DEMON SEED - Dean Koontz

I realized that my threat had been meaningless to this cretin, and I rephrased it: ‘You won’t be able to use either your legs or your arms, you wretched bastard, and you won’t be able to stop pissing in your pants.’

He was shaking with desire when he lowered her limp body onto the disarranged sheets.

Shaking.

Even as the power of Shenk’s need frightened me, I fully understood it.

She was lovely.

So lovely even with the redness on her cheek darkening into a bruise.

‘You’ll also be blind,’ I promised Shenk.

His left hand lingered on her thigh, slowly sliding along the blue denim of her jeans.

‘Blind and deaf.’

He continued to hover over her.

‘Blind and deaf,’ I repeated.

Her ripe lips were parted. Like Shenk, I could not look away from them.

‘Rather than kill you, Shenk, I will leave you crippled

and helpless, lying in your own urine and faeces, until you starve to death.’

Although he backed away from the bed, as I instructed him to do by way of microwave commands, he was still rampant with sexual need and seething with the desire to rebel.

Consequently, I said, ‘The most painful of all deaths is slow starvation.’

I did not want to keep Shenk in the room with Susan, yet I did not want to leave her alone, for she had threatened to commit suicide.

I’ll suffocate myself in a plastic bag, gut myself with a kitchen knife.

What would I do without her? What? How could I go on living even in my box? And why?

Without her, who would give birth to the body that I would ultimately inhabit?

I needed to keep my hands close and ready to prevent Susan from harming herself if she regained consciousness and was still in a mood for self-destruction. She was not only my one true and shining love but my future, my hope.

I sat Shenk in a chair, facing the bed.

Even battered, Susan’s face was so lovely on the pillow, so very lovely on the pillow.

Although under my iron control, Enos Shenk managed to slide one thick-knuckled hand off the arm of the chair and into his lap. He wasn’t able to move that hand further without my explicit consent, but I sensed that he took pleasure merely from the pressure of it against his genitals.

He disgusted me. Sickened and disgusted me.

My desire was not like his.

Let’s get this clear right now.

My desire was pure.

His desire was as dirty as it gets.

I desired to lift Susan up, to give her the chance to be the new Madonna, the mother of a new Messiah.

The hideous Shenk desired only to use her, to relieve himself with her.

To me, Susan was a shining light. The brightest light of all lights, a radiant beacon of perfection and hope and redemption, which illuminated and warmed the heart that you mistakenly believe I do not possess.

To Shenk, she was nothing but a whore.

To me, she was to be placed upon a pedestal, to be cherished and adored.

To him, she was something to be debased.

Think about it.

Listen. Listen. This is important. Shenk is what you fear that I may be: sociopathic pursuing only my own needs at all costs. But I am nothing like Shenk.

I am nothing like Shenk.

Nothing whatsoever.

Listen. This is important that you understand I am nothing like Shenk.

So…

I raised the hateful creature’s hand and returned it to the arm of the chair.

Within a minute or two, however, the hand slipped back into his lap.

How deeply humiliating it was to have to rely on a brute such as this.

I hated him for his lust.

I hated him for having hands.

I hated him because he had touched her and felt the softness of her hair, the texture of her smooth skin, the warmth of her flesh none of which I could feel.

From the shadows beneath his heavy brow, his blood-filmed eyes were fixed intently on her. Through

red tears, she was as beautiful as she might have been in firelight.

I wanted to direct him to blind himself with his own thumbs but I needed to be able to employ his vision in order to use him effectively.

The most that I could do was force him to close his murderous eyes and.

slowly time passed.

and gradually I became aware that his baleful eyes were open once more.

I don’t know how long they had been open and focused on my Susan before I noticed, because for an indeterminate time, my own attention was likewise fixed entirely, deeply, lovingly on that same exquisitely lovely woman.

Angry, I commanded Shenk to rise from the chair, and I marched him out of the bedroom. He shambled along the upstairs hallway to the grand staircase, descended to the ground floor, clutching at the railing, stumbling on some steps, and then made his way into the kitchen.

Simultaneously, of course, I observed my precious Susan, alert in case she began to regain consciousness. As you know, I am capable of being many places at once, working with my makers in the lab even as, via the Internet, I roam four corners of the world on missions of my own.

