Snapshots Excerpts

Selected excerpts from: SNAPSHOTS FOR A
SERIAL KILLER
Fiction by Robert Peters

WOMAN WITH RABBIT

I hoped the woman who bred rabbits would give me one. My favorite, jet black, was unable to hop within the confines of his horrid wire cage. A white doe with black markings shared the hutch. They're "making bunnies," the woman said, adding that "minks fuck more but don't have litters as big."
When I brought Bermuda grass to the mesh the big buck munched, dropping saliva on my fingers. He'd even interrupted a shuddering copulation. The lips of death and sex are thin.
When I asked for the buck, the woman fingered a rusty safety pin holding her apron to her blouse. "Your grandma won't like it," she said, her eyes like cold zinc. "Please? I'll pay for him." "No way, Jose. Summer's nearly done and you'll go to California to school."
I gazed between her beefy brows, at her third eye, at a declivity waiting to be smacked with her blunt hatchet. A pomegranate shed seeds through me. "It would serve her right," rang a voice from a cistern, as in a Sunday School text.
The buck, the woman explained, had sired so many offspring he was now screwing his "kids." She, the woman, would not risk letting the strain peter out. "What applies to humans applies to bunnies." She grabbed the animal, yanking him forth. "He'll dress out from six to seven pounds," she declared, "which is exactly what the customer ordered."
"Let me hold him," I said.
"Well, only if you clamp him tight. If he gets away, a fox will eat him."
I glimpsed her black wooly armpit hair. I caught the gamey odor of the stocking cap pulled over her ears. Her gingham dress was so tight the crack of her ass was visible. Her knees were knobs of suet; even behind the knees were globs of blue-veined fat. Her work shoes seemed of heavy slate secured with scraps of rawhide. I reached for the hatchet. "What you doin' with that thing, boy?"
She banged the buck's head on a plank supporting his cage. "Instant death," she said. His brain shattered into a host of crabs squirming for shelter. The woman's eyes were the ends of silver screws. I wanted to shove poisoned grapes down her gullet. I wished I'd not dropped the hatchet.
She strung the animal to a nail, slit its throat, and hacked off its head. She next made an incision around each of its legs, near the feet, so that all she had to do was give one jerk and the fur detached itself. This she did with the ease she'd have used in stripping one of her six kids of a snowsuit.
Without saying goodby, I crossed the road to my grandparents' house. Behind me, the buck's black fur looked glazed. A pair of blackbirds struggled over the guts. It was the same in California. Death was a ghost with a beard, long eyelashes, and hair down to his waist. He wore a nightgown and held a sheep crook. Hosts of bleeding children, rabbits, squirrels, quail, and deer scattered before Him. I felt lashes across my back. Gladioli whipped my mouth. I was stumbling over myself. I was not yet able to fly.

DISNEYLAND

An angel with a red devil's face, wearing a white Botticellian dress with gossamer wings attached, hovers over the zinnias planted in designer plots around the clock tower near the railroad station and the central esplanade. Security men in blue blazers scrutinize the guests. I scurry into a toilet, take a leak, and when I return there's no angel. I say nothing to Jim who is with me. He has found his own apartment. I knew the split was coming. "Your life-style has changed," he says in the jargon of the day, little knowing how right he is. "You won't miss me. You can keep the Persian rug, and I'll take half of the house plants." I agree to pay for his interest in the TV and the stereo.
Half way up Main Street, if you look over to the left, the sidewalk slopes a little. Perhaps the Andreas fault buckled it. You can tell it best if you line up the asses of two lithe men of a similar height; you'll see how one, just for a moment, stands above the other. Those inches are important to me, for minutiae clue us in.
Though Disneyland isn't perfect, it's a great place if you are compulsively neat. You'll never find a dead opossum or rat here. Old people with heart attacks are immediately shuffled off. In "Pirates of the Caribbean" violence and mayhem are "sicklied o'er," as the poet says, with fairy tale compote. When an angel flaps his wings in order to be airborne again, you'll hear a plop as though a merganser hit the ground. Happy Sandman strokes your eyes. The boys who collect debris in plastic dustpans are cute and passive. Bearded gents are green kids again. Old women menstruate. No one slams you down.
And here comes the parade! Aromatic good cheer wafts from the glossy brass and silver horns of the band. Nary a cloud traverses the sky above the butterscotch hills. Nary a whiff of smog. Guests are snapping pictures. No planes winging to John Wayne airport disturb the serenity.
On the Jungle Cruise, a guide tells faggot jokes as we approach some black tote-bearers sent up a tree by a pronged rhino anxious to ram their butts. That script writer sure didn't understand sodomy. I want to cry. Brushing sweat from my upper lip (didn't I shave well?), I edge close to a blonde youth in cords speaking German to a blonde girl. I see the head of his cock and touch my knee to his, pretending it's an accident. He returns the pressure, smiles, then moves closer to his date. I begin to shake, then stand. The guide admonishes me to sit. "You were raw meat back there," Jim says. "Yes, what happened? I wanted to take a swim."
At home, I shower. "Don't plan on me for dinner," I say. "I'll dine with the leopards." "I'll be busy packing," Jim says, not hearing me. "I'll probably be gone before you get home." He pauses. "Oh, your sister phoned; she needs your advice."

