I was carrying a grocery sack through the aisles of one of those violent, all-male institutions that pass as a reform school.
I was headed to the lavatory, wherein the boys, unbeknownst to the teachers and principle, smoked continually behind the yawning doors of so many filthy stalls. The stall doors were opened against detection, covering the entrance. But who could not smell the smoke, or see it as it wafted out the restroom entrance.
I mention this in passing. The important point is that that I was carrying a head an an arm in the sack. This is significant.
It was either a plaster head, and a plaster death mask (ala the plaster arm and death mask of JOSEPH CAREY MERRICK, the hideously-deformed Victorian “Elephant Man,” whose death date just passed yesterday. [his death date, coincidentally, coincides with the birth date of Anton Szandor LaVey, who was born April 11th 1930, and founded the Church of Satan]), or it may have very well been the genuine article, in which case it is reminiscent of the various killings committed by famed serial murderer Ed Kemper, who I just drew for the second time (I’ve actually done artwork based on all three individuals).
Ed was born in 1948. He was famously christened the co-ed killer for his penchant for killing co-eds. When he was a tender lad of fifteen, after being sent from his abusive, alcoholic bitch of a mother to live with his grandparents (his grandmother apparently wrote children’s books), Ed got in a tussle with grandma one day, and promptly dispatched her to that Big Valley in the sky. He then killed grandpa, and went and meditated under the mountain sky, after calling police and telling them he just wanted to see “what it felt like to kill grandma.”
After spending a wee bit of time at Atascadero mental asylum, and developing into a literal six ten three hundred plus pound giant, the amiable Ed against medical advice, was sent by a judge to live with his mother (same one that use to accuse Ed of trying to rape his sister before locking him in a basement hole). Ma was her ever-lovable self, and continued her verbally abusive and belittling habits post haste. Lucky for Ed, he found some new ways to release his pent-up frustrations.
We could go into the boring litany of cat-and-mouse games played by Ed at this time in furtherance of securing victims, but, suffice it to say, he dispatched five college females and one high school girl. His unique habit of beheading the victims and then sodomizing the severed craniums brings us to the next sordid part of our story.
Six victims–nary a peep of suspicion from anyone. Everything cold and icy as a trip through the city morgue.
Then, Mom drove Ed to the breaking point. I guess guys like Ed are pretty much always to the breaking point.
(Now, here it gets strange. We’ve just realized Ed committed his final murders on April 20th, which is not only the birth date of Hitler, but also a celebration for pot smokers worldwide; also, it kicks off that “April 20th-April 30th corridor” that gives us the “Shot Heard Round the World,” the Fall of Saigon, the first LSD trip by Dr. Hoffman, the Oklahoma City Bombing [actually happened on the 19th, but what’s a single day?] the suicide of the Branch Davidian cult at Waco, Hitler’s suicide on April 30th 1945, the founding of the Church of Satan in 1966, Walpurgisnacht [the high holy day, traditionally, of those who practice black witchcraft] the Virginia Tech Massacre [okay, we’re stretching the dates again here, but still, close enough] and the birth date of Adam Lanza (April 22), the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooter…and we’re positive there are things were forgetting, but we can’t be bothered at the moment to hunt them all down; and, if we did, we’re sure this little essay would stretch into volumes.)
The hulking ogre with the genius-level IQ was waiting for Mommy to come home. When she did, and retired to bed with a paperback, he passed by the door menacingly–one supposes breathing fire.
After berating him with a suspicion that he would want to stay up all night “talking” (did they often do this, one wonders) Ed assured her this was not the case. Then, he beat her to death with a claw hammer, sodomized her severed head, put it up on the mantle and used it as a dart board, and took her vocal chords, stuffing them down the garbage disposal (which just would not take them). Ed liked this last bit of irony, as “she was always bitching at me…” One is left speechless.
After this round of slaughter, Ed called up Clarnell Kemper’s good female friend, invited her over, and strangled her.
Fleeing, Ed called from a few states over to turn himself in. The rest of the story is as dully predictable as one of those episodes from a television police show. Anyway, he’s serving life at Vacaville without parole.
The special point of this essay is his predilection for sodomizing severed heads–a practice that, in 1973, was likewise depicted in the notorious cult film Bloodsucking Freaks (aka The Incredible Torture Show) by the demented dwarf porn actor Louis De Jesus (whose last role was as an Ewok in Return of the Jedi. He died shortly thereafter.) The coincidence between our own dream of carrying a severed head (as well as an arm), and then commencing to depict Ed Kemper one morning in a very poor sketch cannot be overlooked, seeing as how it coincides with so many other significant dates in this turbulent month of April, going into the “black corridor” of April 20th- April 30th.
Of course, the head is the seat of human consciousness the arm representing reach and action and physicality. Maybe. What metaphor am I to read into this?
I go into the Boys’s room, with a bunch of wet, nasty, beastly boys in towels, getting ready for a communal dip in a porcelain tub of filthy water (mental patients in the Victorian period and later were often subjected to “hydrotherapy” that was perfectly useless in alleviating their psychological sufferings)
I pull the head and the arm from the sack.
“Feels like flesh. But, it’s awfully white,” I say. “Through and through. Could just as easily be rubber. I touched a corpse once. Felt the same way.”
“No, I don’t think so,” said one of the boys, dropping his cigarette on the floor, were it dissolved in a puddle of filthy shower water. “look, you can see the veins and muscles and ligaments and all that shit.”
I don’t remember how it all ended. I don’t suppose it matters. This is not a scholarly essay, nor does it attempt to be definite or thorough in regards to Ed Kemper, April 30th, or dreams of severed heads.
Note: The last time I dreamt of carrying around a mysterious package, I went into dismal, filthy trailer, laid it down on a coffee table, and realized it looked like a package of Chinese take-out. I supposed there was a dead baby inside, but I never did get it opened before I awoke.
credits
released April 13, 2015
All instrumentation and production by Tom B. 2015.
Hopefully, my various musics are ultimately like magic bullets that enter and impact at the base of the skull, ricochet
around the brain chamber, and then leave a gaping exit wound in the forehead. You may hate them
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