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[5] MS. ZERI
[Living Room of Dr. Hertz’s Residence | 25 April, 2012]
Oh, my God.
So many questions cloud my mind. Why? How? When? What now? Who knew?
I walk toward the bed and run my hands down the intricately carved post, before realizing what I’m doing. I must be out of my mind. I use the bottom half of my blouse to wipe down the section that I’ve just run my hands along, but that’s not going to work too well either because my clothes are soaked with blood.
Dr. Hertz. Licensed therapist (aka licensed the-rapist). A person you are expected to trust. A person you expect not to abuse that trust.
As an editor, words are something I’m up close to on a daily basis. On a deeper/personal/non-work-related level, I can often gather impressions or have fun with the structure and syntax of language.
“The-rapist” is one of the earliest words that ever jumped out at me this way. I was fourteen years old when I first noticed how that word was spelled.
Must’ve been a premonition of some sort. Dr. Hertz himself said that I seem to have been very precocious, even from a young age.
Did I mean to slaughter him? I don’t think so. I don’t even know why I’m here. The blood on the floor and on the walls are real though. This isn’t fiction. This is a crime scene and God is my only witness.
Our session today began like any other, with me all on edge, biting my nails almost.
“How was the past week?” Dr. Hertz asked, as per normal.
He’s a tall, lean man, in his late fifties. I’m speaking in the present tense. Was. He was. Not exactly physically repulsive. Recently divorced. Thin metallic glasses, though he had seven glasses in his collection. He’s use a different one for each different day of the week.
“Just okay,” I’d replied. “But I’m tired and jaded as always. Seriously? I don’t know how long more I can keep this up.”
“Keep what up?”
“This whole facade that everything in my life is fabulous.” I launched into a mini-meltdown, with the words just pouring out of my mouth like I had to get it all out at one go. “Even though I’m overworked and underpaid—even though my heart’s really not in my work—even though I don’t really respect what any of my colleagues and bosses do—oh, it just doesn’t ever end, does it?”
“There appears to be something masochistic about it,” Dr. Hertz remarked, looking me over from where he was seated a few paces away. “You always describe your predicament with such...passion, such fervor. Like you’re too involved in it to really be able to step back from your situation.”
My heart fell a little. I don’t know why. It was the way he used the word “situation.” I was just another unit with another problem to be fixed and sent along my way. But maybe that’s the way human beings treat each other nowadays. I know it’s how I treat the books I’m employed to “edit.” The notion of treating each book like it’s “a baby being born” is a ludicrous and romanticized flight of fantasy. Unless one’s idea of birthing a book means birthing something that’s high-concept with super-sky-high profitability, never mind the true value of the inner contents.
“This recent book you were working on,” said Dr. Hertz. “It’s an S/M novel?”
“Marketed as such.” I spoke in a flat, deadpan tone, with an equally empty, expressionless look upon my increasingly weathered face. “People will believe anything you tell them. If it makes them feel good, they’re sold.”
“You mentioned before you have frequent fantasies of being tied up, Ms. Zeri?” Dr. Hertz pressed on, glancing at some of the notes in his files.
“Why, yes. I don’t understand why. I already experience a kind of bondage everyday being part of a major corporation. You’d think I...”
Would want something different in the bedroom, my inner goddess wanted to reply.
Dr. Hertz walked over to the door, making sure it was locked and that the blinds were down.
“When was the last time you had sex with a man?” Dr. Hertz loosened his tie a little. I noticed it was a gray tie. Oh God, gray ties. “As in, a real man, like this Christ Grey in the Fifty Shades book you’ve been editing that women of all ages are swooning and fainting like flies over.”
I shrugged. “Two years ago, maybe.” I’d mentioned a couple of flings with a female to Dr. Hertz. I thought I’d enjoy it, but I didn’t really. Not because the other person was female. It just seemed more mechanical than something new and engaging. “Is Christ Grey a real man?”
“You’re the editor—you tell me,” Dr. Hertz replied. “Publishers are the ones who conduct the marketing research, no?”
“You’re the therapist.” I gave a casual shrug. “I believe you’d know what makes people...tick? It’s how you make a living, after all.”
“Oh, very sexy, Ms. Zeri.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“I like how your mind works. My intelligent clients are always the sexiest.”
I was about to yawn and fall off my seat—I was just so bored with the whole “straight into bed” thing, never mind two or three coffee dates before a quick shag—when it hit me then that this was supposed to be a client-therapist relationship, not some conversation struck up by some yuppie in some bar packed with faces I wouldn’t be able to recognize if I saw them on the street the next day.
When I next looked up, I saw the gray tie lying at the back of Dr. Hertz’s neck, with the two ends of the tie hanging over his shoulders.
“This will relax you,” he said.
I didn’t think he could move so quickly. He reached over and grabbed me by the neck, half-dragging half-shoving me over to the nearest wall in the office. He got me to face the wall, and brought the tie around my bare neck, saying, “Scream or make a sound, and I am going to choke you.”
