Genital Grinder

July 18, 2001

I’ve never kept a journal before, but there’s too much going on now that I can’t talk about with anyone else. I feel like I have to keep a record. I guess this is also a precaution, too.

I’m Alex. I’ll be a senior at Bernardo High School in a couple weeks. Check the honor roll, I’m there. I’m on the yearbook staff, which is probably where I first got interested in cameras. Someone had to photograph the cheerleaders, and I thought I’d never looked more like “someone” before in my life. I turned out to be a someone with a real eye for low angles.

I also play on the tennis team, which I don’t recommend if you’re hoping to attract the opposite sex. I was lucky if my parents or my sister even came to the damn games, much less Katy Hindley.

I don’t know where to begin exactly, but I guess I’ll start with my job. I develop film at a store I won’t name, because I’d hate to lose your business. Once you hear about the Binders, you probably won’t want to bring your film to me.

I took the job to save up for a car. It only paid minimum wage, and when I first started, I had every intention of leaving when something better came along. I just expected lots of snapshots from birthday parties, weddings, and Disney World, but you wouldn’t believe the pictures people drop off. I guess everyone thinks I wear a blindfold when I develop their film. I’ve seen some unbelievably hot slutcakes bare-assed naked or in bone-stiffening states of undress. We’re talking lingerie, swimsuits, nightgowns, and half of one or the other. They pose for their boyfriends and husbands, who don’t have sense enough to develop film themselves or learn how. I bet some of the pictures were sent to amateur photo contests in skinmags like Gallery and Buxxxom. Some had a good chance of winning, although I’ve had the misfortune to see many who could have soured a rapist’s sex drive faster than a chemical castration.

I saved them in the Binders anyway.

I get some fetish pictures, too. There’s a surprising number of guys who go around secretly taking pictures of women’s feet. It became a game for me to see if I could guess who took what pictures, judging by the individual requirements. “Darrin McDonel,” for instance, had to have open-toed sandals and toenails painted red. “Harold Bennett” was into red high heels and pallid skin. “Jamey Fiala” only photographed women in black high heels with those thin interlaced straps.

“John Futchins” was bolder. He went for those upskirt pictures you can see all over the Internet. I didn’t realize so many women in Bernardo were into thongs (and thongs were into them).

I saved all these pictures in the Binders. It didn’t matter if customers paid for doubles or not, some of their photos were duplicated and added to my Binder. It filled up fast. So did the second, and I’m running out of room on the third. Customers have to write their address on the film envelope, and halfway through the second binder I started keeping track of who submitted each picture. It was an impulse, you know? One of those things that you do without knowing exactly why. You suspect you could figure out why, but you’re almost afraid to admit it to yourself.

Sometimes I visit their homes at night and look in the windows. Just anywhere a woman who posed for some of the pictures might live. I don’t know why. I can see more in the pictures. But I do it anyway. Not often, just sometimes. I’ve never been caught. I wish I knew the addresses for some of Futchin’s upskirt subjects.

It’s not always the women from these photographs I watch. Remember I mentioned Katy Hindley? I’ve known her since sixth grade. I’ve had a hard-on with her name on it for seven years now, which she has only experienced vicariously through her yearbook photos. She knows I exist, but I don’t think she cares. The closest we’ve ever been was a lab group for biology. We dissected earthworms, dogfish sharks, and fetal pigs together, but strangely enough, she went to Homecoming with someone else in spite of our intimate bond. That’s okay, though. If her blinds are agreeable, I have my own private “homecoming” with her on Elvin Avenue three or four times a week during the school year, and more in the summer. This has been going on much longer than the other nighttime visits.

But I was talking about the great pictures I see on the job. They’re the reason I have to go to 1201 Hodson Avenue tomorrow. I’ll explain it then . . . assuming I come back. Like I said, this is not just a record, it’s a precaution.

