Read Online Riptide by Michael Prescott - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael Prescott
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nicknamed Wisp. He flitted in and out of the entries, a perpetual nuisance to the diarist. But then, everyone was a nuisance to him, “a plague and a contention” as he wrote. The diarist hated everybody—students, employers, colleagues, people he passed on the streets.
His seething hostility perhaps found expression in his bloody dreams. If so, the imagery of violence was intimately bound up in his mind with the symbolism of sex. Possibly it was his struggle to avoid facing the full implications of the dreams that caused them to return night after night. He did not want to admit that he could have fantasies of violence. He did not want to unleash the killer inside.
But the killer was there. The writer needed only to unlock the door to his deepest urges. In the next entry he had found the key.
I know now why I see her face in my dreams and in the streets. It is a message to me, flashed as if by semaphore. An intuition of the truth.
To-night as I walked the streets, I came upon her lodgings. I felt I must see her at once, despite the lateness of the hour. I pounded on the door until a woman answered, Amelia her roommate. I enquired after Kitty. Amelia amazed me by saying Kitty was not at home. She was not expected back at any particular time. No purpose would be served if I were to wait.
What decent woman would be out and about in the dead of night?
I saw it then. I saw her true nature, and how narrowly I had escaped disaster.
She is a whore. She walks the streets at night, taking coins from eager customers. She sells herself for the price of a pint, shameless as an alley cat.
I see now that in my heart I always knew. It was why I threw her over. At the time I had no clear conception of my motives. Now all is clear.
She was whoring even then, behind my back. She and Amelia also. Their virginal modesty is a sham. They are as chaste as goats. Pure as ditch water. Clean as soot.
In his paranoia and delusion he had misinterpreted the roommate's understandable reluctance to let him enter. Most likely Kitty had been there all along, and Amelia was simply covering for her. But he couldn't see the obvious truth.
His next entry explored his epiphany. The neat penmanship of earlier passages was gone. Now she saw many of the distinguishing traits of criminal handwriting. Dot grinding, the deep indentation of periods and similar shapes produced by jabbing pen into paper. Variable pressure, as the writer at times allowed his pen to flow lightly, then abruptly bore down. Extreme angularity, the script slanting hard to the right. Harpoons—fishhook-shaped strokes originating well below the baseline.
The stroke analysis suggested an explosive personality, boiling with rage.
I find my mind so crowded with thoughts—strange new linkages of ideas all unifying into a comprehensive overview. I see—everything. The world is a sump of vice and filth, women lowering themselves like beasts, men sharing their degradation--illness and debauchery! Pestilence and pollution! We are fleshly things. What is the female? What gives her this power? The blood in her which is her life. They are called the weaker sex, the gentle sex—a lie ! If they are so weak why do they rule us with their cunts?
We’re told it is conscience that distinguishes Mankind from lower animals. A sanctimonious lie. Conscience is but a weakness imbued in us by those who would control us. Remember poor Augustine: ’Give me chastity and continence but not yet!’ Conscience places the natural man at war with himself, his hardy spirit made impotent by social doctrine, strait-jacketed. Meantime what of the men who break free? They are made to wear actual strait jackets, confined to hospitals, shut up in cages.
Can not keep it to myself. It is my calling, my mission.
The others won’t know—no one will know. It will be my secret. My private undertaking ha ha there’s a good word. I am the undertaker indeed. I will give the penny-a-liners
His seething hostility perhaps found expression in his bloody dreams. If so, the imagery of violence was intimately bound up in his mind with the symbolism of sex. Possibly it was his struggle to avoid facing the full implications of the dreams that caused them to return night after night. He did not want to admit that he could have fantasies of violence. He did not want to unleash the killer inside.
But the killer was there. The writer needed only to unlock the door to his deepest urges. In the next entry he had found the key.
I know now why I see her face in my dreams and in the streets. It is a message to me, flashed as if by semaphore. An intuition of the truth.
To-night as I walked the streets, I came upon her lodgings. I felt I must see her at once, despite the lateness of the hour. I pounded on the door until a woman answered, Amelia her roommate. I enquired after Kitty. Amelia amazed me by saying Kitty was not at home. She was not expected back at any particular time. No purpose would be served if I were to wait.
What decent woman would be out and about in the dead of night?
I saw it then. I saw her true nature, and how narrowly I had escaped disaster.
She is a whore. She walks the streets at night, taking coins from eager customers. She sells herself for the price of a pint, shameless as an alley cat.
I see now that in my heart I always knew. It was why I threw her over. At the time I had no clear conception of my motives. Now all is clear.
She was whoring even then, behind my back. She and Amelia also. Their virginal modesty is a sham. They are as chaste as goats. Pure as ditch water. Clean as soot.
In his paranoia and delusion he had misinterpreted the roommate's understandable reluctance to let him enter. Most likely Kitty had been there all along, and Amelia was simply covering for her. But he couldn't see the obvious truth.
His next entry explored his epiphany. The neat penmanship of earlier passages was gone. Now she saw many of the distinguishing traits of criminal handwriting. Dot grinding, the deep indentation of periods and similar shapes produced by jabbing pen into paper. Variable pressure, as the writer at times allowed his pen to flow lightly, then abruptly bore down. Extreme angularity, the script slanting hard to the right. Harpoons—fishhook-shaped strokes originating well below the baseline.
The stroke analysis suggested an explosive personality, boiling with rage.
I find my mind so crowded with thoughts—strange new linkages of ideas all unifying into a comprehensive overview. I see—everything. The world is a sump of vice and filth, women lowering themselves like beasts, men sharing their degradation--illness and debauchery! Pestilence and pollution! We are fleshly things. What is the female? What gives her this power? The blood in her which is her life. They are called the weaker sex, the gentle sex—a lie ! If they are so weak why do they rule us with their cunts?
We’re told it is conscience that distinguishes Mankind from lower animals. A sanctimonious lie. Conscience is but a weakness imbued in us by those who would control us. Remember poor Augustine: ’Give me chastity and continence but not yet!’ Conscience places the natural man at war with himself, his hardy spirit made impotent by social doctrine, strait-jacketed. Meantime what of the men who break free? They are made to wear actual strait jackets, confined to hospitals, shut up in cages.
Can not keep it to myself. It is my calling, my mission.
The others won’t know—no one will know. It will be my secret. My private undertaking ha ha there’s a good word. I am the undertaker indeed. I will give the penny-a-liners
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