End of the Line

The first time I heard Berlioz, I was riding in a classic, burgundy 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air with bucket seats and chromed trim and was on my way to Hell. It was the final and the fifth movement of the composition and, from what I had been told, often the most celebrated. My hands gripped tight to the polished wood of the wheel, growing more white-knuckled with every mile that passed, the anxiety increasing steadily with the wheeling of the tires upon the asphalt. My passenger sat idly at my side and drummed his fingers upon the fabric of his trousers.

"Ah... this movement is his finest, " he said, arching his back further into his leather seat. "It is here, Charles, the artist finds himself at the Witches' Sabbath. The funeral he attends is his own. This is all a drug induced dream, of course, but Berlioz was quite gifted in the ways of imagination. Have you ever tried opium?"

"No," I replied, not particularly enjoying the reference to witches and funerals and the discourse on classical music I was receiving. A slight bead of perspiration had begun to angle its way from the hairline of my forehead and toward the eyebrow of my left eye socket. It wasn't difficult to steer the automobile between the mid line of the road and the white of the other side. That part was easy. You simply stayed between the lines, steered clear of either extreme, avoided oncoming traffic and any obstacle in your path, and placed your right foot on the accelerator and gunned it. The hard part was knowing when to stop, when to ease up on the gas. Too much drink here; a little junk there; an unexpected rendezvous with a fifty dollar hooker on a street corner. And then, of course, there was always the instance with a stray cat in the backyard with hanger wire while the babysitter was too occupied with an experimental finger up her teenage crotch to hear the morbid curiosities of an eight year old at work and all the tortured hissing. With a little intervention on her part then, perhaps, my morbid fascination with death would have been nipped in the bud and tucked away like a bad dream. That intervention never came. My parents never knew about it or didn't take the time to care. The hooker's eyes had bulged the way the cat's had when the wire had grown taunt around her neck. I was twenty-four or twenty-five then, although I can't rightly remember now. She had been my fifth or six, I think, but I never bothered counting. I had since learned that piano wire was preferable to the stiffness of the steel found in hangers or the coarseness of rope. Its spring steel can be twisted tight around the neck with little to no effort. It doesn't take much. But with enough pressure, and the will for it, piano wire can serve as a guillotine of sorts. It is surprising what you discover in the act. I could have let up, removed my weight from her chest and walked out of that shoddy, motel room, but that would have been like putting on the breaks. Taking the foot off the accelerator. The hard part for me had always been knowing when to quit, knowing when to ease up off the pedal.

"More the pity," my passenger continued. "A man hasn't lived until he has tried opium. I hear it is an extraordinary experience. At one time, opium was considered to be of immense value, only equal to that of gold. Can you believe that? To prefer something that has no intrinsic value whatsoever... beyond its physiological and pain numbing effects... to gold? I find this fascinating, don't you?"

"Anything is possible, I guess," I replied. His voice was becoming more and more monotonous, like the Sunday sermon of a preacher or a lesson one might learn in school, although I had never attended much of either. He had been going on like this for hours, days maybe, if time even existed here. He had appeared to me as a refined gentleman in his mid to late forties. Against his well-tanned skin, he had adorned a gentleman's vest, frock overcoat, and black leather gloves. Between himself and my seat at the wheel, a walking stick, fashioned of hickory and with a polished, metal grip, sat ceremoniously to his left side. His hair was short and greased back with some sort of pomade, and above his upper lip, he sported a handlebar, Italian-type mustache. His posture was poignant, as fit a man of his stature and status, but was loose in demeanor. I could tell he was quick to anger, but his general temperament was easy and graceful - at least, it had been with me. He had earned himself many names in the wide world of Christendom. To some, he was the Light-Bearer, the Morning Star. To others, the less poetic, the Beast, Lucifer, Satan. For whatever reason, he was curious about me. I felt I was receiving some sort of special treatment. My answers had been short, however. I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of becoming a spokesman for my own damned, human condition. He could go to hell, as far as I was concerned, not that it would change much for him.

"Fascinating..." he said.

