Grimoire Diabolique

Lieutenant. We got a positive match with the state CID records index. Torso Number Four has a name. Susan H. Bilkens.”

“Why the hell’s she got a genetic-profile record?”

“She’s a whore, er, was. Six busts, five city, one county. Pressed charges against her first pimp last year so the city asked for a g/p-material sample. The pimp cut her up a little, they hoped the g/p-sample would match blood on the pimp’s clothes.” Beck let out a humorless chuckle. “Too bad it didn’t wash in court, fuckin’ judges must be out of their minds. But at least it gave the girl’s name for a rundown.”

“Susan H. Bilkens,” Tipps repeated. He appraised the naked torso on the stainless-steel morgue platform which came complete with removable drain-trap and motorized height-adjustment. The torso’s acid-burned face more resembled a mound of excrement, and her y-section had been stitched back up like a macabre zipper. “You said she’s a hooker?”

“Was a hooker, that’s right.” Another chuckle. “She’s just a dead torso now. Worked the West Street Block, the dope bars, till she shitnamed herself with the pimp thing. For the last year she was turning her tricks at a truck stop up on the Route.”

“This is…wonderful,” Tipps intoned.

“The postmortem gave us more of the same. Teeth manually extracted shortly after death. Eardrums ruptured, eyes glued shut with cyanoacrilate aka Wonder Glue. Minor insult across the lateral sulcus in the frontal lobe. He lobotomized her just like the others. Oh, and I was able to match her body with the arms and legs we found in Davidsonville four months ago. You ready for the bombshell?”

Tipps looked at her.

“Tally this up, Lieutenant. Like I said, we found her arms and legs four months ago.”

“I heard you.”

Beck sipped her Snapple. “When she died she was two months pregnant.”

««—»»

Two month’s pregnant, he recited, motoring down Route 154 in his unmarked. It seemed spectacularly…hideous. With each revelation, Tipps felt beckoned to unveil Mr. Torso’s conception of human truth, and, hence, his empirical purpose.

Mr. Torso, Tipps thought. I’m going to get you, buddy, and I’m going to find out. Not only was Tipps a conclusionary-didactic nihilist, he was also a proficient investigator. A records check dropped the prostitute’s life into his lap. Twenty-five years old, Caucasian, brown hair, brown eyes, 5’5”, 121 pounds. Tipps wondered how much she weighed without her arms and legs. Since she had been run off the red-light block in town, she worked a truck stop near the county line called The Bonfire. Truck stops were the first places banished prostitutes fled to, and there was only one in all of south county…

He parked between two Peterbilt semi’s at the end of the lot. The little dive of a restaurant glowed beyond, peppered with minute movement in its plate-glass windows. Tipps sung a tune in his mind, with a slight lyrical modification—“Eighteen Wheels And A Dozen Torsos”—scanning the Bonfire with a small pair of Bushnell 7x50’s. In the binocular’s infinity-shaped field, he could see them in there: Unkept, nutritionally depleted, desperate. Most, he knew, were clinical drug addicts, their only human purpose in the universe being to cater to the axiomatic and primordial male sex-drive in exchange for crack money. They fluttered about the restaurant interior, fussing with corpulent truck drivers whose stout arms provided tattoo-tapestries. Some of the girls dawdled outside, hidden within the gulf of shadows.

Tipps wondered about them, these sex-specters. Did they even realize their place in the ethereal universe? Did they ever ponder such considerations as existential verity, psycho-societal atomism, tripartite eudaemonistic thesis? Do they ever wonder what their purpose is? Tipps wondered to himself. Do they even have a purpose?

At once, Tipps sat up. The Bushnell’s fine German optics easily revealed the dilapidated red pickup truck that pulled into the lot, as well as the long fresh scratch along the right-rear fender.

««—»»

