by Edward Lee
It had to be unique. It had to be—
Brilliant, he considered. Mr. Torso was making effective efforts to avoid detection, which meant he was not pathological, nor bipolar. The m.o. was identical, painstakingly so. Nor was Mr. Torso retrograde, schizoaffective, ritualized, or hallucinotic; if he were, the psych unit would’ve discerned that by now, and so would the Technical Services Division. Mr. Torso, Tipps thought. What purpose could there be behind the acts of such a man?
Tell me, Mr. Torso.
Tipps had to know.
««—»»
Lud always ’ranged ta meet ’em out in the boonies, with phony plates on his pickup. Old lots, convenience stores an’ the like.
“Oh thank God I can’t believe it’s true,” yammered the blueblood lady when ol’ Lud passed her the fresh, new critter. The critter made cute goo-goo sounds, its pudgy little brand-spankin’ new fingers playin’ with his new mommy’s pearl necklace. She was crying she was so et up with happy. “Richard, give him the money.”
Lud scratched his crotch sittin’ back there in the back seat of this fancified big lux seedan, one of them ’spensive kraut cars was what he thought. But the gray hairt guy in the suit gave Lud a bad look. Then, kinda hezzatatin’ an’ twitchy, this fella asked, “Could you, uh, tell us a little bit about the mother?”
She’s a torso, ya dipstick, Lud thought. An’ it was my spunk preggered her up. But what’choo care anyways? I got’cha what ya wanted, ain’t I? Jiminy Christmas, these rich folks!
“I mean,” the suit said, “you’re certain that this arrangement is consentual? I mean, the child wasn’t…abducted or kidnaped or anything like that, right?”
“No way this critter here’s kitnapped, mister, so’s you’s got nothin’ to worry about.” Then Lud felt the fella could use a reminder. “Acorse, no questions asked is what we agreet, weren’t it? Like ya said in yer ad, conferdential. Now if yawl gots second thoughts, that’s fine too. I’lls just take the little critter back and yawl can sign back up at the ’doption agency, a’course if ya don’t mind waitin’ like five er six years..”
“Give him the money, Richard,” the lady had out in a tone’a voice like the devil on a bad day. Women shore did have them some wrath now an’ again. “Give him the money so we can take our baby home! And I mean right now, Richard, right now!”
“Er, yes,” mouthed the new papa in the suit. “Yes, of course.” And then he passed ol’ Lud an envelope full ’o hunnert’ dollar bills stuffed like ta the tune of twenty grand. Lud shot the folks a smile. “I just knows in my heart that yawl’ll raise yer new critter fines an’ proper. Don’t ferget ta teach ’im ta say his prayers ever night, an’ make shore he’s raised in the ways of The Man Upstairs now, ya hear?”
“We will,” said the suit. “Thank you.”
“Thank you thank you!” gushed the new mommy all silly-face happy and teary eyed. “You’ve made us very happy.”
“Don’t’chall thanks me ’s much as The Man Upstairs,” Lud said an’ scooted outa the big lux kraut seedan parked at the QWIK-STOP. ’cos it’s Him that called me ta do this. After the rich folks left, Lud hisself drove off in his beat-ta-holy-hail pickup, thinkin’. He had work ta do tonight. What with that skinny-ass brownyhead dyin’ on him yesterday (Lud figured she musta got some bad germs up in her noggin when he jigged her brain, and that’s why she didn’t live long). He had to swipe hisself a new gal an’ get her torsoed up ’cos the June trough was empty now. Acorse, ’fore he did that he figured he best git home ta that red-hairt August gal ta lay some afternoon peter on her, get some good spunk up her hole. After all, Lud had future orders now, and it didn’t seem fit ta hafta keep God’s work waitin’. An’ he also knew, from his fave-urt books, that The Man Upstairs kept his mitts off the world itself, ever since Eve put her choppers ta that apple, so’s there was physerolegy in play too, which was why ol’ Lud knew he hadda get his dicksnot up the girl’s hole many times a day as he could manage so’s she’d be shore ta get preggered up just fine.
And bring new life unto the world.
««—»»
Tipps wore the morgue’s ghastly fluorescent light like a pallor; he could’ve passed for a well-dressed corpse himself, here in such company. Jan Beck, the TSD field chief, set a bottle of Snapple Raspberry Iced Tea on a Vision Series II blood-gas analyzer. “Be with you in a minute, sir,” she offered, matching source-spectrums to the field indexes. Tipps wondered how she applied her own notions of truth to her overall assessment of human purpose. Did she have such an assessment? She histologized brains for a living, autopsied children, and had probably seen more guts than a fishmarket dumpster. What is your truth? he wondered.
