I WASN'T FREAKED
OUT OR EVEN SCARED--except maybe by how weird Mia Farrow looked. I have the formula all figured out. How did it happen to Rosemary's Baby? Minnie and Abe laid Thalidomide in her milk shakes to make sure the kid would come out with cloven hands and feet, absent eyes.
The motive? Roman makes millions by putting the fear of the devil in his batty widow neighbors and a select few foreign shmucks. Like a little congregation, but with bigger tithes, less overhead, and a hell of a lot less administrative headache.
"The Greek hasn't coughed up in a while--neither has the Jap. What're we gonna do?"
"I've got an idea! Let's make'm a Satan baby!"
Doc Abe's in on it all as the necessary pharmacological evil in the equation, and decoys like tanas root just add color to the ceremony. If god is in the details, Satan's in the centrifuge. Mix it all in with a lot of chanted mumbo jumbo and you've got yourself a rock-solid collective hallucination.
"Have you got what it takes to make a Satan baby?"
"Oh, sure. I'll personally engineer the diabolical feat."
The demonic apparition in the conception ritual? A man in a gorilla suit. Maybe an old friend of Roman got the whole mojo started: like the landlord wanted to fuck Rose the moment he laid eyes on her, didn't care if he had to wear a hair shirt.
