Excerpt from Manuscript; Sal #1

This is a piece I wrote about one of the supporting characters in my novella “Country Murder Songs” who’s a sociopath and a sexual predator. Obviously, this story has very mature subject matter, I’m hesitant to even post it, but I think it came out pretty well and I decided to share it. Recommended for readers ages 18+. Sensitive readers might want to stay away too, to be honest.–

---

 

Sal was a foster care system kid. CPS ‘saved’ him from his mother when he was twelve. It was already too late, he was too damaged. Sal is a pathological liar. He takes up different lies and personas and plays a game with himself seeing how long he can maintain them, sometimes for no reason at all; he just likes it. Being Sal Ogilvy is boring. He’s thirty-two years old. He was considered to be pretty intelligent by the headshrinkers who tested him when he was fifteen, but highly manipulative. He was diagnosed with an attachment disorder and a conduct disorder. He spent several of the tests staring at the sole woman psychiatrist’s tits. He stared at them very deliberately until she started to feel uncomfortable. Started clearing her throat and fiddling with her blouse, embarrassed by her larger-than-average breasts. She felt naked, and he loved it. He asked her what color her bra and panties were, and she transferred him to a male headshrinker. She was angry and flustered, he told the male psychiatrist that he couldn’t help it if she was making him hard.  She should dress more decently. Sal is a sociopath. So what? Having a conscience is overrated. Should he feel ashamed? Being a sociopath makes him more interesting. But not interesting enough.

Sal craves constant stimulation; he reads books to keep his mind sharp. He’s an insomniac so he reads late into the night. He gets splitting headaches so bad it feels like his head is being cleaved in half. He doesn’t tell people much about his childhood. What’s the point? Always move forward, right? His mom was a fucking bitch. A hypocritical Jesus freak with a Jekyll and Hyde personality. She was short and fat and smoked Marlboros by the dozen. She had him say his prayers, read his bible, all that shit. The bible is the most overrated book in the world. It’s called the ‘good book’ but it has about as much truth as the average porno. It’s got some sexy parts and good stories but that’s about it. The Old Testament is the best. God didn’t screw around, he took what he wanted. Sal liked that. Women were put in their place.

 

Sal read the Old Testament in less than a month as an adult. It wasn’t a bad read overall. Sal had cystic acne as a kid, he was ugly. He got made fun of and pushed around in school. Then he came to school with a sock full of pennies and beat a boy in the face with it. Sal went to juvie, but no one ever messed with him again. He went to juvie again when he was fourteen for making a little girl touch his penis. She was five or six or seven, he doesn’t remember. She was the foster parents’ biological daughter. He told her not to tell but she did it anyway, he threatened to kill her hamster. He doesn’t get off on kids anymore, not his predilection. He prefers virgins but he mostly takes hookers. Prostitutes are scared of him, but they don’t deny him. Sal lives in a cozy little apartment and peddles heroin.

 

He met Dwight by unusual circumstances, you might say. He was walking through a clearing, taking a shortcut for a drug deal when he saw Dwight doing a beat-down on a girl through the trees. The girl was Kristy Smith. Sweet sixteen. She fell down an incline and didn’t get back up. Dwight was crying and shaking. Sal realized Dwight had killed the girl, so he decided to blackmail him. Dwight was retarded, Sal could tell as soon as he saw him up close and talked  to him. Dwight talked slowly but still stumbled over his words, staring at the ground. He had the slightly high-pitched intonation of a child, oddly open, trusting eyes. Sal told him he was going to report him to the cops if he didn’t do some jobs for him. Drug running. Simple stuff. He probably shouldn’t have placed the responsibility in the hands of an idiot but he was hard up.

 

He told Dwight he would be raped in prison if he didn’t do what he told him to do to scare him. Hell, that would even scare Sal a little, he didn’t scare easily. Dwight obeyed unquestioningly, like a child. He was like a tall scared child, he lived with his mother and his brother, a Neo-Nazi. Sal had seen him around, maybe, strutting around town like a peacock. Dwight was dumb but he could follow directions. He tried to kill himself once but botched it. His eyes were swollen and his wrists were bandaged, he slit them with a box cutter. Dwight was a virgin. Sal gave him motivation to live by hiring a whore for his birthday. Two whores, actually, Sal kind of wanted to see the big dummy have a threesome. Dwight only picked one, the brunette. Well, that was a waste of money. Dwight was nervous and excited, and it was kind of funny, a big shy boy about to get laid for the first time. Sal kind of lived vicariously through it. Sal and some friends stood outside the door in Sal’s apartment while Dwight got his dick wet. Sal heard brief, excited panting and moaning from Dwight. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little turned on himself. Then he heard Dwight and the whore talking quietly.

 

He sounded calm, not so much nervous energy. Dwight came out fully dressed and smiling, and he thanked Sal sweetly. He was so stupid he actually thought Sal was his friend. Like he saved Dwight from being arrested for murder and gang raped in prison out of the goodness of his heart. Please! Sal didn’t care if every inmate in the prison took turns. Still, sometimes Dwight’s vacant simplicity made Sal uncomfortable. Mostly he liked the arrangement, though. Sal was drunk off of power. He was a puppeteer and Dwight was a puppet who wanted to be a real boy. He was like a big kid. He loved his mother. He liked corny TV shows and he was always hungry. He told Sal a story once about going to the Dairy Queen with his mother that lasted almost an hour. My mom. My mom. My mom my mom my mom. Sometimes he made Sal feel rather sour. He kind of wanted to make Dwight suffer to see what he would do. Stupid fucking retard. Dwight sometimes cried about killing the girl, and Sal dutifully comforted him. Dwight came from a shit family, but he was kind of a blank slate. He didn’t understand much, he didn’t get out much. Sal’s associate Trevor gave Dwight acid. Dwight got soft-eyed and drowsy. His head hurt. He pissed and missed the toilet. He threw up. Once he shit his pants and cried out of embarrassment. Sal had him take his pants off and let him sleep. Dwight said, ‘thank you, Sal.’ Drool was running down his chin. Trevor had obviously given Dwight some potent stuff.
Sal cleaned Dwight’s pants so his mother wouldn’t see and wiped the drool off Dwight’s chin like a baby so he wouldn’t get his slobber on Sal’s couch. He saw Dwight laying on the couch with no pants on and Sal’s blanket over him and his clenched fist raised to his mouth like a baby. He wasn’t sucking his thumb but he might as well have been. Sal considered killing him pretty seriously. Dwight was basically dead already. Sal took a kitchen knife and stood over Dwight, his hand shaking, drunk off the power the knife gave him. What would Dwight’s mother think if her blathering idiot son didn’t come home? Possibly she would be relieved. Imagine having this as a son, feeding it, clothing it. But no, let the inmates in prison do it for him. He wouldn’t be murdering Dwight if he did it right now, he would be mercy killing. Dwight groaned and turned over, the blanket falling off his lanky body. Sal quickly put down the knife and put a copy of Playboy on top of it.
“Hey Sal,” Dwight smiled weakly.
“Hi, Dwight. It’s about time you got your lazy ass up. You must have slept for four fucking hours. Did you piss on my couch?”
Dwight looked embarrassed. He ran his fingers through his curly hair and mumbled, “No sir.”
“Good, because if you did I’d have to kill you. I can’t afford a new couch. Do you want me to take you home to your mother?” He regretted not killing Dwight already. Dwight had the dull listless eyes of a sheep. Sal could see why Dwight’s brother Graham went for Neo-Nazism. Dwight was an excellent case for eugenics.
“Your mother might be worried about you. She might wonder what happened if you don’t come home.”