by Peter Manus
Yeah, but what’s more alarming is that what he “imagined” about the closet was weirdly similar to some crazy guy jumping out at Burly-Bear when he was supposedly alone with fickel.
chinkigirl @ February 28 08:21 pm
Whoa!!!! That did NOT occur to me.
marleybones @ February 28 08:22 pm
While we’re on the Burly-Bear issue, can we talk about this: could fickel have possibly stabbed Burly-Bear through the heart with a scissors? I can imagine a woman having the strength and the knowledge of where to place the blade’s point, but wouldn’t he have had to have been prone or at least lounging in a chair and then just allowed her to walk up, place the point of the scissors against his chest, and then jam it in?
wazzup! @ February 28 08:23 pm
Shades of The Maltese Falcon, my friends!!! Sam Spade’s hound dog of a partner would only have allowed a WOMAN to walk right up to him and blow him away. WAHOO!
webmaggot @ February 28 08:25 pm
That was with a gun, though, Dutchy. marleybones’s point is that killing someone with scissors would require a pretty high amount of passivity on the part of the victim.
chinkigirl @ February 28 08:31 pm
Well, I can confirm that a woman with some degree of arm strength and determination could strike the blow if she knew where to stick him and had a long, narrow, sharp blade. The breastplate is vulnerable in several spots just north of the sternum itself, and I’ve seen victims when I used to work emergency who were killed or nearly killed from a blow to the chest.
wazzup! @ February 28 08:40 pm
All I could say is that we felt contempt as we faced each other, and I still didn’t know why she looked so avenging, even at the last moment when the blade leaped out with a sharp snap and glittered through the air, because now she had thrown it and a great hand had been played!
Source, anyone?
roadrage @ February 28 08:42 pm
Man, wazzup!, I have to say that you have read every noir in print. He Died with His Eyes Open—by the way, anyone know of a movie version of that?
wazzup! @ February 28 08:43 pm
My best of friends, like you I consider Derek Raymond the key to our fickel. Surely you all remember the last line from poor dead Staniland’s cassettes:
What shall we be,
When we aren’t what we are?
The cassettes themselves, I can add for your contemplation, were a diary!!! And who is that speaking if not our beloved fickel? Perhaps our beloved fullfrontal?
roadrage @ February 28 08:45 pm
The difference there, however, is that in He Died the cop’s guard was down. Barbara and the hairy guy were in bed together when he burst in on them. Barbara’s stark naked and sleeping—who could guess she slept with a switchblade under the pillow, just in case she felt like killing someone. Also, she knew what she was doing and could throw the thing across the room. Here we got a girl talking to a cop in her kitchen. I don’t know—you think fickel could have thrown cuticle scissors to land in the guy’s chest?
chinkigirl @ February 28 08:48 pm
Impossible. She’d have to have been right up next to him, face to face.
36-D @ February 28 08:50 pm
You do get, you guys, that this is not fanfiction? You get that we’re talking straight here?
marleybones @ February 28 08:55 pm
I’m starting to think that wazzup! “gets” a lot more than the rest of us “get.” I think that a lot of what fickel fed us is fiction—and I don’t mean fanfiction; I mean real noir, translated for her purposes. I’m not convinced that she and Burly-Bear were chatting when a naked man burst out of her back hall. Maybe she was flipping out, feigning hysterics (or actually having them), and so could throw herself at Burly-Bear, weeping, and in that way get herself close enough to his chest to stab him. His guard would be down if she was pathetic enough.
webmaggot @ February 28 08:59 pm
But his guard wasn’t down. Escroto was outside waiting. Burly-Bear wasn’t totally off duty the way he told fickel he was. Also, there’s no way the cops would have let fickel walk if she’d been alone with Burly-Bear when he bit it. There was a guy there, and we know who it was.
chinkigirl @ February 28 09:03 pm
Jiminy Cricket, again I am caught not seeing the obvious! Burly-Bear was totally on duty and there to score a confession out of her, and she was—or she and dickel were—onto him?
