The Strangler of Whores

Pretty much the only thing that brought Marcus Marcus joy in life was strangling prostitutes.

Unfortunately, Marcus Marcus lived in a benighted and God-forsaken land in which the noble art of applying pressure to a whore’s windpipe until she not only lost consciousness but in fact died was (incredibly) still considered a heinous crime.

And, like most of us (you’re no exception, reader, and fuck off if you say you are), Marcus Marcus was a god-damned coward who would rather accede to the dictates of social convention than follow his one true deepest desire to the point of death or imprisonment.

So Marcus Marcus was a deeply miserable man.

He carried hate in his heart like other people carry copies of Tim O’Brien’s The Things they Carried. He slept with hate in his heart the way other people sleep with people they “love” and “cherish” and “genuinely care for the well-being of.” He thought about murder with hate in his heart the way other people think about murder when they — I dunno, watch true crime shows or some other masturbatory bullshit like that.

And I know what you’re thinking, I can hear it already. “Marcus Marcus is such a bad, nasty, evil man for singling out sex workers that way. Doesn’t he know sex work is real work?”

But that’s where you’re wrong, reader. Because Marcus Marcus really didn’t care about the fact that the women he wanted to strangle were whores — he didn’t give a shit about morality, and even when he tried to pay lip service to it things just came out so fake and bullshitty that it made him sick and drove him to the bottle. So if you’re thinking this was some kind of misplaced do-gooder-ism, it’s not.

Marcus Marcus really had no problem with the fact that whores are whores. In his heart of hearts, he believed prostitution was the most honest possible form of sexual relationship. So if anything, in principle he was a great advocate of a woman’s right to stand on a street corner and wait around for some fat middle-aged dude to pay her to suck his cock.

What he really wanted to do was strangle women, any women, and since whores are the women society seems to give the least of a shit about, they were the ones he singled out in his fantasies of divine violence. But — and just to make this extra-crystal-clear — the last thing on his mind was any kind of moral indignation against whores, or any kind of vigilantism, or any sort of nonsense like that.

It was just that they were adult female humans. Period.

And it definitely wasn’t any kind of tender-hearted “I’ve been so wounded by women in the past” bullshit like that, so if that’s what you’re thinking you can get the fuck outta heah! Marcus Marcus didn’t give a shit about anybody’s tender-hearted little emotions, least of all his own.

And this was what Marcus Marcus loved so much about his prostitute-strangulation fantasy: the pure malevolence of it. You see, Marcus Marcus got his jollies off of thinking of himself as an evil person, the same way most people get their jollies off of thinking of themselves as good people.

And like most of those people, Marcus Marcus fell well short of his ideal. Like those people telling themselves lies to prove to themselves how good they are, Marcus Marcus had to lie to himself to convince himself he really was quite evil. He had to convince himself he really was an evil mastermind and not just an insignificant nobody with serious anger issues and misplaced aggression against half of the human race. That he wasn’t a man who really just wanted the pain and the anxiety and the really awful feelings of powerlessness that came up whenever he thought of women to go away and never come back.

(And okay, maybe he wanted to love and be loved too, but not in a sappy way or anything so if that’s what you’re thinking, once again: fuck you.)

But then again, on a pretty deep level all that misplaced aggression was his driving force in life. He was pretty sure if a single moment ever came where he didn’t feel utterly powerless and impotent he’d lose all his vitality, sink into his couch, and just wait for the long-awaited release of death to finally take him.

(And just to make sure you know when I say impotent I mean that in the sense of not having power, not in the sense of not being able to get it up, because Marcus Marcus had rock-hard erections all the time. Like, he even did the thing where you take a wet towel and hang it off your dick to test the strength of the erection, and he managed to hold up the towel that way almost half the time. Which isn’t so bad, really.)

So what Marcus Marcus told himself was that since the hate in his heart was the only thing keeping him going… maybe he really was evil? And maybe he didn’t have to be rude or mean or unpleasant to people to prove it to himself?