Lud loped outa the Bonfire, wearin’ the usual overalls an’ size-11 steel toes, totin’ a bag of mags. See, the Bonfire up ’fore the register had thereselfs a rack of the girlie mags and a lotta the September issues’d just come out. Lud never quite reckoned why, for instance, the September mags always come out third week of August, not that he much cared. Next week’d be time ta start gettin’ his peter up inta that lil’ blondie with the hairlip sittin’ cozy an’ limbless in the September trough. She had a nice set of milk wagons on her but a joyhole big enough ta take a ham hock. What’d fellas been stickin up this gal ta get her so stretched out—their blammed heads? Or was she just born that way? Acorse bein’ real big likes that’d make it easier for her ta drop critters-Jiminy, big as she was she could problee drop a whole kindergarten at once! An’ the lips ’round her snatch looked like a bunch of hangin’ lunchmeat er somethin’. ’Least she didn’t make a ruckus like the gal in the August trough who Lud was gettin’ a might sick of by now. See, that’s why Lud buyed hisself new mags each month, ta open the centerfolds onta their bellies so’s he could get his peter up proper an’ come. An’ on account of the June gal up an’ dyin’ on him an’ his havin’ ta dump her last night, Lud needed hisself a new gal ta take her place. These hookers always hanged out at the Bonfire ’cos the truckers was ferever tryin’ ta get their peters off in some splittail ’tween their long hauls, and ways it was set up, that big tookus-lot with all them semirigs parked alls over, Lud could propersition a gal right quick and have her outa there without no one bein’ the wiser.

Walkin’ down, though, he sawed all them rubbers layin’ on the cement, like a whole lot of ’em, an’ this made Lud right sad. Don’t fellas know nothin’ these days? Didn’t fellas ever use their brains fer more’n skull-filler? The dicksnot, see, was fer more an just feelin’ good whiles it was comm’ out’cher peter. It’s a ’lixer of life, it was. It was a special gift The Man Upstairs gave ta fellas so’s they’se could have their peters in gals proper the way He intended an’ get ta makin’ critters once that good spunk got up there inna gal’s baby-makin’ parts. Givin’ life an’ all, that’s what the dicksnot were all’s about, see? Droppin’ new rugrats onto the earth ta carry on with things the way God wanted. And it was a blammed shame seein’ all’s this good spunk wasted just fer the sake o’ havin’ a nut. Weren’t supposed ta be shot inta some infernal conderm! These little things layin’ all over lot, they was like a slap ta the face of The Man Upstairs in a way of reckonin’, a way mankind’d figured on cheatin’ the ways things was supposed t’ be. Lud had a mind ta collect up all these rubbers each night an’ empty ’em like maybe inta a soup bowl er somethin’, them git hisself a turkey baster so’s he could give each of his gals good squirt without havin’ ta do it hisself. Acorse, that might not be such a hot idea considerin’ all the devil-made diseases goin’ ’round these days. Just seemed a cryin’ shame fellas’d see fit to wastin’ their juice like that, kinda in a way of like puttin’ a little bit of God in a bag an’ flushin’ Him down the crapper or throwin’ Him down on some dirty trucker parkin’ lot—

“Hey, pops, for twenty bucks I’ll suck your cock so hard your balls’ll slide out of your peehole.”

Lud gandered this little stringbean who’d came outa the shadows. They’se was all mostly rack-skinny like this one an’ all had there-selves lank straight hair on ’em an’ mostly little-type hooters ’cept a’course fer his September gal with that big ol’ pair of the chest melons. “Well, say there, missy, that sounds like a right deal ta me,” Lud enthused “Just foller me yonder to my truck’n we’ll have ourselfs a dandy ol’ time”

They gots in the pickup an’ Lud had his peter out even ’fore she could pussy-pocket that double-sawbuck he gave her. Then she opened her yap an’ got ta work lickety-split. Lud figured he’d let her suck awhiles, not that he was plannin’ ta waste a perfectly good load of his critter-goo on her yap but just ta let her get on it awhiles so’s he’d be good’n boned up fer later when he were givin’ his August gal her beddy-bye pop. Lud in fact ’preciated it. It made things easier later ta have his stiffer all hot’n bothered by a gal who still had her arms an’ gams connected to her, yessir, right nice change ta be with somethin’ other’n a, brain-jiggered blabberin’ torso with a girlhole full of the K-Y. An’ this little stringbean here was just a’smokin’ his pole like a regler trooper she was, an’ kindly givin’ his ballbag a good feelup while she was goin’. Lordy, can this gal suck a peter! Lud exclaimed in thought. A regler machine she is, like ta suck the peterskin right off my bone! Then she stopped sucking a speck an’ kinda snotty said, “Hey pops, I been doing this a while. You getting close?”

“Wells, try ta be patient, missy. Ol’ fella the likes of me sometimes takes awhiles ta get his nut out.”

She sucked awhiles more, harder an’ faster with that little hand of hers just a pumpin’ away on his sack like it were a full-up milkbag on a cow, an’ she was a’slurpin’ an’ lickin’ an really goin’ t’town