July 19, 2001

Okay, remember how that killer in Silence of the Lambs was based on some crazy motherfuckers from real life? One was Ed Gein, who killed at least three women in Plainfield, Wisconsin. His hobbies included cannibalism, necrophilia, and fashioning furniture, bowls, masturbatory aids, and clothing accessories from dead women. Waste not, want not, right? Ed could have taught home economics and interior decorating.

The other inspiration was Gary Heidnik, who kept some prostitutes hostage in his cellar. They were played against each other as he systematically tortured and killed them. Just goes to show you can never tell what’s going on in the homes around you.

Unless, of course, you develop their film.

The house on Hodson certainly didn’t look like the kind of place you’d find a lot of missing women chained up in the cellar, assuming there is a design intended to suggest this. It’s a two-story the color of earth clay with blue shutters, entirely visible from the street except for a few maple trees in the way.

The mailman stops here six days a week, never realizing. The resident probably didn’t have subscriptions to magazines like Unwilling Sex Slaves, Torture Made Easy for the Suburban Serial Killer, or Middle Class Murder, though.

I rang the doorbell. I’d thought about what to say all week, and this was the big moment at last. I heard footsteps and there was a long pause where I had time to think, Shit, he’s not going to answer and I have no idea what to do next. But the door opened, and I got my first look at him. (After we develop the film, it’s packaged and placed on an in-store rack where the customer can pick it up. I rarely see them unless they have questions or they need one-hour photo service.)

“Mr. Owens?”

He squinted in the light—a scrawny, skeletal man whose smile may have seemed pleasant to anyone who didn’t know his secret life. I bet it was the last thing seen by several women the police didn’t know about, and I doubted they’d describe it as “charming.”

“Yes?” he asked. The picture of innocence. I could sense the gears turning in his head; he’d seen me before, even if I hadn’t seen him. If it was at work, I generally pay little attention to the male customers anyway, especially when the females are parading around in shorts and halter-tops.

I had this elaborate story about a lost basset hound named Gloria, but I found myself saying, “You’re the one who took Cassandra Bittaker.”

If the police dropped that line on him, I don’t think he would have reacted, but this was coming from some kid he vaguely remembered seeing before. He couldn’t quite conceal his discomfort.

“Are you out of your mind?” he finally asked—which wasn’t quite the same as denial.

Let me get back to you on that one, sir . . . because sometimes I really wonder.

“Cassandra Bittaker back in May,” I said. “Jenny MacColl in June. Aurora Fenech and Mariangela Bouchet in July.”

Owens’ expression gradually changed as I named the young women who mysteriously vanished in the past four months. Initially he had the look of a claustrophobic man on an elevator where the doors don’t seem to want to open, but by the time I got to “Aurora Fenech,” he was positively beaming. Like I was describing his greatest accomplishments.

“You read the papers,” he said. “So do I. I don’t go door to door making wild accusations, though. Maybe you should stick to the funnies.”

“Maybe I should call the police,” I countered. “I think they’d be very interested in your basement. That’s where you keep them, isn’t it?”

The whole time, he kept that smile. Fight or flight was in his eyes, but the smile never faltered. It reminded me of all those pictures where the flash gave people red satanic eyes, but they smiled good-naturedly all the same.

Owens surreptitiously examined the street from right to left. I knew he was looking for potential witnesses to his next disappearing act, having realized that he wouldn’t be having this conversation with me if I’d already called the police. A SWAT team would have smashed through every window and door of the house.

“I wrote about coming here in my journal,” I lied. He didn’t have to know that I hadn’t actually gotten around to naming names or reasons. “I went from house to house on your block, too, asking about my lost dog. ‘A basset hound, long ears, sleeps about twenty hours a day, answers to Gloria.’ If I disappear, someone around here will remember me. It won’t be long before they figure out my last visit was at your house.”

Sounds convincing, doesn’t it? Wish I’d thought of it BEFORE I went through with this, and actually did it.

He looked at me like he was trying to solve an equation, and the wattage of the grin finally diminished.

