The Sadist's Bible Read online

  THE SADIST’S BIBLE

  by Nicole Cushing

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, and events portrayed are

  fictional or are used in an imaginary manner to entertain. Any resemblance to any real

  persons, living or dead, is co-incidence or purely intentional for the purpose of satire.

  THE SADIST’S BIBLE

  By Nicole Cushing.

  Ebook first published by 01Publishing 2016.

  Copyright © 2016 Nicole Cushing.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover Art by Josh Finney.

  Cover Design Copyright © 2012 by Josh Finney

  MORE INFO:

  WWW.01PUBLISHING.COM

  WWW.NICOLECUSHING.WORDPRESS.COM

  ISBN-00: 978-0-9839230-9-1

  Electronic Edition

  April 2016

  CHAPTERS

  The Covenant

  The Escape from God

  Captured

  Faith

  Revelations

  Damned with Blessings

  Miracles

  The Covenant

  “Do u really think ur ready 2 die? I don’t want u chickening out on me.”

  Ellie thought about Lori’s question. Stared at it in the chat window. Rubbed her eyes.

  Yawned. It was late. She should start packing, but she had to see this through. It was

  simply too important a conversation to cut short. The click-clack of keys on her ancient laptop sounded like grinding teeth as they churned out her reply. “There’s nothing here

  for me. So...why not? I mean, I’m damned anyway.”

  “I think it will b awesome. Dying is the most intimate thing 2 people can do

  2gether.”

  Ellie paused. Let that sink in. Lori had a way with words. She was younger, but

  seemed so smart. Could’ve made it into college, but hadn’t even applied. Should’ve gone

  into advertising. She could make even the most outrageous thought sound believable.

  Was she right? Was dying the most intimate act two people could share? Ellie wasn’t

  sure. She started typing. “But before we die, there will be...well...you know...”

  “I will ravish u, before. We will suck things and lick things and poke things and

  probe things. Just thinking about it makes me want to jill off. U won’t die a virgin. :)”

  “I’m not a virgin. I’m almost old enough to be your mother.” She hit the enter key

  and thought about what she was going to say next. Something pithy and sexy and...

  Lori’s next message plopped into the window, interrupting her train of thought.

  “We’re only thirteen years apart. That’s not old enough 2 b my Mom (but, maybe it is,

  out where u live). ;) Anyway, I know ur not a virgin. You’ve had cock, but not pussy. Ur a girl-gin. Very well. U won’t die a girl-gin.”

  Ellie’s eyes focused on a single word: “die”. Her heart pounded. The muscles in her

  arms stiffened. She took a deep breath, absorbing the finality of it. How could Lori chat about it so casually? They’d talked about this for weeks. Now, she was getting ready to

  make it real. To pack. To leave. To never come back.

  “I...I think I love you, Lori.”

  Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty. Then, finally, the message. It wasn’t what Ellie

  had been waiting for.

  “I want 2 make love 2 u. And I want 2 die with u.”

  Ellie felt her face flush. Something inside her started to feel sick and broken. She

  pounded the keys more forcefully as she typed. “Damn it! Why can’t you say that you

  love me, too?”

  “Why is it so important that I say it?”

  “Because then I’ll know I’m dying for love.”

  “Ur dying for the same reason I am. 2 escape. Ur escaping a stupid marriage u

  should’ve never agreed 2 and I’m escaping...well...let’s put it this way: a very bad...man.

  Someone who won’t ever stop torturing me, unless I’m permanently out of reach. So it’s

  not about love. I’m not being mean. Just...honest. Anything else is self-delusion.”

  Ellie thought back to the last nineteen years with Jesse. A stupid marriage? Yes, she

  thought. Lori was right.

  (Lori was always, right – wasn’t she? She was so much younger than Ellie, but far more brave about pursuing what she needed. Lori was still in her twenties, but had

  already made peace with death and figured out her own sexuality. Ellie envied her.)

  The marriage had indeed been stupid. Self-deluding. Mother liked Jesse and

  encouraged her to date him, simply because he was a guy and the dates were enough to

  encourage her to wear makeup and fix her hair. Mother never thought she looked girly

  enough. A date turned into two, turned into a proposal, turned into a wedding right out of high school. Everyone thought she was pregnant, but she wasn’t. That was the ironic part

  – everyone gossiping that she must’ve gotten knocked up, when in fact she was a virgin

  on her wedding day.

  That said, she’d thought she wanted a child, once. But there had been many

  problems. When she turned thirty-five they both decided against continuing the expensive fertility treatments. Jesse had started volunteering as the Sunday School superintendent at church. He’d told her he felt called into this ministry as a way to soften the blow of being childless. He’d brought her on board as a teacher. She joined in the get-togethers attended by all the other church ladies, too. She was the only one whose hair wasn’t gray. They

  sipped coffee and read the Bible and lamented the number of women in modern society

  who sported tattoos.

  Sometimes she’d joined in with their tattoo-bashing, just to feel included.

