But, acorse…
Lud believed in proverdence. He believed what he eyeballed in them there books, an’ he believed The Man Upstairs shore worked in some strange ways. An’ it was proverdence he reckoned that this copper’d made him sit in the chair right next ta his dead mama’s old highboy. And Lud knowed full well that in the top drawer was daddy’s big ol’ Webley revolver…
««—»»
Tipps’ gaze flicked about. It was an untold fantasy:
I’m in Mr. Torso’s house!
“I want to know what you’ve been doing?”
“What’cha mean, son?”
“What do I mean?” Tipps could’ve laughed. “I want to know why you’ve dismembered sixteen women over the last three years, that’s what I want to know. You’re keeping them alive, aren’t you?”
Mr. Torso’s white hair stuck up in dishevelment, his chin studded with white whiskers. “Keepin’ what alive?”
“The girls! The…torsos!” Tipps yelled. “My forensic tech told me the torso you dumped last night died within forty-eight hours, you crazy old asshole! We matched her body to a set of limbs you dumped four months ago, and she was
two months pregnant!
You’re impregnating them, aren’t you? Tell me why, goddamn it!”
Mr. Torso shut his eyes. “Aw, son, would ya
please
stop takin’ tha Lord’s name in vain? Come on, now.”
Tipps took a step forward, training the Glock on the old man’s 5x zone. But at that precise moment his flicking gaze snagged on a row
of books atop the veneered highboy.
What the… hell?
Many of the titles he recognized, many he owned himself. The chief works of history’s most preeminent philosophical minds. Sartre, Kant, Sophocles, and Hegel. Plato, Heidegger, and Jaspers. Aquinas, Kierkegaard…
“You…”
Tipps faltered, “read…
this
?”
“Acorse,” Mr. Torso affirmed. “What, just ’cos
I wears overalls an’ live in the sticks, ya think I’se just some dumb-tookus rube with no hankerin’ of the meanin’ of life? Lemme tell ya somethin’, son. I ain’t no sexshool preevert like ya problee think. An’ I’se ain’t no psykerpath.”
“What are you then?” Tipps’ question grated like gravel.
Calmly, Mr. Torso went on, “I’se a perveyer of sorts, ya know? A perveyer of objectified human dynamics. Volunteeristic idealism’s what
they’se call it, son. See, the abserlute will is a irrational force ’less ya apply it ta the mechanistics of causal posertivity as a kinda counter-force ta the evil concreteness of neeherlistic doctrine. What I mean, son, is as inderviduals of the self-same unerverse, we’se all subject ta the metterphysical duality scape, and we must realize what we’se are as transcendental units of bein an’ then engage ourselves with objectertive
acts
, son, ta turn the do-dads of our units of bein’ into a functional deliverance of subjecterive posertivity in the ways of The Man Upstairs, see? No, I ain’t no psykerpath. I’se a vassal, er a perpetcherater of Kierkegaardian fundermentals of human purpose.”
Tipps stared as though he’d downed a fifth of Johnny Black in one chug.
Holy fucking shit!
he thought.
Mr. Torso…is a teleologic Christian phenomenalist!
“It’s takin’ things inta our own mitts, see? Like with the gals, livin’ in a neeherlistic void of spiritual vacuity. I do what I do ta give ’em the transertive
purpose
thats they’d never reckon on their own. I’se savin’ ’em from the clutches of human abserlutism, son, ya know, savin’ ’em from wastin’ their potential as posertive units of bein’. All they’d be doin’ otherwise is gettin’ the AIDS, the herpes, gettin’ abortions, smokin’ the drugs, an’ gettin’ thereselfs problee beat up an’ kilt. But alls forces in the universe is cyclic—like, ya know, one unit of bein’ feeding the other to a abserlute whole. Shore, I’se sells the critters but only ta folks who can’t have none
thereselfs no ways. An’ the scratch I don’t need ta keep good care of the gals, I gives to charity.”
Tipps felt stupefied, locked in rigor. His astonishment caused the Glock’s front sights to drift…
“It’s all purpose, son. Human abserlute
purpose.
Purpose
, Tipps paused to wonder—
—and in that pause, a size 11 steel-toed boot socked up and caught Tipps square in the groin. He went down—the pain was incalculable. Through blurred and spider-cracked vision, he saw Mr. Torso standing now, rooting through the highboy’s drawers.
“Daggit! Where’s that big-tookus Webley!”
Tipps’ gunhand trembled as he extended his arm. He managed to squeeze off a double-tap—
pap! pap!
