The Sacrifice
While Seth’s friends only knew his girl was the “mysterious disappearing dragon,” Kat let it slip at school she was seeing somebody named “Lex,” but the name was meaningless outside of community-theater circles.
Not long after school started in September, the relationship began to get physical. Seth always wore a condom, and Kat assumed his furious thrusts were part of his excitement to be with her. He told her over and over again how much she turned him on. His seemingly uncontrollable devotion turned her on.
At the start of each week, he’d ask her to detail her schedule. When he could identify a potential hole in her calendar, he threw out excuses for her to give, cover stories about double shifts at Target or additional show rehearsals. Kat wanted to be with Seth so, invoking her best community-theater performances, she repeated the lies to her parents.
“Dream not of madness and doubt,” Seth would tell her as she tried to go to sleep, “but rather of a future with castles and wonder and fantasy and love. Because that future is yours, yours and Darkheart’s.”
One night, they made love on the futon while it was folded into a couch. Kat was on top and found that position to be the most pleasurable. Facing her, his hands free, Seth tried some things he hadn’t before. There was some pinching and twisting. He then moved his hands up to her throat and gently squeezed on and off until it was over. Afterward, Kat admitted the sex game had turned her on.
Seth asked her then what she knew about BDSM. Kat would later say she knew some rudimentary things because her ex-boyfriend had talked about it, but nothing had ever come of it. Seth offered to teach her about a sexual world that few ventured into, just as he had guided her through the mysterious world beyond the Veil.
BDSM is shorthand for “bondage, discipline [although some substitute the word “dominance”], and sadomasochism.” The mega-bestselling Fifty Shades of Grey novels brought BDSM into the mainstream. Originally conceived as fan fiction inspired by the Twilight series of vampire novels, the books were equal parts cultural scandal and cultural sensation, normalizing a brand of fantasy that had previously been largely dismissed as “perversion.” Fifty Shades was not everyone’s cup of tea, but millions of readers were curious why their friends and neighbors were reading a “whips and chains” book, and got a healthy lesson on kink as a reward.
People have long dabbled in minor variations of BDSM by giving in to urges to spank a partner or turn dirty talk into filthy talk, or allowing a lover to tie their hands and have their way with them. It’s not unusual for loving, committed couples to experiment in bed, to learn what turns each other on.
Actual BDSM goes well beyond these suburban fantasies. Participants—many of whom are loving, committed couples themselves—enjoy more hard-core versions of these games.
Instead of a necktie knotted to the headboard, a woman might allow herself to be fully bound with soft rope or belted to the corners of a bed and rendered completely immobile. Instead of an open palm, a spank on the buttocks might be delivered repeatedly with a paddle or leather flogger, leaving the skin red or bruised. One lover might so totally submit to the other that they allow themselves to be slapped or struck, or ordered to crawl around as if in humiliation.
The science behind it, like many sexual studies, is largely conjecture. The part of the brain activated by pain is very close to its pleasure center. One theory says that if pain is not in response to fear or a threat, the pleasure centers are stimulated and counteract that pain. Some believe the level of pleasure is equal to the corresponding level of pain.
Perhaps for some consensual couples, the act is not the attraction. It’s what the act signifies. Following bondage there is freedom. Following discipline there is absolution. Following humiliation there is respect. Following injury there is healing.
Whatever the flavor or intensity, most people who enjoy BDSM agree on its basic tenet: complete trust in one’s partner, the ability to give up control or to take it absolutely without fear. Trusting one’s lover to know one’s limits is essential. Knowing that one’s partner will stop when asked (or will ask to stop) if the contact is no longer pleasing is essential.
Because some consensual partners pretend to beg “no . . . stop” as part of the sex game, couples who practice BDSM agree on “safe words” in advance to indicate when things must come to a halt. These are code words that wouldn’t be confused with dirty talk; safe words are phrases like “lollipop” or “red” (as in “stop”).
The safe word is the ultimate expression of trust.