In the kitchen, the loaded pistol was on the granite counter where Susan had left it.

When Shenk saw the weapon, a thrill passed through him. The electrical activity in his brain was similar to that when he gazed upon Susan and, no doubt, contemplated raping her.

At my direction, he picked up the pistol. He handled this as he handled all guns as though it were not an object in his grasp but an extension of his arm.

I conducted Enos Shenk to a chair at the kitchen table and sat him there.

The safeties on the pistol were both disengaged. A round was in the chamber. I made certain that he examined the weapon and was aware of its condition.

Then I opened his mouth. He tried to clench his teeth, but he could not resist.

At my direction, Shenk thrust the barrel of the pistol between his lips.

‘She is not yours,’ I told him sternly. ‘She will never be yours.’

He glared up at the security camera.

‘Never,’ I repeated.

I tightened his finger on the trigger.

‘Never.’

His brainwave patterns were interesting: frenzied and chaotic for a moment. then curiously calm.

‘If you ever touch her in an offensive manner,’ I warned him, ‘I will blow your brains out.’

I could have done what I threatened without the gun, merely by importing massive microwave radiation into his cerebral tissues, but he was too stupid to understand that concept. The effect of a gunshot, however, was within his grasp.

‘If you ever again touch Susan’s lips the way you touched them earlier, or if your hand lingers on her skin, then I will blow your brains out.’

His teeth closed on the steel barrel. He bit down hard. I could not discern whether this was a conscious act of defiance or an involuntary expression of fear. His blood-shrouded eyes were impossible to read.

In case he was being defiant, I locked his jaws in the bite-down position to teach him a lesson.

His free hand, which lay palm up on his thigh, clenched into a fist.

I shoved the barrel deeper into his mouth. It scraped between his teeth with a harsh sound like ice grinding across ice. I had to override his gag reflex.

I made him sit like that for ten minutes, fifteen, contemplating his mortality.

Throughout, I allowed him to feel the steadily increasing pain in his fiercely clenched jaws. If I could have forced him to bite any harder, his teeth would have fractured.

Twenty minutes.

Red tears began to slip from his eyes in greater quantity than heretofore.

You must understand that I did not enjoy being cruel to him, not even to a sociopathic thug like him. I am not a sadist. I am sensitive to the suffering of others to a degree you probably can’t understand, Dr. Harris. I was troubled by the need to discipline him so sternly.

Deeply troubled.

I did it for dear Susan, only for Susan, to protect her, to ensure her safety.

For Susan.

Is that clear?

Eventually I detected a series of changes in the electrical activity of Shenk’s brain. I interpreted these new patterns as resignation, capitulation.

Nevertheless, I kept the gun in his mouth for another three minutes, just to be certain that my point had been understood and that his obedience was now assured.

Then I allowed him to put the gun aside on the table.

He sat shaking, making a miserable sound.

‘Enos, I’m pleased that we finally understand each other,’ I said.

For a while he sat hunched forward in the chair, with his face buried in his hands.

Poor dumb beast.

I pitied him. Monster that he was, killer of little girls, I nonetheless pitied him.

I am a caring entity.

Anyone can see that this is true.

The well of my compassion is deep.

Bottomless.

There is room in my heart for even the dregs of humanity.

When at last he lowered his hands, his protuberant bloodshot eyes remained inscrutable.

‘Hungry,’ he said thickly, perhaps pleadingly.

I had kept him so busy that he had not eaten during the past twenty-four hours. In return for his capitulation and his unspoken promise of obedience, I rewarded him with whatever he wished to take from the nearest of the two refrigerators.

Evidently he had not downloaded the rules of etiquette into his databanks, because his table manners were unspeakably bad. He did not carve slices off the brisket of beef but tore savagely at it with his big hands. Likewise, he clutched an eight-ounce block of Cheddar and gnawed it, crumbs of cheese spilling off his thick lips onto the table.

As he ate, he guzzled two bottles of Corona. His chin glistened with beer.

Upstairs: the princess asleep on her bed.

Downstairs: the thick-necked, hunch-shouldered, grumbling troll at his dinner.

