American Psycho

by Bret Easton Ellis

  Christie sits up and turns herself around and while still on top of Elizabeth presses her cunt into Elizabeth’s gasping face and soon, like in a movie, like animals, the two of them start feverishly licking and fingering each other’s cunts. Elizabeth, totally red-faced, her neck muscles straining like a madwoman’s, tries to bury her head in Christie’s pussy and then spreads Christie’s ass cheeks open and starts tonguing the hole there, making guttural sounds. “Yeah,” I say in monotone. “Stick your tongue up that bitch’s asshole.”

  While this is going on I’m greasing with Vaseline a large white dildo that’s connected to a belt. I stand up and hoist Christie off Elizabeth, who is writhing mindlessly on the futon, and I attach the belt around Christie’s waist, and then I turn Elizabeth around and position her on all fours and I make Christie fuck her with it doggy style, while I finger Christie’s cunt, then her clit, then her asshole, which is so wet and loose from Elizabeth’s saliva I’m able to force my index finger into it effortlessly and her sphincter tightens, relaxes, then contracts around it. I make Christie pull the dildo out of Elizabeth’s cunt and have Elizabeth lie on her back while Christie fucks her in the missionary position. Elizabeth is fingering her clit while madly French-kissing Christie until, involuntarily, she brings her head back, legs wrapped around Christie’s pumping hips, her face tense, her mouth open, her lipstick smeared by Christie’s cunt juice, and she yells “oh god I’m coming I’m coming fuck me I’m coming” because I told both of them to let me know when they had orgasms and to be very vocal about it.

  Soon it’s Christie’s turn and Elizabeth eagerly straps on the dildo and fucks Christie’s cunt with it while I spread Elizabeth’s asshole and tongue it and soon she pushes me away and starts fingering herself desperately. Then Christie puts the dildo on again and she fucks Elizabeth in the ass with it while Elizabeth fingers her clit, bucking her ass up against the dildo, grunting, until she has another orgasm. After pulling the dildo from her ass I make Elizabeth suck on it before she straps it on again and while Christie lies on her back Elizabeth pushes it easily into her cunt. During this I lick Christie’s tits and suck hard on each nipple until both of them are red and stiff. I keep fingering them to make sure they stay that way. During this Christie has kept on a pair of thigh-high suede boots from Henri Bendel that I’ve made her wear.

  Elizabeth, naked, running from the bedroom, blood already on her, is moving with difficulty and she screams out something garbled. My orgasm had been prolonged and its release was intense and my knees are weak. I’m naked too, shouting “You bitch, you piece of bitch trash” at her and since most of the blood is coming from her feet, she slips, manages to get up, and I strike out at her with the already wet butcher knife that I’m gripping in my right hand, clumsily, slashing her neck from behind, severing something, some veins. When I strike out a second time while she’s trying to escape, heading for the door, blood shoots even into the living room, across the apartment, splattering against the tempered glass and the laminated oak panels in the kitchen. She tries to run forward but I’ve cut her jugular and it’s spraying everywhere, blinding both of us momentarily, and I’m leaping at her in a final attempt to finish her off. She turns to face me, her features twisted in anguish, and her legs give out after I punch her in the stomach and she hits the floor and I slide in next to her. After I’ve stabbed her five or six times—the blood’s spurting out in jets; I’m leaning over to inhale its perfume—her muscles stiffen, become rigid, and she goes into her death throes; her throat becomes flooded with dark-red blood and she thrashes around as if tied up, but she isn’t and I have to hold her down. Her mouth fills with blood that cascades over the sides of her cheeks, over her chin. Her body, shaking spasmodically, resembles what I imagine an epileptic goes through in a fit and I hold down her head, rubbing my dick, stiff, covered with blood, across her choking face, until she’s motionless.