LOVE POEM FOR A BOY OF THE EVENING

Even more ridiculous than your mutilated ass are the enormous, livid fungi-buttocks of those apes (mandrills?) in the zoo who blast diarrhetic shit over human visitors. Who said this would be sexy? The denuded palms in the ape house reek, crammed with mangy ape souls exploding everywhere as harp strings tinkling, rattling kitchen lids, zithers strummed by angels. You loved, you say, to watch the pot-bellied creatures mastur bate their red stringy penises capped with those little absurd mushrooms. The males, you laugh, are exact replicas of old comedian Joe E. Brown. I don't smash your face in because I love blue, even on mandril asses. I do, though, prefer salmon, of the sort that stains beach sunsets. I'll have them both, please, salmon and blue. You know what I mean? I'll play "monkey" if I must. You, then, ride that flatulent truck tire suspended from the leafless cement ape tree, over the ape pool with its rancid mix of feces, urine, and sperm. If you can't oblige, say that the tire rim chafes your skin and we'll move to a pair of sycamores in the aviary. We climb to the upper canopy, free of the lice and other creepy insects dropped by infested parrots and mynah birds. Up there we groom ourselves, wiggle our lurid fungi asses in one another's face, fuck, and scream at the sun (and the moon). They send up water and food via pulley and sponge. Who knows, we may come to love vinegar and gall. This is a love poem for you, boy of the evening.

SNAPSHOTS OF ATTACK AND LOATHING

On the honeyed floor of the bar nude males, flower petals tended by leather men, sleep. Railroad spikes arranged on a bed of shaved ice.
Though I always feel less than I am, I crave the pursuit. That's the game. I have my wrist stamped. Sex baboons with livid ass plates shaped like fungi lurk. I posture within a grove of technicolor faces: Mae West, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Marlene Dietrich, Mel Gibson, Liz Taylor, and Marilyn Monroe. I sing along, though I shiver. My nose and tail, like Pinocchio's, blue, are out of joint. Someone's finger jiggles the fluted puckers of my ass hole.
I avoid eye contact and assume a steely gaze. I guzzle Bud straight from the bottle, and flatten my gut beneath my plaid Western shirt.

During adolescence, at the library, if a stranger stroked his crotch I feigned disgust, later suffering bad dreams. If a man in cut-offs sat nearby on a park bench, I snapped my book shut, threw my half-eaten sandwich to the squirrels, and left. If a "queer" walked his setter on a leash, I hurried to the other side of the street. Dad mocked "faggots." So did my classmates even as they jerked one another off in the citrus groves. I fashioned lurid descriptions of tits and ass. That's when I preened and concealed, my guardian angel having long since blown off on the wind. Too weak to thrust bridges of personal shame over the abyss, I snatched Jungian sex shadows flickering on the canyon walls. I relished what I despised. Drawn now exclusively to men, I chewed my fists. I stared into sphincters; many were as sweet as freshly split figs. I did not then intend to murder.

My watch said there was plenty of time for pleasure, guilt, and renunciation. I was still young. Tumid cock heads spurted over my eyes. The worst I could get then was clap. No one thought of AIDS, those piranha-toothed viruses fixing their incisors along your colon's blood-rich capillary seams, overwhelming the castle, crashing its towers in a soup laced with carcinoma flower petals.