“Not only that,” I went on, “but you know who I am. And I have copies of your pictures. It was pretty ingenious of you to nab all those girls without being seen, but you need to bone up on common sense.”

He didn’t look pleased with that remark at all. “Just what exactly is it that you want?” he asked, his mouth now barely a line on his face.

“Show them to me,” I said.

July 19 (later)

I’m back. Damn telephone. People calling to ask how my mom and I are doing, as if they really care. We oughtta have the thing disconnected.

Anyway, I GOT TO SEE THEM! It must have been how those astronauts felt at the moon landing. One small step for man, one giant leap for sexual sadism. You go in the house, through the den to the kitchen, and that’s where the door to the basement is. I made Owens go first, because I didn’t want him to a) push me down the stairs, b) lock me up down there with the women, or c) both. Not that “B” wasn’t without its prospects, but I’d only accomplish half of my goals. More on that later.

So we went down there, and of course it’s just like the pictures, for the most part. The basement walls are stone, and Owens has the shackles driven into them. You aren’t breaking away from those unless you come from the planet Krypton. There were also some empty shackles for future acquisitions. And speaking of acquisitions, there, from left to right, were the pretty little schoolgirls and co-eds all in a row. Alphabetical order, too. I thought it was a coincidence, but he consciously lined them up that way. It seems like a pointless risk to me if he has to trade out shackles, but Owens is a bit weird.

The girls are chained with their arms overhead, which makes their breasts rise up. I sound like Gray’s Anatomy, don’t I? Their tits, then! I’d seen tons of pictures, but never in the flesh, never right in front of me. Not even when I was looking into houses, even after three steady years outside Katy Hindley’s. My sister always locked her room and the bathroom, too. It was like this huge conspiracy to make sure I never got to see the good stuff, but I found a way around it, didn’t I?

It was all on display! Four downy clefts, eight TITTIES, and four sets of ass. Hours and hours of fist-pumping action if you just happened to sit next to them during a study hall, but in a place like this where you can blur the line between daydream and reality, the possibilities were downright exhausting.

I HAD thought about being a “law-abiding citizen” and calling the police when I first saw the pictures. If anyone ever reads this, I want to go on record as saying I considered it. But when I weighed the pros and cons, doing the “right thing” seemed like a real cop-out. Think about it. Let’s say I reported the pictures to the proper authorities and they stormed the house, saving the women and arresting Carl Owens. Would I even get so much as a thank-you card from three of those women? It’s doubtful. After all the psychiatric treatment for their “ordeal” and their “post-traumatic stress disorder,” they’d either go on with their lives and purposely leave any reminders of the experience way behind them, or they’d try to cash in on their “tribulations.” The bottom line came down to “Will good ol’ Alex get some ass in return for his heroic benevolence?” and the answer was always “Not bloody likely.” What WHORES! Some gratitude, huh?

So yeah, I may look like the bad guy, but it was worth it for the steamy thirty seconds I spent with Jenny alone. I’d thought about doing this with her for some time. You’ve never seen such a struggle before in your life, either. I bet she didn’t put up half the fight when Owens came to collect his just reward. All that squirming and whimpering, you’d think Helen Keller’s mom set her down on a hot stove. I have to admit, if half those thirty seconds weren’t spent restraining her gyrations so I could even get it in her, it would have been over that much faster. I made sure to get in a couple squeezes of her TITS after I blasted off in her, because I forgot to do it in all the excitement. Nice and firm, fit right in the palm of my hand.

I didn’t even care that Owens was watching (and he looked at me distastefully, if you can believe that . . . what a hypocrite!). I should have been more worried that he’d try something, I guess, but I’d offered to develop film in his house, and having found out how close he came to discovery, he liked the sound of that.

