< PREVIOUS |  1  |  2  |  3  |  4 Diary of Ellen Rimbauer- Missing Excerpts #4 5 April, 1921 I believe John has lost both the battle and the war. He is flaccid and grotesquely discolored and withered, unable to respond to me and my womanhood in the way a man should, especially the man this particular man supposes himself to be. Tears streamed down his face as mad, drunken, eyes strained for my sympathy as he dared to expose (_ _ _ _) [ed: "himself"] to me, his wife, who only looked down at him from her rose petals and linen and laughed. Laughed loudly enough for the entire house to hear, or so I hope.     The morning, I am laughing still. Sukeena knows her potions.     As a man my husband is ruined. How far behind can the human be--the human whom once I loved, and am now so desperate to be rid of? 10, June 1922 I struggle to contend with those factors that may seal my fate and the fate of those around me. The loss of my daughter weighs upon my heart like a curse, and as I look for an answer to the resulting riddle, I am tempered by nothing, laying a course, straight away, to the bedroom door of my betrothed.     Convinced now that my husband's insatiable appetites have delivered the devil or his apprentice to my home, the search for a remedy is on. Sukeena believes she is able to summon some agent of the netherworld (stronger and even more convincing than the bewitching of Madame. Stravinsky) but I find I put more faith in the power of wife's anger and fury. No agent of the netherworld can imagine, much less deliver, the cruelty I envision for my husband.     First he brought me disease of unspeakable origins; then, my daughters deformity; then the disappearance of several young beauties in our employ (and no doubt my husband's employ as well), and finally this claimed the daughter he never learned to love. What punishment befits such crimes? What means of torture can I devise that might suit both the need for justice and a wife's unbending and unyielding urge to feel remedy is finally met? Can this goal ever be reached? Some act of violence to his manhood perhaps--a rubber mallet comes to mind. An appropriately dilute form of acid in a slow, controlled drip from above his body, rendered motionless by restraints. Perhaps to lock him in a room with some hag, or better yet, a once gorgeous young vixen now saddled with leprosy. How long until his need looked past her infirmity, this wife wonders? How long until his body parts withered and scaled and fell off? A knife would do. A gun. A hunting accident also comes to mind, but seems so tame by comparison, so unfair a fate for such lying and deceit.     Long nights I have lay awake pondering those acts of his that led to my indisposition, the sweet joys he has tasted at my expense. < PREVIOUS |  1  |  2  |  3  |  4