"You look cool," says a stranger. "I'm Mona Lisa," I laugh. "In truth, I'm an iron goblet brimming arsenic-laced wine. If I seem facile, forgive me." I fill two glasses with hemlock, one for the man I crave, the other for the one I loathe. "You choose."

A tire-iron in the hands of a gay-basher with a spiny ridge of orange hair like the plume on an Etruscan warrior smashes me. Other punkers pin my arms. I fall. Two ribs on my right side shimmer pain. Marrow neurons blaze. The hoods, screaming "Faggot," run off as a police car wails. Gays leaving the bar are singing, walking in the opposite direction. My mouth is crammed with black thorns. I am bleeding on the macadam.

KNIFE OR GUN

Lying flat on the ground, trussed, on his back, the dandy Marine asks me why I don't just shoot him. I'd drawn the rawhide shoelace (from his right boot) around his throat, and his words spewed shiny drops of blood. I draw up one of the many smiles I keep in my arsenal: "I don't own a gun," I whisper into his teeth. "Such messes, and you'd flop about like a beetle doing somersaults. You're much too pretty to go that way." I've never shot a man, nor shall I. A gun is wood and steel. Both are extensions of our hands they throw lethal power far past the sadly limited reach of our fingers. I'm after knowledge. I'd rather cut it out of a body with a blade, curetting so slowly the victim becomes a sybarite of pain. My failures once again shred my wrists. Stop. Stop. I won't write more today. Do you understand?

A MOTHER

The short, plump mom with eyes like gray anemones, frizzed hair, and a spiral notebook sits near the defendant's table. The oak railing burns with black pomegranates, hibiscus, ashen cypress twigs, calyxes of lizard tongues, and strawberry blooms of pain. I am Satan facing her.
She flings burning silica at my head. She would glaze a window with granite to bring back her son, to kiss his cherry lips. What she craves is, of course, hopeless. She's reduced to unsheathing claws of rage. Her hoarse breath emits barbed fish vertebrae, ridiculous harpoons that never penetrate.
When I first faced her, I smiled. Even today a sore spot remains on my nape where her gaze burned through. Wearing a starched collar doesn't help.
On most days a fat man with a nose like a scimitar sits holding her hand. They've been estranged ever since their son's head was found off a quay, the skeleton in manzanita twenty miles down the coast. Now, they report, the trial has restored their marriage. There were terrible fights, neither accepting blame for having ejected the son as a truculent drop-out, doper, and tramp.
This mom is the most persistent of a dozen mothers on the witness stand. They see snapshots of couches, living room floors, and cars where their boys died. They see the final terrifying beds of rock, shrub, and sand, with the warm bodies knifed, bruised, and trashed. We show them frozen smiles no snapped face expresses anguish. Fathers, in public, learn that their sons were homosexual. The dads resemble pilots on solo flights during snowstorms; they don't know where they are. The mothers always glare at me, the fathers never do.
This mom loves being interviewed, especially during trial breaks when she stands near her front- row seat, dripping tears. Her train careens through flooded landscapes. A lilac shrub of death roots inside her. When I snuffed her son, I snuffed her as well.
During the autopsy photos, she hides her face. "If the wounds had been ante-mortem," drones a pathologist wearing a red reindeer tie (he's been flown in from Hawaii), "there would have been blood in the eyes. The victim was dead when the killer grabbed the cigarette lighter from the dashboard, opened the eyelids, and seared those concentric rings." Ditto for the charred nipples. "Yes, the victim was dead, of alcohol, benzedrine, and garroting. Moreover, blood in the genital area shows that the testicles and half the penis were excised ante-mortem..."
The prosecuting attorney appears solicitous, but shakes the guilt tree, dropping over-ripe fruit in my lap, smiling. Perhaps he imagines the bereaved families licking his oxfords. I don't know. His winsome, ingenue boy lawyer manner is misleading; for he gets convictions.
I feel quite safe in my charmed circle, immune from the spectators slapping massive detestations like furious lava combs against the cool, honey-colored bar of justice. Yes, someone could shoot me, though most people are cowards. "Courageous" males shaft sotto voce obscenities at the breaks, sure that I can't retaliate.
I keep smiling, appearing as though I'm having raspberries and cream with my secretaries at morning coffee break.
I scribble notes in legal pads. I sketch the mothers. I sketch sheep dogs playing with boys. I draw valentines with arrows shot through them. I jot facts to discuss with my lawyers. I sketch Santas with hard ons. I've always wanted my own private cemetery, with a portrait photo set into the headstone of each victim's grave, to remind me of the fragility of love, of how once you've invited someone in they soon split. No one inks your contract. When you see them sucking their thumbs, you drug them and plow them under. This agricultural image reminds me of germination and the trees from which corpses dangle like red death flags. I feel all of these bodies. Their hearts pound, their blood congeals as I traverse forests choked with leaves.