—
Seth had honed his interest and practice of BDSM as a young adult. When Seth left RPI after completing only one semester, he returned to New Hampshire with a long-distance girlfriend. She was a high school senior from Pennsylvania named Catherine Fish, who called herself “Cat” for short.
Catherine’s best friend, Barbara*, attended RPI, and Catherine often made the trip to upstate New York to visit her. All Catherine originally knew of Seth Mazzaglia was he had just gotten out of a rocky relationship with Barbara. But Barbara was not “Natasha,” the girl who had allegedly died in his arms. Never during their relationship did Seth mention Natasha or someone who died in a similar manner.
Catherine was a pretty girl with a round face who wore neon streaks in her delicate blond hair, giving her the look of an approachable Goth-next-door. (Noteworthy is that Seth’s physical description of Natasha was similar.)
Like Kat, Catherine’s home life wasn’t happy. Years later, Catherine would describe her parents’ relationship as extremely volatile, and at seventeen she was looking for a way to get out of the house once and for all. She’d planned on joining the military after graduation, but September 11, 2001, made her reconsider. She was also still exploring her sexual identity and had just ended a relationship with another girl on bad terms.
Although Catherine knew hooking up on the rebound wasn’t a good idea, she found herself attracted to the college freshman she’d met while visiting RPI, despite his having dated her best friend.
Catherine got together with Seth the long weekend of Martin Luther King Day in 2002, about a week into his second semester. She was there when Seth received a letter from the college saying he was being expelled for unspecified “violence issues.” After reading the letter, Seth reacted by repeatedly kicking the porch of the off-campus house he was living in.
He never told Catherine the specifics of what led to his expulsion, and she didn’t ask. Years later, Catherine learned from Barbara that Seth had been rough with her. Barbara was a virgin, and when she’d refused Seth’s advances, she said he’d thrown her across the room.
It was possible that this incident was what led to Seth’s expulsion. The school could have learned of these allegations through Barbara, through an eyewitness, or from someone connected to a completely different incident. The college would not comment on Seth’s apparent expulsion.
After getting kicked out of RPI, Seth moved back to Dover and into a basement apartment at Sawyer Mill. He and Catherine keep their long-distance relationship going, with him making regular trips to Pennsylvania. Seth told Catherine he’d lost his virginity only a few months before they’d met (perhaps with Barbara), but he had an advanced view of what made for pleasing sex. Much of it had to do with sadomasochism.
As Catherine later told 48 Hours, Seth made special plans for her eighteenth birthday in March of 2002. He took her out for a night on the town, and then took her back to his hotel room. As they had sex, Seth’s hand went from caressing Catherine’s face to wrapping around her thin neck. Unsure of what was happening, Catherine told him to stop. Instead, he squeezed her throat harder. She grabbed his shoulders and threw him off of her.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Seth released his grip, then rolled off of her and onto his back. Catherine tried to catch her breath, placing her fingers where she was sure bruises would soon appear. The choking hadn’t been enough to knock her out, but it had startled her.
Seth whined about her reluctance to try something new. The mood was ruined, but he continued to badger her to at least finish the sex. Catherine surrendered.
Despite his distaste for crowds, Seth offered to escort Catherine to her senior prom. She bought an aquamarine dress with a beaded bust line and an empire waist over an A-line skirt and streaked her hair in blue to match her dress—an edgy contrast to her jeweled choker necklace and pearl-beaded handbag.
Seth dressed in all black, wearing a jacket but no necktie. His two top shirt buttons were left open, exposing a gold chain. He had grown his whiskers out and his hair was long, covering his neck. He looked in part like a dress-up Dracula, in part like an actor auditioning for Jesus Christ Superstar.
Seth picked Catherine up at the door and presented her with a wrist corsage, then posed for photos in her backyard. In recounting the night during interviews, Catherine said that, after the prom, Seth took her back to his hotel room, where they had a repeat of her birthday experience. During sex, Seth attempted to choke her by pinching her windpipe between this forefinger and thumb.
“What the fuck are you doing? Stop that!”
