kill that night. Actually, he had pretty much decided this two minutes after entering, but had forced himself to sit and take his time. After all, these things shouldn’t be rushed. He may have been mistaken. But he wasn’t. It would be the short blonde one tonight.

Basing an opinion merely on appearance would not have labelled Gerald O’Donnell as anything more than a meek, rather world-beaten man; what the less kind would call a ‘loser’. He was of only average height – around five feet nine – with nondescript features; thinning mousy hair in the process of a trial separation which was inevitably going to lead to divorce, a pale round face, and eyes which looked as though they had been cut out of a Turner sky, assuming no definite colour. This bland face was supported by a stooping frame which appeared to be losing the battle against gravity.
  
Now he sat hunched over his cup, looking through his eyebrows at the waitresses as they walked briskly backwards and forwards, occasionally chatting with each other as their paths crossed. Harlots every one, as Gerald knew only too well. He carefully brought the steaming cup up to his mouth with his bandaged hands and sipped the hot coffee, wincing slightly as it met his sore, chapped lips. Replacing the cup just as carefully, his eyes never left the waitresses who continued to bustle backwards and forwards. One turned towards him, catching him staring at her. She stared back defiantly, which was not his usual experience. Normally when women caught him looking at them, they turned away quickly. But this…this…brazen hussy just stared back. Stared him out. Eventually, he looked down at his coffee, seething with religious indignation inside. She was the one. His instincts had been spot on, as usual. Tonight, that whore would be shown the error of her ways; taught that she and her sex were the cause of the downfall of the human race. He sighed mildly as he considered the job he had set himself. Eradicating the world of the sinful sex was wearing him out, yet it was his appointed task, and he must see it through. He continued sipping his coffee, and, when finished, stood and walked to the counter.
  
At the till, the designated sacrifice was waiting for him to pay. “That’ll be two pounds ten please”, she chirped through her fixed smile. Gerald handed over the exact change without speaking. He looked directly at the waitress, who this time refused to meet his stare. She simply followed the movement of her hand with her eyes as she placed the coins in the cash drawer of the till, then closed it. She turned her back on Gerald immediately and busied herself with some anonymous task. Gerald stared at her back for a further few seconds, before leaving the café.
  
Outside in the bitter January night, he checked his watch under the light of a streetlamp. Half-past ten. He knew, from previous observation, that the café closed at eleven, and the waitresses left shortly afterwards. He moved into the deep shadow of an alley two shops down from the café, and took up his waiting position. He would probably have to stand here for about three-quarters of an hour, and the cold was already biting into him; but this was his duty, and he did not complain.

*

At twelve minutes past eleven, Jenny Parker left the Coffee Cup Café, pulled up the collar of her woollen overcoat, and began the short walk home along the high street; a walk which would be even briefer than normal. Twenty yards along the street, a figure rushed out at her from the dark, grabbed her from behind, clamped a bandaged hand over her nose and mouth, and dragged her back into the alley. She struggled and fought, to no avail; the stranger was powerful and completely constrained her.
  
Gerald pulled Jenny deep into the alley, well away from the high street, down behind the back of the shops, where the service entrances and rubbish skips were found. He manoeuvred Jenny up against a wall, turned to face her, keeping her mouth covered with one hand, and stared again into her eyes. The flash of recognition in them came slower than he might have expected, but she was obviously shocked, which must have caused the delay. However, when that recognition did come, it gave rise to a renewed bout of struggling, which only a well-aimed punch to her left temple could subdue.
 
Jenny recoiled from the blow, stopped struggling, and let out a whimper, of which she was immediately ashamed. She would not admit to herself the terror which was fast overcoming her, as she realised that her assailant was the staring creep from the café. He spoke.
  
“’And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.’ Genesis chapter four, verse six. Have you eaten of the tree, you harlot?” Another strike to Jenny’s face accompanied the last word of this speech. Jenny flinched away, and said nothing.
  
