Pieces of Hate (27 page)

“You’re doing it again, Thomas,” Ophilia said, holding up her hand and her cards. “Would you please let her speak.”

He pressed his lips together hard and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes with the fingers of both hands.

The audience applauded Ophilia’s handling of Thomas.

Turning to Dr. Carmody, Ophilia said, “You’ll get to finish in just a moment, but first — ” She turned to the camera. “ — we have to break. Be right back.”

As the music began and the show faded to a commercial, Della shook her head and said, “Why doesn’t she let him talk? It sounds to me like he’s got something to say, like he’s telling the truth!”

“Have you read any of his books?” Lolly asked her.

“Yeah, the one before last, but that’s all.”

“Did you like it?” Brenda asked.

“Sure, I thought it was fine. It was suspenseful and scary and — ”

“But do you agree with the doctor?” Marilu asked.

“Oh, come on, for crying out loud!” Della snapped, frowning as she tossed a half-eaten cruller back down on the paper towel. She turned to Lolly. “Have you read any of his books?”

“Oh, sure. I’ve read all of them.”

Della’s eyes opened wide and her mouth dropped open. “All of them?” She turned to the other two. “How about you guys? Have you read any of his books?”

Brenda and Marilu both nodded hesitantly.

“And have you, by any chance, read all of them?”

The two of them glanced at one another before turning back to Della and nodding slowly.

Della’s eyes opened wider as she asked, “Well, did you like them? Did you enjoy his books?”

They both nodded again and Marilu said, “Yeah, he’s a good writer, but I think maybe that doctor’s right, y’know? Maybe he’s just — ”

“I can’t believe this!” Della hissed. “You guys are such hypocrites! You’ve read his books and liked them, but . . . do you think he deserves what he’s gonna get on here?”

“Well, you have to admit,” Holly said, shrugging, “the sex in his books is pretty unrealistic, right?”

“Then why do you read it?” Della asked.

“Cause it’s entertaining!” Marilu piped in.

“It’s just not realistic,” Brenda added.

Then Lolly asked, with a smirk, “Tell me, Della, when was the last time you had sex like that, huh? Does your Bobby do that kind of stuff to you? Do you two wail like that at night while you’re together in bed?”

“No. Of course not! The sex in those books is fantasy. It’s meant to be fantasy! So you guys think this guy is awful because he’s given you this sexual fantasy? A fantasy you don’t have in real life? Is that why you want him to be punished in the way he’s going to be punished on this damned show?”

All of them stared at her silently, with widened eyes, as Ophilia returned to remind her viewers of the 900 number they could call to register their opinions.

“Well, that sounds pretty hypocritical, don’t you think?” Della asked them, her voice a little more calm now. “He’s a novelist. He’s supposed to entertain. Fantasy is what he does. So what’s wrong with that? I mean, whatever happened to the idea of — ”

The other three women suddenly returned their attention to the television as the show continued. Della released a long, quiet sigh, cradled her chin in her palm and put her elbow on the edge of the table, watching with them.

Dr. Carmody was allowed to finish what she was saying before the break. “Mr. Fisher’s writing is filled with unwholesome and unrealistic sex that only leads the reader to harbor unrealistic expectations from a relationship. His female characters are depicted as little more than seductresses in skimpy lingerie while the men, more often than not, remain fully clothed. In his books, women are no more than objects, which is an attitude that has been fostered for much too long and must come to an end. It must stop. And I think a good place to start is the source of that attitude that reaches millions and millions of people every year in several different languages. Namely, Mr. Fisher’s novels. They must be stopped.”

Della rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe it. Now she’s talking censorship. On top of what’s going to happen to the man, this woman is talking — ”

Suddenly, all the others turned to her and hissed, “Ssshh!”

“Could you give us your reaction to that, Mr. Fisher?” Ophilia asked.

“Yes. Yes, my reaction is this. If Dr. Carmody succeeds in suppressing my books, and in suppressing my readers’ right to read them, then what will she suppress next? Someone’s right to worship as they please? Someone’s right to do whatever they want in their bedroom with his or her spouse? Is that what she’s after?”

There was more negative grumbling from the audience in the studio and Ophilia turned to Lisa Curran.

“Lisa, could you give us your reaction to what Mr. Fisher has said?”

“It’s crap,” the woman said, tossing her blond hair back over her shoulder.

There was a burst of applause and cheering from the audience.

Lisa continued: “He’s a great one for setting himself up as the victim. He does it all the time.”

“You don’t even know me!” Thomas shouted, leaning forward in his chair to look at Lisa. “We went on one date and you think you can talk about me like you know me?”

Suddenly, Thomas Fisher’s microphone was muted and a camera focused on Ophilia’s face.

“We have to take a break,” she said into the camera. “But my producer says that, so far, we have a huge majority of ‘thumbs down’ for Mr. Fisher. We’ll be back in two minutes.”

“They always have a majority of thumbs down!” Della barked as she stood during the first commercial. “They do, really, I mean, why is that? It’s always a majority of thumbs down, right?”

She looked at the others.

They stared up at her. Lolly giggled. Marilu covered her mouth with a palm. Brenda simply turned away from her, directing her eyes to the commercial for a pill that was supposed to shed pounds instantly.

Della sighed, then grabbed a cruller and took her mug to the coffee pot to refill it. But she took her time. She moved slowly. Long after the show came back on, she was still standing by the coffee maker, nibbling on her cruller and stirring the cream and Equal into her coffee. She was not anxious to return to the television and watch more of that sick, corrupt show. In fact, by the time she returned to the table, the next commercial break was half over. She glanced at her watch. There were only thirteen minutes left. She knew what was coming, but she took her seat at the table anyway. She’d just finished her cruller, but she snatched another from the box and bit into it hard, taking a gulp of the hot coffee.