“Your man wears size-11 shoes.”
“That’s great!” Tipps celebrated.
“Ground was wet last night.” Beck chewed the end of a fat camel’s-hair brush. “Left good impressions for the field boys.” Rather despondently then, she closed a big red book entitled: Pre-1980 U.S. Automotive Paint Index. “I checked every source index we got, and it’s not here.”
“What’s not here?” Tipps queried.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. When he backed up to the ravine last night, his right-rear fender scraped the culvert rim. I ran the paint-residuum through the mass-photospectrometer. It’s not stock-auto paint so I can’t give you a make and model. All I can tell you is he drives a red vehicle.”
Tipps felt delighted. Finally they had a real lead…
Beck continued, sipping her Snapple. “And that g/p-run you asked for? Well, you hit pay-dirt this time, Lieutenant. We got a positive match with the state CID records index. Torso Number Four has a name. Susan H. Bilkens.”
“Why the hell’s she got a genetic-profile record?”
“She’s a whore, er, was. Six busts, five city, one county. Pressed charges against her first pimp last year so the city asked for a g/p-material sample. The pimp cut her up a little, they hoped the g/p-sample would match blood on the pimp’s clothes.” Beck let out a humorless chuckle. “Too bad it didn’t wash in court, fuckin’ judges must be out of their minds. But at least it gave the girl’s name for a rundown.”
“Susan H. Bilkens,” Tipps repeated. He appraised the naked torso on the stainless-steel morgue platform which came complete with removable drain-trap and motorized height-adjustment. The torso’s acid-burned face more resembled a mound of excrement, and her y-section had been stitched back up like a macabre zipper. “You said she’s a hooker?”
“Was a hooker, that’s right.” Another chuckle. “She’s just a dead torso now. Worked the West Street Block, the dope bars, till she shitnamed herself with the pimp thing. For the last year she was turning her tricks at a truck stop up on the Route.”
“This is…wonderful,” Tipps intoned.
“The postmortem gave us more of the same. Teeth manually extracted shortly after death. Eardrums ruptured, eyes glued shut with cyanoacrilate aka Wonder Glue. Minor insult across the lateral sulcus in the frontal lobe. He lobotomized her just like the others. Oh, and I was able to match her body with the arms and legs we found in Davidsonville four months ago. You ready for the bombshell?”
Tipps looked at her.
“Tally this up, Lieutenant. Like I said, we found her arms and legs four months ago.”
“I heard you.”
Beck sipped her Snapple. “When she died she was two months pregnant.”
««—»»
Two month’s pregnant, he recited, motoring down Route 154 in his unmarked. It seemed spectacularly…hideous. With each revelation, Tipps felt beckoned to unveil Mr. Torso’s conception of human truth, and, hence, his empirical purpose.
Mr. Torso, Tipps thought. I’m going to get you, buddy, and I’m going to find out. Not only was Tipps a conclusionary-didactic nihilist, he was also a proficient investigator. A records check dropped the prostitute’s life into his lap. Twenty-five years old, Caucasian, brown hair, brown eyes, 5’5”, 121 pounds. Tipps wondered how much she weigh
ed without her arms and legs. Since she had been run off the red-light block in town, she worked a truck stop near the county line called The Bonfire. Truck stops were the first places banished prostitutes fled to, and there was only one in all of south county…
He parked between two Peterbilt semi’s at the end of the lot. The little dive of a restaurant glowed beyond, peppered with minute movement in its plate-glass windows. Tipps sung a tune in his mind, with a slight lyrical modification—“Eighteen Wheels And A Dozen Torsos”—scanning the Bonfire with a small pair of Bushnell 7x50’s. In the binocular’s infinity-shaped field, he could see them in there: Unkept, nutritionally depleted, desperate. Most, he knew, were clinical drug addicts, their only human purpose in the universe being to cater to the axiomatic and primordial male sex-drive in exchange for crack money. They fluttered about the restaurant interior, fussing with corpulent truck drivers whose stout arms provided tattoo-tapestries. Some of the girls dawdled outside, hidden within the gulf of shadows.
Tipps wondered about them, these sex-specters. Did they even realize their place in the ethereal universe? Did they ever ponder such considerations as existential verity, psycho-societal atomism, tripartite eudaemonistic thesis? Do they ever wonder what their purpose is? Tipps wondered to himself. Do they even have a purpose?