Seth’s gaze was fixed on her throat. Catherine pushed against Seth’s face, his shoulders, his chest, trying to shove him off. She was able to wiggle out from beneath him, coughing as she tried to catch her breath, then she leaped from the bed and started gathering her clothes.
“Fuck this. I’m out of here.”
Before she could make her escape, Seth locked himself in the bathroom.
“If you go, I’m going to kill myself,” he said through the bathroom door.
It was a childish ploy, but Catherine had grown up in an environment where drama was a comfort, threats a part of everyday life. She stayed that night, if only to convince herself she had saved him.
Catherine said she wanted someone to save, someone who needed her. Seth knew that, and he knew that’s why she would find it hard to leave him.
—
For the entirety of their relationship, Seth was insistent that high school student Catherine leave Pennsylvania and move in with him in New Hampshire. The chance to leave home was too tempting to pass up. Catherine left town as soon as her last high school class was dismissed, even skipping graduation. Since her senior year had been so tumultuous, she hadn’t made plans to attend college.
Seth began taking night classes at the University of New Hampshire. He heard about a small group of UNH students who had formed an unconventional club: a pagan circle. They would gather to talk about spirits and legends and magic and other otherworldly things. After Seth joined, Catherine told him she wanted to attend as well. She wasn’t radically mystical, but she’d always felt like there was a male spirit who was watching over her.
“Who is this protector spirit?” Seth asked.
“His name is Cyrus,” she said. It was a name that Seth would later say was among the several personas watching him from beyond the Veil of Separation.
At first Seth didn’t want her to come to the pagan circle, but he eventually changed his mind. The circle was coed but predominantly female. One of the women, Gloria,* was an attractive redhead who was comfortable talking about sprites and pixies and Wiccan power. Gloria told the group she had a powerful essence in the spiritual world, a fairy named Anay.
In recounting the incident a decade later, Catherine said Seth proposed bringing Gloria into their bed. Although she had been in a same-sex relationship previously, Catherine wasn’t interested in being part of some sort of polyamorous arrangement. But she wasn’t going to leave Seth either. If he wanted to pursue Gloria, she told him, it would have to be something he did on his own.
Seth proceeded to hit on Gloria as well as most of the other women in the pagan circle. He let Catherine think that he slept with at least one of them, but whether he had or not, it wasn’t with Gloria. She’d politely deflected his come-ons until she’d had to flat-out refuse him. The turmoil that followed among the club’s members was enough to break up the circle for good.
After failing to sleep with Gloria, Seth left the circle believing Gloria’s Anay was a spirit he had been chasing from one life to another—she inhabited the bodies of women for the purpose of tantalizing him. As women walked out of his real life, Seth kept their alter egos among his list of personas. He could not control those women, but he could control the spiritual versions of them.
—
Living in a basement apartment at Sawyer Mill was lonely for Catherine Fish. She didn’t know anybody in New Hampshire. She landed a part-time job, but Seth made her quit because he didn’t want her to work at night. He made all the decisions in their life, from what she could wear to what they would buy at the grocery store. He even insisted on doing all the cooking and would then decide what size portion Catherine was allowed to eat.
The young woman was conflicted. As she told Foster’s Daily Democrat, she didn’t consider Seth an abuser; he didn’t strike her during an argument. But there were aspects of the relationship Catherine knew weren’t right, like how rough Seth was with her in bed. But she was inexperienced, so she went along with it, first getting spanked, then slapped, then tied up as he had his way with her.
There were nights when Catherine was just too tired or not in the mood, but Seth never took no for an answer. Seth would cajole her by rubbing his hands on her or giving her unsolicited kisses on her body. She rebuffed his requests to do breath play (choking), knife play (running and scraping the dull edge of a blade on her skin), or blood play (drinking any blood these cuts might draw), but he would always have a different act to try, something different he wanted to insert in her. If she still said no, Seth would become enraged. He’d throw a tantrum like a child. He’d start flinging things around the apartment, yelling and berating her. If that didn’t work, he’d say he’d kill himself if she didn’t do what he wanted. Catherine would often give in just to calm Seth down, just to make the shouting and damage stop.
