9Chews

by 9 Tales Told in the Dark

  No one in Precinct 37 asked Denton if he would like a sandwich before his interview with the psychiatrist.

  Lieutenant Sal Muncey watched Dr. Matthews scribble her notes as she formulated her diagnosis, and he prepared himself for the fancy shmantsy double talk he knew was coming. Central headquarters always pigeonholed guys like Lester Denton because the public required those neat labels that explained their criminals’ misdeeds. The police commissioner demanded his ten cents’ worth of psychological buzzwords that would logically explain Boston’s atrocity du jour to John Q. Public. Maybe Lester’s mother rejected him? Call his craving for female flesh ‘Oedipal’. Maybe his girlfriend in junior high had spread the word that he was hung like a flea? Call his rage ‘displaced aggression’. Maybe a Big Mac just didn’t do it for him? Call his derangement ‘munchoid psychosis’. Then follow the papers for the next ten years as an army of shrinks argued about why the crazy bastard did it.

  Headquarters wanted Boston’s badge and gun club to appear familiar with the psychobabble so the precinct cops would not come off like morons in front of the t.v. cameras. The commissioner’s goal was to wrap these recent killings inside a neat package, then present that package to the media by morning. The commish signed Janice Matthews’ paycheck personally and expected Lieutenant Sal Muncey to nod and smile accordingly with whatever diagnosis she offered.

  Let’s label this one ‘case closed,’ guys. And how ‘bout them Sox?

  “I realize it’s hard to understand after seeing what Mr. Denton did to the Daniels girl after he strangled her,” the therapist explained to the three men seated before her. They were together in the small office alongside Precinct 37’s interrogation room where Lester sat alone beneath a single dim light bulb. The woman spoke as they watched him through the two-way mirror.

  “Denton envied women for the desire they created inside him and he coveted what he found alluring about them. Whether it was their fingers or their breasts, the secret ingredient was contained in their flesh. Lester Denton saw only a woman’s component parts and believed he could assimilate the best parts of each woman inside himself, thereby displacing everything which he found detestable in himself. Only an extremely weak ego would be capable of such sick stuff, but we’ve got a classic obsessive fixation here taken to its behavioral limits.”

  “You are what you eat. Right, doctor?” mumbled Cooper, the oily-haired rookie. His eyes locked with Dr. Matthews’ as if he were encouraging an angry retort but she returned his stare without missing a beat.

  “In his mind Denton meant those women no harm, Mr. Cooper. Any pathological obsession tends to blind one from reality, and there is no sense of having done anything wrong. Remember, every one of those women invited him into their homes. He helped Tamara Daniels with her groceries. Last month, he repaired a flat tire for that housewife he killed. Mr. Denton didn’t feel he violated any of those women. But then, how many sane men worry about that sort of thing?”

  The young therapist crossed her legs and her skirt rode midway up her thighs. One of her shoes dangled from her toes. If the move were calculated then it worked, because Muncey noticed Cooper's sudden rapt attention. But Lieutenant Muncey’s thoughts were not on Janice Matthews’ legs.

  “For someone who meant no harm, I’d say ol’ Lester blew it big time, doctor,” he said. Beautiful as she was, this woman was also a pain in his ass. He envisioned Matthews providing Denton’s lawyer with the requisite insanity plea and the thought made Muncey want to upchuck his dinner all over her note pad.

  “I’m not excusing the man’s actions, and I didn’t say he was rational, Lieutenant. That’s why we call his behavior pathological.”

  The woman’s carefully selected words had a mathematical precision, as if Boston’s latest looneytoon had been a bothersome algebraic equation she had managed to solve. Even with that cannibalistic fruitcake seated within spitting distance from her chair, she spoke about him as if he were some kind of laboratory rat. The Lieutenant did not doubt that Dr. Janice Matthews also had a hypothesis regarding the symbolism of why cops carry those big guns.

  An awkward silence followed. The woman used the moment to remove her high heels and reached into the large tote bag she had placed under the table to pull out a pair of flats. Lieutenant Muncey and the two arresting officers watched through the two-way as Lester fidgeted in his hard-backed chair and licked his fingers. The nondescript little wuss behind the glass hardly seemed worth six months of front page headlines in The Globe. The kid could pass for the bastard son of Dan Quayle and June Cleaver.