“’And God said unto the woman, I shall greatly multiply your sorrow.’ Genesis chapter four, verse sixteen. I am here to carry out God’s decision, you whore.”
  
Jenny, detecting that this man was seriously deranged and, for whatever twisted reason, set on causing her severe injury, probably death, began a last desperate struggle for freedom. So concentrated was she on trying to escape the madman’s clutches, in fact, that she initially did not notice the sharp narrow blade piercing her abdomen. Several seconds passed before the agonising pain bore down on her senses, by which time it was way, way too late to stop it. Gerald thrust the knife deep into the soft flesh of Jenny’s body, up to the hilt, then gave it a final, vicious twist. Withdrawing the blade, the familiar metallic smell of blood began to permeate the cold air, as Jenny’s life-force vented from the bloody hole. Her woollen coat was soaked in seconds, and she looked down at herself with a curious mixed expression on her pretty face; pain, shock, and bemusement. She looked up at Gerald, and found his eyes were on hers, and continued to watch her as she slumped down the wall, collapsing in a heap on the frosty ground. A whisper of steam rose from the hot body fluids now flowing freely out of Jenny, which Gerald found mildly fascinating. He watched over her for several minutes, until he saw the final ebbing of life from the body, then offered up a short prayer of dedication and thanks to his Lord God. From his coat pocket, he took out a clean white handkerchief, wiped the bloodied blade scrupulously, dropped the handkerchief on the ground beside the cooling corpse, and left the scene. The job was done, and done well.

*

He entered his small first-floor flat, took off his coat and hung it up, and walked straight to the bed. He knelt down by the side of it, resting his elbows on the top sheet and linking his fingers together, striking the traditional pose of prayer, and began a much longer and fuller prayer than the earlier situation had enabled him to do.

“Lord God, most Gracious Father, I your humble servant hereby pledge to you my life, such as your Divine Wisdom will grant me, and swear to you my unwavering dedication to your Word. My sole desire is to give myself wholly to the duty of the cleansing of this heathen world, that it might one day reflect the magnificence and purity of your vision. Grant me, oh Lord, the courage and strength to carry out my appointed task with the fortitude and compassion of you son, our Lord Jesus Christ.” After this spontaneous devotion he ended, as always, with the Lord’s Prayer.

Rising from the bed, he walked into the tiny kitchen, gingerly removed the soiled and bloody bandages, and inspected his hands. They were completely covered in scarlet eruptions. Some of the sores were fresh and weeping, some older and scabbed over. His hands reminded him of the volcanic surface of some alien world, with new craters appearing on top of old, eventually hiding the original surface.

So far, the MRSA that was gradually taking over his entire body, had confined its more obvious symptoms to areas normally covered by clothing. Of what remained, only his hands were unsightly enough to warrant any measures of concealment. The bandages were merely applied to this end. In reality, the sores would benefit more from being open to the air, but he must avoid drawing attention to himself. More importantly, he could not risk leaving any biological trace of himself on the sacrificial remains, for later detection by the Police, the servants of the Fallen Angel. Although Gerald was confident that his Lord would protect him should he find himself in the clutches of Satanic forces, nevertheless he took it upon himself to take all possible precautions, as a sign that he was not taking the Lord’s Divine intervention for granted.

Gingerly cleansing the fresh sores with cotton wool and antiseptic cream, he wondered again how he had managed to contract this unusual and painful disease.

MRSA – Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, as his medical encyclopaedia had informed him – was the name given to an antibiotic-resistant strain of a bacterium found naturally on the skin of many humans, and in the nasal passages of most children and about half of all adults. The strain had arisen as a direct result of evolution. As antibiotics became more and more widely used, the bacterium had found itself under increasing attack, and had evolved to resist that attack. Since bacteria reproduce every few hours, the rate of evolution outstripped the rate with which new antibiotics could be introduced, until several strains of Staphylococcus Aureus existed which were only vulnerable to one particular antibiotic, out of the many now available. The disease caused sores and boils to erupt literally overnight, anywhere on the body, attacking sites where the skin was broken. Sufferers, Gerald included, were in permanent discomfort, and frequent agony, from the lesions and pustules which covered their body. Treatment was possible, if difficult, but to Gerald this was not an option. Firstly, he had too much work to carry out to confine himself to a hospital for any length of time; but secondly, and much more importantly, he believed this condition to be a test conferred on him by God, in order for him to prove his dedication to his duty. So he bore his pain and discomfort with a tolerance which could only have come from his religious convictions.

