Diary of a Dead Man: The final thoughts of Ed Boothe

by Matt Shaw

  At this stage of my life truth is important to me. There’s little point in writing part truth and part lies for - in doing so - you’ll end up doubting everything that I put to paper. I told you I killed the girl. I could follow this up with the lie that I fucked her for hours in a multitude of positions and that - even in death - I was the best lover she’d ever had inside of her. What I have learned from being contained within this cage though is that the truth always has a way of coming out and - in this instance - the truth of the matter is I only managed a couple of thrusts before I ejaculated deep inside of her. Now I’m not sure whether this is because it had been so long since I’d last had sex or whether it was because of what I was doing but I can tell you this much - it was one of the best, most intense, orgasms that I’d ever had.

  The Morning After

  I awoke the next morning feeling rejuvenated. For as long as I could remember it had been one of the best night’s sleep of my life. No broken dreams, no haunted memories, just an erotic overture of what I’d carried out the previous evening. When I woke up I rushed through to where she still laid upon the floor. There was no hesitation as I crossed the room to her body and once again lay on top of her. The sickly sweet perfume which lingers in my memories today was then replaced with another kind of aroma. The scent of death. The start of the rot had already started to take a hold of her body but it didn’t bother me. All I could remember was the feeling of the orgasm the previous evening and all I could think about was to replicate that sensation. It just meant that I’d need to breathe through my mouth as opposed to my nose.

  I felt her skin tear as I pushed myself in. Unlike the previous night some force was needed this time. The blood, used the night before, had dried up inside of her as had the semen I deposited into her. The friction stung a little as I pushed into, and pulled out of, her. I wouldn’t say it dampened my enjoyment any. My actions still excited me as I built a steady pace. If anything - the pain added to the sensation. Not sure why that is. I’ve never been one for ‘pain’ inflicted upon me whilst in the bedroom. Some people swear by it saying there’s nothing better than pleasure and pain being administered at the same time but it’s not for me. I’d sooner just take the pleasure. At least - that’s how I used to feel. As I said, in this instance, it was adding to my overall enjoyment as though something had changed within my personality during the night’s sleep.

  By the time I was finished with her (for the sake of truth: not long after I started) my post-sex bliss was short-lived as - for the first time since killing her - a sudden panic set in with regards to what I was to do with her body. I couldn’t very well leave it in the middle of my apartment. Fair enough people didn’t come and visit me but I knew the smell would soon be attracting the wrong kind of attention.

  Smiling once again in my cell. This isn’t because I’m reminded by anything amusing as I reminisce about past shenanigans but more so out of embarrassment for how I behaved after the panic took a hold of my emotions. I flapped around the apartment, bouncing from wall to wall like a moth hitting a bulb as I desperately tried to think of how to dispose of the body. With mother it was easy, I knew the area and I knew where I could go without many people coming by. Out here though I was like a fish out of water. Everywhere I looked - places looked alien. To hide a body in an area unknown to you is no easy feat I can tell you and - for what seemed to be hours - I contemplated turning myself in then and there.

  “911. What is your emergency?”

  And I’d tell them, “I’ve just killed someone.”

  I thought about crying down the phone too. Pretend the whole thing had been an accident in the hope they’d let me off with a slapped wrist and possible fine. The woman was a prostitute. It wasn’t as though I had killed anyone real.

  Remember - these are the thoughts which went through my head when I was panicking. I still stand by previously made comments suggesting these women are human too and, despite some bad eggs needing to be broken, these girls deserve respect from the more ‘normal’ members of society. Hypocritical of me to suggest such a thing I guess - what with having bashed that woman’s head in but you have a lot of time to kill when you’re inside and most of mine was spent thinking; not about my crimes (until now anyway) but more so how people treat each other. It’s funny thinking back to how I treated people before I became what I became; I’d rarely stop and say good morning to a fellow human and yet I’d cross the road to stroke a cat that was unknown to me (annoying when they ran away though). That is what is wrong with the world today; no one has any time for each other. That and the fact it’s incredibly hard to get away with murder most foul.