  McGuinty whispered something to his partner and Cooper nodded. Muncey knew the senior cop had whispered “This is bullshit” although he had not heard him say the words. Muncey suspected the woman knew what he had said too.

  The lieutenant lit a Marlboro without asking the young therapist if she minded that he smoked. He hoped that she did mind. Her lecture was pissing him off and he felt like returning the favor.

  “Of course you could always argue that Lester’s biting off a woman’s fingers was his helpful way of saving her the trouble of doing her nails,” the lieutenant suggested, spitting smoke as he spoke. “Look, I don’t mean to sound out of line, Dr. Matthews, but last night that sick puke chewed off the Daniels girl’s nipples and left them in the ash tray like they were wads of bubble gum. A few months ago he strangled a young Beacon Hill housewife and made a gourmet meal of her brains. Her husband found what Denton left behind in the dog dish. It’s no sweat off my nose if your report explains how chowing down on that woman’s frontal lobe was that psychopath’s way of making himself smarter. But I want you to understand that just because he’s a sicko, your intellectualizing what he did doesn’t make it any less despicable. If this was my call I’d throw the switch on that bastard right now.”

  “The law recognizes that Lester Denton has diminished capacity, Lieutenant. He’s a sick man who doesn’t understand what he’s done. That’s why--“

  “---that’s why you call them pathological section 8 non compos mentis poop heads. Did I get that right?”

  Janice Matthews shot the lieutenant a look that would have caused a Brahma bull to break eye contact. Possibly all her misguided professional sympathy for the loopy bastard masked the rage she really felt toward him, rage she redirected toward the easier male targets seated before her. More likely she was just too plain stupid to know what she was talking about.

  Maybe she needed to see the photos of those women after Lester was through with them. Maybe she needed to study Tammy Daniels’ gutted remains down at the city morgue. Muncey suspected Dr. Matthews would feel differently if she suddenly had to dislodge her own tit from Lester’s maw.

  The woman turned toward McGuinty and Cooper as if she were about to share the riddle of the sphinx.

  “Let me put this into perspective for you gentlemen. The lieutenant here says Lester Denton should fry, and maybe he should. Most people probably would like to see him fried, baked, and filleted. But here’s something for you to think about. There isn’t a man who hasn’t done to women with his eyes what Mr. Denton has done with his teeth.”

  “Yeah. That college girl looked so good, he just went and ate the whole thing,” mumbled Cooper. Muncey had to force himself not to smile.

  Janice Matthews set a bead on the young cop like a cheesed off school teacher.

  “Abnormal Psychology is a relative term, Mr. Cooper. You could apply it to a lot of men if you peeked through a few key holes. Show me a man who hasn’t mentally dismembered a woman’s breasts and buttocks every time he looks at a centerfold. Fetishists and voyeurs don’t foam at the mouth. Sometimes they sip martinis or guzzle beers. Misogyny isn’t restricted to psychopaths, and from what I can tell in this precinct it isn’t restricted to Lester Denton’s side of the mirror.”

  The three men exchanged quick glances with one another, then aimed them right back at the therapist. She might just as well have accused them of masturbating to the photos of Denton’s most r
ecent target. Muncey was beginning to regret that Dr. Matthews had not met Lester a few hours earlier. The lieutenant might have even passed him the salt.

  Behind the glass Denton studied his fingers and smiled a silly little grin, the same idiotic grin he had flashed at the waiting reporters when the two officers had brought him in. His was not the smile of the cat who had swallowed the canary; it was the smile of the cat who had swallowed the canary’s beak and toes.

  “This meeting is adjourned, folks,” said Muncey. “Coop, write this one up. McGuinty, make sure you find a clean shirt for ‘Good Morning America’ tomorrow. Dr. Matthews, thank you for your time. I’ve learned so much.”

  The therapist did not bother with the amenities. She grabbed her tote bag and did not look back as she headed for the door.

  It was 3:17 a.m.

