He thought each tactical pregnancy was a way to buy silence for the public humiliations and the filth he brought back to their bed. But the stench of his sordid tableau is a stain no soap can reach; it is a rot as deep and stagnant as the mud beneath the Amiens bridge.

By Frits Thaulow - National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97994136

Things turned ugly when he and a hostess had a massive, explosive row at the nightclub where she worked.

This miserly wretch. Arrived with his sycophant in tow, he was armed with a haphazardly put-together ledger; a dense collection of receipts for every major and minor trinket, holiday, flight, and hotel stay he had ever deigned to pay for - as if filing an expense claim.

It took a special kind of shamelessness to issue an extortionate demand for a refund on paid intimacy after he had already consumed it - forgetting that one cannot truly un-consume what has already been taken - transactional or not.

He hath already eaten her out of house and home, gorging himself on the entire banquet and licking the plate clean.

Speculation runs rife within that world.

Expertly draining wallets through a vast repertoire of schemes, some of these women play the game better than the men realize, viewing every man who walks through the door as a walking ATM with no limit. Everything from a weaponized pregnancy test for marriage entrapment to extortionate medical fees for an abortion that may or may not be real, all leading up to the ultimate jackpot of a settlement.

Their lives were a glittering, obscene social media pageant.

Yet, the women weren't entirely to blame; it was a sordid contract that the men were more than willing to sign.

It was the fairest Faustian bargain of them all - if such a thing exists. One pays for a gilded illusion: gold paid, service rendered. In a world built on lies, at least this transaction is honest about its own dishonesty.

But it was his standard modus operandi: a cold ritual of discard after use.

He loved a midnight stroll with his flavor of the day, all while admiring his own shimmering reflection in the water - like the Somme on a Thaulow night.

He wasn't looking at her, or them. He was looking at himself, the man with a woman on his arm - mirror-gazing, as if admiring how a new watch looks on the wrist.

He can be moved to tears in awe with his own supposed greatness. He, who hath the ability to trigger intense emotions based purely on his own vanity, like Narcissus.

He called on their presence just as he liked it, only to push them off into the dark current the moment he grew bored, taking a piece of them with him: their reputation and their time.

He pursued the beauty of them under the midnight moon only to ruin them the moment the sun began to rise.

It is a far cry from the Somme to a squabble over a bill at the nightclub. The hostess flatly refused to entertain his pathetic demand for a refund and laughed in his face.

Just like that, the confrontation escalated from a shouting match into a visceral slapping contest.

It soon exploded into a full-blown brawl involving several of her colleagues, ending only when security intervened and physically ejected them into the cold night.

In a rare display of consistency, he managed to make himself the center of attention yet again. It was, after all, his most practiced - and most pathetic - talent.

Weeks later, Bateman was discovered in a derelict housing estate, huddled inside a stagnant bowel of a manhole.

The site was still frequented by squatters and drug users, meaning the drainage system was sporadically active though it didn't possess the volume or pressure to drown him.

He had spent days in that slurry - putrid, knee-deep excrement. Starving and delirious, he was forced to sustain himself on the filth in which he was submerged, all while clutching his own severed pinkie - refusing to let go of that jagged, flesh-and-bone.

He refused to divulge exactly how he ended up in the pit; and though the finger was long past the point of being salvaged, he kept his rotting memento mori like a reliquary.

He had survived by sheer, sickening luck. Despite everything, his long-suffering wife took him back. Some bastards truly have all the luck in the world.

But there is no grace in his return. A man who has been through the fires of hell and comes out unchanged is not a survivor; he is a monument to his own damnation.

He is the wretched creature of spite he has always been.

So, if one ever cross path with a man with missing pinkie, belauding his bedroom conquests, belittling or besmirching women, remember: this caitiff deserves absolutely no respect.

Let men shun his company and women flee his shadow.

Concurso de Arte y Escritura #187 y Ganadores de la Edición #186/ Art and Writing Contest #187 y winners de la Edición #186

Inviting @dreeyor to write his story.

©Britt H.

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