  Pacing my apartment - fresh thoughts of turning myself in still plaguing my head- and I was trying to make myself cry. Could hardly make the phone call, pretending it was an accident, if I didn’t sound as though I was upset. I’d seen television programs about these calls in the past and I knew they recorded them. More so, I knew they’d play the recording back during my trial if there were to be one - and in this case, I couldn’t see a reason as to why there wouldn’t be one.

  “911. What is your emergency?”

  “I killed her!” would not have the same effect if I were to be laughing down the other end of the line.

  “Please, you have to help me, there’s been a terrible accident…I think…I think I’ve killed her,” along with tears and - well - I believe I’d be in line for the Academy Award and further job opportunities from the golden stages of Hollywood.

  Needless to say I didn’t phone the emergency operator despite contemplating it. Despite ending up here, I wasn’t ready for prison and I knew I wouldn’t get away with saying it was an accident. The girl’s head had been smashed in and her cunt was brimming with my sperm. It would be hard to say it was an accident.

  “Well, Officer, I accidentally punched and kicked her about twenty times. She dropped to the floor. I jumped on top to see if she was okay. I was naked and, before I knew it, my penis was stuck inside of her vagina. I’d never experienced anything like it before but the damned thing…It was clamping shut around me. I tried and I tried to get off of her but it kept sucking me back in…And then - before I knew it - I ejaculated. Twice.”

  My mind kept turning back to how I’d disposed of my mother and I knew - despite not knowing where to get rid of the body - I didn’t really have any other options other than to cut the woman up and scatter her around in places which looked to be remote. The apartment was purchased in my name so I couldn’t even run away and jump on a plane back to England. They’d come looking for me and would extradite me back to the States in order to make me face the music.

  With my mind settled on the fact I needed to cut the woman up, I threw some clothes on and left my apartment (ensuring the door was properly locked) in a quest to find a do-it-yourself store where I could purchase the required tools.

  Thankfully I didn’t have too far to travel to find such a store but what is it with Americans and their over-sized shops? In all my time in the States (as a free man anyway) I don’t recall seeing a small shop; certainly not like the corner stores we have in England anyway. Years ago my relatives were boasting about their trip to America in front of my mother and I. “You need at least two weeks over there,” they’d said. What they didn’t say was that those two weeks would mostly be spent shopping for groceries, or even trying to find the exit of the building. Needless to say, this store was no different. On the plus side: They had everything I could possibly need and my trolley was soon filled with saws, hacksaws, hammers, sheeting, black bags and even a face mask for I recalled how messy it had been when cutting mother up years prior to this.

  I’m not ashamed to admit that I had a mild panic attack at the checkout. I was watching other people go through before me and each time the cashier seemed to show an active interest in what they were doing. Either they were being incredibly polite or they had a keen passion for do-it-yourself. I looked down to the contents of the shopping trolley and desperate
ly tried to think of a reason why I could possibly have some many various cutting tools and plastic sheeting without it sounding like a lie. Part of me even contemplated telling the cashier what I was doing.

  “That’s a whole lot of saws y’all have there,” would be something the cashier could have said to me.

  “Well - there’s a whole lot of dead bodies I have tucked away in the apartment,” I could have said. Of course I would have followed it up with a laugh and the cashier would have laughed too; thinking the whole thing was a sick joke. “No sense buying the one saw when it will blunt down so easily against the bone.”

  “Where are y’all from?” they’d then ask me - a common question from people over here as soon as they heard my accent.

  When the cashier did finally call “Next Please” and I did venture up with my trolley of goods, I was still trying to decide what to say. Should I have told the truth and pretended the whole thing was a sick joke, do I make up a lie and risk getting caught out on it or do I just say I was collecting the goods for someone else. A friend, perhaps. Well - as it turned out - no excuse was needed as the cashier silently put the transaction through. To this day I still do not know why I had a silent transaction whereas the previous customers were all engaged in conversation. Maybe they were regular customers and the cashier recognised them or maybe they could see I was English just from my appearance and - on that score - just couldn’t be bothered to talk to me? I bagged up the goods, paid up and left before they changed their mind and started an unwanted conversation with me.