At once, Tipps sat up. The Bushnell’s fine German optics easily revealed the dilapidated red pickup truck that pulled into the lot, as well as the long fresh scratch along the right-rear fender.
««—»»
Lud loped outa the Bonfire, wearin’ the usual overalls an’ size-11 steel toes, totin’ a bag of mags. See, the Bonfire up ’fore the register had thereselfs a rack of the girlie mags and a lotta the September issues’d just come out. Lud never quite reckoned why, for instance, the September mags always come out third week of August, not that he much cared. Next week’d be time ta start gettin’ his peter up inta that lil’ blondie with the hairlip sittin’ cozy an’ limbless in the September trough. She had a nice set of milk wagons on her but a joyhole big enough ta take a ham hock. What’d fellas been stickin up this gal ta get her so stretched out—their blammed heads? Or was she just born that way? Acorse bein’ real big likes that’d make it easier for her ta drop critters-Jiminy, big as she was she could problee drop a whole kindergarten at once! An’ the lips ’round her snatch looked like a bunch of hangin’ lunchmeat er somethin’. ’Least she didn’t make a ruckus like the gal in the August trough who Lud was gettin’ a might sick of by now. See, that’s why Lud buyed hisself new mags each month, ta open the centerfolds onta their bellies so’s he could get his peter up proper an’ come. An’ on account of the June gal up an’ dyin’ on him an’ his havin’ ta dump her last night, Lud needed hisself a new gal ta take her place. These hookers always hanged out at the Bonfire ’cos the truckers was ferever tryin’ ta get their peters off in some splittail ’tween their long hauls, and ways it was set up, that big tookus-lot with all them semirigs parked alls over, Lud could propersition a gal right quick and have her outa there without no one bein’ the wiser.
Walkin’ down, though, he sawed all them rubbers layin’ on the cement, like a whole lot of ’em, an’ this made Lud right sad. Don’t fellas know nothin’ these days? Didn’t fellas ever use their brains fer more’n skull-filler? The dicksnot, see, was fer more an just feelin’ good whiles it was comm’ out’cher peter. It’s a ’lixer of life, it was. It was a special gift The Man Upstairs gave ta fellas so’s they’se could have their peters in gals proper the way He intended an’ get ta makin’ critters once that good spunk got up there inna gal’s baby-makin’ parts. Givin’ life an’ all, that’s what the dicksnot were all’s about, see? Droppin’ new rugrats onto the earth ta carry on with things the way God wanted. And it was a blammed shame seein’ all’s this good spunk wasted just fer the sake o’ havin’ a nut. Weren’t supposed ta be shot inta some infernal conderm! These little things layin’ all over lot, they was like a slap ta the face of The Man Upstairs in a way of reckonin’, a way mankind’d figured on cheatin’ the ways things was supposed t’ be. Lud had a mind ta collect up all these rubbers each night an’ empty ’em like maybe inta a soup bowl er somethin’, them git hisself a turkey baster so’s he could give each of his gals good squirt without havin’ ta do it hisself. Acorse, that might not be such a hot idea considerin’ all the devil-made diseases goin’ ’round these days. Just seemed a cryin’ shame fellas’d see fit to wastin’ their juice like that, kinda in a way of like puttin’ a little bit of God in a bag an’ flushin’ Him down the crapper or throwin’ Him down on some dirty trucker parkin’ lot—
“Hey, pops, for twenty bucks I’ll suck your cock so hard your balls’ll slide out of your peehole.”
Lud gandered this little stringbean who’d came outa the shadows. They’se was all mostly rack-skinny like this one an’ all had there-selves lank straight hair on ’em an’ mostly little-type hooters ’cept a’course fer his September gal with that big ol’ pair of the chest melons. “Well, say there, missy, that sounds like a right deal ta me,” Lud enthused “Just foller me yonder to my truck’n we’ll have ourselfs a dandy ol’ time”
They gots in the pickup an’ Lud had his peter out even ’fore she could pussy-pocket that double-sawbuck he gave her. Then she opened her yap an’ got ta work lickety-split. Lud figured he’d let her suck awhiles, not that he was plannin’ ta waste a perfectly good load of his critter-goo on her yap but just ta let her get on it awhiles so’s he’d be good’n boned up fer later when he were givin’ his August gal her beddy-bye pop. Lud in fact ’preciated it. It made things easier later ta have his stiffer all hot’n bothered by a gal who still had her arms an’ gams connected to her, yessir, right nice change ta be with somethin’ other’n a, brain-jiggered blabberin’ torso with a girlhole full of the K-Y. An’ this little stringbean here was just a’smokin’ his pole like a regler trooper she was, an’ kindly givin’ his ballbag a good feelup while she was goin’. Lordy, can this gal suck a peter! Lud exclaimed in thought. A regler machine she is, like ta suck the peterskin right off my bone! Then she stopped sucking a speck an’ kinda snotty said, “Hey pops, I been doing this a while. You getting close?”
