The Cannibal's Prayer Read online

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  She's been here before. Here in this hotel, before. I remember it so clearly, the weary way she crept through the lobby, a goddess crawling like a dog. I saw her at once, watched gaping as her retinue escorted her to the desk, a man of hers checking in for her. She pushed up her dark glasses against her eyes, as though she could hide, as though that would be enough to disguise her from us. Her eyes meant nothing to me. She could not hide her body, her true self. I found her shyness endearing. I knew that I was in love.

  They were shooting a movie out on the other side of the city. She would come back so tired at the end of the day. I pitied her, hated the filmmakers for what seemed abuse. I would have killed them if I could, wrapped my fingers around their fat throats and squeezed until the life left their piggish eyes. For her.

  I would let myself into her room with the master key whenever she left for the day's filming, whenever the room was empty. I would bury my face in the rumpled bedsheets, would feed on the scent of her. I ran my tongue over the drain of the bathtub, kissed the strands of perfect golden hair caught there, kissed the soft dark curls of pubic hair. I used to rub my genitals with objects of hers. Her panties, her jewelry, her toothbrush. I ate scraps from her garbage and licked the toilet bowl clean. Little things. The adoration of a worshiper from afar, no more. I always left the room spotless.

  I saw the movie when it came out. Pitiful, of course, nothing but melodramatic trash for wide-eyed children. It was beneath her; she deserved better. She was nude in one scene, and stimulated sex in another. I saw the film six times, masturbating beneath my heavy coat. No one saw me, I think. I always sat in the back, though I fantasized about doing it in the front row, of tearing off all my clothing and laying naked beneath her immense image as it writhed above me impossibly large, impossibly masterful. I was a slave to her sex.

  And now she has returned and she is not so famous anymore. Her face is not on the magazine stands in the grocery store checkout aisles, her name is not up in lights over the filthy sidewalks. How quickly the public eye wanders. But a true believer never forgets. There are those of us who believe in her, who will never forget, who never can. My need for her grows with every passing moment. And now she is mine.