As he cleaned up his hands, he pondered next on where he had contracted the disease. Whilst he realised that, as this was a plague bestowed on him by the Lord, it could have struck at any time, he also thought that there was a good chance that he had in fact contracted it from the nurse he had sacrificed a few months ago. Since MRSA is particularly prevalent in hospitals, this was the most likely earthly source. Not that it really mattered. The job had still been done, and that was the important thing. That was the only thing. The uniformed Jezebel had been removed from the World, to spend Eternity in the company of the rest of her sort, burning in the cauldron of Hell.

After making and eating a meagre sandwich, Gerald lay on his bed, read a few chapters from his Bible, the only other book he possessed, before dozing off with his reading light still on.

*

“Don’t hit me again Daddy, please. I’m sorry, I won’t do it again. Please Daddy. Please.”

“You are a heathen thug Gerald, whom God has instructed me to teach the error of his ways. And in the Lord’s name, I will carry out my appointed task.”

“But I didn’t mean to tear the page Daddy, the book slipped while I was turning the page. I’m sorry Daddy.”

Gerald had committed the mortal and unutterably evil sin of slightly tearing the top of the page of the Bible he had been reading aloud from; The only book he was allowed to read from. Martin O’Donnell was deaf to his seven-year-old son’s pathetic pleading, and as he pulled his thick leather belt out from the loops around his trousers, he began reciting slowly the Lord’s Prayer. As the opening line, “Our Father, who art in Heaven….” was intoned, Gerald began to cry. The tears were part fear of the pain to come, part simple Pavlovian response. He knew that this was his father’s accompaniment to all his beatings, that each emphasised syllable of the prayer would be accompanied by a hard, stinging whip from the cruel belt. Gerald bent over, as non-compliance would lead to an escalation in the duration of the beating. The prayer continued.

“…Hallowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil,
For thine is the kingdom,
The power and the glory.
For ever and ever,
Am-en.”

The thirty lashes were administered with an accuracy which ensured that the pain would be confined to the same strip of Gerald’s fleshy behind, thus magnifying the effect of the lesson. The last two licks of the leather, falling on the ubiquitous ending to the prayer, were delivered with extra force behind them, but that was fairly irrelevant since Gerald was by now in such a state of agony and distress that he felt them as slightly as a butterfly brushing past his cheek.

After the beating, Gerald fell silently onto his hard bed, turning his sobbing inwards to avoid incurring the further teachings of his father, who took a very dim view to outward shows of emotion of any kind. Not for the first time, not even for the first time that hour, he wished his mother was still here. She had tried her best, and had partially succeeded, in keeping her husband’s most vehement and physical lessons from her son. But she had succumbed to God’s call two years ago, so his Daddy had told him. She was now with the angels, and Gerald’s only hope of seeing her again was to adhere to his teachings and follow the path of righteousness.

Gerald awoke, feeling the tears drying on his face, and was immediately furious with himself. Back then, he had been weak and evil. Now, thanks to his father’s wise and tolerant teachings, he had become strong and clean in the Lord’s eyes. He had his appointed task, as had his father before him, and he intended to pursue it with the same single-minded vehemence. He wiped the last of the moisture away from his face roughly, sniffed hard, and said a short prayer, before switching off the reading lamp and returning to a subsequently dreamless sleep.


