I just did a bunch of stuff to my blog! I put all three covers of my book’s editions published so far under the “13 rue Thérèse” tab, and will keep adding them as they get published. (I think France is next at the end of this year.) Also, each tab now has its own header, different iterations of the same photograph in various PhotoFunia montages. Is it awesome?
It was nice to go all OCD for a while on something that is not terrifying. A few days ago, I watched a two-hour interview with Jeffrey Dahmer and his father. Then afterward I went on a huge google binge about American serial killers. And then I went to bed. My advice would be, now that I have done this: do not do that.
I have effectively fucked myself in the brain for this whole week. Some of the specimens from my ill-advised google binge:
Backwards through time:
- Ted Bundy, 1946-1989, good-looking dude with crazy gleam in his eye. Raped and killed a stunning number of young women (30 confessed, actual number unknown). Necrophiliac. Interstate murder sprees. Represented himself at trial. Executed.
- Albert Fish, 1870-1939, scruffy old gent who tortured, mutilated, raped, killed, and ate children. Seriously. If you ever want to sleep again, do not read the letters he wrote to the families of his victims. A masochist as well as a sadist. Made psychiatry look damn bad when he was diagnosed as “sane” so he could be executed.
- H.H. Holmes, 1861-1896, one of the original American serial killers. Harvested victims from the Chicago world’s fair, usually single young women who stayed in his hotel/”murder castle” (outfitted with various torture chambers and body processing amenities). Raped, tortured, killed and stripped his victims of flesh–then sold their skeletons and organs to medical schools. Really.
So, you see, I have fodder for nightmares for quite a while. Also, here is something that I find just as disturbing as the horrific crimes committed by these severely fucked-up individuals: the shocking amount of time these dudes operated with total impunity. I mean, holy shit. Holmes built a fucking hotel with gas chambers and lime pits in the middle of Chicago. And none of the representatives from the medical schools ever asked him, dude, where do you keep getting all these skeletons? Sometimes total human indifference is as unfathomable to me as the most depraved evil. You might remember this story about Dahmer if you paid attention to his trial in the early 90s: one of his victims, a 14-year old boy, escaped when he woke up from his drugged sleep while Dahmer was off doing something. The boy went stumbling out into the street buck naked and ran into these two women. He was terrified and incoherent. They called the police. The police showed up. Dahmer had the balls to show up too and collect this kid from the police despite the two women pointing out that the kid was clearly scared of him. Because the testimony of two black chicks and a kid drugged out of his mind weighed nothing against the soothing words of one calm white dude, the police escorted the kid back to Dahmer’s apartment. They took Dahmer’s ID but did not ask him to show them around the place despite the weird smell emanating from the bedroom. They delivered the kid right back into the nightmare. They left him there to be raped and killed and chopped up. Dahmer kept his skull as a trophy.
This is what happens when people are empty.
Right now I am going to pretend that I am not a human being. I am a fallen leaf. I dance on the wind and decay gently into the ground with no scent.
I am a mirror. If you do not like the image I cast, it is none of my business. If you smash me into pieces, all you will do is make your hand bleed. Watch out, the edges are sharp.
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Elena Mauli Shapiro 