The Department of Hate - A Love Story

by Anthony O'connor

  “Get her ready.” Then he turned and stormed out, slamming the door shut as he left.

  The woman came over to Cassandra and helped her get to her feet. She was short but looked fit and wiry, probably in her late twenties, with blue eyes and short black hair, cut page boy style. She seemed pleasant enough but Cassandra remained cautious. She recognized her from somewhere. The woman smiled at her

  “Hi, I’m Marie.” She was an American with a strong New York accent. Now Cassandra remembered. She was one of the combatants back in the Great Hall. She must have won her fight. Cassandra tried to smile and replied quietly

  “Hello, I’m Cassandra.” Marie looked her over carefully. She didn’t seem altogether pleased with what she saw.

  “You’re quite pretty aren’t you?” Cassandra didn’t reply. Marie was evidently sizing her up as competition, possibly already plotting and scheming. Marie continued to look her over and then with obvious curiosity she asked

  “You’re the one who came in with Beelzebub?” Cassandra nodded her head.

  “Yes.” Marie thought about this and then looked at her sadly.

  “You poor, poor girl. You’re much better off here, which is not saying much.” Cassandra said

  “I saw you in the Great Hall.” Marie replied

  “My last fight, I saw you there too. That was definitely a close one!” Cassandra didn’t know what to say to that and so she remained silent. Marie waited for a few moments more and then rather abruptly stood up straight and took Cassandra’s hand.

  “Right, let’s get you ready.” Cassandra sighed. She knew what that meant.

  Marie started to take off Cassandra’s blouse. Cassandra put her hands up to stop her but Marie brushed them away and continued to undress her. She spoke quickly and impatiently

  “You don’t have any choice in the matter honey. He likes us all naked, all of the time, well most of the time, there are some outfits he likes. And what he wants he gets. Believe me.” She helped Cassandra out of her jeans and panties and then stood back. Cassandra stood there in front of her, completely nude, feeling very self conscious and a bit awkward. Marie smiled at her

  “Don’t worry honey, you’ll get used to it – and a lot more. He’ll put a collar on you when he comes back.” Cassandra groaned

  “I can’t believe this.” Marie was sympathetic even if Cassandra was now in effect one of her competitors.

  “You better believe it. He keeps a dozen or so slave girls at any one time – you’re currently number twelve. I’m his favourite though.” Cassandra was shocked.

  “Keeps! How long for?” Marie sighed

  “Until he gets bored with you and then you get thrown into the Pit.” She was obviously terrified of this. “I’ve lasted the longest. Five years. Other girls come and go. But it helps that I’m a champion in the ring. And I know all the tricks – what pleases him, what doesn’t.” She stopped herself suddenly and smiled not unkindly. “You’ll have to figure that out for yourself. Sorry.” Cassandra listened to all of this with rapidly growing despair

  “This is all so horrible.” Marie shook her head, resigned and stoic.

  “It’s not that bad, you get used to it. It’s better than the Pit, anything is better than the Pit.” She led Cassandra to the side of the bed and sat down, motioning to Cassandra to sit beside her. Cassandra did so, then asked

  “What now?” Marie replied

  “We wait. He likes for us to be waiting for him on the side of the bed. That’s your life now honey, sitting around naked, looking pretty and waiting to be fucked by Belial.” Cassandra was defiant.

  “You must be joking.” Marie looked at her steadily.

  “No. And there’s no point in resisting. He’ll beat you into submission and then you’ll do what he wants anyway.” Cassandra glared back at her crying out

  “Never.” Marie felt sad for her, but also relieved. This one wouldn’t last long.

  They sat there for some time, waiting, saying nothing. Cassandra looked around the room but saw nothing of interest. Marie broke the silence

  “What did you used to do when you were alive?” Cassandra sighed

  “Oh, such a harsh way of putting it. I still haven’t got used to that.” Marie replied

  “You’d better.” Cassandra had to agree with that

  “I suppose. Anyway, I used to teach art, do some painting.” Marie seemed unimpressed

  “That’s nice, but what did you do to end up here?” Cassandra replied

  “I’m not too sure about that. I did work as a dominatrix part-time.” Marie smiled at her

  “How cool is that! But yes, that would do it. It doesn’t take much.” Cassandra looked at her

  “What about you?” Marie continued to smile broadly.

  “Oh, I was a corporate lawyer in Manhattan. I pretty much knew I was coming here.” They both laughed.