“Wells, try ta be patient, missy. Ol’ fella the likes of me sometimes takes awhiles ta get his nut out.”
She sucked awhiles more, harder an’ faster with that little hand of hers just a pumpin’ away on his sack like it were a full-up milkbag on a cow, an’ she was a’slurpin’ an’ lickin’ an really goin’ t’town down there on his meat an’ makin’ more noise than a couple of thousand-pound Hampshire hogs havin’ a row in the mudhole, but then she stops again an’ bellyaches, “Come on, pops. Hurry up and come, will ya? I ain’t got all night.”
“What’choo got, missy,” Lud kindly corrected, “is yer whole life ta turn from the errah of yer ways an’ starts ta doin’ what gals was meant ta do in the eyes of The Man Upstairs, like havin’ critters and perpetcheratin’ the species. What I’se talkin’ ’bout, missy, is the purpose of the whole ball of wax we calls life,” an’ just right then lickety-split, Lud gave her a thunk fierce on the bean with a empty Carling bottle an’ put her little lights right out. He stuffed her down inta the footwell an’ droved outa the lot with his peter still out’n stickin’ up all high an’ mighty from that humdinger of a suck she were givin’ him, an’ it kinda seemed a shame, ya know, what he’d hafta be doin’ ta her shortly.
««—»»
Way he’d do it, see, is he’d take ’em downstairs an’ make ’em swaller a bowl of potatomash full of horse trank, so they’d be out deep for a good spell. Then he’d glue up their eyes an’ poke their ears an’ ’botermize ’em with the scratch awl so’s they wouldn’t sense no more an’ not be confused an’ all. Then he’d lop off their arms and gams with his field adze, which were like a axe only the blade went crossways, and acorse before he’d do that he’d tie off each arm an’ leg right close with heavy sisal rope so’s the gals wouldn’t bleed ta death on
ce he had off with their limbs.
And that’s just what Lud did when he gots back ta the house with that little suckjob gal he picked hisself up at the Bonfire. Each time looked a little neater, ’fact by now Ol’ Lud could have off with a gal’s arms an’ gams just as neat’n clean as you’d ever want, provided acorse that you’d ever in the first place want a livin’ torso in yer basement. The stumps’d heal over just fine in about a coupla weeks, then he’d be all set ta get ta pokin’ her. This is one here, now that she were buck nekit, had some right nice little hooters on her an’ a nice big clump a’hair down there on her babyhole, an’ she even had a real fine little line’a hair goin’ from her snatch ta her bellybutton which Lud always thought was just as cute as could be. One thing he didn’t much care fer, though, was the tattoos—lotta these gals had tattoos on ’em—-like this here brownyhead who sported one just over her right tittie, a silly little heart with a knife in it it looked like. Seemed a blammed shame ta Lud that gals’d have so little respect fer their bods ta scar ’em up like that ’cos the ways Lud saw it, ’least accordin’ ta the books he’d read, was the body was a temple of The Man Upstairs and ta scar it up with silly tattoos were just the same as like throwin’ garbage in a church or spraypaintin’ the swear words on the altar an’ bustin’ up the stainglass winders with stones an’ such. Didn’t matter now, though, not fer this stringbean little brownyhead ’cos now she were well on her way ta some real godlylike meanin’ in the scheme of life. Lud’d wait a spell ’for gettin’ her settled down inta the June trough though, an’ meantime, he bandaged up her stumps so’s she wouldn’t get no ’nfections. Then he picked up her arms an’ gams’n carried ’em upstairs ta put ’em in the truck fer dumpin’ a little later after he burned up the hands ’n’ feet with mercuric acid, an’ he’s walkin up them stairs his size 11s goin’ clump clump clump but, see, he stopped in his tracks on the top landin’ ’cos first thing he sawwed was some fancified fella in a suit waitin’ for him an’ this fella had in his mitt a big tookus-gun that he was a’pointin’ right smackdab at Lud’s face…