  I wheeled the goods to the car and loaded up with no hassles other than a paranoia that someone was going to realise my true intentions with the tools I’d purchased and follow me back to my apartment. So strong was this sense of paranoia that I took an excessively long route home.

  The journey to the store had taken less than fifteen minutes. The journey to my apartment took me over an hour. I wish I had maintained this discipline as the years progressed. Had I done so - had I not become complacent - there’s a strong possibility I would have continued to get away with my little hobby.

  A Grim Task

  I am a murderer. Not just that: I am a serial murderer. I enjoy the act of killing. Remember - humans only, not animals. I’m not sure why I enjoy this hobby. I’m not sure whether it’s down to nature or whether it is down to nurture. Indeed - we could argue the hours away going backwards and forwards with that particular debate but I feel it would be pointless. We’d never settle upon a definitive answer and - more importantly - it would be a waste of what little time I could have left. Not long to wait now. I’m not sure whether I am excited or scared. Maybe a little bit of both?

  It’s weird knowing you’re going to die but not knowing when exactly. I mean, I know we’re all waiting to die, it’s just knowing you’re going to be murdered. Knowing at some point you’re going to be woken up in your cell by a smug looking guard handing you your exact date of execution. You’ll be pleased to know that it is not a nice way to live. At least I spared my victims - your families - that. There was no build up, no anticipation, I just came along and snuffed out their pathetic little lives. I wish there was someone who could offer me such a way to go. But I digress.

  Killing someone is one thing (enjoyable thing at that) but getting rid of the body is not as pleasant. Over the years many people have tried varied methods of hiding their crimes and disposing of the bodies. Some criminals have tried feeding them to pigs (and other animals) but this isn’t practical unless you’re a drug baron with your own private farm (or zoo). Some have fed the alligators in the Florida swamps, others have simply thrown the bodies into the ocean. Some bodies get buried in shallow graves in the woods or in the Vegas desert and you even have some people getting more elaborate with bath tubs filled with flesh and bone eating acid (I couldn’t possibly imagine the smell of a body melting down). On the wrong side of crazy you have the odd individual who likes to skin their victims and wear them as a coat whilst eating what is left of them but - again - that’s not for me. For me - it’s all about cutting the body into small sections which are then, hopefully, easy enough to hide.

  Despite the horrors which faced me as I sawed into my mother’s dead body all those years ago, I had actually forgotten the sound the teeth of the saw made as it sliced through the flesh, tendons, and bone of a person. For me the sound of the flesh getting cut is nastier than the sound of the bone getting cut for the latter - it sounds as though the saw is cutting through a thick branch. At least it does if you really call upon your imagination to help disguise the noise. But through the flesh? There’s no sound on earth which sounds similar to that - certainly not enough to try and fool your brain into thinking you’re cutting something else anyway. Your best bet is to simply grit your teeth, close your eyes to the horror and get on with it, which is exactly what I did with the whore.

  When cutting the bodies up I always stripped them off and put them into the bath. Cutting through clothes was just awkward. The fabric would get caught between the teeth of the saw and would actually stop the blade from being as productive. Seeing them naked, one last time, also gave you another opportunity to properly say goodbye. Whether it was a lick of their salty skin to actual penetration - either was nice. Although, in hindsight, the taste of their dead pores against the many taste buds of your tongue was a little disconcerting from time to time. The longer you left it before cutting them, the more they tasted of ‘off milk’.

  The reason I put them in the bath was fairly straight forward - I didn’t want the mess splattering the floor and leaking through to the apartment below.

