Deep Inside

by Polly Frost

  Tyler brushes me aside. “I want to know more about how I inspired you to decapitate people. Because I only got to pretend to do it. And it’s so cool that I empowered you to go out and make it happen in real life.”

  “I don’t think you can do the movie of my life,” Karen says.

  “What?” I say. “But we’re perfect to do it—”

  “You seem to think I’m a serial killer,” Karen says. “But I’m just a woman who didn’t get the right breaks. Who didn’t get to go to Yale the way you did.”

  Karen leans back in her chair and cocks her head to one side, appraising the two of us. Then she sits up and says, “Our time’s over. Call the guard back in.”

  “Wait!” I say.

  Tyler puts her hand on my thigh to silence me.

  “Karen,” she says. “It’s time somebody made a movie about you. I know it makes you feel bad to see Aileen Wuornos get all that attention. There she is played by Charlize Theron and now she’s everywhere. She’s on American Justice and Notorious and Biography. If you ask me, Aileen’s a loser.”

  Karen sits up. She lowers her lids, staring lusciously at Tyler.

  “Fuck Aileen! What about you?” Tyler insists. “You killed more people than stupid ol’ Aileen did. It’s unfair that Aileen gets acclaimed as America’s finest female serial killer! She had no style. But you—I just know you had style. I can’t wait to hear the real story of how you did it.”

  “I’ll talk once we sew up the deal,” Karen says. “And if you want the movie of my life, right now you’ll tell me how much the two of you love each other. Because, you know, love is the most important thing in the world to me.”

  Tyler inhales sharply and stares right at Karen. She reaches for my hand and moves it up under her skirt. Of course she isn’t wearing panties, even though I’ve told her that’s inappropriate. But I have to admit I’m feeling real stirrings for the first time in ages.

  Karen moves her eyes slowly from me to Tyler. It’s as though all three of us are in bed together.

  “She’s fingering my deliciously wet pussy. And I’m going to come big time,” Tyler whispers.

  Karen silently watches as I bring Tyler to a climax. Then she lowers her head and whispers, “I developed a real taste for couples. The way that one person would watch the other die and me choosing who’d get to go first—that was better than your orgasm right now.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Tyler says, putting my hand back into her crotch. “Tell me some more.”

  “Know what it’s like to make that first cut on a neck?” Karen says.

  Tyler shakes her head rhythmically, biting her tongue.

  “It’s like the first time you kiss somebody,” Karen says. “When you’re a great kisser—as I’m sure you both are—there’s that look of surprise the other person gets. You know what I’m talking about. Because they didn’t expect it to be like this, and that’s so delicious. And then there’s the blood, which spurts out. And if you do it right, you don’t use a sharp knife. You saw slowly and tenderly through every muscle and artery. You make it last.”

  Tyler’s coming again on my fingers. Her hips perform tiny gymnastics, rotating in tight yet voluptuous circles. Her face is flushed, and then she settles calmly. I pull my fingers from her crotch.

  “Go ahead, taste it,” Karen says.

  I do. I lick my fingers and savor Tyler’s pussy. I give the fingers to Tyler to taste.

  “It’s good, isn’t it?” Karen says. “I wish I could taste it myself. Now imagine if you two had someone tied up in front of you. To a chair. Just some random individual—man or woman—or even better, a couple—that you just picked up in a bar. You chose them the way God chooses. Because they’ve got on a red sweater that you like or don’t like. Or they’ve got hair that’s brown and long. Or they look like they’re just too happy.”

  Tyler’s touching my thighs now, and moving her hand up and down the crotch of my pants.

  “You invite them home and they go. Because who can resist you. Oh, how I envy the two of you. I’m good-looking, but you two are from Hollywood and who wouldn’t want you?”

  I’m breathing short, agonized breaths as Tyler slowly rubs the thick seam of my pants into my cunt.