For Marcus Marcus, this was a deeply consoling thought. He so badly wanted to be evil, but not if he had to step on anybody’s toes to do it.

For a while Marcus Marcus escaped these deep tensions in himself by drinking himself to sleep every night. It worked okay because it numbed all that hate and turned it inward so he just hated himself instead of actively hating anyone else.

But then he ran out of his savings, so he had to stop drinking. He rationalized it by saying he was choosing to stop drinking, but really it was only because he was out of money.

So all that numbed hateful energy started building up inside him, and he no longer had the outlet of pouring beer after beer down his throat to quiet it. And he couldn’t go out and actually strangle any whores, because he was pretty sure no matter how miserable his existence was it would be worse if he actually went out and murdered anyone. Because he’d read Crime and Punishment, after all, and he knew himself well enough to know that the guilt of the act would drive him to seek out punishment for it — plus he didn’t have it in him to rationalize his motives to himself. He knew it was just malevolence and spite, nothing he could really justify to himself.

And he also avoided any genuinely intimate relationships with women, because he couldn’t trust himself or what he might do if he got angry at a woman he was with. The most he had was a few one-night-stands or a fuck buddy every now and again, and even then he’d end up doing or saying things that revealed an inner destructive potential in him that frightened him to the point where he’d avoid women all the more stringently.

For example, there was a time when a woman he was with had wanted to take a break during sex. And the simple suggestion had so enraged him that he’d grabbed her face hard and pulled it towards him… seeing a fearful look come over her eyes as a million dark thoughts bubbled up in his mind.

Then he’d realized what he was doing and immediately let go, ashamed of himself for what he’d done with so little provocation, and terrified of what he might have done if she’d really provoked him.

So like I said, he avoided women all the more after that, because he was afraid of himself.

Sometimes he thought about going to pick up a prostitute. Not to strangle her, or anything, even though he wanted to. But just to exchange money for sex.

But he didn’t really enjoy sex enough for all that. It was fine and all, but paying for it would just make him feel dirty and unwanted, and he already felt that pretty much all the time anyway. Might as well keep the money, jerk off to some porn where a woman verbally abused him, and feel dirty and unwanted that way. Cheaper, more convenient, and he ended up in exactly the same place.

So Marcus Marcus couldn’t strangle whores.

Couldn’t drink.

Couldn’t fuck.

But still he had all this evil in himself that had to go somewhere.

So he started drawing pictures. Pictures of whores.

The first one he drew was a girl in a black leather bustier and miniskirt with fishnet stockings and stiletto boots that came to the mid-calf. She had a small ass and huge tits. Marcus Marcus had talked to other men on the subject before and found he was apparently in the minority in that he was relatively indifferent to big, round asses — even caught a little flak for that, as a matter of fact. And sure, he could appreciate a nice ass, but it wasn’t the thing he was looking for.

What he was really looking for was a pair of great, engulfing breasts. For plenty of strictly sexual reasons, sure, but his real fantasy was that someday he might feel safe enough and comfortable enough with a woman to be able to lie post-coitally with his head between her large, pillowing breasts while she stroked his hair softly and told him everything would be okay. And maybe he could even feel safe enough with his head there against her warmth to let the tears flow out, without having to worry that she was secretly judging him and holding him in contempt for it.

So anyway, that’s why the whore he drew had big tits and a small ass. And when he was done drawing it, he paused to admire his work for a minute. Then he took his lighter and fucking burned that picture to ashes. And as he did it he laughed and laughed, hysterically, like a crazy person laughs.

And when he went to sleep that night he didn’t let the tears come, because he was all alone and insignificant and nobody on earth had any reason to give a damn about him.

But the next day he also drew a picture of a whore, and burned it.

And the next day.

And the next day.

It became a habit with him, the way drinking had been a habit.

Marcus Marcus didn’t feel any better. But at least it was something to do.