36-D @ February 28 09:04 pm
But are we saying that they planned to kill him together, or that dickel just went and did it and left fickel holding the bag as usual? And did dickel do it because the cops were a threat to fickel, or just because Burly-Bear was nice to her and dickel couldn’t stand anyone touching his sister (but, like, him)? I mean, what are we thinking, guys?
marleybones @ February 28 09:05 pm
Not sure we’re thinking at all. We’re spinning theories here.
i.went.to.harvard @ February 28 09:09 pm
In that spirit, and since we are all putting out our true confessions about our hunt for fickel, I will reveal my own:
A month ago, I returned to Cambridge for a reunion. Naturally, I visited spots I used to frequent, including a coffee shop in Central Square where my ex and I used to suck down espresso and listen to George Michaels. (Yes, roadrage, I’m old, but not quite Eric Clapton old.) Of course, I was dying to try to find fickel’s apartment, which I never did. My last night, however, I was online in a Starbucks when this guy caught my eye. He was thin, blond (buzzed hair with the nubs dyed platinum) and wearing a lot of black. None of this would make him stand out in the least, except that he also had very colorful sleeve tattoos. Even this did not particularly catch my attention (where I live you get a lot of motorcyclists passing through) but as he was leaving a young woman joined him. She was on the chunky side, wearing clothes comparable to the young man, and her dead black hair was thick and coarse and cut choppy, like a wig. She handed him one of those ubiquitous laptop cases and he slung the strap over his head and let it hang at his hip like any kid. Thus, nothing really caught my full attention until, just as the pair of them let the door swing to behind them, she turned her head, spotted me looking after her, and gave me a stare. Her eyes were blue-grey, her expression unpleasant—and exactly like the young man’s—causing me to wonder if this couple was actually brother and sister.
My next thought was “she sensed that I was watching her,” in spite of the fact that I’ve never bought into the idea that people sense when they are being watched. In retrospect, I believe that she hadn’t turned because she sensed my attention. She’d turned because she was suspicious that someone might be watching.
All this tripped my next thought, and I was sure that this was fickel. I gave up my place in line and practically tumbled out after them, only slowing when I got outside. I spotted them walking off through the other night prowlers. She was wearing some kind of thick footwear, like mini work boots, with black stockings and a skirt. She didn’t look back, although I had a feeling that she was preventing herself from doing just that.
That’s it. Means nothing, I know, but at the same time…
marleybones @ February 28 09:18 pm
Quite a patchwork of half-tales we’ve woven. I’ve lost hope that we’ll hear from fickel again.
chinkigirl @ February 28 09:23 pm
God I worry sometimes.
36-D @ February 28 09:31 pm
You and me both. The Rottweiler has, like, banned me from anything resembling blogging at work. He did, however, let me know that he is keeping tabs on fickel’s “situation” as far as the BPD is concerned. They got nothing, and with a dead cop, you can believe it that they are looking. Not sure how that cuts.
webmaggot @ February 28 09:33 pm
Well, it cuts in favor of fickel’s innocence. If there were a case they could build against her, she’d be on the America’s Most Wanted list for killing a cop without a doubt.
roadrage @ February 28 09:35 pm<
br />
Not to mention the couple in Sudbury/Concord.
proudblacktrannie @ February 28 09:36 pm
And the jewelry store clerk. Can we please not forget him?
chinkigirl @ February 28 09:37 pm
Forget him? Somehow he’s the saddest victim of all.
i.went.to.harvard @ February 28 09:39 pm
And the—what was her name? The bag lady who supposedly witnessed Mr. Suicide’s death.
webmaggot @ February 28 09:40 pm
Sewer Hag. Got to hand it to fickel, she really could spin a tale, whether true or one big farkin lie. But to me, her disappearance makes things look pretty effin grim.
marleybones @ February 28 09:53 pm
You mean you think that fickel’s run off, as in my dream?
webmaggot @ February 28 09:55 pm
No, I mean like she’s dead. As in part of the Mysterious Hottie’s body count.
