The Writers' Circle

Prologue

   He was fifty-two years of age when he murdered his first female victim. For almost four decades his troubled mind had been satisfied playing out his sick fantasies alone behind closed doors. One will never know why Ernest George decided he would put into real live practise his most secret desires. Some say he was a time bomb waiting to go off. Others who make a life time study of sexual homicide, say his long-standing preoccupation devoted to violent sexualised thoughts and fantasies were just the start and all that was missing was a trigger. In truth Ernest George knew all his life that he was going to end up killing. The trigger was the unjust world he believed he had lived in for too long.  


    Ernest thrashed and turned restlessly. His body saturated in sweat soaked the bed sheets. He was having his usual nightmare. He was a child again. Alone and naked, locked inside the tiny unlit cupboard under the stairs. That frightening black hole, full of evil manifestations, where as a small child he would be put as a punishment for the smallest of misdemeanours. 
    Ernest at the age of four years had been orphaned when his parents had been killed in the blitz of London. Having no immediate family he had been taken into care where he stayed for a further two years. At the age of six Ernest was adopted by Harold and Ethel Mortimer an ideal middle class couple. Harold a school headmaster was well respected in the community, a very dominant man with strong Victorian values. His wife Ethel, a mousy woman of low dominance was completely ruled by her husband. They had been married for twenty years and were childless. It was a strange relationship with no outward sign of love shown or given by either party. They lived more like brother and sister than man and wife. Ethel didn't like sex, she thought it was dirty, to be indulged in only for the purpose of producing children. She considered the male sex organ to be crude and ugly, frequently feigning headaches and bouts of nausea when Harold insisted on having his conjugal rights.
      The introduction into their lives of little Ernest should have brought them happiness and joy. Instead, it brought intrusion and unhappiness particularly for Ethel who suddenly found her busy social life turned up side down. By the age of eight years Ernest was showing signs of being a very disturbed little boy. His chronic bed-wetting, self-mutilation and a defiant streak brought him in to conflict with his adoptive father who had little time or patience with him.  Instead of giving love and understanding, Ethel would, on the orders of her husband beat Ernest mercilessly to rid him of what Harold called an insubordinate streak. Any motherly instinct she may have had towards Ernest had been lost in the early days of adoption. The need to punish weighed less on her conscience as she came to blame Ernest for being the cause of her lost social life and subsequent unhappiness.  By the age of ten years Ernest was showing signs of feminophobia. He was being left alone at home for long periods by Ethel who would frequently tell him she was leaving home because she couldn't cope with him any more. To satisfy his need of company and affection, his fantasies and daydreams became a dominant force in his life. That's when his compulsive masturbation began. Ethel one day catching him had gone into a frenzied rage. She had beaten him viciously locking him in the cupboard under the stairs without food for two days. A week later she had convinced a private doctor that he should be circumcised, believing that to be the only cure for his disgusting behaviour.   From that moment on Earnest's psychosexual development became traumatised. His daydreaming and fantasies grew more violent with every beating and verbal attack that he suffered.

     In his dream he could hear her now. 'You dirty little, brat!' Ethel screamed catching him masturbating again. Her features horribly distorted, she waves the carving knife in his face threatening to cut his penis off.  Inside the dark cupboard Ernest screams in terror. Suddenly, the cupboard door bursts open. Stood in the open door way Ethel his adopted mother shrieks hideously holding his bloody severed penis in her scrawny hand.

      Ernest awoke in a jolting fright. Sitting bolt upright in bed giving out a gasp of terror he grabs for his genitals fearfully. Feeling them still intact he whimpers, rubbing his sweaty hands roughly over his face trying to erase his torment.  Dragging himself out of bed the same overwhelming desires for revenge that had plagued him all his life fill his mind.  Shuffling down the stairs and into the kitchen he put the kettle on to make a cup of tea, his thoughts turning to Lucy Smith and what he had done. He felt instantly better. With his mug of steaming hot tea in his hand he made his way to the cellar. This was his private domain. Somewhere to go to ease his troubled thoughts, somewhere he felt safe. He shivered as the blast of escaping cold air from the freezer cabinet door permeated his dressing gown raising goose bumps. He ran his tongue feverishly over his lips speaking softly. 
       'It's about time you had some company my little, sweetheart.'  He smiled affectionately at the pathetic bloody severed head that was leaning precariously to one side on the top shelf. Lucy Smith's soft blue opaque sightless eyes stared back incomprehensibly.  Her once beautiful face now marble white, twisted grotesquely in surprise and pain. Her long blonde hair once her pride and joy now matted with dried blood hung lustreless between the slatted shelves of the freezer cabinet.

                     Because they didn't know who he was they called him the Monster. 
                       It was a fitting epitaph for his crimes were of the most diabolical.