  The cuts themselves: I’d start at the neck. Cutting the head off was always harder than I remembered it to be. The spinal column being fairly thick to cut through and, with each pull of the blade, the head would just rock backwards and forwards. The easiest way, by far, was to grip the head by the hair and then start cutting. Head off, I’d move to the left arm and slice it as the shoulder joint. Never that tricky and the same was done for the right arm. The arms would then go into a black bag but not before I cut the hands off. There was plenty of room in the bags for both hand and arm but I knew it would be easier to identify the bodies from their prints, if they were discovered. The hands would go in the bin, along with the arms, but only after I had burned them on a pan in the kitchen. No lifting prints from black, crispy skin. Watching CSI back in England taught me that much. I burned the feet too. Not sure why. The legs were cut off at the thigh and just above the kneecaps. By making two cuts it made it easier to pack them up in the heavy duty bag and - at this stage of the crime - I needed things to be kept easier. I was already stressed enough with the prospect of getting caught red-handed (literally).

  I would then be left with a head, a torso, two arms, two hands, two feet and two legs cut into four pieces but that would not be the end of it. The torso would also need to be cut down further too, in order to make the transportation of it easier to manage. It was hard going but I would cut the torso into smaller sections but making horizontal cuts - as though I were cutting thick chunks of meat, ready for cooking. Not that I’d have wanted to cook these. I always worked a sweat up cutting the torso. So much bone to make my way through, it wasn’t easy but it was a necessity. And once that was done, even though I’d want nothing more than to rest a minute, there was still one final act to complete…

  Bodies can get identified through the use of dental records. The faces were always hard to identify by themselves due to the state they were in after I’d been hitting on them for hours and some of the teeth were cracked (especially when thinking back to the whore) but not all of them. I’m not sure how many teeth were needed to be able to identify someone. Maybe because a couple were cracked it meant identification was impossible? Maybe they only needed one tooth? To this day I still do not know. Back then, though, I wasn’t concerned with knowing the truth. I just knew I couldn’t leave them rooted into the gums. That’s where the hammer came into play.

&n
bsp; I’d pull the mouths open and hold them in the open position with my spare hand as I positioned the hammer with my second. I’d lift it high up. I’d close my eyes and I’d bring it crashing down - quick to move the hand holding it in position out of the way before the hammer connected. The sound was terrible and hard to describe. The first few times I did this - I remember gagging. At one point - with the prostitute if memory serves correctly - I came very close to vomiting over the bloodied remains as the teeth splintered from the mouth. It was never just one hit either but multiple as I continued to bring the hammer down onto the jaw. One of the victims, I can’t remember which, even had their jaw smashed and by the time I looked to what I was doing, the bone was protruding from the cheek.

  You might be wondering why I went to such extremes on the bodies in an effort to stop them from being identified. I think it all stems from when I disposed of mother. I didn’t want her body to be recognised. I didn’t want the police to come back around to the house, questioning me as to our relationship and trying to catch me out with saying the wrong thing. Same goes for these people. I didn’t want the bodies to be found and the police to come round because they were aware of my connections to the deceased. Admittedly I didn’t want the bodies to be found at all but - if they had to be - I’d sooner they were discovered with no traceable features whatsoever. They’d simply get buried as a John or Jane Doe - although, with regards to my victims, they’d always be a Jane Doe. I don’t have any Johns under by belt, so to speak. Only Janes.

  Actually that’s a point; do Americans call their unknown bodies John or Jane Doe as we do over in the United Kingdom? Is it a worldwide name? Considering how similar the two countries are (America and England) you can’t help but laugh when you think about the little differences between the two of them. Spelling for example: they spell ‘color’ and in the UK we spell it ‘colour’. Remembering some of the obese people I saw wandering the maze that is Walmart , I can’t help but wonder whether that’s just down to laziness though. They simply can’t be bothered to add in the ‘u’? And speaking of ‘funny’…It’s ‘funny’ how you procrastinate over the little things when really it is just a waste of time to do so. And time - as of now - is something I have very precious little of yet I continue to waste it with silly thoughts.