American Cult

By Madness Heart Press, Charles Bernard, Dustin McKissen and Jude Reid

The eldritch secret behind the USA's clandestine operations, the predatory nature of certain world leaders, cults rising to support their country in the most violent ways they can imagine, tradgedy brought on by children's crafts and murderers close to the powers that be.

Is there something terrifying hiding behind the facade of American history and politics? Can the powers that be control the powers that could be? We all have questions we would like to ask our leaders, and sometimes, just sometimes, there are questions we are too afraid to ask. 

But all of us here in the United States belong, to the American Cult.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Madness Heart Press
• Release date: Jul 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393323570

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Madness Heart Press

2006 Idlewilde Run Dr.

Austin, Texas 78744

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2019 Madness Heart Press

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: [e-mail]

First Edition July 2019

Book design by Jon Claeton

Edited by John Baltisberger

ISBN  9781076432445

www.madnessheart.press

● My Name is Theodore @2019 Dustin McKissen, Original to this printing.

● Rev Six Two @2019 Judith Reid, Original to this printing.

● Policy of Neglect @2019 James Lief, Original to this printing.

● Water Colors @2019 Phillip Wendt, Original to this printing.

● The Clients @2019 Vincent Treewell, Original to this printing.

● Stuffed @2019 Charles Bernard, Original to this printing.

● Children of Glory @2019 Jeremy Megargee, Original to this printing.

My Name

is

Theodore Robert Bundy

and I am a

Nixon Man

By

Dustin McKissen

1

It was a girl.

She turned me on to Richard Nixon.

I first saw her at the edge of the convention floor. Her back was to me as she craned her neck for a better look at the stage. With all the banners and signs, it was difficult for a girl her height to get a good view. I watched her raise herself up on her tiptoes. That didn’t work. She tried adjusting her hips, leaning her right one out to better angle her line of sight between the balding, spotted heads of two very tall men.

That didn’t work, either.

My Rockefeller in ’68 sign lay discarded at my feet. I no longer needed it. Nixon already locked up the nomination. Romney, Rockefeller, and Reagan.

I stood ankle-deep in an alliterated litter of failed ambition.

Music came through the speakers in the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Maybe Glenn Miller?

Country club Republicans love Glenn Miller.

Aside from the music, the humidity inside the room was awful. Collars darkened around their edges. Toupees lost their form as what little real hair remained dripped with sweat.

She looked nineteen. Maybe twenty. Her pants were blue, just like her shirt. She was a curvy ocean, broken only by the reef of her brown leather belt. I could see stitches along the outside of her pant legs. Sixty-four, all totaled — thirty-two sutures on each side. I counted them.

I have excellent eyesight.

She adjusted her hair, and I saw a fine trail of fuzz going up the back of her neck.

Finally, she turned toward me. Our eyes locked. They were the same color brown as her hair and belt. Her right hand rose in a half-wave, I did the same with my left.

She shrugged and motioned toward the tall bald men in front of her.

Too short, her shrug said.

I shrugged too. 

It’s okay. I like short girls, my shrug said back.

She cut through the crowd and stuck her hand out. Her fingers were smooth, her hands hairless and feminine. 

I’m Elizabeth.

Her smile lit up her face.

And the face of whoever was standing across from her.

But my friends call me Liz.

Only your friends get to call you that?

Flirt. Tease. Challenge. That’s how this works.

Elizabeth smiled but did not laugh.

Special privileges for special people, she said.

Well then. I’m Theodore, I responded. But my friends call me Ted.

No flirting. No teasing. No challenging.

Elizabeth watched me. Considered me.

She had long brown hair parted in the middle and flat, white teeth. She wore a blue Nixon for America t-shirt and hadn’t bothered with a bra. 

She broke her gaze and leaned back against the wall. There were five inches of space between us. At most. Elizabeth and Ted, side by side. She reached down to scratch her thigh. I felt her finger move over the polyester stretched tight across her skin. Watching the tip of her nail trace a lazy figure eight lit me up.

I was an in-dash AM/FM, tuned to the right spot on the dial. 

And we definitely weren’t listening to Glenn Miller.

I could feel a vibration in the building. It began near the floor and spread into the soles of my shoes before crawling up the back of my brown suit and into my skull. I could hear security dogs yapping somewhere in the stadium.

What’s your last name? I asked. Those dogs. I could barely hear myself think.

But I could hear her just fine.

In fact, the only thing that cut through the racket was her voice: Clear, high, and feminine.

A good girl.

If she was in a sorority, she was probably a Zeta.

My last name? she said, turning her head away from the white gloves and wool suits that made up most of the crowd.

Yeah, your last name.

My question seemed to me like a logical way for two human beings to interact. First names. Then last names.

She paused and took two deep breaths.

Stewart, she said. I could feel her eyes lock on my throat.

Stewart? You don’t look like a Stewart, I said, still facing forward. It seems too—

Ordinary? What? I look don’t ordinary to you?

You don’t get too many braless feminists in Nixon t-shirts. At least I think she was a feminist. I assume that’s what braless at a political rally means, even if it was braless for Nixon.

So, no.

Not ordinary.

No, you don’t look ordinary to me, I replied. Ordinary girls—

Ordinary girls don’t what, Ted?

I could feel the gravity of her kneecap.

Nothing—just, you, you...look different. Not...or-or-or-ordinary.

Well, Theodore, you don’t look ordinary, either, she said. She rested her knee against my leg. I believe it was close to my lateral patella. That’s the technical term. The scientific term. I’d nabbed a medical book from the UW library before I got on the plane. I’m dabbling in anatomy.

I like to learn new things.

Elizabeth used her hand to shield the side of her mouth and whispered loudly, You look like a man I shouldn’t share my real last name with.

I looked at her.

Her mouth smiled.

Her eyes did not.

Kind of like Richard Nixon.

Why—

Do you think you shouldn’t tell me your last name? I was going to ask. Before she interrupted me.

Tell me a last name, Ted. It can be your real name, or it can be—whatever. Whatever you want. Tell me what you think I want to hear. You were going to do that anyway, right?

I did not like where this was headed. I decided to lighten the mood.

Bates, I said.

Like Norman Bates? She asked. The psycho?

I chuckled.

No, not the psycho. I was just pulling your leg. It is another B name, though. Bu-Bu-Bundy. Ted Bundy. Real name. First and last. Swear to God.

I stuck my right hand out and placed it on the imaginary Word of God. 

I thought your name was Theodore? Elizabeth asked. How can I trust you if you told me a fake name?

My fr-fr-fr-friends call me Ted. It’s sh-sh-sh—

I’m kidding, she said.

Across from us grown men and women screamed like maniacs for Richard Nixon, of all people. Any man on stage—any man with even a bit of celebrity—is graded on a different curve. There is more forgiveness, I guess, for the monster who shows his face.

So long as he insists he’s not a monster.

A bead of sweat rolled off my chin, landing on my red tie.

I looked at Elizabeth.

She was a little shiny. But sweaty? Not even a little. She was dry.

Like a femur in the sun.

Well, Ted Bundy, do you want a cookie? I’m dying here.

Elizabeth didn’t look like she was dying to me. It was probably just hunger. She unbuckled and began rummaging through the yellow purse that hung from her shoulder. I pictured her white-tipped fingernails passing over various items in the dark of her bag. Feminine hygiene products. Maybe a pack of cigarettes. Razors. Birth control—possibly.

Did she brush over a can of mace, or one of those tiny little pistols that look like a toy?

Probably not.

Finally, she found what she was looking for: A