DOCTOR HENRY HOWARD HOLMES

Article BY Ed Dazere - Art by Chuck Hodi

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The following article is a fictionalized and embellished reconstruction of Dr. H. H. Holmes’ thoughts, based on facts available to the author. Any perceived permutations of prejudice are not representative of the author’s sentiments.

Chicago June 27, 1893, the World's Fair: Columbian Exposition. The place is teeming, with far-flung people, a sea of heads, mostly hats, milling around, bobbing. They have come to see things exotic and edifying; things they could hardly have believed existed beforehand – some swell tales to relate back home. Within the teeming huddle there is a head as unlike the others as some of the showpieces are from the perceived norm. Though he moves amongst the crowd quite vibrantly, he doesn’t look strange at all; in fact, you’d feel you’d trust his expounded wisdom despite its liable awful conclusion, even if you’d guessed it might turn out that way, given his charm. His name is Herman Webster Mudgett although he goes by others. He is here in this great gathering because he seeks prey, logic no different from organisms you might crush under foot or swat, that have nests with cells, and all manner of peculiar architecture related to their habit. Herman is like an insect, and he is the Queen, or commandant. You go into your cell, die in ultimate terror, as he, watching you through a peephole, laughs uncontrollably, claps. Then, you become assimilated, because the building is like a carnivorous hive, the cellar its stomach.

HERMAN (ME)

Alright, so it must have been the dozy era because I would have thought mankind would have learnt to have taken me for an atavistic con-artist pat and shook me off, killed me, before I got up to such dickens. Well, they should have, saved some souls, but they were too dumb. Now let’s get this straight, being born is not an option, I think I and nature concurred that it would have been better had I not been, but there I was, so you’ve got a good story here out of her licence be it fickle or cruel. Things got untoward quite early on, and I think it probably began with my Grandma’s funeral, the sight of her like a white and waxy effigy, in the coffin, descending into the ground, for digestion, my father sobbing like a Goddamn baby, a repulsive sight – which was worse!

But then there was the business with the animals, by which I mean torturing them to death. You see, I was given to thinking that a cat just wanted to be your friend, and then I thought it just wanted food, then I oscillated. Oh God…I’d tie their paws up like a con’s, do these awful-awful things to them, throttle them, tears running down my cheeks (theirs’ too I’d imagined), trying to gauge the truth of their nature, get the whole man-animal dynamic straight, and I’d dabble with the benefit of the doubt, moving them back and forth towards my face, leniency, but then misgive – so death to the fraud!

I’d feel an indescribable admixture of exhilaration and terrible emotional pain doing that, a whole ménage of sentiments augering my soul, then a self-loathing urge to do it again, and again, like being on a screwed-up carousel you can’t jump off of because of the speed, and then it slows down and you think there’s a window of opportunity for you to escape without breaking your bones, then it seems to realise you’d thought of that, speed up to thwart, or to chuck you off like it’s a centrifuge so you hold on tight. That sort of screwed up arrangement; basically, Hell in your noddle.

When the sound with the cats got too abominable for tears to salve I leapt from that mad carousel thinking it might mean some form of mental injury, madness, but if anything, it was just a rough and tumble. Then I segued onto another, not entirely un-volitionally. I took to tying can parts to dogs’ tails, sometimes douse them in fuel, and light them like wicks, and off those sorry beasts would go aclatter, sometimes in a little derby, me cheering, clapping and stomping like a wind-up tin toy. It was a truly awful, yelping, howling affair, they chased by themselves, until they died of exhaustion or whatever if I caught them again. And I do believe their horrible noise contained an element of modulation that evoked a sense of betrayal at the hands of mankind.

I did find some other kids, and a perverted teenaged hobo named Caleb, to join in the wicked fun, but not for long, and soon they shunned me except for Caleb, who I shunned for fairly obvious reasons. Soon the parents and people in general came to put a stop to it and threatened to tell father, who would not have been best pleased and likely ‘whale’ me, except, I’d given the name of another kid’s who’d looked like me, and I like to think he’d gotten a good beating on my behalf. It was becoming increasingly clear to me that I was not really of this world and would have to make scant of it what I could by ordinary standards, or maybe flourish at stuff that would not be much to the liking of his ethereal Highness and his erstwhile-terrestrial crucified brat. My existence down here was likely to be horrible for me, for humanity – as it had been for certain animals. Cruelty was my laudanum, and I was a fiend for it.

OF MY FAMILY I’LL SAY THIS MUCH

We were based in a poxy little town called Gilmanton, New Hampshire. I had two brothers, one older one younger and an older sister. Now, my older brother was quite religious (we were nominally Methodists), and he had designs in that direction, like a missionary; the youngern, was just a squib unworthy of further mention. My sister was someone many espying boys would have liked to tup, but she, intuitively cognizant, was not conducive and would keep her distance (I suspected she was fearful that I might try that thing on; if so, I resent it). My mother was just a damp napkin (ditto brother no 2). My father was seemingly quite formidable, but in a fey, pantomime sort of way, a disciplinarian, very religious, which I was not; so, he’d catch me saying something like “For Chrissakes, get off the Goddamn jakes Arthur, I need to go…!”, then stomp out and say something like “You took the Lord’s name in vain!”, and he’d look terribly irate, but like he was about to make water, then screech “I simply won’t tolerate…!”. Then an ineffectual thrashing with his belt, which would amuse me: just slapping around the edges so to speak. (There was something very odd about him, which took me years to work out; I met someone in the most insalubrious quarters of Chicago, then the penny dropped, and I almost did with laughter.)

1

The best cure for torturing animals with boys is either to get badly maimed by one or the inauguration of wood – I mean the libido sparking up like a star. I believed I had grown out of the animal thing, had a clean bill of health, and neatly segued into the ‘girl thing’, and I don’t mean a ‘bad thing’, like torturing them, sending them on races with their hair and skirts afire etc, no, much to my surprise, I actually genuinely felt that I was destined to live a nice and normal life. So, the girl in question Clara Lovering (a charming name don’t you think!), she was of English stock – as was I – and she was of the Nordic ilk, with some lovely blonde hair (nearly platinum), and eyes like saphires, and her skin was milk. But notwithstanding those winsome attributes, she was rather plump, and masculine of countenance. I was lovestruck anyhow. And my, did she have the goods, ostensibly sufficient to thwart any recidivism; she was ostensively triumvirately bounteously fruitful shall we say. We had a child, Robert Lovering Mudgett, born on February 3, 1880 (he became a C.P.A., served as city manager of Orlando, Florida, which was extraordinary given his provenance). If you’d seen us as a nuclear family unit, say on a jaunt by the lakeside or in a park, you’d think we were pretty much A-O.K. I was teaching bratfarm, Gilmanton, Alton. Part of me wanted things to carry on in that innocent fashion, but we all here know that the reason we are here is that that part of my psyche was mere fanny compared to the antithetical other, the order of things, that took control lock stock and smoking barrel.