  “The couple you’ve brought home. You let them fuck you. You let them experience a little heaven and then you tell them you want to tie them to a chair. They think it’s S-and-M fun, but you bring out a knife and then they’re jolted. It takes them a few moments to process what’s going on. And then you start. You make the woman watch while the two of you take turns cutting off the man’s head. And let me tell you, that first slice of the knife—there’s nothing like it. The blood starts to run. And you stop for a moment. To consider your work. The screams, the gurgling, the cries…You made this happen and you two are down on the ground fucking like you’ve never fucked before.”

  Oh my God, I am coming…and then I realize what I’m listening to—a psychopath talking about beheading innocent people.

  I snap out of it and push Tyler’s hand roughly away. She glares at me. Karen’s still talking in that slow, mesmerizing voice.

  “Of course, dead people stink if you leave them out, so I put the heads in baggies into my refrigerator.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Tyler says. “Thanks for the tip.”

  As the two of them talk, I find myself returning to the normal world again, and as my head clears, my mind kicks into gear. Fuck, how am I going to make a meaningful film out of Karen Devere? She’s gorgeous and charismatic. And she loves killing. Nonetheless, if I don’t seal matters up, Sherry’s going to take the project away.

  “Karen, it’s time to close the deal,” I interrupt. “We’re going to make a film of your life that’s more powerful than Thelma and Louise. But I need exclusivity.”

  Karen frowns. “I liked Thelma and Louise right up to end,” she says. “Why’d they have to kill themselves? I don’t want to give women some sort of victim message. I want to show women what they’re capable of. I want them to know that they, too, can be Charles Manson or Ted Bundy. Or even better, they can be Karen Devere.”

  “That is so beautiful,” Tyler says.

  “I can’t think of anyone better to play me than you, Tyler,” Karen says. “So you have the deal. But you have to promise me that you won’t gain weight, Tyler. Keep the good teeth, too.”

  The guard marches in. “Your time’s up,” she says, in a husky, intimate voice.

  Two-shot. Rental-car interior.

  Tyler hugs and kisses me. “Karen is totally awesome!” she says. “I am so into her! I can’t wait to play her. Thank you so much, Stacy! This is going to be my favorite role yet!”

  Night. Motel.

  Inside, Tyler tries to make it with me but I’m too disturbed to have sex. I shut down, claim I need to work.

  How the hell to make this Karen Devere bitch attractive to a mass audience?

  Maybe the facts of the case can help me out. I spend the next day exploring Karen’s hometown. Tyler takes a cab to spend some time at the jail with Karen.

  Grenville. The town where Karen grew up. A nice little suburban nest. Big sidewalks. Kids on bicycles.

  The principal at the school Karen went to can’t think of a reason for why she killed. “She was popular and pretty,” she says.

  People at the minimall tell me Karen’s family is nice and hand me her aunt’s phone number.

  “Was Karen abused as a child?” I ask.

  “No, she sure wasn’t,” the aunt says.

  “What happened to make her like this?” I ask.

  “Nothing whatsoever, as far as I can see,” her aunt replies. “Well, she did watch an awful lot of television.”

  I contact reporters at the newspaper, officers at the police station. I stop random shoppers at the Costco.

  They all deny that Karen had any reason to kill.

  Close-up. My finger on the tape-recorder button.

  I start rehearsing my pitch.

&nbs
p; Tyler always laughs at me for how meticulously I prepare my pitches. I’ve got a whole routine, starting first with the tape recorder, then outlining, and doing several drafts on my laptop.

  Tyler says this approach is indicative of my overcontrolling personality. I tell her it worked for me at Yale.

  “Stacy,” she would say. “Throw away the notes and just go with your passion. It’s what I do. Stop being your always-cautious-to-always-appear-correct self.”

  I look in the mirror. Not bad, really. Not movie star material; but I’ve got my own thing. I pull up my T-shirt and get my nipples hard. Yeah, I’m hot.

  I start the pitch.

  “This will be a film in which we make a plea for the freedom of America’s finest female serial killer,” I say into the digital device.

  No, maybe not. Damn. I feel droopy again.

  It’s nine P.M. Where’s Tyler? I call the cab company. Nothing.

  I dial up the jail. A woman guard answers.

  “Tyler Beaumont? She’s still here. In fact, she’s been here all day alone with Karen,” the woman says.