I wonder exactly what he would have said if someone else developed his film and called him on the carpet. I suppose he could have said it was just a make believe thing, and hey, I swear they were all over 18! Nothin’ weird here, good sir. If no one recognized the girls, he might have even skated on that, at least for awhile. The pressure cooker hadn’t exploded just yet with no actual bodies. A lot of people figured the girls just ran away and were shooting up dope and sucking dicks—believe me, I’ve heard the ugliest theories—while the rest whispered that the Slave Killer guy from twenty-five years ago was back. Geisha Hammond does that story about him in connection with the Bartok Butcher, and she just happens to disappear? And now four other girls? You think that’s a coincidence?

For the record, I wish Geisha Hammond was on display between Aurora Fenech and Jenny. Just my luck that she dropped off the face of the earth before Jenny disappeared. Have you seen the lips on that woman? You’d blast the back of her skull out instantaneously if she wrapped those things around your dong.

I’m sure it pained Carl to have to share the girls, but the guy was so spoiled anyway. He inherited the house from his mommy, didn’t have to work for anything. I’m busting my ass for minimum wage, and he’s out joyriding, chloroforming flawless college girls for an orgasmathon. Pretty unfair, if you ask me.

My hand’s about to fall off from reliving this great experience . . . and I’m getting tired of writing, too. More tomorrow.

July 20, 2001

Oh, I said there were a couple differences from the pictures yesterday, didn’t I? It turns out Mr. Holier-Than-Thou can’t abide by the cost of feeding the girls, so he improvises. Chunks of flesh are now missing here and there from thighs and stomachs (Gray’s Anatomy note: The buttocks were left intact, thankfully). The good news is that the girls don’t have to worry about their stomachs eating themselves from malnutrition . . . the bad news is they’re experiencing self-cannibalism from the outside.

That was hardly enough to sustain them and keep them from looking like refugees from Auschwitz, though. It turns out there was a FIFTH girl, but she wasn’t local. Owens picked her up hitchhiking (they never learn, do they?). It probably got the whole thing started, such an opportunity falling into his lap. This is, in fact, how he figured out the high cost of living (as in keeping a sex slave alive), because he had to start buying for two. Then three, because he had to grab Cassandra Bittaker. Why do that if he can barely afford to keep one? Because he HAD to grab Cassandra Bittaker. Check back issues of the newspaper for her picture, and you’ll understand immediately. After some soul-searching (and coming up empty), Owens gave the hitchhiker one more for the road, then slit her throat from ear to ear. A good strategy move, when you think about it—Cassandra Bittaker sees just how valuable she is from his perspective.

Frugal as he is, Owens didn’t have a very big crisper. The fifth girl couldn’t possibly fit. One hacksaw and three hours later, though, Owens did the impossible. Now he had plenty of meat to keep the livestock fed awhile. He’s crafty, I’ll give him that much. It couldn’t last, though, especially when he kept bringing in more girls.

I made him swear not to carve on Jenny. I’ll feed her myself, if need be.

Today I got the privilege of doing the carving for the others, though. A few strips from Aurora’s arms. I whittled all the skin from Mariangela’s toes (which contributed little, but the reaction was worth it). The soles of Cassandra’s feet, to prevent visible scarring. That was something! Peeled off like the skin of a potato. More bones in the human foot than you’d think. We’re going to need a new knife.

Did the deed with Cassandra and Mariangela today, savoring the coming fun with Jenny. Went off like gangbusters in Cassandra almost on contact, but held out for five glorious minutes with Mariangela. Still haven’t managed a bee-jay because of the duct tape over all their mouths, which seems unnatural (my not getting a bee-jay, I mean, not the duct tape). The pictures in the paper of Mariangela showed some of the most pouty lips imaginable. Not Geisha Hammond worthy, but they promised a soft landing. Friends and family claimed she wasn’t taken without a struggle, because she’s a tough one. I take that to mean she’d bite a man off given half the chance. It sure wouldn’t be worth it to take the chance of those teeth.

So we’re gonna need pliers.

July 26, 2001

The political correctness of the papers is hilarious, and actually quite dangerous. Hilary Stiglitz is the fifth (known) disappearance in the past three months. Police do not want to attribute her vanishing to the same person or persons responsible for the first four, but they won’t reveal why. “We have some leads we’re working on,” claimed Detective Keene.