36-D @ February 28 09:59 pm
I can’t think that. It’s weird, but I actually prefer to think of her guilty and gotten away.
webmaggot @ February 28 10:01 pm
Okay, then answer this: if fickel were guilty, why would she write a blog full of clues about her guilt? Two blogs—and you think that with a little perseverance the cops won’t have figured out whether or not she’s fullfrontal?
roadrage @ February 28 10:03 pm
Dewd. “Perseverance” in a sentence. I like.
webmaggot @ February 28 10:04 pm
spellcheck got me some ballz. How about it though?
chinkigirl @ February 28 10:15 pm
I’ve thought about that. If fickel was guilty, I think she wrote about it because she couldn’t help herself. She needed an outlet. In fact, the whole thing hangs together, psychologically, as a person with rather uncommon proclivities involving her twin brother who had those proclivities reinforced by an uncle who found them exciting. Things could have developed from that point in a number of ways, except for the unfortunate complication of her father discovering the little den of iniquity and eventually offing himself over having failed to protect his daughter from the most intimate of sins. The guilt she feels over her dad morphs into anger—she’s determined to convince herself that her brotherly love thing is not repellent. She travels, brother in tow, and occasionally sets up a compromising position, but all backfire and, if they teach her anything, it’s that she is indeed responsible for her dad’s death.
How’s that for the dime-store psych analysis?
wazzup! @ February 28 10:18 pm
I can do you one spookier, my dearest friends! Maybe fickel’s mother was right, and the uncle was totally INNOCENT! Maybe he arrived at the family house in rural Mass long ago and fickel discovered the “sexual creature” inside her, but he, being normal, rejected her, so she turned to the next best thing and an apparently willing partner: her crazy TWIN BROTHER!!!
marleybones @ February 28 10:21 pm
Sigh. We can fill in that fickel finds escape in the darkest forms of literature—noir, pulp, old police procedurals—many of them tales where aberrant sexual behavior is key to the theme.
i.went.to.harvard @ February 28 10:24 pm
So she casts a blog into the web-o-sphere, and finds a group of seemingly normal folk who are into this dark stuff, but, even better, we like her. Heck, she becomes our spiritual leader! And then what? The coincidental sighting of her original enabler on the street one night, going through his “gay experimental phase?” Or did she find him and start planning the family reunion even before coming to Boston herself?
roadrage @ February 28 10:31 pm
And then what, though? The reunion goes sour because Uncle Steve figures out that fickel and the Mysterious Hottie are his little effed-up niece and nephew, grown up, and now even he rejects them? Could a guy really get that involved with a couple of relatives he used to live with and not get what’s going on?
wazzup! @ February 28 10:33 pm
Hey Everyone!!! Think about THIS: maybe when fickel finds Uncle Stephen in Boston, he does recognize her and lets her move in on him, even remembering the schoolgirl crush she’d had on him a decade earlier, but thinking she’s outgrown it now!!! Maybe it’s when she made a pass at him that he finally kicked her INCESTUOUS ass out of his pad, and maybe that caused her to moon over him, following him about. Naturally, Uncle Steve does not see her as a big threat—she is his NIECE, for Pete’s sake!!! But dickel the vicious wolf-man sees Uncle Steve as a threat—because he wants fickel for HIMSELF!!!!!
marleybones @ February 28 10:38 pm
So dickel shoves him. She’s the one who is full of guilt and rage, but he’s the trigger-happy one. He sees that Mr. S is a big problem for fickel. He knows that she’s so consumed that she’s tailing the man. So he eliminates that problem one night in a style that’s familiar.
proudblacktrannie @ February 28 10:40 pm
Yes, and THAT’S why she stayed at the train station to await the police. Even if she didn’t KNOW that dickel was following her and Mr. S, and even if she hadn’t INSTRUCTED him to shove the man in front of a train, she’d certainly SUSPECT it the moment it happened. So she had to WAIT and see what OTHERS said so she could COVER for her brother if she had to.