SCORECARD

Prosecutors maintain that a paper with 61 entries found in the murderer's car trunk at the time of his arrest in May 1983 is a death list, with entries dating back to late 1971. Killer claims that the list refers to friends of his and to old roommates. The initial capitalized entries match the killer's list as published in a local newspaper. As the grisly remains surfaced, the prosecutors matched the killer's clues to the victims.

1. STABLE. W. J. W., 30, of Long Beach, found dead at bottom of a ravine in Orange County, next to the Ortega Highway. Suffered from acute alcohol intoxication.
2. ANGEL. Unsolved.
3. EDS. A Marine from Camp Pendelton, found at a freeway interchange. Strangled. Sock stuffed up anus.
4. HARI KARI. Unsolved.
5. AIRPLANE HILL. A "John Doe" found on Airplane Hill in Huntington Beach. Sodomized.
6. MARINE DOWN. Unsolved.
7. VAN DRIVEWAY. Unsolved.
8. 2 IN 1 MV TO PL. Unsolved.
9. TWIGGIE. J. D., 19, of Cypress, California, found near freeway in S. Orange County. Nude except for T-shirt. 4' tree branch shoved up his anus.
10. VINCE M. Found at bottom of ravine in San Bernardino mountains. Shoeless. Sock stuffed into anus and genitals mutilated. Hands severed from body.
11. WILMINGTON. Another "John Doe" found in Wilmington. Nude with sock up anus.
12. LB MARINA. Unsolved.
13. PIER 2. T. L. B., found on a pier in Long Beach Harbor, strangled.
14. DIABETIC. Not connected to unsolved murder.
15. SKATES. W. J. L., 17, found floating in surf at Sunset Beach. Wooden surveyor's stake stuffed up anus. Was seen the day before boarding a bus en route to a roller skating rink carrying new skates. Suffocated.
16. PORTLAND. Unsolved.
17. NAVY WHITE. Unsolved.
18. USER. Unsolved.
19. PARKING LOT. C. D. K., 19, was seen leaving parking lot with killer. Head found near a jetty. Skeletal remains, lacking hands, found months later near a Marine base.
20. DEODORANT. R. P., 16, found near Hollywood Freeway. Known as heavy deodorant user. Strangled.
21. DOG. G. D. R., 13, found next to body of #20. He was visiting relatives and had gone to a park to seek his lost dog. Strangled.
22. TEEN TRUCKER. E. L. M., from Alabama, found near Salton Sea, California. Emasculated, with branch stuffed up anus.
23. IOWA. Unsolved.
24. 7TH STREET. F. W. R., found along San Diego Freeway. Body redressed, except for shoes. Sock up anus. Strangled. Body ejected from moving car.
25. LAKES MC. J. W. G., from Florida, found in Big Bear area. Wore military clothing and told people he was a Marine. Body found without head or legs. Emasculated.
26. MC LAGUNA. D. R. E., Marine, found near a dead-end street in Laguna Beach. Sodomized. Bite marks. Strangled.
27. GOLDEN SAILS. V. G. J., found on Pacific Coast Highway. Shoes and socks missing. Strangled.
28. EUCLID. H. M. S., Marine, found on freeway on-ramp, Anaheim. Emasculated. Strangled with his own shoelaces.
29. HAWTH OFF HEAD. "John Doe," found April 22, 1973. Torso on Wilmington. Right leg on Terminal Island Freeway, Long Beach. Head at 7th St. and Redondo in Long Beach. Left leg found behind Broom Hilda's Bar in Sunset Beach. Strangled. Emasculated.
30. 76. "John Doe" No. 299, found in a dumpster behind Union 76 Station in Long Beach. Arms severed at the shoulders, legs at hip joints. Head severed. Only head, left leg, and torso recovered. Sock in body cavity.
31. 2 IN 1 HITCH. Unsolved.
32. BIG SUR. G. G. S., found in Laguna Hills. Missing socks and shoes. Cause of death: acute drug intoxication.