No one will state the obvious: The bitch was too ugly to fit the pattern! Cassandra, Jenny, Aurora, and Mariangela were gorgeousness and gorgeosity. Hilary was what happened when you pissed in a test-tube. She was (and I do mean past tense) one of those overweight women whose pounds congregate in one area—in her case, the ass. It looked like someone threw a blanket over a monster truck tire.

You wouldn’t insult your dog by feeding him the remains. Your basement-bound sex slaves, on the other hand . . .

You never know what might develop when you drop off some film and leave your address.

And yeah, I admit it . . . I took “the plunge” in her, too. But Carl did it first. You take that kind of risk, it seems a crying shame not to get the most out of your effort.

July 28, 2001

I watched Katy through her window tonight. I thought she was going to undress, but the phone rang. I have to be completely silent during the summer, because she leaves her window up. Even the sound of a zipper might draw her attention, but that’s part of the thrill.

The phone call was for her. A new boyfriend, apparently. That was rather depressing. I can’t help thinking that if I was the one she was so happy to hear from, I wouldn’t need a basement of women to satisfy me.

Loneliness is vastly underrated.

I did my thing anyway, quietly as possible. They were still going on when I left. Then I went to buy a pair of pliers before the store closed.

July 29, 2001

We’re going through two and three rolls of film a day at Owens’. I develop film for less than six bucks an hour for six to eight hours, then I go to his house and do it for free for a couple more. The upside is that I am already halfway through Binder Number Six.

Stock tip: Buy as many shares of Vaseline as you can.

July 30, 2001

Owens is pissing me off.

Remember what I said about my goals? That’s plural. Katy was at least the second reason I got involved in all of this. It’s been my plan to bring her to Owens’ from the beginning—or better yet, to have Owens bring her there himself. He’s got a great track record, six for six all told. Katy has everything but a COME THROUGH MY WINDOW, ABDUCT ME AND RAPE ME sign on her house. It’d be nothing for him to do it.

But he won’t.

“It’s not the right time,” he said.

“What are you waiting for, a full moon?” I shouted.

“It’s just not the right time,” he said again.

So I got to thinking. It’d be nothing for him to creep through Katy’s window and take her. It wouldn’t be anything for me, either, would it? This time we’ll be collaborating on a chemistry project—I’ll administer the chloroform, she’ll succumb. Then I’ll bring her back to Owens’.

Owens won’t object, because Owens won’t be around anymore. I’ll get the hang of this kidnapping thing, and I won’t need him. I can have ALL the women to myself, with no more of those disgusted looks when I do as I please with Jenny. At least not from him, anyway.

No more sloppy seconds, and I get the van AND the house. You couldn’t ask for a better divorce.

July 31, 2001

I’ve never kept a journal before either. I guess you’ve heard about me, but we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Carl Owens. I picked up this nifty little journal from Alex.

You’ve probably figured out that I still have my harem.

I noticed that Alex didn’t care to leave out the truth whenever it suited him. I DID recognize him when he first showed up on my doorstep—from the papers. He was Jenny MacColl’s brother (and I do mean past tense). He forgot to mention that, didn’t he? He sure didn’t seem like the kind of guy to be ashamed of anything, but I guess you never really know some people. For example, I didn’t know that he wanted to kill me and take over my congregation. Personally I was just getting sick of him, and I thought I’d take my chances with finding all the evidence he had against me. He was dead to the world whenever he got going with Jenny . . . only this time he stayed that way.

His mother isn’t exactly my type, but it’ll be good to have some meat on stand-by when they get done with Hilary Stiglitz. I think I’ll hold onto this for awhile. Mrs. MacColl might be interested in reading it.

It just so happens that I have some empty shackles between Aurora Fenech and Jenny. I guess the time is right for Katy Hindley. Elvin Avenue, wasn’t it?