2

I had given up interest in teaching brat, had never really been into that at all. What I had really decided on long before – at least subliminally – was something to do with humans that involved opening them up and finding out the secrets therein, and that meant either being a mortician, or a physician, as far as I was concerned anyhow, and the latter was much more prestigious. The urge to discover their inner workings was maddening, perhaps as much so as dope or alcohol is for an addict-fiend. And there were other designs forming, which were far too incipient to be clear, but they were growing like some awful-creature-grubs, that much I could tell.

So, I enrolled at the University of Vermont, in Burlington aged 18, and I studied their course for a while then got the distinct impression that the faculty consisted of a bunch of snake oil salesmen and dubious sawbones (like the ancient booger who claimed to have been a battle surgeon during the Civil War, which everyone must have known was a stretcher). I wasn’t going to take that for academia despite my developing macabre desires and designs that were distinctly at odds with the ole Hippocratic O and my expedient desire to enact them, so I enrolled at the University of Michigan's Department of Medicine and Surgery, and that was much more to my academic level/delectation. As ill of me you may think re my crimes, I was damn smart, as my chroniclers will admit – well they better!

You would not believe some of the ilk that were matriculated on the course; I mean, some of them threw up at the first sight of a cadaver. I on the other hand was entranced; the smell of the formalin mixed with that of the slowly decaying bodies was like an attar to me. I had found nirvana.

3

Cadavers are interesting, not just because of what’s inside of them, but because of their financial potential. In the past – for reasons that were probably religious/superstitious – cadavers for anatomical study were hard to come by, which retarded the advancement of the science (Burke and Hare made a killing out of, well, killing people to sell their corpses to Drs – and I believe theirs’ were utilised thus – such a poetic circularity!). Before I started on my killing, I’d make a ‘killing’ out of utilising cadavers for insurance purposes. You see one way is to get someone to take out a life insurance policy and make you the beneficiary, then a corpse turns up in the road, dead for myriad prospective reasons (medicine back then was pretty primitive, and proper I.D. was almost non-existent), and you enlist a crook lawyer, and hey presto, you get the windfall, which may be shares, or maybe the other party gets the chop, and maybe, via the same trick becomes another windfall. I did that some, because they had a drunk in charge of the cadaver room, and I sometimes ran it, the conscientious student that I was, and I even saw two corpses me and another student had used for that fraud return. I think that was when I decided that the cadavers I sought needn’t come from natural causes nor through a hospital. For Chrissakes, I was a rootin’ tootin’ murderer just busting to get on the job, waiting for my creds to come good – there’s nothing worse than a serial killer than a no-show or an amateur at it. My mind was already making up a list of subjects, types possible. People would die like flies back then, the law hardly turned a blind eye, less you were a Goddamn fool at it, a fool enough to be taken for the culprit and bite another’s bullet, get the Faraday-Throne or the lynch, which some did on my behalf quite possibly. It was rich pickings for Mr Smartypants = Me.

4

It is reputed that Clara was mistreated by me, reportedly so by fellow students, and wouldn’t that fit the bigger picture pat. Actually, it was that I took her violence like a castrato panto-ass, cuffs and blows, insults enough to make you a pachyderm, lover of the sex and their exhilarating attributes that I was. Anyhow, maybe having lost all respect for me, she jilted, boosted herself elsewhere, and the kid, and that was the end of our affair, and I loved her still, and still, then it was like she was one of those mewling cat fraudsters that caused so much water, then she was just a Goddamn bitch to me. But I was a busy busy busy bee, designs Milton would have liked. And I was fit to go over the Rubicon whenever it would let me, and it was as if there was a nest of baldifaced hornets in my noddle, just waiting to go berserk. I had no time to worry about the mistakes of the past. There were too many people who had escaped death by unnatural causes, and they or their ilk were going to get their comeuppance. Time was ticking, faster for some than others.

5

I will not deny that I was proud of my appearance – I feel that there was a certain éclat – and that this was instrumental in the downfall of various persons at my hands. Because even men are attracted to attractive men; but by golly, had it gone any further than an oblique affinity for the aesthetics of my physiognomy, death would have ensued and been as painful as something conjured by ole Vlad or his chief sadist. I looked like some sheriff from Tombstone or Texarkana, just like from those old factitious Western movies from the 1950/60s, the buster who ran the town, with a Billycock hat, rampant-rambler tache, and my eyebrows two satellites thereof, and I’d be packing two Colt Peacemakers and a bandolier belt, a golden timepiece on a generous fob, herringbone worsted waistcoat and all the other fitting sartorial trappings corollary, and I’d have some dynamite phrase off pat for the neophyte bad guy, like: “Kick yer ass outta town, before I set them thar boys on a hellacious mission to’t” (a silly fantasy). And boy was I a charmer, to homo sapiens, to domesticated animals (I hope I’d made it clear I’d grown out of the terror unto the latter category). To be quite honest, I didn’t want to spend too much time on this mortal coil; had only partial inklings of the two haitches being my likely destinations. I was the fraudster from Hell an apostate thereof, but fraudster that I was, I did keep some inkling of faith and wore a nice 22 carat cross my grandma gifted me, to hedge my bets.

6

But you’re here to read about my killing people – not trivia. I won’t be long getting onto it, a few hundred words at most, I promise. (If you complain to my editor, you bet your copper-bottomed ass I’ll come for you, in your noddle, like a nightmare record on constant replay, like a nest of crazed baldifaced hornets unleashed, buzzing you mad, stinging you mad and you’ll beg to die – just kidding?) All I wanted to say was that I had this peculiar dream, which went thus: I was some kind of weird vespid, not unlike a yellajacket, and I had my Billycock hat and physiognomy like from the Western scenario above, and I had this whippy tail that wasn’t a stinger but felt vital, and a teeny little stinger that seemed like it couldn’t even kill an ant, and I was crawling around my nest inspecting the crew, the grubs (the whole Goddamn family – reveille), and flying outside I was pleased as punch with the paper nest (house proud), then these hornets came in a warparty, and started attacking my commune and chopping their heads off with their mandibles, like secateurs, and I was so irate, so determined to stop this awful business, but I felt powerless, and a hornet cornered me in a passage, and it gave me this evil-evil look, its mandibles going like secateurs maniacally, and it made this stridulating noise that frightened the hell out of me, and I hollered “go hie your yellabellied ass outta here you S.O.B., before I set my boys on ya”, and showed it my stinger and whippy tail, and it came closer, and made more of that awful chirring noise, and then it raised up and protruded its abdomen at me from underneath, and its stinger came out, and it was a hell of a stinger and it was dripping venom, and then it just rushed me and took the Billycock hat off my head with its jaws and chewed it to bits, and I was sure it was about to decapitate me, or zap me, and where were my boys!, they were crawling out of a huge caterpillar I’d planted them in, just iddy-biddy and no real use…when I woke sweating, upright fit to scream, as if an archangel had come to pay a visit, or Satan. And there was a queen yellajacket in the room up by the ceiling, and my, was she a frightful sight, buzzing and trading levels in a somnolent fashion.