  The door burst open and Belial strode into the room. He had two more girls with him – both nude, already collared and leashed. He tied them to a pole near the door. Then he went straight towards Marie and pulled her to her feet. Reaching down he unlocked the collar around her neck and threw it to the side. She instantly knew what this meant and started screaming

  “No, No, Oh no, please no.” He grabbed her and threw her up over his shoulder, turned and walked quickly out of the room. Cassandra didn’t know what to do. There didn’t seem to be anything stopping her so she followed. Belial carried Marie down the corridor, down the stairs and across the Foyer. Marie struggled but to no effect. She continued to scream out

  “Please Master, please don’t, please, I’ll do anything, anything.” But Belial ignored her. He exited the building and walked across the path towards the Pit with Marie still casually slung over his shoulder. Cassandra followed, horrified – but there was nothing she could do. Belial got to the edge of the Pit and held Marie high up over his head. She was begging

  “Master, please don’t, No, No, please, No.” Then almost casually he cast her out and down into the Pit. He had no particular malice towards her he was simply bored with her – he had had her for long enough. She fell for some time, screaming all the way down. She hit the surface of twisted writhing bodies with a sick thud and was instantly pulled under down into the bloodied seething maelstrom that was to be her place now - and forever more.

  Cassandra watched all of this with disbelief. Then Belial turned and looked at her with a wicked smile and very obvious intent. Cassandra thought to herself

  “Oh fuck no.” She turned to run. But she wasn’t thinking clearly. She ran straight back into the Department building. She was half way across the foyer before she realized her mistake. But it was too late. Belial was coming in the main entrance. He wasn’t rushing. He knew he had her. She rushed up the stairs and down a different corridor than before. She turned left and then right and then into one of the rooms. But it was his bedroom, same as before. The two nude girls were still leashed to the pole near the door. How was that possible? The door opened again and Belial entered. He smiled at her - swinish lust plastered across his face – obscene and repulsive. He advanced towards her. She tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go. She cried out

  “Oh no.” She kicked him but the blow had no effect. He punched her in the side of her head knocking her to the ground. He stared down at her. She stared back at him – defiant, and something else. He stopped for a moment, puzzled, thinking

  ‘What was it about her?’ But his blood was up and he fully intended to enjoy his prize.

  Chapter 20 – Detective Chief Inspector Boone

  Detective Chief Inspector Reginald Boone had become a man obsessed. It had been almost ten years since he’d arrested Jarrod for the murder of Elizabeth Collins and then been forced to let him go. In that time he’d thought of nothing else and no one else. He had studied every available murder case involving the midget and found obviously damning correlations between the murders and Jarrod’s movements – obvious to him at least. He had tracked
every available detail about Jarrod’s life and background. He had on several occasions, for varying periods of time, placed Jarrod under covert surveillance. Slowly at first but then with rapidly increasing certainty he had reached a stunning conclusion. He had become convinced beyond all doubt, that Jarrod was the Anti-Christ and the midget one of his minions - some kind of familiar. But why was the Anti-Christ teaching philosophy at the University of London? It made no sense.

  He had been forced into early retirement after the first four years. The department took a dim view of detectives who were constantly warning every one around them of the impending apocalypse and the real and immediate presence amongst them of the Anti Christ himself. He was sent on psychiatric review several times but each time managed to pass – by at least having the common sense to tone down his views while talking to the psychiatrist and projecting a strong sense of sanity and stability. His views were after all religious in nature and no psychiatrist, who wanted to keep working, was going to try to draw a line in there between what was sane and what wasn’t. They talked calmly about reason and evidence and objectivity - and relating these to the deeper underlying emotional needs present in all of us. Boone nodded and agreed to whatever he was meant to. Each time though he came out asserting to himself

  ‘But you are not insane if you are actually correct.’ After the reviews he noticed that his colleagues were now keeping a close eye on him and it was obvious that his superiors were assigning to him only the simplest and easiest of cases. He was well liked and well respected and they had nothing but sympathy for him in his all too obvious fall into mental illness. His position became untenable when details of the illegal surveillance operations came out, followed closely by allegations of hacking into Scotland Yard case files. He was not charged but allowed to retire on a full pension.

  The pension was fairly modest but fortunately he had some money of his own and was able to buy a cottage in Elgriff in the far north of Scotland. Elgriff was a small village of just a few hundred people – the closest city, Iverness, was fifty miles away. Boone wanted to be as far from civilisation as he could. He was certain that it was about to fall and that Jarrod was at the centre of it. Even in Elgriff his nearest neighbour was several miles away – and the road or track was more or less impassable during the winter. He wasn’t a complete recluse though. He had gotten to know some of his neighbours and saw them occasionally. He attended the annual village fair and contributed to some of the local charities. The vicar called on him from time to time as did the local police constable. They liked him and would have visited him more often but they respected his obvious desire for privacy and only occasionally speculated amongst themselves why he’d left the London Police so suddenly and moved up here. He had been married back in London but his wife left him when he was thrown out of the department. He now saw her as superficial and vain and wondered what he had ever seen in her. He occasionally found himself pining for female company but not often – as he moved into his late fifties it all seemed to be of less and less importance and lacked any real urgency. He’d gotten use to it. He had lived in Elgriff for six years now, alone mostly and furiously busy all of the time. He had become even more obsessed with Jarrod and even more intent on exposing him. He had come up through the ranks in computer forensics and had developed significant skills in network subversion and penetration. In the course of his later career he had also established some unsavoury but very useful connections with certain groups and individuals. So he had been able to continue hacking into police records – the London Police Department, Scotland Yard, Interpol. He was more cautious this time and so far hadn’t been caught. In his mind the evidence was indisputable and overwhelming.