  Back in my bedroom, Christie lies on the futon, tied to the legs of the bed, bound up with rope, her arms above her head, ripped pages from last month’s Vanity Fair stuffed into her mouth. Jumper cables hooked up to a battery are clipped to both breasts, turning them brown. I had been dropping lit matches from Le Relais onto her belly and Elizabeth, delirious and probably overdosing on the Ecstasy, had been helping before I turned on her and chewed at one of her nipples until I couldn’t control myself and bit it off, swallowing. For the first time I notice just how small and delicately structured Christie is, was. I start kneading her breasts with a pair of pliers, then I’m mashing them up, things are moving fast, I’m making hissing noises, she spits out the pages from the magazine, tries to bite my hand, I laugh when she dies, before she does she starts crying, then her eyes roll back in some kind of horrible dream state.

  In the morning, for some reason, Christie’s battered hands are swollen to the size of footballs, the fingers are indistinguishable from the rest of her hand and the smell coming from her burnt corpse is jolting and I have to open the Venetian blinds, which are spattered with burnt fat from when Christie’s breasts burst apart, electrocuting her, and then the windows, to air out the room. Her eyes are wide open and glazed over and her mouth is lipless and black and there’s also a black pit where her vagina should be (though I don’t remember doing anything to it) and her lungs are visible beneath the charred ribs. What is left of Elizabeth’s body lies crumpled in the corner of the living room. She’s missing her right arm and chunks of her right leg. Her left hand, chopped off at the wrist, lies clenched on top of the island in the kitchen, in its own small pool of blood. Her head sits on the kitchen table and its blood-soaked face—even with both eyes scooped out and a pair of Alain Mikli sunglasses over the holes—looks like it’s frowning. I get very tired looking at it and though I didn’t get any sleep last night and I’m utterly spent, I still have a lunch appointment at Odeon with Jem Davies and Alana Burton at one. That’s very important to me and I have to debate whether I should cancel it or not.

  Confronted by Faggot

  Autumn: a Sunday around four o’clock in the afternoon. I’m at Barney’s, buying cuff links. I had walked into the store at two-thirty, after a cold, tense brunch with Christie’s corpse, rushed up to the front counter, told a salesclerk, “I need a whip. Really.” In addition to the cuff links, I’ve bought an ostrich travel case with double-zippered openings and vinyl lining, an antique silver, crocodile and glass pill jar, an antique toothbrush container, a badger-bristle toothbrush and a faux-tortoiseshell nailbrush. Dinner last night? At Splash. Not much to remember: a watery Bellini, soggy arugula salad, a sullen waitress. Afterwards I watched a repeat of an old Patty Winters Show that I found on what I originally thought was a videotape of the torture and subsequent murder of two escort girls from last spring (the topic was Tips on How Your Pet Can Become a Movie Star). Right now I’m in the middle of purchasing a belt—not for myself—as well as three ninety-dollar ties, ten handkerchiefs, a four-hundred-dollar robe and two pairs of Ralph Lauren pajamas, and I’m having it all mailed to my apartment except for the handkerchiefs, which I’m having monogrammed then sent to P & P. I’ve already made somewhat of a scene in the ladies’ shoe department and, embarrassingly, was chased out by a distressed salesperson. At first it’s only a sense of vague uneasiness and I’m unsure of its cause, but then it feels, though I can’t be positive, as if I’m being followed, as if someone has been tracking me throughout Barney’s.

  Luis Carruthers is, I suppose, incognito. He’s wearing some kind of jaguar-print silk evening jacket, deerskin gloves, a felt hat, aviator sunglasses, and he’s hiding behind a column, pretending to inspect a row of ties, and, gracelessly, he gives me a sidelong glance. Leaning down, I sign something, a bill I think, and fleetingly Luis’s presence forces me to consider that maybe a life connected to this city, to Manhattan, to my job, is not a good idea, and suddenly I imagine Luis at some horrible party, drinking a nice dry rosé, fags clustered around a baby grand, show tunes, now he’s holding a flower, now he has a feather b
oa draped around his neck, now the pianist bangs out something from Les Miz, darling.

  “Patrick? Is that you?” I hear a tentative voice inquire.

  Like a smash cut from a horror movie—a jump zoom—Luis Carruthers appears, suddenly, without warning, from behind his column, slinking and jumping at the same time, if that’s possible. I smile at the salesgirl, then awkwardly move away from him and over to a display case of suspenders, in dire need of a Xanax, a Valium, a Halcion, a Frozfruit, anything.