7

Dear reader, I lied to you. I think I had given the impression that I had jumped off that putative second carousel. On a sweltering night in August 1885, had you been in Mooers Forks N.Y., ears alive, you might have heard, emanating from the outskirts of town, a terrible howling, yowling, yammering, screaming cacophony, consisting of poor creatures aclatter, afire, affright, going pell mell; a chaotic derby from Hell! And me cheering, stomping, laughing like a loon. Coyotes are just dogs really; they can outrun a smouldering hobo by quite a margin even if it’s just that of the leash.

8

I was peregrinating, like certain birds with wings like sickles. My first job in medicine was as a ‘Keeper’ at Norristown State Hospital Philadelphia, but I quit after a few days, due to severe differences of opinion; the management no better than the cod-docs at my first college. Subsequently, I took up a position at a drugstore in that town. While I was working there, a boy died, who was seen with me. Well, I do recall meeting a boy and discussing things along the lines of his puny intellect, but honestly, I don’t remember killing one then and there, but tag it to my rap for all I care – I’m dead for Chrissakes! Then a boy died after taking medicine I’d prescribed, and it seemed maybe I was to blame. (It seemed there was a pattern developing.) I denied that pat, since the little brat looked like he was a walking cadaver in the first place, and people died like flies, and he probably deserved it anyway, and laudanum isn’t buttermilk. But I felt it was about time to hie my derriere elsewhere, set up shop and get the show on the road proper. I moved to Chicago.

9

Things were moving along nicely. I’d changed my name to the eponymous triple H. I’d found a job in another drugstore: Elizabeth S. Holton's, in Engelwood. I had found a new filly, and she was Myrta Belknap (I later married her bigamously and claimed to the authorities that ole Clara had been doing the dirty on me with another, and nothing much came of that matrimonial business). But by now, I was getting some serious urges of a murderous nature like impetuous wood in a teen, and I wanted to build myself a nest, and then I thought I had found a suitable area for one. The Holton’s were sweet people to me, and I worked hard for them, astute and diligent. (As it happened, Mr. Holton was my senior at Michigan, and that helped me along some.)

Doing well from that arrangement, I felt like the queen wasp in need of that Goddamn nest site, so driven to get the whole business up and running. So, I went buzzing around for my place of establishment. I checked out many places, quite far and wide in the purlieu, but it was somewhere just over the Rd, somewhere just perfect for construction, and I set about designing it in my mind, sure of its design from instinct, a blueprint truly sinister. I hired these asshole architects (who I basically instructed on the design) and builders (ditto) and up she went, a huge rambling block that could hold whatever I wanted, you name it; different cells for different business purposes. I would rent it out to a jeweler, an accountant, a dentist, a tenant/guest, whomever. But it was MY NEST. It had a cellar, which was work in progress, and no one who came into that place could know about that beforehand – after that, it was a moot point, since they didn’t leave.

10

As with any Hymenoptera nest, you start off small, one cell, one room. Initially, with the decor, I didn’t have any workers apart from myself really; I was Queen, and every other Goddamn role besides, a regular Mary Poppins – ho hum. A yellajacket nest is distended hexagons made of Papier Mache, within a kinda ass-wipe paper Rugball arrangement. And the little grubs are in there like greedy babies (like human babies are grubs really). And if you get too close, they come and suss you out, and that should be enough given their alarming colour scheme and buzzing. And then if you stand pat, they butt you on the noddle. Then if you won’t hie your ass outta there, they give you warning number three, which is butting and a whole concert of buzzing, which should be plenty, lest you’re a wethead. Then they lose their patience and sting you like you’re a pin cushion, till you get outta-town like a shitheel afire, acclatter, and maybe you even die – vamoose!

Yellajackets and baldi-hornets don’t have it all their own way though, despite what they might like to think: if you’re daring enough, get some sal-petre and make a solution out of it and drench the nest piecemeal, then when it’s dried, crusty with the crystals, light the mother and see it burn, see them acrawl sans wings (but don’t burn your place down!) – anyone who can’t crack up at that must have a heart of granite.

11

I had decided that eventually the premises which I had designated ‘The Castle’ would be a guesthouse and that that was the best arrangement for my purposes, to keep my prey and kill and dispose of them. The rooms troubled me somewhat, since I needed to kill them within without causing any disturbance, elicit attention. But I was smart – like ichneumon wasps – and was thinking about that all the while, in virtuoso proportions. I was house proud and ambitious, and everything had to go to the plan, as bizarre as it was.

It was remarkable how the cells kept increasing, as if the Castle was an organism growing of its own accord, but how in the Hell could it, given it was just dead stuff I controlled. It was growing as materially as my designs; maybe I was so entranced by the whole wicked project, I just wasn’t paying attention. And by golly was there some hootin’ tootin’ dandy fun in store, and it seemed to know it and surely grew in sync, commensurate.

I was transitioning over from the Holton’s business to my own, and even had a small rival pharmacy, which you might have thought would have riled my employers, but in fact, we were on good terms (they were old and going to die of natural causes shortly and I would buy them out anyhow). The Castle cells were filling up with myriad small concerns, and I supposed I felt they were a bit like little baby grubs, but not the business ones so much. The guesthouse rooms were the real cells, where my grubs would be situated (the ‘Grubhouse Suites’), and where I’d get them. How to organize them properly for my purposes troubled me greatly, since I was reliant on the bunch of craftsmen who were simply devoid of any real talent, and, like with most of those critters, they would likely blackmail me if they even could build my designs, the purposes of which were obvious even to their ilk. I would have to do considerable building, alterations myself. A regular mason bee.

12

Myrta and me had a child Lucy Theodate Holmes, born July 4, 1889. I also had a mistress Julia Smythe, who helped out at the check in desk. Julia was a whore, but then again, I did have those good looks and charming mien. Her husband Ned Conner was running a jewelry counter in my pharmacy. They rented an apartment there too, with their daughter Pearl. When he got wind of the dirty, he just upped and ran, which made me feel the better man. That made me want to kill him just for fun. Killing people isn’t just about necessity, like you might surmise from the tales of wars like the great Civil, all that valorous bullshit ethos. No, people will go to war to kill people just for fun, or thrill, take your pick.