  Jarrod was born in Brighton in 1983 and lived there until 2000. The first known murder in the midget files was in 1987 – one of Jarrod’s kindergarten friends. There were fifty other cases from that time up until 2000 – all in the Brighton area and in many of them, at least half of them, the victim was related to Jarrod in some way. There was the well documented case from 1990 of the Brighton parish priest running out of his own Church screaming in terror – only to be run over by a truck and killed. There was one witness, Sister Francis, one of the nuns, who mentioned in her statement that Jarrod was the child at the front of the aisle about to receive communion when the priest turned and fled. Boone had wanted to interview her but then found that unfortunately she had been one of the midget’s victims not long after making her statement.

  Jarrod moved to Cambridge in 2000 and stayed there until 2007. He studied for a BA and then a PhD in philosophy at Magdalene College. During that time the midget murders all occurred in the Cambridge area – forty of them on file, and again over half were of people having some kind of interaction with Jarrod. A disturbing number of them were young females – fellow students he’d either gone out on a date with or at least shared a class with. He could not believe Jarrod had never been called in and questioned. But he never had. The various investigators clearly had a very marked reticence to even connect the cases. No one wanted to push any of them or to be involved in them for even a minute longer than they had to be. There were often one or more putatively supernatural elements involved – the midget walking through walls or vanishing, and also impossible coincidences. They were career killers for sure – as he had found out for himself. It wasn’t impossible that there was also pressure from above. Boone thought that maybe there was a hidden network of powerful supporters – secret groups of practising Satanists! Then in 2006, of course, the midget had murdered Elizabeth, Jarrod’s fiancée, bringing Boone into his orbit. Oddly there had been no cases before that for several months – as if the midget had gone away for a time.

  Jarrod moved to London in 2007 to take up a position as a philosophy lecturer at the University of London and had been there ever since. The midget murders moved to London also – not as many, but at least thirty in the last nine and a half years and again more often than not of people involved with Jarrod in some way. Boone had studied closely the case of Dr Caroline Lerner - just over a year ago. She’d had dinner with Jarrod and some others on the evening she was killed - just a few hours before her death. The details had matched the pattern of the midget murders and again there had been multiple independent sightings of the midget at around the right time. Boone had spent minutes shaking in frustration when he found that Jarrod had never even been questioned over that one. Only a few months after that there was clear surveillance footage of Jarrod and an unidentified man together in the subway at Farringdon. The unidentified man killed an armed mugger, possibly saving Jarrod’s life. The way they looked at each other afterwards was completely revealing – master and slave obviously. Boone knew that the midget could change shape. Boone just knew the unidentified man was the midget. Something in the way he walked. There were numerous reports of some kind of black mass nearby – three people were later found dead. In the statements there were descriptions of a demon appearing, sexually assaulting some of its worshippers and then itself running away screaming in terror. It was supposed to have been Beelzebub. But what could possibly terrify Beelzebub?

  Yet again Boone found himself pondering all of this – trying to see the big picture. How could Jarrod not be the epicentre of something vast and evil? But none of it made any sense. What could he possibly be up to? In the last few days Boone had been studying case files stolen from Sydney Australia – they also had had a string of midget murders – at least forty from 1988 to 2016. Oddly enough, down under, the victims were mostly male. The Australian authorities also had no leads and no suspects. Jarrod had never even been to Australia – Boone had checked that. Maybe there was someone else down there connected to him somehow. Boone was desperate to find out what was going on even if it was too late to stop it. Almost certainly there was never anything he could have done about it. But he wasn’t giving up. He would prove it beyond any doubt. People would have to listen to him then. They could at least prepare for the end, prepare for deat
h – as he did, every day. It was important to die well.

  There was a knock on the door. He was surprised at first, he didn’t get many visitors but he got up, walked through the hall to the front door and opened it. There was a young Asian woman just standing there. She looked completely out of place. She was only lightly dressed, wearing a skimpy bright blue top and jeans and must be near freezing to death in the blistering cold. She didn’t seem to notice it and Boone failed to see this. He opened the door widely and urged her to come in before even bothering to ask her what she wanted. He took her through into his living room and stood with her in front of the fire he’d had going all morning. She seemed to appreciate his concern, smiling at him and thanking him. She was unbelievably cute and so young, barely twenty if that – Boone was smitten. If he had been thinking clearly he would have seen the obvious menace in just the fact of her presence there. But disarmed by her youth and her beauty he proceeded blithely and naively towards his now quite certain demise, smiling inanely most of the time.

  She stood in front of the fire for several minutes - though again Boone should have noticed that she was indifferent to it. When she finally spoke she spoke softly and quietly in a way Boone found thoroughly delightful

  “Hi, I’m Annette. My car broke down just down the road. Can I use your telephone please, my mobile phone is out.” Boone replied quickly