It is strange when you’re in that kind of “situation.” You’d think a person would have the brains to fight back or do something.
I can’t understand myself.
I could’ve kicked him in the balls, scratched his eyeballs, smashed a vase or some paperweight or something nearby against the side of his skull.
Instead, I remember my body actually becoming passive, in his grip, as he turned me around again, with the tie still tightly around my throat as he held the tie out to one side. He was very hard when he dropped his pants—his full body weight was pressing against me as his free hand undid the top buttons of my blouse.
He squeezed my left slightly-bigger breast and sucked on the nipple hard.
“Very nice,” he remarked, when my nipple got erect. My God, I was so confused. I knew what he was doing was wrong. But my body was reacting in another way entirely which was several shades of fucked up.
He entered me that way, not too quickly, taking his time, in fact, with my eyes wide open, as he kept repeating, “You are always so demure.”
I don’t know if that was a deranged fantasy of his or if I really give off that vibe. I always think to myself, “Career Woman!”, when I get dressed everyday in the morning in my corporate attire. Who knows what others think of my image?
When he was about to come he got me to get on my knees, and he held me down with his hands on my head, and his knee pressing my shoulder against the wall so I wouldn’t be able to crawl or scamper away. I should’ve just bitten his penis right off. But no, I swallowed. Why?
The strangest part is that I didn’t even hate myself for it, at that exact moment in time. There was no humiliation, no disgust, no fear, nothing. Just like an empty shell.
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME, my inner goddess shouted to me while my lips were wrapped around his...you know. With the Muse song of that title playing somewhere far away at the back of my mind too. The song was slightly different though. I seemed to be hearing some Gothic symphony orchestra providing an extra boost of sinister instrumental music. There was a really dark pulse to the whole thing—it was dark, subtly aggressive, and haunting.
The psy
chotropic music stopped when Hertz stroked me on the back of the neck. “Oh, those marks will go away quickly enough,” he said. There was a red mark where the tie had been pressing against my skin.
He was already getting on with the rest of his day, preparing to meet the next client.
“Did you enjoy that?” He leaned back against his seat, looking like his normal polished self. “I don’t do that often. Only with three patients in my entire career, actually. They were all thankful for what I had to offer, extra privileges not extended to the rest of my clients.”
What was I supposed to say? Of course I had to say “yes” so I’d be able to step out of the place alive and in one piece.
“Shall we meet again, later?” Dr. Hertz said. “We can negotiate. I even bought one of my former special clients a house by the beach so she wouldn’t say anything about it to the police, or anyone else. She still stays there. A painter. Very happy.”
“OK, send me a text,” I think I said. I was about to walk off when he came forward again, to smooth some of my hair down and button up my blouse. He squeezed my ass cheek on my way out.
That walk out was weird. Couldn’t really focus for the rest of the day. It was just...oh, I don’t know. He seemed more polite than violent about it. I didn’t really want it. But I didn’t really hate it.
Floated around in a stupor at work. Did I even do any work? Was I even at work? Damn, I really don’t know. But I know I had a text to meet him at his home address in the evening at 9 PM.
I know I went there wondering not ‘if’ it was going to happen again, but what ‘it’ was going to be. Was it rape? Was it consensual?
I hadn’t been raped in the past though the first boyfriend was the “fuck ’em and leave ’em” type. I didn’t know what type Hertz was. Probably more...capable. The psycho ones can be very suave. They’re always two steps ahead of you.
He welcomed me in through the front door like I was an old friend he was expecting. Well, I supposed I was, in a way.
“Greetings, Ms. Zeri,” he said, calm and serene.
I like how I didn’t think much about what I did.
He said something about “ropes and chains” and how he was planning to get me to be spread-eagled on his bed upstairs—I’m not too sure, there was something about some “spreading” he was talking about.
He’d been practicing golf in his living room while waiting for me to arrive.
It was like the golf equipment was just there for me to use, you know?
It makes a really good weapon. Light to swing and efficient in terms of execution.
THWAAAACCCCKK! It’s impossible to forget the sound of bone cracking under the high pressure of a blunt force object such as a golf club.
He started groaning and crawling away so I just hit him, again and again and again. On the head and face first. Then between the legs just for good measure. He might’ve been already dead so that wouldn’t have caused him much more pain anyway.
I guess I went there to find out one thing—that he was wrong.
I’m not demure on the inside. I never felt like I was, so how dare he or anyone else think they know me better than I know myself. I am pushed around like a nobody at work more than enough, thank you asshats very much.
And I discovered one more thing: that I’m not a masochist.
I’m a sadist.
I actually enjoyed it—going there under the guise of having sex with him, then killing him when he didn’t expect it. The power! The release!
Which actually does relax me.
I just have to cover my tracks now...I can’t wipe away all of the blood. No time. Not practical. It’s obvious the man was murdered.
But I can make sure to dispose of all my clothes/items, thoroughly wash the murder weapon in the sink, and all that kind of thing.
*You did good, Misery!* my inner goddess cheers.