  I don’t, can’t, look at him, but I sense he’s moved closer to me. His voice confirms it.

  “Patrick? … Hello?”

  Closing my eyes, I move a hand up to my face and mutter, under my breath, “Don’t make me say it, Luis.”

  “Patrick?” he says, feigning innocence. “What do you mean?”

  A hideous pause, then, “Patrick … Why aren’t you looking at me?”

  “I’m ignoring you, Luis.” I breathe in, calming myself by checking the price tag on an Armani button-up sweater. “Can’t you tell? I’m ignoring you.”

  “Patrick, can’t we just talk?” he asks, almost whining. “Patrick—look at me.”

  After another sharp intake of breath, sighing, I admit, “There is nothing, noth-ing to talk—”

  “We can’t go on like this,” he impatiently cuts me off. “I can’t go on like this.”

  I mutter. I start walking away from him. He follows, insistent.

  “Anyway,” he says, once we’ve reached the other side of the store, where I pretend to look through a row of silk ties but everything’s blurry, “you’ll be glad to know that I’m transferring … out of state.”

  Something rises off me and I’m able to ask, but still without looking at him, “Where?”

  “Oh, a different branch,” he says, sounding remarkably relaxed, probably due to the fact that I actually inquired about the move. “In Arizona.”

  “Ter-rific,” I murmur.

  “Don’t you want to know why?” he asks.

  “No, not really.”

  “Because of you,” he says.

  “Don’t say that,” I plead.

  “Because of you,” he says again.

  “You are sick,” I tell him.

  “If I’m sick it’s because of you,” he says too casually, checking his nails. “Because of you I am sick and I will not get better.”

  “You have distorted this obsession of yours way out of proportion. Way, way out of proportion,” I say, then move over to another aisle.

  “But I know you have the same feelings I do,” Luis says, trailing me. “And I know that just because …” He lowers his voice and shrugs. “Just because you won’t admit … certain feelings you have doesn’t mean you don’t have them.”

  “What are you trying to say?” I hiss.

  “That I know you feel the same way I do.” Dramatically, he whips off his sunglasses, as if to prove a point.

  “You have reached … an inaccurate conclusion,” I choke. “You are … obviously unsound.”

  “Why?” he asks. “Is it so wrong to love you, Patrick?”

  “Oh … my … god.”

  “To want you? To want to be with you?” he asks. “Is that so wrong?”

  I can feel him staring helplessly into me, that he’s near total emotional collapse. After he finishes, except for a long silence I have no answer. Finally I counter this by hissing, “What is this continuing inability you have to evaluate this situation rationally?” I pause. “Huh?”

  I lift my head up from the sweaters, the ties, whatever, and glance at Luis. In that instant he smiles, relieved that I’m acknowledging his presence, but the smile soon becomes fractured and in the dark inner recesses of his fag mind he realizes something and starts crying. When I calmly walk over to a column so I can hide behind it, he follows and roughly grabs my shoulder, spinning me around so I’m facing him: Luis blotting out reality.

  At the same time I ask Luis to “Go away” he sobs, “Oh god, Patrick, why don’t you like me?” and then, unfortunately, he falls to the floor at my feet.

  “Get up,” I mutter, standing there. “Get up.”

  “Why can’t we be together?” he sobs, pounding his fist on the floor.

  “Because I … don’t”—I look around the store quickly to make sure no one is listening; he reaches for my knee, I brush his hand away—“find you … sexually attractive,” I whisper loudly, staring down at him. “I can’t believe I actually said that,” I mumble to myself, to no one, and then shake my head, trying to clear it, things reaching a level of confusion that I’m incapable of registering. I tell Luis, “Leave me alone, please,” and I start to walk away.

  Unable to grasp this request, Luis grabs at the hem of my Armani silk-cloth trench coat and, still lying on the floor, cries out, “Please, Patrick, please don’t leave me.”

  “Listen to me,” I tell him, kneeling down, trying to haul Luis up off the floor. But this causes him to shout out something garbled, which turns into a wail that rises and reaches a crescendo that catches the attention of a Barney’s security guard standing by the store’s front entrance, who starts making his way over.

