The Teratologist by Edward Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

question?”
    “ Well, I guess that’s fair.” Bryant replied, anything to change the subject.
    “ Do you believe in God?”
    The question startled the two reporters and immediately they recalled the bizarre words the billionaire had shouted as Michaels had attempted to drag him up the stairs to his bedroom. It was something like: “Why don’t the angels love me?” Bryant began to wonder if the billionaire was some type of religious fanatic.
    “ Now what the hell does that have to do with us taking pictures or how you managed to become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire? That is our assignment, you know. Financial strategies, business plans, a little background info for filler.”
    “ Actually it has everything to do with it, Mr. Westmore. Now please, humor me.”
“Well… Okay… No. I don’t believe in God,” Bryant said. “I don’t believe in anything. I either know or I do not know.”
    “ A very admirable yet difficult stance. I wonder how that’s working out for you?”
    “ Well as a matter of fact I do just—“
    Farrington cut him off before he could finish his sentence.
    “ And what about you, Mr. Westmore? Do you believe?”
    Westmore diddled with an unlit cigarette. “I’m a Christian, if that’s what you mean. Not a very good one, mind you.” He paused. “Correction, I’m an existential Christian, a Kierkegaardist.”
    “ Fine, but you do believe in the all-mighty, the all-perfect, the all-knowing, and omni-benevolent?”
    “ Sure.”
    Farrington chuckled under his breath and rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling.
    “ Do you even know what that means? Do you even have the slightest concept of what perfection is?”
    “ I’m sorry but I don’t know what you’re getting at exactly,” Bryant poised.
    “ I believe in God as well, Mr. Bryant. I believe that he is real and alive and that man was created in his image. All that I do so shall ye also do and more than that shall ye also do. Christ said those words and I believe they are prophetic. I believe that he was saying that we all have the power of a God within us. And I mean to claim that power.”
    “ And how the hell do you mean to do that?” Westmore was starting to sober rapidly as he began to realize that the man they were sent to interview, the man who had made hundreds of millions in less than half a decade of trading, just might be out of his mind.
    “ I thought you were the journalist, Mr. Bryant? Your photographer seems to be asking all the questions.”
    “ Like I said, he is a tad drunk.”
    “ No matter. You asked a very good question Mr. Westmore and it deserves a very good answer. I intend to capture God.”
    That sobered him up even more. Westmore and Bryant stared at the billionaire with their jaws hanging open.
    “ Very intriguing.” Bryant replied.
    “ Intriguing? It’s ridiculous! How the hell do you intend to capture God?”
    The billionaire rose from his seat and turned his back to the two reporters.
    “ You see, gentlemen, all my life everything I’ve ever put my mind to I’ve accomplished and generally with relative ease. I have run ultra-marathon’s, won hundred mile bike races and triathlons, climbed mountains, trekked across deserts, and made billions of dollars. I am the ultimate perfectionist yet if God exists than he would be the ultimate archetype of perfection. The only way to be truly perfect would be to be exactly like God. But it’s a perfection so absolute as to be unimaginable. You see, man cannot truly fathom perfection. We have no reference point with which to form even the most fundamental concept of it.”
    He picked a bible up off an end table on the opposite end of the sofa and threw it into the fireplace where it was immediately consumed.
    “ It’s not in here,” he said.
    He picked up a copy of the Torah and threw that in as well, then the Bhagavad-Gita, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the I Ching, the Tao Te Ching. All of them he tossed into the fire.
    “