Psych Out 2
I posted recently about reading American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis), just because there was nothing else in the airport bookstore I hadn’t read. I said it’s a horrible book that only my ironclad commitment to total freedom prevents me from saying shouldn’t even be allowed. Though well-written it’s an abomination. The movie made from it is actually much better, because the guy (Christian Bale) plays it as a surreal comedy.
But all I wanted to observe here is that I get how Ellis was trying to depict real depravity, that actually exists. One aspect of that really rings true. Throughout the book there are these weird scenes where the pyscho guy will suddenly tell people openly and directly what he is and does. Like I’m a psychopathic torture killer who enjoys slowly slicing off body parts til they die. He’d just drop something like that into a conversational lull at a Wall St. after-work mixer gathering. Repeatedly throughout the book.
His friends and colleagues or even a store clerk would just chuckle uneasily and change the subject or joke him out of it. Due to his looks, breeding, wealth, clothes, etc. it’s beyond their comprehension that it could be just the truth.
This aspect of the book rang true because by chance I’d just heard of the case of the Amazon review killer. A non-fictional homicidal psycho who abducted, tortured, abused, and serially killed some 15 or so teen girls. He would keep them in captivity for a while and eventually kill them. But that sadly isn’t the weird thing about the case.
The weird thing is that all along he was writing crazed Amazon reviews of the hardware and other products used in the crimes. Things like padlocks, handcuffs, chains, drills, wire mesh, duct tape - you can imagine. Dozens of product reviews. All were written open from his true pos, under an assumed name of course. But in these reviews, he openly talked about the products as being more or less suited to restraining victims, drilling holes in their limbs for torture, cleaning blood off surfaces, stuff like that. For years! Occasionally another reviewer would mention his “sick humor” but that was about it.