The intercourse was always brutal. Catherine was constantly getting urinary tract infections, and was treated for them so often she became drug-resistant to three of the most commonly prescribed medicines. In order to increase her protection against accidental pregnancies, Seth had a regimen he said was medically sound. Tearfully recalling the practice for interviewers, Catherine said Seth would turn on the water in the kitchen sink and wait until it got to its hottest point. Then he would fill a plastic watering can and pour the scalding water into Catherine’s vaginal canal. She claims this procedure, combined with the vaginal tearing and persistent UTIs she suffered during the course of their relationship, caused permanent gynecological damage. Catherine would later say she didn’t understand why no physician saw the string of infections for what she believed they were: symptoms of sexual abuse.
She told interviewers that Seth was deathly afraid of STDs and obsessive about preventing Catherine from getting pregnant. On more than one occasion, he said he would kill her before he’d pay child support. Catherine didn’t think he was joking. Seth would remind Catherine of his karate training, and told her he could hurt his opponents effortlessly.
“Don’t try to run,” he said. “I would come and find you.” Despite her outward denial about the state of her relationship, Catherine had been researching abuse and abusers. She knew that the second most common time for a man to kill his wife or girlfriend is when she becomes pregnant. The most common time, statistically speaking, is when she tries to leave.
—
Toward the end of their relationship, Seth was openly talking about his personas, which he said lived beyond the Veil. He told Catherine one of his alter egos was a dragon called “Akimeru.”
“If I ever got into a car accident,” he said, “I would become an enraged dragon larger than a building!”
The declaration was so ridiculous, even Catherine rolled her eyes.
One day, Seth sneaked up on Catherine, embracing her from behind. She told Foster’s Daily Democrat she was wearing a short necklace, very much like the one she wore to the prom.
“You should avoid wearing necklaces around me,” Seth said in her ear. “The urge for me to choke you is very strong.”
Catherine slowly began to extract herself from Seth, but the relationship was so similar to her upbringing, it was hard for her to quit. Things started to change when she enrolled in an inexpensive business school in Dover. She made friends on campus and had the chance to crash in the dorms if she needed time away from Sawyer Mill.
These mini-escapes did not sit well with Seth, and for a time he was able to manipulate Catherine to keep coming back. Ironically, his hold over her finally broke over something mundane, not something violent.
“Stop nagging me,” he said to her one day over something inconsequential. “You’re always nagging me.”
The criticism broke the spell he held over Catherine like the sudden pop of a balloon. She knew what she had to say was valid, and calling it “nagging” was an insult.
What Seth Mazzaglia had finally given Catherine Fish was a rational reason to leave him. She could tell people he thought she nagged too much. That was the kind of break-up story people would understand. How could she tell people she ran from him because he was obsessed with choking her and violated her with a watering can?
The farther she got away from Seth, the more Catherine came to realize that during their time together he had been abusive physically, emotionally, and sexually. What he did in bed wasn’t BDSM. It was sexual violence, pure and simple.
Through campus resources, she sought out help from the sexual harassment and rape prevention service at the University of New Hampshire and became an advocate for victims, eventually sharing her story at a Take Back the Night event. She moved to the West Coast, about as far away from Seth as she could get. In the years that followed, she would suffer from crippling bouts of post-traumatic stress disorder.
One of the most disturbing things Catherine recalled about Seth Mazzaglia was his preoccupation with murder and his bragging about how he would get away with it. All you had to do was drive the victim’s car and wipe off the fingerprints, he told her.
“Just bring the body to the woods. The scavengers will do the rest.”
Catherine told 48 Hours that she suspected that Seth was destined to murder someone, that he would not be sexually satisfied until he had. She thought he would likely strangle someone to death in a moment of perverse ecstasy.
If anyone knew what Kat McDonough was getting herself into, it would have been Catherine Fish.