“The verdict is in from our viewers, who have called our 900 number,” Ophilia said. “Now, we want to get our studio audience’s opinion. So!” she shouted, facing the audience and raising a hand into the air like a televangelist ready to heal someone. “By your applause, please give us your opinion of Mr. Thomas Fisher! Thumbs up!”

There was a smattering of applause, maybe twelve or fifteen people. Then:

“Thumbs down!”

The audience went berserk. There was applause and cheering and foot-stamping; they sounded like a group of party-crazed college students, perhaps worse.

“Well,” Ophilia said as she turned to the camera, smiling, “our studio audience apparently agrees with our viewers — ”

“Don’t they always?” Della muttered as she finished her cruller; the others ignored her.

“ — because our viewers voted an overwhelming thumbs down for Mr. Fisher.”

There was a quick cut to Mr. Fisher sitting alone on the stage. The other women were gone now. Mr. Fisher looked even more terrified than before.

“So,” Ophilia said, “I have nothing more to say than — ”

Della’s lips moved with Ophilia’s words.

“ — have at it!”

The seats emptied as the entire audience moved forward like a flood, like a force of nature.

Della turned away and grabbed another cruller, biting into it hard, chewing hard, and biting into it hard once again, her cheeks bulging as she turned reluctantly toward the others.

Lolly, Marilu and Brenda began to cheer and clap, bouncing up and down in their chairs as Della stuffed that cruller into her mouth and her eyes moved slowly toward the television.

There was a lot of blood. The women had closed in on Mr. Fisher like sharks. Their arms rose and fell, their fingers curled into bloody claws. Some of the women were even using their teeth.

Della stopped mid-bite, the cruller still in her mouth as she gaped at the television.

As the others continued to clap and cheer and laugh and bounce in their chairs, Della pressed her teeth through the cruller and tossed it, unfinished, onto the table as she began to chew furiously. She leaned forward and watched. Something moved suddenly through her body — anger, hatred . . . most of all, the bilious hatred — and her hands clutched into fists and pressed against her thighs.

The others were cheering, but she was silent.

But only for a while.

Suddenly, Della began to cheer along with them, her voice muffled slightly by the mouthful of cruller, and she began to pound her fists on her thighs hard . . . she pounded and pounded, as she cried, “Get him! Get the son-of-a-bitch! Tear him apart!”

The others were doing the same, their eyes attached to the television screen.

And on that screen, Della’s very words were taking place.

At first, the women threw nothing more than shreds of clothes into the air, over their shoulders, onto the floor. But then, moments later, they were throwing patches of skin.

The skin flew through the air trailing spatterings of blood.

Then, the skin had hair attached to it.

Mr. Fisher’s screams were muffled because there was no microphone close by to catch them.

Within a few minutes, the women were throwing other things over their shoulders. Wet, black-red things that hit the floor sloppily. But the microphones were kept away, so there were no real sounds to go with the sights.

At one point, the blood splattered the camera lens, and they cut instantly to another angle.

Della continued to shout with the others. She clapped her hands, stomped her feet, and their voices, their stomping, their clapping, all of it blended together in an almost crowd-like sound in that small space.

Then, quite suddenly, Ophilia’s face filled the screen, smiling, showing her teeth, crinkling her eyes, the foam bulb of the microphone just beneath her mouth.

“Tomorrow,” Ophilia said, “we will be talking with the adult daughters of fathers who have abused them. Please join us.” She nodded, then stepped aside, and the camera closed in on the chaos that was taking place on the stage.

Chunks of skin, organs, and strings of intestines flew through the air.

Blood spread over the carpet and spattered through the air.

Thomas Fisher’s arms shot up and down, up and down, convulsively.

Ophilia’s theme music began and the credits began to roll.

Della sat back in her chair, picked up her unfinished cruller and bit into it twice as the others continued to cheer on the women who were pulling Mr. Fisher apart with their bare hands.

When the show finally ended and was replaced by a commercial for some exercising device that was guaranteed to take off inches and pounds within four weeks, the others turned to Della.
 

They saw her sitting in her chair, chewing on her cruller and staring at the television with a relaxed expression.

“I don’t understand you,” Lolly said.

“Neither do I.” Brenda added.

Della finished the cruller and washed it down with a couple swallows of coffee. “Why not?”

Marilu said, “Because you don’t like Ophilia!”

“I think it’s just because you don’t understand her,” Lolly said.

Della realized they had not seen her reaction to the show. She smiled confidently. “No, I don’t like her. And yes, I do understand her. The thing is . . . I just think what she does is sick and morally reprehensible.”

The others laughed.

“Laugh all you want,” Della said. “I think it’s sick and disgusting.”

They ignored the disagreement and turned on the news to see if they could catch a glimpse of the latest footage of the most recent riot in Los Angeles . . .

THE DEVIL’S MUSIC

This story is dedicated to Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, two men who feel compelled to tell us repeatedly that everything we do in our lives — I mean us, you and me, everything we listen to, watch, read, and even think —
 
is fundamentally wrong and can only be corrected with their help.
 
Hey, Newt? Bob? Do what you’re paid for, shut the hell up, and mind your own damned business, okay?

Craven’s death-like sleep was ripped open by a sudden explosion of bright light in the room. He twisted and turned, tangling himself in the sheet and blankets. He tried to open his eyes, but they felt as if they’d been stapled shut. His mouth made a crusty slurping sound when he opened it to move his fuzzy tongue back and forth over his lips, which felt rather numb.