It was the death of the hooker that had damned me. In more ways than one. Of this, I was certain. She hadn't screamed or struggled too terribly much. In fact, she didn't seem all that surprised when I had set to strangling her. I imagine a life of her sort could expect little else. Perhaps the solution I offered was preferable to the circumstances she had at hand. She had probably known something like this would come along, and it was just a matter of time. There is no telling what she had been up to before me, but I doubt it was up to much good. She certainly hadn't been volunteering her time at soup kitchens. No, it was my own lack of control, my own arbitrary lack of self-introspection and restraint, that did me in. It was the way I mutilated her after. You can't be forgiven for something like this. It is too intentional, far too lacking in remorse. If I would have only walked away, not spent the time with the body, experimenting endlessly upon it again and again with the wire, the passerby in the halls of the motel would have never recognized me, years later, and testified on her behalf. Funny how things work out. I got the chair for the murder of a fifty dollar whore. Not my third or fourth victim, the unsuspecting housewife, who I confronted in her kitchen with a pair of Ginsu knives and sliced up the way one might a carrot or potato. That had been magic. Too quick... but magic, nevertheless. Or the eighth or ninth, tenth maybe, the young teacher, who I cornered on the school grounds, following a late parent/teacher conference, and proceeded to strangle with a tetherball rope after she had broken free from me in her car. Lord, did she kick and struggle. Must have had something to do with dealing with somebody else's kids five days a week. No, it was the death of a hooker that sent 2,450 electrifying volts into my body. The illustrious state of Kentucky hadn't known about the others. If they would have, I imagine it wouldn't have made a bit of difference. They would have fried my ass to the seat just the same. Although there are a shit ton of ways to go about it, you can only kill a person but once. I was lucky. My soul escaped my body before the second, 20 second interval. I hear it isn't always so easy. Despite common misconceptions of the humanity of the whole thing, I hear some opt for three or four sessions. Ain't that a bitch? Not only is your soul already bound for Hell - you wouldn't be in the hot seat if you weren't guilty - you get to feel your blood boil on the way out.

And it will boil, if you are around long enough to know about it.

"...Charles, I must say that you have been most agreeable to this point. It is different for every soul, tailored to the individual's needs, but if you don't mind the metaphor, few are able to maintain the composure necessary to keep their hands on the wheel. Most will only come to me kicking and screaming. You do know where you are headed, right? I mean... your destination is not exactly... pleasant...."

"I know where this ride ends, " I interrupted vehemently and applied more pressure to the acceleration.

"I like you, Charles," he said. "We both have our hands dipped in the same clay. We were caste from the same fire, so to speak. I don't do this for just anyone, I'll have you know. I just felt a master craftsman of your sort deserved something more intimate than I generally offer my clients. I must admit I am an admirer of your work. I have followed your life with the utmost curiosity. Do you like the automobile? I thought you might. You saw a picture of it in a magazine publication once. I don't know if you remember, but you were much younger then. A youngster blossoming into his teens. I thought of offering my services to you at the time - for a small payment, of course - but knew you would get along without me just fine. This child has spark! I said to myself. This child is headed places! You do me credit, Charles. You always have. It is a pleasure to be your escort and guide."

They had been right about me. This ol' Beelzebub was crazy as a loon. Judging by the company I now kept, I was a homicidal maniac, after all. Despite society's better intentions, the chair hadn't changed this fact. They may have discharged me from the system, but they were incapable of removing the evil inside the man. The evil and I were inseparable. The transition to it had been seamless. There was no hope for redemption. This would follow its natural course, as it always had, until it had me by the throat and took it to down to a level I could understand. I looked to the right, at my self-proclaimed benefactor and guide, and something clicked in me then. Call it enlightenment. Call it a revelation. Call it what you will, but the vision of my babysitter hung by the rafters of a porch on a still, moonlit night suddenly grafted itself upon my mind. I had put her sleep with a bottle of my mother's Thorazine blended into a strawberry shake. I drug her up to the rafters with a carefully constructed pulley of my own making. Nobody had suspected a thing. The memory of it did something to me. Suddenly, I found myself awake and aware and possessing the curiosity of an eight year old child again. Perhaps my passenger and I, despite his outdated fashion and fascination for opium and Hector Berlioz, were around for a reason, I thought. The world had grown too soft. It had forgotten how to tumble. It was our duty to remind it of what it could have been. I glanced to my right, again, and a thin smile pierced my lips. He had yet to show his true colors, but I knew they would be brighter and more wicked and diabolical than anything I could yet imagine. The fifth movement of Berlioz's Fantastic Symphony was coming to a close. The Dance of Wrath and the fugue of the Sabbath Round had reached their climatic finale. My anxiety eased up a bit. I was where I belonged. It was where I had always been...

Charles H. "The Strangler" Ackerman was thundering down Hell's highways at high speeds in a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air with bucket seats and chromed trim.

With the Devil himself.

And I wasn't about to ease up on this damnation for anyone.