  Yes, Ellie was forced to agree with Lori. (Sexy black short-shorts Lori. Huge, milky-white tits falling out of a purple tank top Lori. Young, free-spirited Lori. Lori the Wise.

  Lori the Brave.)

  Lori knew Ellie better than Ellie knew herself. She revealed to Ellie that she was

  choosing to die because it offered the only apparent escape from a life that had been

  created for her, rather than by her.

  Then, another message popped up in the chat window: “How does it feel 2 finally

  come out?”

  Ellie thought long and hard about the question. She liked looking at soft legs and

  tight rumps and big breasts and imagining what she might do with them. She wasn’t quite

  so crazy about Jesse huffing atop her. Such things were discussed openly on television

  these days. But they weren’t appropriate topics of conversation in southern Indiana, at

  least not among any of the acquaintances she called friends. She’d never admitted these

  things to anyone outside of the groups and chat windows of the social network.

  It had all started this way: one night, on a lark, she typed “suicide” into the social

  network’s search bar just to see what came up. After only forty-five minutes of checking out links and groups, she found a refuge called “The Buddy System”. Its description read:

  “Putting the ‘pair’ in despair ;)”. She asked to join, and to her delight was allowed in. It was a place to find a suicide partner.

  After a day or two of lurking, she felt safe enough to post and (eventually) even

  divulge her attraction to women. Some of the men in the group made crude comments

  and sent her unsolicited pornography they thought she’d enjoy. It horrified her to think of s
uch photographs appearing on the same computer she prepared Sunday School lessons

  on. She was tempted to leave after that fiasco, but Lori showed up the next day and sent her a private message. It said she thought Ellie was pretty. “A soft butch...” she said (it took some Googling for Ellie to decipher just what that meant). “I’m bi,” Lori said. “I’ll be ur buddy. We can mess around b4 we finish it.”

  Lori’s photo looked young, but not too young. She said she was twenty-four. Legal.

  Stunning. A little chubby, maybe, but that just emphasized her curves. (And what

  curves.) Ellie felt a pang of grief at the thought that someone so young and hot wanted to die. Ellie felt butterflies in her stomach at the revelation that such a woman found her attractive. Then she felt guilty. Such desires were an abomination. God would be

  disappointed in her.

  “Hey, u still there?”

  Ellie had drifted off. Gone off yet again into one of her fogs, thinking about how

  they’d first met. She saw Lori’s unanswered question there in the messaging window:

  “How does it feel 2 finally come out?”

  She started typing again. “Who said anything about coming out? This won’t be

  public. It doesn’t need to be. I thought we’d agreed on that.”

  A pause.

  “U came out 2 me. And 2 the others in the group. Doesn’t that count?”

  That was different, Ellie thought. Coming out on the social network didn’t involve

  talking to people. It just involved typing.

  She was about to write her response when Lori dropped another line of chat in the

  window. “U realize this has consequences, right? This isn’t just a game 2 u, is it? We’re talking about something...something really REAL. Fucking is different than talking about sex. Dying is different than talking about death. What we’ve done so far...the phone calls and the Skyping and this...I mean...I like it...but I want 2 make sure I can count on u 2 b there. This is important 2 me.”

  “You’re the one talking about it like it’s a trip to the nail salon. How do I know that

  YOU’RE going to be there when I get to West Virginia? You really haven’t considered

  how big a leap this is. You’re still talking about it like it’s some sort of bonding

  experience.”

  “That’s because I’m ready. Long past ready. I’d just kill myself here, now, alone, if I

  didn’t have the urge to fuck ur brains out first. So, I’m comfortable enough with death to joke about it. Ur still scared, aren’t u? That’s what I’m concerned about. Ur going to

  chicken out.”

  There they were, two people sharing cyber-closeness, each leery of trusting the other

  would make the leap to flesh-closeness.

  “You can count on me. I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ve got to get to bed though.

  Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day. I’ve got lots to do before I leave.”

  “*HUGS*”

  “*HUGS* right back at you.”

  Then she closed her windows and shut down her computer. Brushed her teeth.

  Changed into shorts and a T-shirt. Wriggled into bed next to Jesse as he snored through

  his C-PAP mask.

  * * *

  The next morning, Ellie had to pack pantsuits. If she didn’t, Jesse would suspect this

  wasn’t really a business trip. She had to pack the noose. If she didn’t, she’d have to stop and buy rope while on the road.

  She had to wash her panties, so she’d have enough. ( Granny panties, she thought.

  Just when in the course of my marriage did I let myself go to the point I wore granny panties? ) How many would she need? How many more days would she live? She erred on the side of cowardice. Five. That’s how many days she’d told Jesse she would be

  gone. She’d arrive in West Virginia early tomorrow. Then three days there (during which

  she’d have to feign attendance at a trade show). Then a day for the return trip. (But she wasn’t coming back – not really – at least, not alive.)

