American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis — Read

On a Wednesday night another girl, who I meet at M. K. and I plan to torture and film. This one remains nameless to me and she sits on the couch in the living room of my apartment. A bottle of champagne, Cristal, half empty, sits on the glass table. I punch in tunes, numbers that light up the Wurlitzer. She finally asks, "What's that... smell in here? " and I answer, under my breath, "A dead... rat," and then I'm opening the windows, the sliding glass door that leads out to the terrace, even though it's a chilly night, mid-autumn, and she's dressed scantily, but she has another glass of the Cristal and it seems to warm her enough so that she is able to ask me what I do for a living. I tell her that I went to Harvard then started working on Wall Street, at Pierce & Pierce, after I graduated from business school there, and when she asks, either confused or jokingly, "What's that? " I swallow and with my back to her, straightening the new Onica, find the strength to force out, "A. shoe store. " I did a line of cocaine I found in my medicine cabinet when we first came back to my place, and the Cristal takes the edge off it, but only slightly. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about a machine that lets people talk to the dead. This girl is wearing a wool barathea jacket and skirt, a silk georgette blouse, agate and ivory earrings by Stephen Dweck, a silk jacquard torsolette vest, all from... where? Charivari, I'm guessing.

In the bedroom she's naked and oiled and sucking my dick and I'm standing over her and then I'm slapping her in the face with it, grabbing her hair with my hand, calling her a "fucking whore bitch," and this turns her on even more and while lamely sucking my cock she starts fingering her clit and when she's asking me "Do you like this? " while licking at the balls, I'm answering "yup, yup" and breathing hard. Her breasts are high and full and firm, both nipples very stiff, and while she's choking on my cock while I'm fucking her mouth roughly with it, I reach down to squeeze them and then while I'm fucking her, after ramming a dildo up her ass and keeping it there with a strap, I'm scratching at her tits, until she warns me to stop. Earlier in the evening I was having dinner with Jeanette at a new Northern Italian restaurant near Central Park on the Upper East Side that was very expensive. Earlier in the evening I was wearing a suit tailored by Edward Sexton and thinking sadly about my family's house in Newport. Earlier in the night after dropping Jeanette off I stopped at M. K. for a fund-raiser that had something to do with Dan Quayle, who even I don't like. At M. K. the girl I'm fucking came on to me, hard, upstairs on a couch while I was waiting to play pool. "Oh god," she's saying. Excited, I slap her, then lightly punch her in the mouth, then kiss it, biting her lips. Fear, dread, confusion overwhelm her. The strap breaks and the dildo slides out of her ass while she tries to push me off. I roll away and pretend to let her escape and then, while she's gathering her clothes, muttering about what a "crazy fucking bastard" I am, I leap out at her, jackal-like, literally foaming at the mouth. She cries, apologizing, sobbing hysterically, begging for me not to hurt her, in tears, covering her breasts, now shamefully. But even her sobs fail to arouse me. I feel little gratification when I Mace her, less when I knock her head against the wall four or five times, until she loses consciousness, leaving a small stain, hair stuck to it. After she drops to the floor I head for the bathroom and cut another line of the mediocre coke I scored at Nell's or Au Bar the other night. I can hear a phone ringing, an answering machine picking up the call. I'm bent low, over a mirror, ignoring the message, not even bothering to screen it.