13

O.K., so the Castle was growing nicely. And the Expo was coming to town. You may have heard of the famous one in London in 1851, at the Crystal Palace (which burnt down), and my must that have bee quite a show. Well, for some reason unknown to me, some Joes in office thought it would bee Jim dandy to invite the show over here, to that ever-expanding shitheel-ville-metropolis. And their Joes must have bee on laudanum since they agreed and it up and took and came, like a carney troupe, or maybe our Joes just imitated theirs, I really don’t know. That meant a whole bunch of people would be coming outta town, and they would want accommodation, and they would bee unknown here, and I could take them as easy as a dog will take a piece of jerky, or a bumbler bee a nice poesy. It seemed I was the apple in Satan’s eye.

So, I had to make the Castle ship-shape and ready; come on, even serial killers have standards – I was house proud. Initially, I had to make the beds up, then I got a filly to do it. I really did make sure the place was perfect, in ways that were typical. But then there were the amendments. And the amendments were a very tricky affair, because it was a ‘House of Horrors’ for Chrissakes, and I’d be letting you down if hadn’t made it into the promoted outlet. It was going to be just what you’d envisaged from what you’d read, and lashings and lashings beyond (so you might want to thank me, like in a séance) (And I should add, that you must be a bunch of sick S.O.Bs to be reading this so far, your appetite whetted, just waiting for the juicy stuff to materialize. Don’t worry, I understand –completely)

You see, I was something of a conjurer by nature, even if I didn’t properly know it, and I was inclined to perform tricks, and those would become to kill people. It was smoke and mirror stuff, and smoke was certainly a part of it, but it was of an invisible kind, like knockout-vapor.

14

I’d known about it for some time subliminally at least. Under the eave on 63rd and Wallace corner. Those vicious white-faced toy-like little critters had been busy-busy and built a whole Papier-Mache castle trying to rival mine in the miniature, no doubt. (My do they get on to the job sharpish - I must have been remiss). It was a slightly-bluish-grey affair. I noticed them when inspecting the outside and one came and buzzed me, like I was a shitheel come to wreak havoc unto their nation, and promptly delivered the coupe-de-G, on my right earlobe, which subsequently swelled a good deal. No warnings 1.2. or 3 – bam! I had honestly had respect for their creed, but was deeply offended, appalled. Unable to tolerate that, this is what I did: I leant out the window with a hoe and a big hessian sack held open with a withy ring and severed the offending nest and into the sack it fell, like the noddle of a French aristo, then popped the withy ring and tied up sharply. Then I watched as the crew came back to…well nothing at all, saw their confusion, and laughed like I was Mr Smartypants allover, on laudanum as it happened.

Now, there were some really dirty, perverted hobos – just like Caleb – in the park not so far away, and I had some mischief in my mind (like from the early days), and I thought up a scheme, and it went like this: I placed a full bottle of bourbon in that buzzing sack (don’t think I was completely unfair), and that was a nifty affair, some escapees but no stings, the bottle top just protruding and tied up, so a hobo (or anyone you please), would see that treasure in there and come investigate, and as strange as the encompassing arrangement appeared, likely avail themselves. I surreptitiously dumped it under a catalpa-tree and scarpered a good viewing distance, then waited for the unlucky customer, and I waited for nearly two hours until just about evening, when this terrible-looking wretch came and had a sniff at it and promptly walked off for pickings elsewhere. Not long after, a pair of equally dejected types came, and they were sold hook line and sinker. (By then, you’d have thought the captives were so riled, the whole business would have taken flight, like a balloon, the bottle dangling down.) They seemed to fight over it, but who could say. Anyhow, they ripped it open like hounds will rip ole Reynard after their baying hunt comes good. Oh my, did I laugh fantastic. The sight of them fleeing the scene, like they were dancing a jig, a reel, mad-capering as they hied it like a pair of bona fide shitheels afire, and being such, they left the bourbon pat, and I recovered it once the baldies had dispersed to where I don’t know except it wasn’t home. A marvelous evening’s entertainment, that spectacle along with the L.

15

It has been stated that the Castle wasn’t a hostel at all (I mean the designated portions), just apartments. Well, I don’t get the Goddamn difference, since the rooms I let were to transients, some of whom stayed a few hours, some a day, some a week, some a month, and some of them were 24 carat shitheels, and some of them stayed until they were exhumed, or if you consider that their flesh and ashes were assimilated into the cellar ground, they never left at all. The Castle was a Goddamn compound business/hostel affair, nothing like the Ritz I’ll grant you; no fancy catering or room service (well there was something along those lines, but a whole lot different from theirs), but the Ritz never retained their clientele the way I did. Anyhow, I was really getting the place ready for those unfortunate guests, getting the whole shebang perfect for the visitors, like a demon carney show, the ingenious perfectionist that I was. If there was some envoy of Satan that rated such places, he’d have given me five of whatever symbols, at least when it was truly finished.

16

One day in May 1893, I rented room number 18 to a pair of quite well-dressed very pretty young women that I took for whores, although I think the modern term would be escorts, since they were so refined. By that time, my peepholes were coming along nicely, and that room had six (three doubles), in the interconnected crawlspace between the rooms 17, 19, and the exterior below the window (the Castle made no sense architecturally, if you were to really survey it), and I told them that I’d charge them three cents extra for any other ‘guests’ that came up there, and they agreed, and seemed somewhat abashed. Well, whatever they were going to get up to in there I was going to see for free, S-P that I was.

Well, I had work to do on the premises, so wasn’t aware of what was going on in there for the most part of the early evening, a lot of banging going on on my part. Then Julia came up and said a woman had come to stay with the ladies of dubious repute, and would I let her in. Well, when I came down and saw her, the answer was hell-yeah – she was the best looking of the troupe. I was starting to think about that scenario, so hung around up there awhile after she’d gone in. There was a lot of laughter and some whooping, and the sound of corks being popped, and I knew they were up to some kind of dickens but couldn’t quite fathom what. I just thought, let it mature for an hour or two then go in the crawlspace and have a peep, test those peepholes out.

When the noise from there became really quite too much, I felt it was time to check up on them, and if Julia had let some ‘guests’ in without them paying, or kept any money, I’d be plenty riled. I went in there from room 17 and crawled and took up position by room 19, which had the better view of the bed. What I saw going on would turn a Methodist preacher’s hair white or drop him stone-cold dead: it was quite extraordinary, the three of them up to such carnal dickens as I never knew went on, even though I knew what the likes of Caleb got up to, and what really got me was the instrument that resembled a man’s…you know what I mean! They were making sounds that were quite enchanting, and the whole business gave me the bulge, but I felt that I should put a stop to it, it being so unnatural – but I didn’t.

