Final Sins Read Online Free PDF

Aspen. He was disturbingly popular in Europe, with a smaller but no less loyal following in the U.S. Prominent death-metal bands had written songs in his honor. The Goths, a major cultural force in Germany, had adopted him as their unofficial standard-bearer. Faust himself was cool to the Goths, saying of the movement, “It is a mélange of vulgar Nietzscheism and Dungeons & Dragons, dressed up in jackboots—a game for frightened children.” These comments only endeared him further to his fans.
    She turned to Faust’s memoir. In chapter one, she found a firsthand description of the crime that had made him famous.
     
    I would like to say that the murder itself was a fever dream, that I lived it in a haze of dazzled frenzy, that I knew not what I did. Then perhaps you would forgive me, and I could rejoin your most civilized company and dine in your elegant restaurants without drawing stares. I must, however, be honest. It is my one vice, honesty. I cannot bear deception. Or in saying this, am I only guilty of yet another deceit?
    No matter. This is the truth. Killing Emily Wallace was my great accomplishment, and I have no wish to report it inaccurately.
    I knew precisely what I did. I was in complete control of myself throughout. Indeed, I have never been so utterly sure of myself.
    I killed her with a leather noose. The world knows this. It was the subject of much discussion in the press, and even gifted me with an alliterative sobriquet, the Hangman of Hamburg. In the end, this name fell out of favor, as it should have—for I did not hang Emily. I eased the noose around her neck while she lay half-conscious, shackled to the radiator. I then began to draw it tight, slowly, my fingers electric with the texture of the leather, its suppleness and softness. Leather is tanned flesh—and how it rubbed against the downy skin of her neck, how it caressed her, gently at first, while she moaned, her eyelids fluttering, her body quivering.
    The bluenoses among you will never understand. They have allowed their natural bloodlust to ebb. They have smothered instinct under a blanket of homilies. They are eunuchs. Like all castrati, they will not be satisfied until the rest of humanity shares their affliction. Impotent themselves, they make their flaccidity a virtue, and paint virility as a vice.
    Some of you are different. It is for you that I write. For you—and to you.
    Can you feel it, the leather in your hands? The strap was thirty millimeters wide and one meter long. I pulled it tight enough to choke off breath. She came fully awake then. She tried to raise her hands, but they were fastened to the radiator. I let her struggle for air. Then I loosened the loop. She could breathe again. I heard the delicious gasp of her intake of air, a wet and hungry sound. When she had recovered her strength, I tightened the noose again.
    There is a game some people play in which they bring themselves almost to asphyxiation in order to heighten the pleasurable intensity of orgasm. I have not played this game. But I had designed my own variation on it, as you see. In bringing Emily to the edge of death again and again, I was heightening my pleasure.
    Please do not misunderstand me. I am not speaking of mere physical enjoyment. Some oaf, in the aftermath of my arrest, editorialized that I had taken a life for only a few seconds of gratification. In truth, sexual gratification was not my motive. These moldy Freudian fairy stories should be laid to rest. There is more to a man than genitalia. Was I erect when I drew the noose taut? Doubtless, I was, but I scarcely noticed. Erections are not so precious to me, or so rare. My attention was focused on higher things. In those final minutes, as I played out the endgame, I experienced what I can only call transcendence. I was lifted up, possibly to the third heaven of which Saint Paul writes. I was transported, liberated. Sex is a mere flicker of sensation in comparison to what I felt and knew. I was