  At 4:45 a.m. Sal Muncey awoke from behind his office desk. It made no sense making the forty-five minute drive to Sudbury when he had to return to the station house in four hours. Camille Muncey had stopped caring years ago about what time her husband crawled under their sheets. Most nights she never knew whether he had returned home or not, and she no longer asked.

  He could catch a couple hours of sleep right here. But first he wanted some answers that did not come from a text book.

  Lester Denton had been transferred to the holding cell next to the lieutenant’s office. In just a few hours every person in the country would know that unremarkable face, and the lieutenant expected Precinct 37 would be hearing from Oprah or Geraldo before the week was through. Ol’ Lester had caught the American public’s imagination, and Muncey wondered if the poor schmuck’s lack of charisma would disappoint his fans. One thing was certain. After tonight, Lester Denton would never again be an easy man to sit down with just to chew the fat.

  Chew the fat. Now there was an interesting term. Muncey considered Dr. Janice Matthews’ analysis of Lester’s eating habits and his curiosity kicked in hard. This would probably be his last opportunity to know.

  “We all have our insatiable appetites, my voracious friend,” he whispered as he pushed the key into the cell door’s lock. Lester Denton, currently the media’s flavor-of-the-month serial killer, slept in the shadows of the small enclosure. He lay curled in a fetal position on the cot fast asleep with his thumb in his mouth.

  The man was not exactly the embodiment of terror his reputation suggested.

  Muncey placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and shook him gently, but Lester’s heavy meal of the preceding night had sent him into a deep sleep. Muncey shook harder and Lester Denton’s eyes flickered open.

  “It’s just you and me in here, Lester. Just you and me, and I have one question for you, just one question, and then I’ll let you get back to sleep. Okay?”

  Denton looked around without moving his body. Still half asleep he gurgled something unintelligible, then muttered only one word.

  “. . . ‘kay.”

  “Those women, Lester. Five women in six months. I can understand why you killed them. You hated them, didn’t you? You hated their guts and snowballed that pretty psychiatrist into thinking you were fulfilling some deep rooted psychological need. But that was a crock of shit, wasn’t it? You didn’t merely kill them, pal. You ate them, Lester. You stuffed their flesh into your mouth and you ate them. Why? Just tell me why.”

  Lester gurgled again and managed to formulate another word.

  “Chicken,” he said.

  “What?”

  Muncey noticed that Lester was smiling.

  “They tasted like chicken . . .”

  Alone again inside his office, Lieutenant Sal Muncey could not remember the last time he felt so tired. Still, he managed to smile a feeble little grin. Lester Denton had pretty much said it all.

  “What does that bimbo shrink know about compulsive obsessives, fetishists, or the price of tea in China?” he grumbled and reached under his desk. He pulled out one of the high heeled shoes Dr. Janice Matthews had left behind in her rush to get out of his sight. “The lady doesn’t know schizoid from shitzoid,” Muncey mumbled as he shut his eyes. His hand traced the outline of the soft cushion of the dainty pump’s instep.

  Muncey raised the woman’s shoe to his face and sniffed . . .

  THE END.

  RESPECT FOR THE DEAD by Lee Clark Zumpe

  Terrance usually slept until noon.

  His parents did not know what to do with him. Since finishing up at prep school, he seemed inordinately listless. He made no overtures toward applying to university; showed no interest in employment.

  He watched television all afternoon, glassy-eyed and silent. Around sunset he left, staying out until five in the morning. His parents often asked where he went, what he did.

  "What is there to do after dark, dear?" his mother whined. "You should be in bed."

  "It's them night clubs," his father said. “That's where the boy goes. They fill the kids up with. He's an addict, I tell 'ya."

  "No, dear, not Terrance -- he's a good boy," mum said, patting her son on the head. Terrance ignored her.

  "'Good boy?' Why doesn't he have a job? Why doesn't he contribute something to the family?" Dad fumed out of the room, trailing mum close behind.

  Terrance winced as his parents continued their battle. Outside, the blue sky darkened steadily and shadows bloomed. Twilight swept over the land. In the city, street lamps ignited. On the outskirts of town, night reclaimed everything.