36-D @ February 28 10:47 pm
My God, and so right away she creates fullfrontal, to have a handy stalker-pervert-killer around in case everything starts homing in on her and dickel.
i.went.to.harvard @ February 28 10:48 pm
And fullfrontal beating up dickel in the motel room is…?
marleybones @ February 28 10:59 pm
Discipline? fickel herself punishing him for creating the mess they’re in? What a stretch…
chinkigirl @ February 28 11:10 pm
Stretch is right. dickel was almost killed. Would she—could she—do that to him?
marleybones @ February 28 11:12 pm
Maybe she exaggerated it on the blog.
webmaggot @ February 28 11:13 pm
Maybe she should have punished him more severely, if he was responsible for the Colonel and the Peacock murders. That guy’s ONE MAD DOG!!!
36-D @ February 28 11:17 pm
God, who even wants to figure this out?
webmaggot @ February 28 11:21 pm
But no one’s got at my original question. If this shyte is true then fickel took a huge risk in writing it all down. She had to know the cops were onto the blog.
chinkigirl @ February 28 11:25 pm
All I can offer is—a need for approbation that is so strong it’s worth every risk?
roadrage @ February 28 11:26 pm
And, what? No approbation if she doesn’t reveal the truth, in one form or another?
i.went.to.harvard @ February 28 11:30 pm
She’s confronting the unavoidable suspicions on everyone’s mind that she did it. Not such a risk as long as people accept that this is what the cops are looking to prove from the start.
wazzup! @ February 28 11:35 pm
I was only trying to cheat death…to surmount for a little while the darkness that all my life I surely knew was going to come rolling in on me some day and obliterate me…
The great Cornell Woolrich!!!
chinkigirl @ February 28 11:37 pm
wazzup!…whoa. Lose the exclamation points and you are truly wise.
marleybones @ February 28 11:40 pm
He’s been expostulating wise all along. Look, have we been bamboozled? I mean all along. Maybe there was some incident in the Hynes T station where a man died, but couldn’t everything else—and I mean everything—have been the product of a dark imagination, aided by events that just happened to occur in the Boston area as the story developed, and also, more significantly, aided by the tale-spinner’s vast knowledge of noir?
webmaggot @ February 28 11:42 pm
Uh-oh, marleybones is pissed. Now we all get called misogynists.
marleybones @ February 28 11:43 pm
Actually, I’m not sure I mind having been
bamboozled. Fact is, the idea gives me solace.
i.went.to.harvard @ February 22 11:47 pm
There are several facts—verifiable, in my view—that just don’t support this hoax theory.
marleybones @ February 22 11:48 pm
Look, be that as it may, I’m through. Let’s all be through. Let’s let fickel be. I ask this of the rest of you only because I don’t trust myself. I know I’m going to come back here to see what’s being posted. I just…hope I don’t find anything.
40
March 9 @ 10:00 pm
>MICKEY SPILLANE’S BIRTHDAY<
So it’s Mickey Spillane’s birthday, and in spite of a general malaise that’s been hanging all over me for the longest time, I couldn’t resist posting a happy birthday to one of the greatest pulp writers of all time. Guys like Mickey live hard but they last. Most of you probably know that he died a few years ago—July 18, 2006—unrepentant as ever about his writing style, his views on justice, his treatment of women.
I, the Jury. Seems like a lot of us have been playing jury lately, here on this site.
Obviously, for 100 reasons I should not be writing this. I feel flattered that you have maintained a level of concern for me over the weeks. Flattered and at the same time betrayed, of course.
Me as serial murderess. And a cop killer, no less.
Me and dickel as S&M incest twins.
Me as Miss Scarlet, as a freak on a train, as my own imaginary predator.
Me as a fat sadsack bookstore clerk with dementia.
Me as a manipulative web-liar, spinning a tale just for the pleasure of jerking around a bunch of decent people (ah, if only…)
Me and X as what exactly? Lesbian jewel thieves on the lam for conspiring to kill her husband and my lover? (Oddly, that one’s less insulting than the rest.)
Me as fullfrontal—the ultimate in metadiagetic masquerading as the simple diagetic.
Deep. Very, very deep. But such is the dark, wonderfully repellent wilderness of low art.
I’m afraid, however, that none of the above is accurate. I’m nothing so colorful, really. To be honest, part of me would like to leave the rest of you in the dark forever. But I need to write, just this once more. Like Cornell Woolrich, I need to cheat death, just a little. And I need closure.
