Mr. Murder

Debra Winger died of cancer, leaving Shirley MacLaine bereft, he had been inconsolable, but only a few days later he had seen her, alive again, younger and more beautiful than ever, reincarnated in a new life where she enjoyed a new destiny with Richard Gere. Paul New man has often shared with him bits of wisdom about death, life, pool, poker, love, and honor, therefore, he considers this man one of his most important mentors. Likewise, Wilford Brimley, Gene Hackman, burly old Edward Asner, Robert Redford, Jessica Tandy. Often he absorbs quite contradictory lessons from such friends, but he has heard some of these people say that all beliefs are of equal value and that there is no one truth, so he is comfortable with the contradictions by which he lives.
        He learned the most secret of all truths not in a public theater or on a pay-per-view movie service in a hotel room. Instead, that moment of stunning insight had come in the private media chamber of one of the men it was his duty to kill.
        His target had been a United States Senator. A requirement of the termination was that it be made to look like a suicide.
        He had to enter the Senator's residence on a night when the man was known to be alone. He was provided with a key so there would be no signs of forced entry.
        After gaining access to the house, he found the Senator in the eight-seat home media room, which featured THe Sound and a the better-quality projection system capable of displaying television, video tape, or laserdisc images on a five-by-six-foot screen. It was a plush, windowless space. There was even an antique Coke machine which, he learned later, dispensed the soft drink in classic ten-ounce glass bottles, plus a candy-vending machine stocked with Milk Duds, Jujubes, Raisinettes, and other favorite movie-house snacks.
        Because of the music in the film, he found it easy to creep up behind the Senator and overpower him with a chloroform-soaked rag, which he pulled out of a plastic bag a second before putting it to use. He carried the politician upstairs to the ornate master bath, undressed him, and gently conveyed him into a Roman tub filled with hot water, periodically employing the chloroform to assure continued unconsciousness. With a razor blade, he made a deep, clean incision across the Senator's right wrist (since the politician was a southpaw and most likely to use his left hand to make his first cut), and let that arm drop into the water, which was quickly discolored by the arterial gush. Before dropping the razor blade in the water, he made a few feeble attempts to slash the left wrist, never scoring deeply, because the Senator wouldn't have been able to grip the blade firmly in his right hand after cutting the tendons and ligaments along with the artery in that wrist.
        Sitting on the edge of the tub, administering chloroform every time the politician groaned and seemed about to wake, he gratefully shared the sacred ceremony of death. When he was the only living man in the room, he thanked the departed for the precious opportunity to share that most intimate of experiences.
        Ordinarily, he would have left the house then, but what he had witnessed on the movie screen drew him back to the media room on the first floor.
        He had seen pornography before, in adult theaters in many cities, and from those experiences he had learned all of the possible sexual positions and techniques. But the pornography on that home screen was different from everything he'd seen previously, for it involved chains, handcuffs, leather straps, metal-studded belts, as well as a wide variety of other instruments of punishment and restraint. Incredibly, the beautiful women on the screen seemed to be excited by brutality. The more cruelly they were treated, the more willingly they gave themselves to orgasmic pleasure, in fact, they frequently begged to be dealt with even more harshly, ravished more sadistically.
        He settled into the seat from which he had removed the Senator.
        He stared with fascination at the screen, absorbing, learning.
        When that videotape reached a conclusion, a quick search turned up an open walk-in vault-usually cleverly concealed behind the wall paneling-that contained a collection of similar material.
        There was an even more stunning trove of tapes depicting children involved in carnal acts with adults. Daughters with fathers.
        Mothers with sons.