The Sadist's Bible by Nicole Cushing Page A

old and gathered in
    groups and pious. She observed more than one table bowing their gray heads to say grace
    before devouring their plates of eggs.
    She took He Wants Us Broken out of her back pocket. Re-read it. Who were the old people praying to? Jesus, the compassionate Christ (who healed the lame) or another kind of Christ, entirely (to whom healing was blasphemy)?
    Sure, they thought they had been praying to the compassionate Christ. But who were they praying to, really? She looked at the tract again. Its claims, on the one hand, seemed so unlikely. So out there. And yet, if you looked long enough at the arthritic, wrinkled, praying hands that surrounded her, it was impossible to refute certain points.

    If we live long enough, our body will break down .

    One of the old women looked up after praying and spotted Ellie staring at her. She
    glared back. Ellie pretended to look toward the kitchen instead. A moment later a
    disembodied arm and hand appeared in front of her, pouring water into the waiting plastic cup. “M’name’s Ronnie,” the man said with an Appalachian twang, “and I’ll be your
    server this mornin’. Can I get you some coffee? Orange juice?”
    Ellie flinched and instinctively slapped her hand over He Wants Us Broken . It was still her secret. She wasn’t yet ready to let anyone else see it. Besides, the picture of the sorrowful amputee on the cover was bound to lead to misunderstandings.
    Ronnie had the same build and complexion as the waiter at the chicken house in
    Winchester. Round and ruddy. Only he had thick glasses (and the one in Winchester
    hadn’t worn glasses at all). Also, he wore a crew cut, while the other had a fuzzy head of hair approximating a woman’s perm.
    Ellie asked for coffee.
    Ronnie smiled. “And will you be takin’ any cream and sugar with that, ma’am?”
    Ellie shook her head.
    “Alrighty then, I’ll be gettin’ that right out to you. And are you ready to order?”
    For two or three seconds, the words didn’t compute. Order? As in “order around”?
    As in “tell someone what to do”? Yes, she was ready to give orders. Especially to the
    weather girl on the TV back at the hotel. After cutting the dress off her, Ellie would order the skank to get on all fours and crawl up into her lap for a series of rough over-the-knee spankings. Ellie would set a rule that the spankings wouldn’t stop until the weather girl got wet. Ellie would really wail on her, and that tight ass would bear the mark of her
    palm. It would be warped with welts, too. And the weather girl would start crying. And
    Ellie would remind the weather girl that if she wanted the spankings to stop then she had to fuckin’ get wet. And when the weather girl finally got wet, Ellie would stop the spankings but start laughing at her. Laugh, and tell the skank that – despite all her
    protestations to the contrary – she’d actually been turned on by it all. And then Ellie
    would handcuff her and gag her and take duct tape to her ankles, because the weather girl would probably be the kind of filthy whore who was into that sort of thing. And the
    weather girl would never ever leave her. And...
    “Ma’am...?”
    Ellie jerked her head up
    “Have you had a chance to look at the menu?”
    Ellie didn’t make eye contact with the waiter. Glanced, instead, at one of the tables
    of old people. “I’ll have eggs,” she said.
    “And how would you like them cooked?”
    “Broken,” she said.
    “Beg pardon, ma’am?”
    She felt her cheeks flush. What had she just said? It really was like she was
    hungover. Confused. Restless. Scatterbrained. “I’m sorry, I mean, scrambled. I’ll have
    the meal deal with the biscuits, too.”
    “Would you like grits with that?”
    “Why not?”
    “Alrighty then,” Ronnie said in a voice that was way too energetic, “one country
    mornin’ breakfast, comin’ right up!” He waddled off to the kitchen.
    At the nearest table, a lady so wrinkled she looked like