—
When Seth told Kat his version of his year-and-a-half relationship with Catherine, she had not been the great love of his life like the fabled Natasha had been. She had not been someone who had been inhabited by Anay or Akasia or some other ethereal spirit. She had just been a girl who hadn’t understood him.
Catherine broke his heart, Seth said, and she’d made it even more difficult for him to feel secure in any relationship. He told Kat that’s why he needed to keep her close. He was afraid this Kat would abandon him, just like the other Cat had.
Like every story Seth spun for her, Kat believed every word.
—
Kat had enjoyed the nonsexual role-playing with her new boyfriend. They seemed so perfect for each other in this life that it seemed natural to her that they had been together in past lives too. Her love, like the love of every teenaged girl, felt enormous and everlasting and all consuming. Despite this, Seth said they were not tethered in the Veil of Separation. Skarlet had not yet “paired” with Darkheart.
Seth said he could smell that Skarlet was a “dragon rider.” He reported from his dream journal that Skarlet had been circling Darkheart, whose essence was that of a dragon. She was searching for Darkheart with the intention of capturing and taming him.
Once a dragon rider pairs with a dragon, “they are paired for eternity,” he told Kat.
Each night while instant messaging, Seth reported on how tantalizingly close Skarlet had been to catching Darkheart. He said Skarlet’s last test was to defeat a shadow dragon who was fortified behind a wall of fire. This dragon was named Akimeru, the same name he used with Catherine Fish.
It was a compelling story. It was also a powerful way for Seth to manipulate an impressionable girl. Over the course of a handful of days, Seth eventually told Kat he’d seen Skarlet defeat Akimeru and become Darkheart’s dragon rider. Kat realized it meant that the two of them were now paired for eternity. Now she was tied to Darkheart and whatever he wanted.
If she recognized Seth’s telling of Skarlet’s journey as being nearly identical to the plot of the movie Avatar, she never said so.
—
Now that Seth had married Skarlet and Darkheart, he used this spiritual connection as a way of further manipulating Kat. He said the Hollow One was now trying to rip Skarlet and Darkheart apart. Seth said the Hollow One’s power was so strong that it might hurt them in the real world too. Judging by her text messages, Kat seemed to believe wholeheartedly that the threat to them and their personas was real.
Seth said there was one way to keep the Hollow One away: destroy the spirit known as Violet and allow Darkheart—in the body of Seth—to sexually ravage Kitty in any way he wanted.
If Kat recognized the symbolism, she didn’t say as much. Seth wanted her mother figure, Violet, out of the way. Since Kitty was actually Kat in real life, Seth was asking her to surrender unquestionably to him in real life.
To save the spiritual connection with her one true love, Kat agreed to play the part and give up control of her body to Seth. The bargain was set for November 5, four days after her eighteenth birthday.
—
As the sacrifice approached, Seth told Kat over Facebook that he had been seeing Skarlet everywhere—turning a corner, sneaking up on him, ducking from his peripheral vision. Seth said he’d had to keep Darkheart “in check” for several days.
“I know he’s been itching for a chance to play.”
Seth said Darkheart had been standing over Kat’s bed watching her sleep. Hearing this, Kat agreed she had felt the dragon’s presence in her room.
On Friday night, November 4, 2011, Kat could not get off the laptop despite her total physical exhaustion. Kat was taking her SATs in the morning and was desperate to get some sleep. For weeks she had been up past midnight instant messaging with Seth.
“Dream not of madness and doubt,” he said as she tried disconnecting, “but rather of a future with castles and wonder and fantasy and love.”
She ended up clocking just four hours before it was time to wake up and get ready to take the five-hour test. After the exam, Kat was supposed to go to Seth’s apartment, which he was now referring to as “the Lair,” and surrender her body to Darkheart.
They had blocked off six or seven hours for this date. Seth insisted they needed that much time for their first experimentation with BDSM. Kat had told her mother she’d be spending the entire day with her friend Darla* and would be home after dinner. By now, lying to her parents about when she was with Seth had become an easy thing.