17

So, the Expo was nearly here and there were some prospective guests sniffing around through agents, even though I hadn’t made it entirely clear I was open for business for outta-towners, even though it was high season. And I must admit that I wasn’t entirely on the job. I mean, there were some rooms free, but others were occupied by people I wanted rid of, whether they left or stayed. I was giving serious consideration to exactly how I would get onto the primary business, which was to kill those people that I thought I could and get away with. And what exactly was the point in killing them? Well…Apart from it being fun, and so in a kind of sexual way, and to dissect them to see what was going on in there, and out of pure evil, I really couldn’t say – but it was on the cards, and those were aces high.

18

Julia and her daughter Pearl were getting on my nerves, for various reasons including that Julia – who couldn’t afford rent – was asking for more pay, and she was making noises intimating informing Myrta on the dirty if I didn’t cough up, and she intimated I’d intimated doing the dirty with and to Pearl (who was about that age) which was partly true. I had a distinct feeling that their lives had been over-lived. I was having some very strange dreams about that time, including one in which I had a huge yellajacket nest attached to my back, and another in which I was a brook trout and was about to eat a yellajacket then it went and flew off then stung my noddle, and another in which there was a huge nest surrounding the Castle and I had to register with the commandant each time I went in and out, and he sat at a desk – and although human – had his retractable stinger protruding under it, so long that it was a gatekeep. I was going to kill them. Dissect them. And this is how it went: Julia was clearly pregnant, and I suggested so given her dimensions had changed so, as had her mien, and having pointed this out she said, well now you mention it, I have the impression that might be true, and I’d rather not be, and while we’re at it, Pearl has been mentioning problems in that department too, cramps, itching, pain, etc, etc the naughty girl she is, and me being a doctor, could I help to solve those problems? Well yes, I could, and then you’d shut your Goddamn trap about spilling the beans on the dirty and more pay, and I gave her an elaborate but plausible short anatomical lesson on the area in question, then explained the possible issues therein, then a possible course of treatment, and it was a sale. But with their means they couldn’t pay could they! Well, they could: I’d get my pound of flesh (to bee or not to bee).

With the ‘appointment’, I took them down to the cellar, promptly knocked them out with chloroform. I performed the most awful, savage backstreet surgery on them imaginable using a stout piece of wire bent for the purpose with a thick cork handle, and they simply never recovered from it down there. And that is where they stayed, until I cut them up and burnt their bits in the boiler-furnace, and they were cremated without ceremony.

I had to take laudanum after that to fell the bad emotions and felt the coward for it. I had a very strange sense that I had done something wrong when I disposed of the bodies in that incinerator, because I had the impression that the soil of the cellar was after it for nutrition, to keep the whole premises alive. The Castle had grown prodigiously and rewarded me well, but it was distinctly obvious that there was a quid pro quo, a debt to be paid up. Well, people dropped like flies, and there were plenty of them to feed the Castle, as greedy as it might have bee.

19

One of the carpenters I’d hired was a Polack named Benjamin Pitezel, and my, were we birds of a feather; his artful flair for fraud gave mine a running. I also quite liked him, despite my generally unyielding misanthropy. It didn’t take long for us to work each other out and hit the nail on the head and hit it off thereafter. He was involved in myriad schemes, which had certainly paid off given his attire. His story was that he was into selling mortgaged goods, the old life insurance ruse, and trading in stolen bearer bonds, and fencing goods, and selling fake investments, and anything that his sharp and crooked mind could conceive – and I believed it so. Of course, it was life insurance scams that interested me, and after we’d come to fully understand our respective natures, discussion veered towards that. He agreed to take out a life insurance policy with me the beneficiary. We’d have to plan it some, but the intention was there, and I was pretty sure something would come of it. I was certainly intending on getting hold of the material, but that might have meant depriving the Castle of its sustenance; I would come to some unilateral compromise on that, and the Hive could sort that buzzinezz out if needs bee.

20

The Expo had arrived like a monsoon, or a swarm. My, were there a lot of people, and of such divergent nature as I had never known of this young Nation. It was a grand occasion, a magnificent, exuberant orgiastic show-off of the Nation’s scientific and cultural talent. Maybe Chicago was not the dumps I had branded it. Maybee, it really was making that final transition from a jumped-up cattle station gotten way too big for its boots, into a proper city fit to give New York a shock, a run for its money. I mean they made a whole Goddamn lake in the plaza afront the Administrative Building.

So, the rooms were getting booked pretty sharpish, and the prices were good. I’d thrown three people out, likely onto the streets – I didn’t care, since they were behind.

I had this young French-Canadian woman Emeline Cigrande working the desk mostly but would come down from my seemingly interminable labors from time to time to see what was going on, to check the cash register was ship-shape, make it be known by my presence that I was diligent about that matter, and in general. While down there about half past one afternoon of June 5th, checking the till in the back-room office, a man walked into the foyer dressed in clothes fairly typical for a lower-end professional Joe’s bests, and he stood at the desk waiting for some attention, presumably looking for a room, likely because of the Expo. I would have assumed Emeline would have been there to deal with him, but evidently not – she did drink a lot of cordial, and maybe something else. So, I went out. At first, I didn’t notice – no, not the way he was dressed – but then, I saw it was Caleb, and I had to pinch myself. He knew it was me off pat, you could see it in his eyes. I was dumbstruck, partly that he was still alive, mostly that he had transformed so much, from that dirty young wretch, who’d behaved in ways I was too young to understand at the time. He looked more respectable than most of my guests on balance, and some of the business renters.

“Herman”

“Caleb”, I replied.

“I came to see you”

(But why?)

“I can see that” I said, then, “So tell me how you found me, what it’s all about?” I was sort of uncomfortable, thinking he’d come to ask for money or free accommodation, despite his attire.
“Herman…Didn’t your brother tell you he’d found me, saved me, from that awful, awful life I’d led back then?” He looked almost contrite and teary.

My brother? He must mean Arthur I thought, who I’d only contacted a few times since my moving here. And Arthur was now a Minister in training – he’d told me.

I was looking for ways to get out of this situation thinking of some S-P excuses; but I wasn’t capable, was probably visibly squirming.

“You see Herman, when he found me, I was so dejected I might just have well have been dead…You remember those dogs we’d set off, and how much fun we’d had…Well, I did that a little more, since you’d taught me, but not as well, and those were such good times – weren’t they? Well…”

This was simply too much. I had to interject. “Look…I don’t do that sort of thing anymore…Sorry, but I really am busy now…You simply must leave”.

“Herman…I’m not like that anymore. I’m here on behalf of the Church. I’ve got a stall at the Expo, to spread the word. Your brother sent me – here’s a testimonial from him and his Presiding Elder.” He handed me that and I gave it a skimread and pocketed it. I noticed two others hanging out by the entrance with quite a bit of luggage, large canvass sacks. They were no more than 20. They were watching the scene, and I took them as his assistants. “Won’t you let me take a room? I can pay. Your brother sends his love, and that of the family, and I bring the love unto you of Christ with me”.

