Satan's Affair

Sibby and Zade, though engaged in the same general vigilantism, show stark differences in their methods. Zade is calm, measured, and brutal in his torture of Mark, specifically so he can get more information about the child trafficking group with which Mark operates. Sibby is his opposite, violently and extravagantly killing one man, to the point that Zade needs to stop her in order to continue his own interrogation. When he stops Sibby, however, she can “see it in his eyes,” noting: “the rage glittering in his yin-yang pools. The desire to torture this man until he’s pleading for death” (122). The difference between Zade’s methods and Sibby’s underlines The Ethics of Vigilantism. For Sibby, simply killing a demon is enough to satisfy her service to the world, while Zade regards this singular man primarily as a source of information as he plans the next steps in his crusade against large-scale human trafficking. Zade tortures for information, while Sibby tortures for the sheer pleasure it brings her. Sibby’s operations are limited to the world of Satan’s Affair, while Zade’s pursuits lead him wherever traffickers try to harm others.

Though Zade asking Sibby about her birthday is a minor and innocuous scene, it highlights The Impact of Trauma on Psychology and Sexuality by showing the similarities between Zade and Sibby, as well as Zade’s understanding of Sibby’s situation. Sibby concludes that Zade is scary, but “he’s not dangerous towards the innocent” (125), and his inquiry about her age and birthday allows her to let Zade into her world momentarily. They bond over being abnormal, and Sibby even expresses interest in seeing him again, reflecting on how she would like to have a friend. This moment is paired with Sibby’s view of Satan’s Affair after hours, of which she notes: “The same buildings and rides that are lit up with an array of colors now look as if they’ve been sitting on the muddy earth for centuries, devoid of life” (125). The fair is analogous to Sibby’s life after the cult, in which she has no real friends or life of her own, focused solely on the brief periods of pleasure she gets from killing demons and having sex with her henchmen. Zade’s interference in her life, though brief, shows her how desolate her life is without consistent human contact.

Following Sibby’s arrest, Dr. Rosie exposes the totality of Sibby’s trauma during therapy. Most importantly, Dr. Rosie claims to have found Sibby’s henchmen, revealing that they are mannequins, which the police found paired with Sibby’s DNA and a variety of sex toys. Rosie explains Sibby’s delusion, saying: “You were alone, scared and very lost, Sibby…So to bring yourself comfort in a time of loneliness, you created friends in your head, inspired by the mannequins in the house” (153). Sibby’s delusion is grounded in the trauma she faced in the cult, which did not prepare her to enter the real world. She found Satan’s Affair, concocted a mission for her vigilantism, and hallucinated her henchmen as a way to resolve her loneliness. Rosie’s explanation includes the fact that Sibby acted alone, killing demons, masturbating, and cleaning the house without being caught.

Many of Sibby’s actions were designed to protect herself from her own trauma, such as memories of powerlessness in the cult, much of which Sibby re-experiences in the mental health facility. Sibby notes: “Another sad part—I don’t have any make up in here to hide behind” (144), adding that, without make-up, Sibby looks like her mother, who represents the abuse that Sibby sought to escape. Suddenly, Sibby’s knife, make-up, dress, and living situation come into clarity as mechanisms designed to keep Sibby from reflecting on or acknowledging her difficult life.

Despite Sibby’s delusions, the validity of her judgments about good and evil remains ambiguous, raising questions about The Ethics of Vigilantism. Though Rosie attributes Sibby’s sense of “smell” regarding evil to her delusion, she cannot definitively rule out the possibility that Sibby succeeded in killing only “evil” people. Gary and Mark are both confirmed criminals, and Sibby’s judgments of Glenda and Zade, too, seem to point toward Sibby having an accurate, supernatural ability to detect evil. Rosie concedes that Leonard was evil, telling Sibby: “So, when you killed him, you felt you were doing something right. You felt it was your purpose to continue that path” (155). Sibby’s understanding of her purpose is rooted in The Allure of Moral Certainty. Because she believes that she alone can tell evil people apart from everyone else, she also believes that she has a duty to protect everyone else from those evil people. This prophetic view of justice is antithetical to Rosie’s institutional view. Rosie speaks for the institutions of criminal justice when she tells Sibby, “Even if every single one of them were evil people, that wasn’t for you to act on” (156). Rosie’s specific language here—“that wasn’t for you to act on”—encapsulates the problem of vigilantism: If Sibby can appoint herself an instrument of divine vengeance, so can anyone. If it were up to individuals to enact justice according to their own subjective criteria, the world would be a more chaotic and violent place than it is. From this perspective, Sibby is little different from her father: someone who believes herself infallible and uses that belief to justify violence.