When Kat woke up on Saturday morning, Seth was already hailing her on Facebook, insisting that she text him the minute the test was over.
“Psychic craziness aside,” he asked her in a message, “what were you thinking of going to college for before everything got all karmically nuts?”
Kat wrote back that she wanted to study graphic design and acting, and possibly aim for a minor in fashion or costuming. Though she knew she and Skarlet were now part of the Plan, she said she still wanted a high SAT score so she could get a college degree.
“I keep getting psychic sonar blips of you every time I think ‘EMT.’ Is that random?” said Seth. “Has Emergency Medical Technician crossed your mind as a thing to do?”
Kat said her grandfather had been a firefighter and conceded that a backup plan wouldn’t be such a bad idea. To Seth, the idea of Kat joining him as an EMT would become something he couldn’t let go.
—
After her SATs, Kat entered Seth’s third-floor apartment at Sawyer Mill as if it were the first time. In a way, it was. She was there—not unwillingly—to make good on her promise to the Hollow One to give over her body completely to Seth.
Seth had explained that, in every relationship like theirs, each lover had a part to play. One was the Dominant, or, “Dom.” The other was the Submissive, the “Sub.” The Sub gave herself up to whatever the Dom wanted. That was okay, Seth said, because the Dom’s role was to take care of the Sub. The Dom would ensure the Sub’s pleasure in exchange for the Sub’s obedience. The Dom would coordinate every move of the erotic dance, could demand his own pleasure come first, could demand in what manner it came. The Dom could do whatever he wanted to his Sub because she was a willing, consensual partner.
Seth asked Kat if she was willing. She said she was.
In his rundown of typical BDSM protocol, Seth left one crucial thing out. He never provided Kat with a safe word.
Seth pulled a length of white rope from under the futon’s mattress. He ran it like a snake over Kat’s bare skin. It was soft, made of cotton, nothing like the rough hemp ropes she had to climb in gym class.
Seth apologized for not knowing the Japanese art of Shibari, an advanced form of rope bondage that locked participants in “optimal positions.” If done correctly, he explained, the knots were self-tightening—moving an arm tightened the loop on the leg, and so on. Kat had never heard of Shibari, but Seth promised he knew enough about BDSM rope play that she would enjoy it.
He started by making her interlock her fingers, then knotted the rope around her wrists. He crisscrossed the cord over her torso, made a loop around her neck, then continued to immobilize her with the line.
Kat’s pulse was racing from excitement and fear. The braiding of her body didn’t hurt. She felt like she was being swaddled, comforted. Kat liked the careful attention Seth gave her while tying her up. She couldn’t move. She’d later say the bondage aroused her, physically stimulated her in every way.
Seth then produced a cold, flat object. It was the decorative short sword hanging on his wall. He used its dull edge to scrape and flick at her skin, the extreme form of BDSM known as knife play. It went by another name: “the kiss of steel.”
Kat had given Kitty over to Darkheart to save Skarlet from the Hollow One. Or was it to save Violet? It didn’t matter. They were bound together on Earth and in the Veil in a way no two other people would ever be. He was her dragon; she, the dragon rider.
—
Later that night, Seth texted Kat at home to see how she was and to relive all of their erotic activities. Kat was baking in the kitchen. She told him she had a bit of a headache but was otherwise blissful. She said she had found a cut on one of her fingers from the blade.
“Not sure how we didn’t notice that,” she wrote. “It’s a pretty deep cut but it’s not bleeding.”
Seth said he had lots of cutlery that left hairline slices that were only detectable when pressure was put on that very spot.
“Hehehe,” Seth typed. “Maybe next time Card’ll come out to play and use something smaller than a short sword. Easier to handle.”
He told his new sexual protégé that she’d worn him out.
“Woo hoo! I win,” she wrote back.
They exchanged some more affectionate texts. Seth told her he wanted all of her free time up to Thanksgiving, then he signed off.
Kat, the high school senior who had just had her first experience with hard-core knife play, went back to baking her cupcakes.