  “What?”

  “She says she’s doing research.”

  “And you left the two of them alone? Isn’t that against regulations?” I’m suddenly frantic.

  “You want that film of yours made, don’t you?”

  “Yes—”

  “So you won’t say anything,” the guard barks. “And you’ll deliver the cash that Tyler promised me for her visit alone with Karen. That’s ten grand and I’ll need it by the end of today.”

  Midnight. Tracking shot on Tyler as she walks through our motel room door.

  I’m on the bed, fuming, my laptop open. “So, is your research going well?” I ask.

  “Really well,” Tyler says. “I am deeply inside Karen Devere.”

  “So I gather,” I say. “Meanwhile I’ve been worried about you, having to get together a wad of cash for the guard!”

  Tyler struts over to me and unzips her pink velvet hoodie to show her adorable bare breasts.

  “I got your serial killer for you. Don’t complain,” she says. “You could at least thank me.”

  “I should throw you out!”

  “But you won’t,” Tyler says. “Because you want the credibility this movie will give you.”

  “I don’t know if I can make the movie,” I assert.

  “Oh, really,” Tyler says, backing away and zipping up her hoodie.

  “I’ve been trying to think up a good reason for Karen’s killing,” I tell Tyler. “Something that will get the audience on her side. But there’s absolutely nothing in her background to explain it. Nothing!”

  “You know why Karen did it as well as I do,” Tyler says, turning around.

  I stare at my laptop and pretend to type.

  “Oh, come on, Stacy, you know as well as I do. She did it for the excitement.”

  “We can’t say that,” I explain. “That’s a nonstarter.”

  “But it’s the truth! Don’t you get it?” Tyler says. “Killing’s a thrill! Hello!”

  “She’s a thrill-killer? Is that what you’re telling me? Well, earth to Tyler, that’s not what we’re going for here. We’re going for respectability. Seriousness. We’re not doing a Tarantino, for God’s sake. The Academy doesn’t like murderers who do it for kicks.”

  “I felt what your pussy was like in that room yesterday as Karen was talking,” Tyler says. “I know how you really feel about what Karen did.”

  I will not become enraged. “I think I can make what you’re saying work,” I tell Tyler. She can sense that I’m putting her off, but for some reason it only makes her smile mysteriously.

  “I know what else we can make work,” Tyler says. She opens her purse and pulls out a roll of duct tape. “Karen told me she used to carry around a little kit when she was on the prowl,” she says. “Flashlight, manacles, ski mask, duct tape—”

  Tyler wraps the stuff around my wrists and ankles. Oh, Christ. My childhood nightmares of being encased are starting to overwhelm me, but before I can protest Tyler presses a six-inch strip of tape over my mouth.

  My emotions are starting to run out of control. My eyes feel like they’re popping out of my head, and sweat is pouring from me. I have the same suffocating feeling I had growing up in the suburbs, and at Yale in that Baudrillard seminar.

  Tyler reaches into her purse, pulls out a knife, and puts it to my throat.

  “I know you’re as excited by this as I am,” she says.

  The knife’s at my throat and her finger’s in my pussy. I’m humiliated and panicking, yet I’m swollen and wet. She teases me into a lather.

  Tyler pauses, then holds her purse up in front of me. The little koala bear dangles before my face. Tyler cuts its head off, and little bits of stuffing fly.

  Tyler’s eyes never leave me as she returns to slithering around in my pussy and holding the knife at my throat. With the duct tape around my wrists and ankles and over my mouth, and with the knife by my jugular, I’m paralyzed. I don’t dare move. The inside of my brain is a nightmare of terrifying, helpless images, spinning out of control.

  I come like never before.

  “You see,” Tyler murmurs as I calm down. “You do like it. Even you can learn to trust.”

  “No,” I gasp when she rips the tape off my mouth. “This is not what I want! I don’t! It’s not about trust! You’ve got us living a sleazy exploitation movie. And what I want to be in is a meaningful film.”

  “And we are going to make a beautiful one about Karen Devere,” Tyler says.