33. MARINE HEAD BP. A. M. A., a Marine, found near Interstate 5. Head and hands severed. Large object stuffed up anus.
34. EXPLETIVE DELETED. F. J. P., disappeared in December, 1988. Last seen at Ripples, a gay bar, in Long Beach.
35. FRONT OF RIPPLES. Unsolved.
36. MARINE CARSON. A. K. E., Marine, found along South Orange County Parkway. Strangled.
37. NEW YEAR'S EVE. H. M. H., found in Santiago Canyon. Eyes and genitals mutilated with an automobile cigarette lighter. Emasculated.
38. WESTMINSTER DATE. B. J. B., 15, of Santa Ana, disappeared after dating a girl in Westminster.
39. JAIL OUT. G. R. P., found near San Diego Freeway, shortly after being released from Orange County Jail for a misdemeanor violation. Emasculated. Stab wound to heart. A jail-release form in his pocket.
40. MARINE DRUNK OVERNIGHT SHORTS. H. C. R., found on San Diego Freeway ramp. Wearing only shorts. Left nipple burned with auto cigarette lighter. Cause of death: alcohol and drug poisoning.
41. CARPENTER. Unsolved.
42. TORRANCE. C. R. A., found in San Bernardino County. Left nipple mutilated with cigarette lighter. Suffocated.
43. MCDUMP HB SHORT. Unsolved.
44. 2 IN 1 BEACH. G. A. D. and his friend R. J. N., last seen on foot near their homes in Buena Park area. D found on Garden Grove Freeway on-ramp. Nude and emasculated. Thrown from moving vehicle. Strangled. N's body found next day in Angeles National Forest, in a ravine. Sodomized. Suffocated or strangled. Sand on DuVaul linked him to Nelson.
45. HOLLYWOOD BUS. L. R. W., found in San Bernardino Mountains. Missing socks, shoes, and underwear. Paper stuffed up anus. Cause of death: pneumonia due to aspiration.
46. MC HB TATTOO. P. J. T., a Marine, found in a trash bag, nude, on dead-end street in El Toro. Had large tattoo on arm. Death caused by acute intoxication.
47. OXNARD. Unsolved.
48. PORTLAND ECK. "John Doe," Oregon, found near Interstate 5, Oregon. Strangled.
49. PORTLAND DENVER. S. O. M., found near Interstate 5, Salem. Nude. Sodomized. Strangled.
50. PORTLAND BLOOD. D. C. M., found near Interstate 5, Oregon. Sodomized. Bludgeoned 31 times on back of head.
51. PORTLAND HAWAII. T. T. L., found near Wilsonville, ORE. Re-dressed. Sock up anus. His small tote bag marked "Hawaii" found. He was last seen hitchhiking in a shirt with "Hawaii" printed on it.
52. PORTLAND RESERVE. J. S. A., found on Interstate 5, near Medford, Oregon. Nude, toothbrush shoved up anus. Sodomized. Strangled.
53. PORTLAND HEAD. H. B. W., found near Wilsonville, Oregon. Lacking shoes and socks. Thrown from moving vehicle.
54. GR 2. P. D. S. and A. C. A., two cousins, found together in field near Grand Rapids, Michigan, where they were attending a horticulture convention. Genitals exposed. Asphyxiated by choking. Schoenborn found nude. Amway pen stuffed up anus. Strangled.
55. SD DOPE. L. M. C., found in a remote area of San Diego County. No clothes with skeletal remains.
57. HIKE OUT LB BOOTS. A. R. T., found in traffic lane of Interstate 5, near Mission Viejo. Left nipple burned with auto cigarette lighter. Boot lace missing from left hiking boot. Dumped from a moving vehicle. Drug poisoning.
58. ENGLAND. Unsolved.
59. OIL. Unsolved.
60. DART 405. J. M. J., found at a freeway interchange. Nude, except for pants pulled down below his waist. Emasculated and sodomized. Suffocated.
61. WHAT YOU GOT. Unsolved.

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