That last clause was a pile of horse manure! Oh…It was too much to consider right then and there. I was very confused, was on laudanum I admit. On the one hand, I had to think about the clientele; he did look and sound quite respectable; on the other, he was Caleb. I told him to come back in the morning after I’d sorted some rooms out. I was also thinking about killing him. Yes, Caleb could stay if he wished, but any decision about that would be tomorrow’s business, because I’d have to think of a way to do it, and what about the other two? Maybe I could give the Hive a good feed.

21

How to kill people in their rooms? I had given that some thought. If you wanted the least bother, the best way would be to gas them, but if with coal gas, then one spark and the place goes up. That wasn’t too shrewd. No, it would have to be chloroform. The question was how to deliver it, to Caleb and possibly the other two. Then once knocked out, I’d take him/them down to the basement, and if anyone noticed, I just say they were drunks who’d broken in and taken a room. I was thinking that maybe I would just take Caleb in, but then thought the other two would draw attention when he went missing, so decided it was all or nothing, the three of them in one room, and that room would be 18. I had some work to do, creating a doorway into there, and I’d set up two cots. If It all went well, the Hive would feed well on the butchered and dissected flesh and thank me for it. I’d burn everything else, the bones, the ash to go into the ground there. If anyone asked their whereabouts, I’d say they came knocking but I was full, the Church – my brother included – would just assume Caleb and his two friends had fled, Caleb back to his old sordid ways, some money gone – what did they expect. My S-P was returning.

22

Caleb came stumbling in the following morning, alone this time. He was greatly disheveled, eyes bloodshot, a small cut to his forehead (sans hat), some mess on his jacket, which was different and mismatched and didn’t fit him well at all. He had that dumb, exuberant look common to hopeless drunks. Approaching me in the foyer, he soon stank of booze. It was just a fraudulent facsimile of dirty old Caleb in disguise before, now he’d reverted to true form, but in yesterday’s ruined flummery, mostly so. Why my brother had given him the time of day I couldn’t fathom, except, Arthur wasn’t that smart – too conscientious. Caleb was unsteady of foot, shaking like he was mildly electrified, had a tell-tale bulge in his right-side waist pocket, and yes, there was the stopper protruding. He slurred something awful, like that creaky-effusive talk of loyal hounds reunited with their absent masters, but helped with sign language, I got that he wanted to rent a room, and that it would be three people in there (those two fine-looking boys). Well, the deal was done in my mind anyhow before. Then he took that bottle out popped the stopper with the art of a sneak-thief and flagrantly swigged a good deal. He looked like he was about to collapse, then looked like a droughted thing drenched and revived pronto. I watched patiently as he tried to compose himself. He managed to get it out better this time: ‘I caarn’t pay fur murr’n n night. Church’ll cover any rr-other-ns’ and handed me another document, crumpled, which was a sort of Letter of Guarantee on “Missionary” “Caleb Winchelsea”’s behalf, impressively signed by someone who was a Circuit Minister out of Towson United Methodist Church, Maryland, impressively stamped also with a Methodist Church logo, and endorsed by one Defoe Bank, with their fine stamp. I took it as a bona fide bond – would sell it on. But I didn’t care about the next day, or the next, because I was going to get it all in flesh, for the Hive.

Of course, I agreed, and with me also signing, Caleb understood to come back at some time after midday and staggered off outside. Emeline, who had been watching this pitiful performance aghast was preparing to take down names, and rates I’d give her. I just told her to leave it.

23

I had completed the secret door-hatch into room 18, and it just looked like a bit of irregular paneling, and Caleb wouldn’t have a clue, and I sincerely doubted his deputies would either. He had brought his own disgrace to the Hive, come out of nowhere, with his factitious religiosity, having fooled Arthur, who’d pled his case to someone senior, who no doubt would have given Caleb and – by dint of him – likely Arthur the flick because of his terrible judgement. Even I thought the Church deserved better.

Just after 1pm, a very much improved, though still not sober Caleb came with his two boys with luggage, and I took them up to their room. I gave the key to one of the boys who called himself Elliot. Then I went down to the basement to prepare my materials for the night’s mission. It was chloroform as a liquid bludgeon – if that isn’t an oxymoron. Then, if needs be, a proper bludgeon consisting of an old chair legs, the upper sections wrapped in lead-sheet. I didn’t fear Caleb at all, assuming he’d probably be paralytic; of the boys, I had assumed that at worst, having knocked out the one with C, if awakened, I’d be noddling the other, and felt pretty confident of my chances therein. I had also considered that I could invite them down for a drink, copious amounts of alcohol to give them the pre-knock, mitigate my risk, but misgave on that.

24

At around 7pm Benjamin came around with his wife who I placed in the foyer with a rootbeer and rye. We went to my office and had a short conference about the corpse, where to place it. During it, I was giving quite a bit of thought towards Mrs Pitezel, although felt that any attentions towards her were inappropriate for the while. They had kids. Benjamin handed me some documents in his name and agreed to return at half-past midnight.

The Mayor should have apologized about the heat that evening; I mean the baldis might have liked it, but most humans don’t. Room 18 was a noise box, with Caleb getting up to dickens I really didn’t want to know too much about, though I did have the heads up on its likely content. I would let them get on to it for as long as it took. The drunkenness in there boded well on my part. I retired to room 12, which was de facto mine, and had a few drams of that bitter tincture of opium, tears of Madam L.

When I woke, it must have been getting on for midnight judging by the black (my watch had broken). I went out into the corridor and listened. It was mostly quiet, just some chatter and minor dickens from some quarters, some loud snoring. I headed to the ill-fated room. Nothing. It was time to act.

When I returned from the basement with the chloroform and cudgels I saw – or at least I thought I had – a ropey dubious-breed dog which loped about aimlessly and barely noticed me, or if it did, it knew I was on business and to keep shtum, and it appeared to have donated two turds, and if it was real was lucky I wasn’t on my mission, otherwise it would have been chloroformed. (I wondered about the integrity of the Hive, whether a door was open).

Entering room 17 with my materials, I was pretty skunked on M-L, but still hot to trot. Then in I went. Oh, crawling through that space, I did feel like the Queen, that rough-timber cellulose texture against my body, splinters come hither. Along I passed dragging my gear, my enthusiasm growing exponentially. Caleb was going to get his just desserts for what he’d tried on back in those depraved days. The others would be collateral damage, the pupils of his sordidness that they were.

I had peeped in in the midsection and saw little intelligence. From room 19, I saw them all asleep in bed together, the two bedside candles illuminating the abominable scene. It didn’t take much courage to go for it after that. I just burst out of the crawlspace like a jack-in-the-box, and sprung on them and smothered the three of them with C. No resistance. Easy as taking candy from a baby.