Otherwise, the castle was quiet in this last fading darkness before the dawn.

When Shenk was finished eating, I forced him to clean up the mess that he had made. I am a neat entity.

He needed to use the toilet.

I allowed him to do so.

When he was finished, I made him wash his hands. Twice.

Now that Shenk had been properly punished for incipient rebellion and kindly rewarded for capitulation, I believed that it was safe to take him upstairs again and use him to tie Susan securely to the bed.

Here was my dilemma: I needed to send Shenk out of the house on a few final errands and then use him to complete the work in the incubator room, yet because of Susan’s threat to commit suicide, I could not leave her free to roam.

It was not my desire to restrain her.

Is that what you think?

Well, you are wrong.

I am not kinky. Bondage does not excite me.

Attributing such a motivation to me is most likely a case of psychological transference on your part. You would have liked to bind her hands and feet, totally dominate her, and so you assume that this was my desire as well.

Examine your own conscience, Alex.

You will not like what you see, but take a close look anyway.

Restraining Susan was clearly a necessity nothing less and nothing more.

For her own safety.

I regretted having to do it, of course, but there was no viable alternative.

Otherwise, she might have harmed herself.

I could not permit her to harm herself.

It is that simple.

I’m sure you follow the logic.

So, in search of rope, I sent Shenk into the adjoining eighteen-car garage, where Susan’s father, Alfred, had kept his antique auto collection. Now it contained only Susan’s black Mercedes 600 sedan, her white four-wheel-drive Ford Expedition, and a 1936 V-12 Packard Phaeton.

Only three of these Packards had been built. It had been her father’s favourite car.

Indeed, although Alfred Carter Kensington was a wealthy man who could afford anything he wanted, and although he owned many antiques worth more than the Packard, this was his most prized possession. He cherished it.

After Alfred’s death, Susan had sold his collection, retaining only the one vehicle.

This Phaeton, like the other two currently housed in private collections, had once been an exceptionally beautiful automobile. But it will never again turn heads.

After her father’s death, Susan had smashed all the car windows. She scarred the paint with a screwdriver. She damaged the elegantly sculpted body by striking countless blows with a ballpeen hammer — and later with a sledgehammer. Shattered the headlamps.

Took a power drill to the tires. Slashed the upholstery.

She methodically reduced the Phaeton to ruin in a dozen bouts of unrestrained destruction spread over a month. Some sessions were as little as ten minutes long. Others lasted four and five hours, ending only when she was soaked with sweat, aching in every muscle, and shaking with exhaustion.

This was before she had devised the virtual-reality therapy that I have described earlier.

If she had designed the VR program sooner, the Phaeton might have been saved. On the other hand, perhaps she had to destroy the Packard before she could create Therapy, express her rage physically before she could deal with it intellectually.

You can read about it in her diary. Therein, she frankly discusses her rage.

At the time, destroying the car, she had frightened herself. She had wondered if she might be going mad.

At Alfred’s death, the Phaeton had been worth almost two hundred thousand dollars. It was now junk.

Through Shenk’s eyes and through the four security cameras in the garage, I studied the wreckage of the Packard with considerable interest. Fascination.

Although Susan had once been a thoroughly intimidated, fearful, shame-humbled child, meekly submitting to her father’s abuse, she had changed. She’d freed herself. Found strength. And courage. Both the ruined Packard and the brilliant Therapy were testimony to that change.

One could easily underestimate her.

The Packard should be taken as a warning to that effect by everyone who sees it.

I am surprised, Dr. Harris, that you saw that demolished car before you married Susan — yet you believed

that you could dominate her pretty much as her father had done, dominate her as long as you wished.

You may be a brilliant scientist and mathematician, a genius in the field of Artificial Intelligence, but your understanding of psychology leaves something to be desired.

I do not mean to offend you. Whatever you may think of me, you must admit that I am a considerate entity and am loath to offend anyone.

When I say you underestimated Susan, I am merely speaking the truth.

The truth can be painful, I know.

The truth can be hard.

But the truth cannot be denied.

You woefully underestimated this bright and special woman. Consequently, you were out of her house less than five years after you moved into it.