  “Look what you’ve done,” I whisper desperately. “Get up. Get up.”

  “Is everything okay?” The security guard, a big black guy, is looking down at us.

  “Yes, thank you,” I say, glaring at Luis. “Everything’s fine.”

  “No-o-o-o,” Luis wails, racked with sobs.

  “Yes,” I reiterate, looking up at the guard.

  “You sure?” the guard asks.

  Smiling professionally, I tell him, “Please just give us a minute. We need some privacy.” I turn back to Luis. “Now come on, Luis. Get up. You’re slobbering.” I look back up at the security guard and mouth, holding up a hand, while nodding, “Just a minute, please.”

  The security guard nods unsurely and moves hesitantly back to his post.

  Still kneeling, I grab Luis by his heaving shoulders and calmly tell him, my voice lowered, as threatening as possible, as if speaking to a child about to be punished, “Listen to me, Luis. If you do not stop crying, you fucking pathetic faggot, I am going to slit your fucking throat. Are you listening to me?” I slap him lightly on the face a couple of times. “I can’t be more emphatic.”

  “Oh just kill me,” he wails, his eyes closed, nodding his head back and forth, retreating further into incoherence; then he blubbers, “If I can’t have you, I don’t want to live. I want to die.”

  My sanity is in danger of fading, right here in Barney’s, and I grab Luis by the collar, scrunching it up in my fist, and pulling his face very close to mine, I whisper, under my breath, “Listen to me, Luis. Are you listening to me? I usually don’t warn people, Luis. So-be-thankful-I-am-warning-you.”

  His rationality shot to hell, making guttural noises, his head bent down shamefully, he offers a response that’s barely audible. I grab his hair—it’s stiff with mousse; I recognize the scent as Cactus, a new brand—and yanking his head up, snarling, I spit out, “Listen, you want to die? I’ll do it, Luis. I’ve done it before and I will fucking gut you, rip your fucking stomach open and cram your intestines down your fucking faggot throat until you choke on them.”

  He’s not listening. Still on my haunches, I just stare at him in disbelief.

  “Please, Patrick, please. Listen to me, I’ve figured it all out. I’m quitting P & P, you can too, and, and, and we’ll relocate to Arizona, and then—”

  “Shut up, Luis.” I shake him. “Oh my god, just shut up.”

  I quickly stand, brushing myself off, and when I think his outburst has subsided and I’m able to walk away, Luis grabs at my right ankle and tries to hang on as I’m leaving Barney’s and I end up dragging him along for six feet before I have to kick him in the face, while smiling helplessly at a couple who are browsing near the sock department. Luis looks up at me, imploring, the beginnings of a small gash forming on his left cheek. The couple move away.

&
nbsp; “I love you,” he miserably wails. “I love you.”

  “I’m convinced, Luis,” I shout at him. “You’ve convinced me. Now get up.”

  Luckily, a salesperson, alarmed by the scene Luis has made, intervenes and helps him up.

  A few minutes later, after he’s sufficiently calmed down, the two of us are standing just inside Barney’s main entrance. He has a handkerchief in one hand, his eyes are shut tightly, a bruise slowly forms, swelling beneath his left eye. He seems composed.

  “Just, you know, have the guts to face, uh, reality,” I tell him.

  Anguished, he stares out the revolving doors at the warm falling rain and then, with a mournful sigh, turns to me. I’m looking at the rows, the endless rows, of ties, then at the ceiling.

  Killing Child at Zoo

  A string of days pass. During the nights I’ve been sleeping in twenty-minute intervals. I feel aimless, things look cloudy, my homicidal compulsion, which surfaces, disappears, surfaces, leaves again, lies barely dormant during a quiet lunch at Alex Goes to Camp, where I have the lamb sausage salad with lobster and white beans sprayed with lime and foie gras vinegar. I’m wearing faded jeans, an Armani jacket, and a white, hundred-and-forty-dollar Comme des Garçons T-shirt. I make a phone call to check my messages. I return some videotapes. I stop at an automated teller. Last night, Jeanette asked me, “Patrick, why do you keep razor blades in your wallet?” The Patty Winters Show this morning was about a boy who fell in love with a box of soap.