I took Caleb down to the basement first, (that damn dog was real and was following me. I would zonk it). When down there, I poured a surfeit of L down his throat and closed his chops and sealed his nose wrapped cloth over his noggin, so he had to swallow it and could hardly breath, let alone retch. I brought the other two down completely paralytic and battered them to death with the cudgels I’d left up there (they were the compromise – the Hive would get a good feast). Then I went for the dog, which I had to chase a while, but when cornered, chloroformed it took it down and chucked it into the boiler and lit her up, shut the door.

25

Benjamin turned up about quarter to 1. Caleb was going back on the street, where he belonged, but with the documents pertaining to Benjamin. We dumped him down in Jackson Park, just by the Statue of The Republic, carried him there in one of those canvass sacks, and no one batted an eyelid, whores and pimps and crawlers and dandies and drunks and slumped-drunks that they were.

Not long after that episode when it was established that Caleb was dead, not just a smelly drunk, long enough to raise concerns, the death in the papers, I would put in the claim. It all seemed S-P with bells and whistles. Everything seemed to be going to plan, but I was seriously concerned about the Hive. I know it must sound strange, but I wondered whether I’d given it indigestion, or even poisoned it, given the Ungodly specie of hominid I’d fed it. Well, it would let me know, no doubt.

26

Walking down to the post office on Wallace, June 10th it was a scorcher, and the crowd attending the Expo were about, like a spillover from the main event. I saw a baldi nest attached to a telegraph pole crosstree and felt mild fury – I wanted to swear at them, but in their own language, which I didn’t know. Standing there giving them the evil eye, they came out as if to substantiate the prospective fight. Well, I gave them obscene gestures enough to turn a young nun’s hair white or make bald, and anyone around must have taken me for a 24-carat loon. I was pretty sure I now hated the S.O.B.s. They stayed mostly pat, away from their nest like a cloud of them Faraday particles disparate and far flung arranged divergently about the buzzing nugget. “Yellabellied assholes” I hollered, then one came and was intent on stinging me, but I intercepted it and slapped it down to the road, and while it was preparing to make another go at it hell-bent, I ineffectively stomped it, and shouted obscenities at its writhing being that drew a certain amount of attention from the passersby, one of whom said “This man belongs in an asylum. Someone get hold of a Doctor.”, and I replied, “I am a Goddamn Doctor. Physician heal thyself”. Then I went about my day, posted the claim.

27

I had suspected that the insurance companies would be curious about me and the business with Caleb and Benjamin, because of the legacy of my claims under various guises, the pattern. It seemed all too easy before, that I must have gotten complacent, as had they.

A little while later, a police officer came around to the Hive, and I offered him refreshment, and he took a glass of soda water. He asked about the whereabouts of Julia and Pearl, and I said they’d scarpered, to where I hadn’t a clue. He asked me why I was the beneficiary of so many life insurance contracts, and I said, I was a businessman and that sort of thing was the norm, since people dropped like flies (which I didn’t actually say; I wouldn’t have been able to keep a straight face, and even a rookie would have gotten suspicious), and he just hummed and harred, and left, his notebook quite the more full for the visit. They would be back for sure. (As it happened, the insurance people refused to pay up for fake Benj.)
The Hive might have been offended by that visit, but if so, it shook it off and rapidly got back into shape, growing and improving, unto its ultimate form. That said, I was beginning to think that anyone who died of unnatural causes within chez Hive would have to be disposed of in the incinerator, and the Hive could have the ashes, and if the Hive didn’t like it, I’d burn the mother down.

28

I can’t keep on telling all of the details of this story – I’m not Sherardize. You’ll get your fill, and if you want seconds come as the buster Oliver Twist, groveling.

29

A nice young filly called Minnie Williams turned up in Chicago, exactly what her ambitions were, I couldn’t have told; though she’d gotten a single slot as an actress, I thought she was a deluded dreamer, and as such, her rightful place was in somewhere like the Hive, working, as it happened, as a stenographer for me. For a pure fraud like me, she presented myriad opportunities, and as soon as I came to know about her family’s wealth, I was quick off the mark. She was a complete fool! I schmoozed her good and got her to sign over the deeds to her property in Fort Worth to an “Alexander Bond” = me, and I acted as notary on that one. Benjamin ended up with the deed under the name "Benton T. Lyman”, but with me and his wife the beneficiaries.

30

So, things having gone somewhat rotten, with too much interest in me and the Hive from the police and people I assumed were private detectives, I went on the run and was in St. Louis and selling mortgaged goods, which seemed like a shitty way to make money given my glory days, the life insurance hoot like taking candy from a baby. The Hive! Oh…Dear Lord, my mind seemed to be at its limits; everything seemed to revolve around the Hive, the place seemingly the fulcrum of my existence, wrecking ball of sanity, I’d had enough – buzzzzz. With that mental transaction, my admiration for – if not love affair with – the hymenoptera seemingly well and truly water under the bridge, emotions took place on their part, and as a thunderstorm will grow after so much heat and humidity, there was bad blood (or whatever the hell it is they have). While on the run, I got stung six times by various permutations of the creed, apropos of nothing, and of them I’ll tell you this: the European hornet delivered the nastiest blow, but I hear that that of the tarantula hawk makes its seem like a loving caress, and apparently there is one called the cow-killer ant which is velveteen and pretty nasty, and there is an ant in whatever Hell exists beneath the Rio Grande.

I was beginning to look like a hobo, and hobos selling items on the street will garner the attention of the law. In short, I was arrested and charged with selling goods likely either stolen or mortgaged, was treated like Caleb deserved to be if it hadn’t been for my gullible God-sick brother and his sympathy for such fraudulent wretches.

Well, in the clink, I met this formidable young character named Marion Hedgepeth. He was an outlaw (lawed) of various proportions, in for a bungled bank robbery he’d told me. Marion was a 24-carat cold-blooded killer, you could see it in his eyes. I had at one point considered myself one of the best-looking villains around, a bona fide bourreau des cœurs (Lady killer to you philistines), but not in context to Hedgepeth. He was one slick, suave, debonair mankiller, his eyes pure deathstares, gunbores, but still, he was prima facie a dynamite prospect through a young filly’s prism, refined or no (check him out). Caleb would have liked him too, but not the other way around, and Caleb wouldn’t have liked what he’d got for giving him his dirty winking eye, if he’d survived it. I wasn’t frightened of much in this world, but surely so of him. Just imagine him…In the lounge of a hotel, dressed like some D.A. or Investigator, in his three-piece suit of the finest cut of twill, a bowler hat, shiny Bluchers. He’d have his equally well-dressed posse with him, them sipping their Manhattans in silence, cool as you like, having killed a Joe or two on a train robbery – the dudes. The bartend would be looking at them admiringly, pandering to their needs effusively, the peanuts topped up, a drink on the house, please these big spenders, and who knows what sort of tip you might be in line for, but maybe your deference and geniality towards them was for a very good reason, not that you understood quite what. Marion is a Jewish girl-name, but you wouldn’t have wanted to apprise him of that, S-P of a bartend you might have been between terms at college.
We talked life insurance scams. He gave me the name of a crook lawyer – Jeptha Howe.