  Her actual plan – no, she couldn’t claim credit for it; Lori’s plan – was to do the deed at a luxury resort nestled away in the mountains. A place called the Hillbriar. The website revealed it to be magnificently ritzy and equally sad-looking. Opulent but

  obsolete. The sort of place that had been popular in the decades before air conditioning, when the mountains offered a relief from summer heat that was impossible to obtain any

  other way. The sort of place that had fallen on hard times since then, offering slightly discounted rates to bring people in. Once she arrived, she’d only have a few days to work up the nerve to kill herself.

  (No, not to work up the nerve...a few days to get drunk and, hell, maybe even try some drugs for the first time and let the chemicals dissolve any lingering resistance like so much liquid plumber eating through clogged pipes. At this point, she felt well-beyond working up to anything. She only wished to succumb. The Hillbriar had a reputation as an oasis of decadence in the midst of rural poverty. Where better to succumb to the inertia of her own perversity? Where better to let it carry her down to where it had always been

  tugging her?)

  Succumb.

  Succubus.

  Lori was the succubus she’d succumb to. They’d make love for the first and only

  time and then – without so much as a shower or a prayer for forgiveness – they’d die. If all went as planned they’d remember to place the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, and

  the hotel staff wouldn’t discover them for a few days. There’d be bloating and rope and

  decay and flies intermingled with the scent of sex.

  The Hillbriar people would be shocked. She and Lori didn’t enjoy the idea of

  shocking people, though. That wasn’t the point. The point was that they shared two

  unspeakable urges that demanded to be satisfied.

  Would it make the news?

  She didn’t know. A double suicide at the Hillbriar would be out of the ordinary, of

  course. But neither she nor Lori were from West Virginia. No one in the town would

  know or care about them. That would discourage local news coverage. The sex aspect

  would grant the story a certain edginess. But would the media report that part? Given that she was married to a man, wouldn’t they withhold that information? For his sake? The

  hotel would see it as a scandal and would try to keep things hush hush. And the hotel

  owners likely had enough money and local influence to ensure things were kept hush

  hush.

  Besides, it wasn’t as though she was a celebrity with actual character worth

  assassinating. She was just a saleswoman for a barge-building company on the Ohio

  River. She looked and sounded no different than any other woman who’d spent her life in

  southern Indiana. She’d lived without fanfare. Her house looked like every other house in her subdivision. Her hair looked like every other coiffed head in her subdivision. She

  dressed without fanfare. She dreamed without fanfare. It seemed to be the only way to

  live.

  Would she die without fanfare?

  She considered this for some time before actually agreeing to Lori’s plan and then

  she decided that, yes, that’s the way it would turn out. No obituary in Clark County, at least, would disclose the cause of death. Word would get out, of course. It couldn’t be

  kept totally quiet, but no one at the funeral would mention it. This, she imagined, would lead to a certain tension – the weight of the secret on all of them. Serves ‘em right, she thought. If I have to die for my secret, the least they could do is acquire one of their own.

  A mental image came to her: the pastor, his entourage of church ladies, and Jesse making small talk around her coffin. Everyone’s careful to avoid mentioning the s-word. They’re walkin
g on eggshells, haunted by the unspeakable. Live with it, she thought. Feel that weight on your shoulders? The tightness in your head? That’s what having a secret feels like. Live with it!

  Then there’d be the flipping of calendars. Months. Years. Until one day her life

  would be so little remembered that it would be as though she’d never been born. (How

  long would it take for her to be practically forgotten? Ten years? Twenty? Surely not

  much longer.)

  But first she had to finish packing the pantsuits. Finish washing her panties.

  * * *

  In Portsmouth, Virginia, Lori wrapped a powder blue housecoat belt around her neck

  and started to jill off. She exerted no pressure on the belt. This wasn’t the time for

  strangulation. This was the time for fantasizing. Rehearsal. She wondered if she’d jill off when she hanged herself. Would she find suicide erotic? Would there be an instinct for

  self-preservation that would lead her to flail her hands up to the rope, or would she defy the odds and have the presence of mind to go out while getting off? She liked the sheer

  boldness of the idea. The perversity. In the whole history of womankind, had anyone

  masturbated during a suicide attempt? Possibly. They’d both have to jill off to up the ante. Surely, in the entire history of the world, no two adulterous women hanged and pleasured themselves simultaneously.

  There was much to do to get ready for it all. Packing. Mapping things out on GPS.

  Getting cash out of the bank.

  She chided herself. No, don’t think about the preparations. Not now. Think of the

  payoff. The high of dying. The orgasm of death throes. The escape. Think of that. Think of that. That’s the pleasurable part. Don’t start worrying and fuck up this moment. Don’t start thinking about–

  –the baby.

  She hadn’t told Ellie she was a mother. That would’ve only complicated matters.

  Ellie would never have gone along with any of this if she’d known a child was involved.

  But, of course, the baby would have to go with her. She would kill the baby. Then she

  and Ellie would kill themselves. And that way the baby’s father could no longer torment

  her. She would go to Hell for her multiple sins. She would be tortured, eternally. And yet torture was a given, wasn’t it? Life was torture. It had never been anything else. So what did she have to lose? And besides, she suspected that Hell’s torture would be less painful than that dished out by her baby’s father. At the very least, it would introduce some