  "Remember tonight, Terrance dear," mum called down from upstairs, "We're going over to your grandmother's apartment to go through her things..."

  Terrance missed his grandmother. Had she not been so ill when he returned from boarding school, he might have confided in her. She came from the old country, from a village in Eastern Europe. They might not speak of such things openly, but they understood. Their customs and traditions reflected it.

  "And wear a nice shirt for Christ's sake," his father added. "Show some respect for the dead."

  Terrance smirked. Little his father knew.

  The voices had first spoken to him a few years ago. Faint at first, he had trouble understanding them; but they were insistent, and eventually he resigned himself to answering their pleas. It took him weeks to find the source, weeks of poking about the countryside after dusk growing more and more haggard by the minute.

  The dead called to him from their graves.

  They yearned for the closure their deaths had failed to provide them. They needed to share their secrets, tell their stories, impart their wisdom.

  Terrance checked over his gear, stowed in a knapsack. He slung the bag over his shoulder and walked out the front door before his parents had finished getting ready.

  Two hours later, Terrance sat by the grave of his grandmother. Though she had been emaciated and feeble in the end, her voice rang out clearly above all the others in the familiar cemetery. The dear old woman had lived a momentous life, and she had innumerable recollections to bequeath to her grandson. Her heart swelled with the many memories.

  Her spectral voice urged him to accept her legacy.

  Terrance dropped down into the hole he had dug, cracked open his grandmother's chest and plucked the stilled blood pump from her corpse, eager to taste her soul.

  THE END.

  HUNGRY by Luke Walker

  If asked, Jen Dempsey would have said that no, she was not insane but she understood why others might say she was mental. That was fine. That was their business, not hers. Even if she was currently holding a Granton Edge knife over her thigh, staring at the leg and wondering which spice would best go with her meal, she was not insane.

  Jen’s neighbour started her car and pulled out into the quiet of Willow Court. The low growl of the engine faded in seconds, and peace crept back into the space left behind. Eight o’clock on a Monday morning; the clear heat of late July already warming the long row of bushes that grew alongside the fence at the side of Jen’s house, and the special quiet held by a weekday morning when it seemed to
Jen the rest of the world was going to work.

  Not her, though. She’d booked a fortnight off from the hospital and repeatedly replied to colleagues that she wasn’t going anywhere; she was just having some time at home. And if they’d looked at her with carefully hidden sympathy, she could ignore that. After six years of working as a pharmacy assistant in Dalry City Hospital and being known as Quiet Jen (or Weird Jen behind her back), she was used to how the staff, the nurses and doctors saw her. Let them think her a loner or lonely; neither mattered. The knife over her naked leg was her focus. Along with the spices in the cupboard, of course.

  Jen lowered the blade to her inner thigh, the metal gleaming a little. She blew upwards to dislodge a few strands of hair curling over her forehead. Although she sweated heavily, she felt no moisture just as she felt no heat. Everything outside the knife in her hand and finally being able to feed her hunger slipped away on a gentle breeze.

  With exquisite care, Jen sliced into her leg.

  The pain blew the top of her head off.

  Jen made no sound.

  Hand steady, lines of blood racing to the sides of her thigh and pooling to the thick wad of bandages she’d placed below the limb, Jen continued to slice. The blade peeled the fatty skin as easily as it might denude an orange.

  A scream grew in her chest, a hot ball sitting between her breasts. While it might have been a howl of pain at some point, it was not now. Jen’s savage, primal joy wanted to burst free. She wanted to shout it to the TV in the corner, to the patio doors—both open to dispel the muggy air circulating through the house—and to her little garden. She wanted the world to hear her happiness at finally daring to take control. She had found a way of satisfying that hunger inside without causing a single second of harm or hurt to anyone. Finally. A lifetime of an itch in her stomach and knowing she could not do this to another. So many years of being sure that itch would never be scratched because how could it be? She was not a killer or a torturer; she would not hurt anyone. She was simply hungry for the taste of this meat. Always had been, and that hunger was an itch, a scream, a sobbing voice from the very centre of her soul. And when the idea came in the middle of a boiling night a year to the day before, the non-stop cry had been silenced for the first time she could remember.