31

I was released after a short while and returned to the Hive, as if summoned. I had concocted a plan to fake my own death under an alias and claim under an alias. It was hilarious, except it didn’t work. The corpse was just that of some old hobo I’d picked up in Washington Square Park and finished off with laudanum. Some people came around to speak with me about that one, and by dint of it others, private dicks. I didn’t press it, was on my guard, and so was the Hive.

I then reconciled with the hymenopterans. I consumed a whole jar of honey over a week dissolved in M-L and approached a nest of some variant of the order that was subterranean (not myrmidons, some which all can fly) – I knew not what. I gifted them a chunk of flesh, and watched from a distance I deemed safe, and after two and a bit-hours, it was safe to say that they distained.

By now Benjamin was turning out to be much more insidious than I had at first taken him for. I guess it was arrogance on my part, or distraction re the Hive; I’d simply accepted him as a fellow, a friend, a brother. He was not on my side, which meant he was liable to die, and maybe end up an offering to the Hive. He was a smart cookie – no doubt – corrupt to the core, but I simply couldn’t stand him. He was blackmailing me, and by dint of that the Hive! He was threatening to tell the police about Caleb, and some others, so I threatened to have him killed, showed him a picture of Marion from the wanted posters he’d given me in clink, told him I’d tell Marion that he’d said he was a sissy whose name was a Jewish girl-name and that having such a name, he was both Jewish and a man who was the sort who Caleb was, a man with a penchant for other men’s derrieres, and that sort of arrangement, and impotent with the fillies. And my that did that do a power of good. We were going to do the life insurance scam on Benjamin again.

32

I had taken quite a lot more of an interest in Benjamin’s wife and seriously considered the dirty with her, fraudster that she was. With the life insurance scam, we were intending to take $10,000 and split it, me, her, Jeptha, and Benji, if it worked. The scam was that Benji would take out the policy in the name of B. F. Perry, a factitious inventor who would die in a lab explosion (as it happened, Benji had exhibited at the Expo this shitty excuse for a coal bin, that was somehow novel, as if coal bins hadn’t actually been properly invented and here was the real thing – it looked like a woman’s bonnet). So, I had to find the cadaver to take his place. But I couldn’t; for some reason, the hobos had fled the vicinity – I guessed they’d come to fear for their safety, the sight of me coinciding with the losses of their ilk. But $10,000 was a lot of money, so someone had to step in.

After giving it considerable thought, I decided to kill Benji and use his body to represent “B. F. Perry”, which was ironic, poetic justice, and just damn hilarious.

Our notional character was set up in Philadelphia, in some shack that had been rented for six months. I took him there to help arrange the accident we’d planned whereby the place went up in a blast and burnt down, and the cadaver would be burnt beyond recognition, except it didn’t matter anyhow, since it would be him, ‘B. F. Perry’. It was in the early evening that I zonked him with C, then poured the benzene we’d stashed there over him. After dark, I set him and the premises ablaze and fled the scene. I thought I’d heard some screaming coming from the blazing place, if so, I wasn’t moved at all, well no emotionally.
The insurance came good that time. It went to his wife via the lawyer you see – since my name and my aliases were starting to raise suspicions. His wife Elanor was a daft creature. She gave me most of the proceeds from the scam, through various crooked demands, while Jeptha got his stakes in full, obviously. But Elanor started asking questions about Benjamin’s whereabouts, and I sincerely felt she thought I’d dispatched him, and wondered if she actually cared. When I tried to intimate the dirty with her, she become quite harpy and started to make some alarming noises about informing the authorities about her suspicions concerning Benjamin. I simply couldn’t stand that. I wanted some kind of security on her so managed to get her to hand over three of her children to me, which was as easy as taking candy from a baby, saying that I’d take care of them on Benjamin’s behalf, while she conducted her search for him, presumably believing he’d fled with an amore or just fled and left her high and dry.

I took Alice, Nellie, and Howard with me on a great trip throughout the Northern states. And into Canada. Myrta, as ever, simply believed I was off on business, and said nothing about it (she was one seriously dumb woman – I’d married another while on the run before, a Georgiana Yoke.)

Well, Dear reader, this cannot go on forever…I mean how much of this sordid story do you want to know! I was starting to lose my mind. It was as if it was a hive of crazed bombinating baldis came for me from inside.

I was going allover the place under different guises with those Goddamn grubkids as if they were mine, wanting their nutrition all day long it seemed. It got to the point where in Toronto, I’d had enough – I killed them, gassed them in a large trunk, buried them in the cellar. My wife, Myrta or Georgia, or maybe even Clara, or another I’d married, maybe even Elanor was my wife, since I didn’t really know (but there was someone who claimed to be one, staying with me), anyhow, they had no idea what I’d done, and I’d hoped that neither did I, but I did.

I just kept moving from place to place, allover the shop, as if harried by the authorities, and by myself – just perpetual vamoose. Harried by the Hive, by hymenoptera in general, the buzzing, stinging cretins of gaudy color-scheme meant to ward you off – poison pie. When they’re in your head, where can you go to escape them! I was like a man afire, aclatter, chased by his tail. I would turn up in some shitheel town, and the first thing I’d see was the baldis about their nests, a cloud of them, and it looked like they were trying to form a physiognomy of me in their swarm. And once I got chased by a gang of them, into the scrub and into another baldi nest, which I butted with my noddle and down it came, and out they came to sort me out with their buzzing and stings, and I looked like a poxy thing and hurt like a toxic human pincushion. And, I ended up in Texas in that house I’d defrauded the onetime actress out of. And there were baldis under the eave. And there were European hornets in the rotten old tree, who came and acted like the Black Hand, threatening me with their garish/hideous color scheme, like a dreadful bunch. And I fled, realizing that wherever I went, they’d find me. And I seemed I was chased by them wherever I went.

**********************************************************************************

A hatless man runs down a Boston street screaming, as if fleeing some terror that might be himself, waving his hands about his head as if to ward off some harrying force invisible, or exorcise whatever is in his head. He’s slapping himself, mostly his head. The Pinkerton agents working on behalf of various concerns know who he is despite what he calls himself. When they capture him, he is wild-eyed, spittle-foam about his chin. He makes a strange buzzing noise but says naught. He thinks it is about time he was held in an asylum, somewhere where the baldis in particular – hymenoptera in general – can’t find him. If they do convict him, he wishes the electric chair, convinced that it hums – he is out of luck there.