  Close-up. Me. Sunglasses. Mexico.

  That bastard Michael Bay. He’s handed me a memo he wants faxed.

  I’m associate producer, damn it. This is not appropriate!

  Christ, you really are nobody unless you’re the boss.

  I hand the memo to a flunky and bark at him to fax it, and fast.

  Tyler’s playing the lead in the new Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay extravaganza. We’re all hoping it’ll be the start of an ongoing series—Lara Croft meets Nicolas Cage, but not just for the geek demographic.

  What with Tyler’s Oscar nomination for her amazing work as Karen Devere, okay, sure, we cashed in. Hey, now we’ve got the bungalow out of debt. It’s ours. And okay, Tyler’s in spandex, and I’m third in command. Not an ideal situation, I know.

  But it’s putting us in a position to move forward again with the good work. At least once this piece of shit action movie’s in the can. I haven’t settled on the exact project that’s right for us, but ideas are starting to gel.

  Of course, there was no way to help Karen Devere, who got her lethal injection prompt and on sked. That was hopeless. Hell, she was hopeless, brilliant though Tyler was at eliciting sympathy for her. But I did manage to turn the premiere into a tribute. And I raised public awareness of the importance of female serial killers. The opening weekend box office was confirmation of our message—there’s no arguing with the grosses.

  I find relief from the heat in the air-conditioned production office and treat myself to a double espresso, my mind on our next film.

  I’d like to follow up the Karen Devere story with another biopic about a female murderer. It’s a vast subject, well worth returning to.

  I’ve got info on three fresh cases, all on death row. One poisoned her victims, another buried them alive. The third? Well, she’s the retro one. She got her boyfriend to shoot a bunch of people.

  Tyler’s head pops around the door frame. Her hair’s black and cropped short in action-adventure style for this film. But makeup’s still emphasizing her kissable lips. The adolescent boys are going to love her. The film’s a lock, as far as I can tell.

  “How’s my sex bomb today?” Tyler says to me. This film’s like a vacation; she’s in an endlessly good mood. “Hard at work as ever?”

  “You’re looking good, baby,” I mumble.

  Tyler slinks merrily into the room. She wears a long, black Matrix-like leather c
oat, unbuckled. Beneath it, she’s a sparkly porno vision of spandex and cleavage.

  She lifts her hand. A big heavy thing dangles from it.

  I give a start and recoil. Tyler’s holding a woman’s head. Fake, of course, but very realistic. The eyes look like tiny sacks of rancid jelly. The mouth is contorted in agony. Fake blood drips from the neck. Below it is a length of wooden stick.

  It’s a severed head on a stake.

  As I pull my composure together, Tyler giggles sweetly.

  “Michael thought it would be so cute to reference back to my TV show,” she explains. “Remember that scene? Head on a stick? Michael’s such a fan. Did he tell you he’s thinking of doing a big-screen version of it? I think that’s a great idea, it’s got me incredibly hot. For you.” She leans in close and her voice is a thundering, intimate whisper. My ear burns with pleasure. “I’ve just got to get off,” she says confidentially. “And I’ve got to get you off. And I have to do it now.”

  There’s a rush of cold air on my ear as Tyler stands up again.

  “But I’ve gotta be at my Shintaido martial-arts practice in thirty minutes. That doesn’t leave us a lot of time.” Tyler hands the severed head to an assistant, then says to me, “We gotta act now, in other words. Meet you in the trailer in two minutes?”

  My mind’s still hard at work as I wait for Tyler inside the trailer. Which project…?

  Gotta blow off some tension. I turn to the laptop and take a look at our backed-up e-mail queue.

  There’s only one item that doesn’t look like spam. It’s from a Mary88553, and it’s addressed to Tyler in care of our production company.

  “Dear Tyler,” Mary writes. “I’m twelve and I’m such a fan! I’m just writing to let you know how much your work means to me. Not only do you kick butt, you rock! Especially your performance as Karen Devere! You made me feel proud to be a woman. The way you gutted that couple in that scene where you watch them die? Well, you’re an inspiration to me! I’m going to do it myself!”