24th January

Elizabeth Montgomery had a regal-sounding name which belied her rather less eminent profession. She had been working as a prostitute for the last three years, since losing her last ‘proper’ job as a packer at the local frozen food factory. That had not been particularly well-paid, certainly she earned a good deal more money now for a lot fewer hours work, but she would swap her present occupation for her previous one any day.

She would admit to herself, unless she were being unusually hard, that she was pretty good at what she did, but took no pride in the fact whatsoever. An attractive woman, who looked all of her thirty-one years and looked the better for it, she had the kind of face and figure which could fit into most of the fantasies and peccadilloes of her various clients. Five feet seven, longish dark hair, and eyes one shade browner than black, she would have stood out in any company. Amongst her colleagues, however, she looked almost ridiculously out of place. But this fact did not register for long in the minds of the men who picked her up. Lady Luck, they assumed, had simply favoured them this night by presenting them with a woman who was a cut above. As a consequence, she was able to clear six hundred pounds a week with no effort at all, and that from only four nights’ work. She was not happy with the job, not happy at all, deeply ashamed in fact; but with a three-year–old daughter to feed and clothe, and without the benefit of the girl’s father, who had scarpered as the first swellings of pregnancy had changed Elizabeth’s svelte outline, needs must.

Elizabeth stood now, hands thrust deeply into her pockets against the raw northwest wind, at the edge of the moon-shadow cast by the railway bridge over Curzon Street. The area was the acknowledged pick-up point for prostitutes, and as she watched for potential trade, she also watched for potential trouble, as much in the shape of undercover Police as plain-clothed psychopaths.

At three minutes past two in the morning, the accuracy being due to the visible clock on the church tower several streets away, she saw him walking towards her from under the bridge. He emerged from the shadows almost as though comprised of their essence. He had on a long trench-coat, the collar upturned, and strode briskly, head down, hands in pockets, directly towards her, ignoring the three or four other ladies of the night that he passed.

“How much?”, he asked as he closed up on her.

Elizabeth trotted out her terms in the strictly professional, flat tone she always used. “Fifty for straight sex, thirty for a hand job. No kinky stuff, no oral, no anal.”

“Okay, straight sex. Do you have a place?”

“Yes, I’ve got a flat round the corner. Take your hands out of your pockets”, she ordered.

“Why?”

“So I can see you’ve got nothing in them” she explained, still in her best businesslike tones.

Gerald pulled his hands out, and waited while she checked inside each pocket. Satisfied, she turned and began to walk away, indicating for him to follow. He did so, resisting the urge to perform the sacrifice here and now, so intense was his hatred and revulsion at this ungodly bitch.

Elizabeth unlocked the door of her ground-floor flat, let Gerald in, then locked the door behind him. She pointed at a door, and he walked through it into a small bedroom, which was unfurnished apart from a rather new-looking double bed. There were no blankets on the bed, no quilt, just a bottom sheet. Strictly functional. This bed was not used for sleeping, and its many occupants had no need of additional warmth. Gerald felt sick.

She took off her coat, hung it on the hook behind the door, then sat on the bed. Gerald stood for a moment staring at her before taking off his own coat and hanging it next to hers. He joined her on the bed. She started to unbutton her blouse, flicking her shoulder-length hair back behind her. Gerald felt no arousal, no stirring of desire, at the sight of her, only disgust at the way she was willing to debase herself like this with a total stranger. Oh yes, the World would be a cleaner place without this particular filthy creature in it.

He waited until she was removing her skirt, then from his pocket he produced a short length of bailing twine which she had not felt when she frisked him earlier. As she turned briefly from him, he announced, “’And the Lord said, Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.’ You offer men the fruit of the tree, and turn them to evil by tempting them to eat.” As she turned, Gerald flung the twine around her neck and pulled tightly, straining the muscles in his arms and shoulders. Elizabeth began to struggle, and scratched at his bandaged hands, desperately trying to draw air through her crushed larynx. He was grateful of the bandages around his hands, as they blocked the lethal-looking red nails from deeply furrowing his hands.

 

 

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Copyright © 2000 Simon King
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