—and somehow both 9mm bullets hit Mr. Torso between the legs, from behind—
“Holy Jesus Moses ta Pete!” the old man wailed, collapsing and clutching the bloodflow at his groin. “Ya blammed neeherlistic copper bastard! Ya done shot me in the
dickbag!”
Tipps, still shuddering in his own pain, crawled forward to finish the job. He could scarcely breathe. But when he raised gun—
What the—
—his foe’s crabbed hand slapped up and pushed it away, and at the same time a terrifying arc-movement fluttered overhead.
Then came a hideous
kaCRACK!
Tipps’ world blanked out like a power failure.
««—»»
“Bet’cha got yerself a headache like a Old Crow hangover, huh?”
A chuckle. Movement. “Yeah, I cracked ya a good one right smackdab on the bean with the butt of my daddy’s big-tookus Webley .455. Took ya right out, it did.”
When Tipps woke, he felt elevated somehow, drifting…
“Was all fired up ta kill ya but then I gots ta thinkin’.”
To the right and left, Tipps saw a long row of what appeared to be open-ended metal troughs on stilts. Twelve troughs in all, each labeled by masking tape with a different consecutive month. Tipps throat swelled shut…
Each trough contained a torso.
“Say hello ta my gals, copper.”
Each lay naked in their trough, their skin lean, white, and sweating in the basement’s heat and incandescent glare. Healed-over stumped hips were visible at each trough-end. As the line of torsos progressed, Tipps couldn’t help but note an increasing state of pregnancy: the later torsos sported bellies so distended they seemed on the verge of rupture, white skin stretched pin-prick tight against the burgeoning inner human freight. Fleshy navelbuds turned inside-out. Breasts heavy with mother’s milk.
Immediately before him lay a wan torso with matted red hair. The slack face with sealed eyes twitched, the head lolled. “Gaaaa!” she said. “Gaaaaa!”
“This here’s my August gal,” Mr. Torso introduced. He stood at Tipps side. “Been spunkin’ her up daily since the first of month so’s ta git her good’n preggered.”
“Gaaa! Gaaaaa!” she repeated.
“A regler chatterbox, ain’t she? Blabbers like that on account I’se ’botermized her, ya know, jigged up her brain a tad so’s she won’t worry an’ be confused an’ such. Don’t seem fair fer the gals ta keep their senses, bein’ in such a state. S’why I glued up their eyes
too, an’ poked their ears. But don’tcha worry none, ’cos all their baby-makin’ parts works just fine.”
Now Tipps deciphered the drifting sensation. His vision cleared further, and four shuddering glances showed him that he’d been divorced of all four limbs. His torso was suspended in a harness that hung from a hook over the trough. Eleven more such hooks were sunk into the ceiling rafter before each torso.
“Oh, I’se ain’t gonna fiddle with
yer
eyes an’ ears,” Mr. Torso promised. “Nor’s I gonna ’botermize ya either. See, a fella’s sexshool responses are all up in his noggin, so’s I can’t be jiggin’ yer brain like I’se done ta the gals. Can’t very well git yerself a stiffer with yer brain all jigged up, now can ya?”
Tipps groaned from deep in his chest. He swayed ever-so-slightly.
“It’s proverdence, son. Okay, shore, ya shot me right smack in the balls, but see, old as I am I was havin’ a rough time keepin’ the crane up anyways, and sometimes I’se just couldn’t get a nut outa me ta save my life.”
“What,” came Tipps’ desolate, parched whisper, “did you say about providence?”
“This, son. Me, you, the gals here—everthing. This is
God’s
work, ya know, an’ I figure that’s why He sent ya to me, so’s you can continue with His work. Keep up the human telerlogic cycle that
proverdence ordained fer us. Ya know?”
Tipps’ brain reeled. The hanging harness which satcheled him continued to sway ever-so-slightly. He saw that his butchered hips were exactly aligned with the redhead’s stump-flanked vagina.
“Ain’t much point at all ta life if we don’t never comes ta realizin’ our unerversal purpose…”
Tipps groaned again, swaying. The word, once ever-important to him, was now his haunting, his curse. And somehow, in spite of what had been done to him, and equally in spite of how he would spend the rest of his life, he managed to think:
You asked for it, Tipps, and now you got it. Purpose.
“An’ don’t’cha worry none. That’s why I’se here, son,
ta help ya,” said Mr. Torso as he opened the brand-new centerfold and carefully lay it on the redhead’s belly.
— | — | —
MISS TORSO
The woman had no arms; her name was Spooky, and the name suited her. Carbon-black hair and murky blue eyes, one iris minutely larger than the other due to a genetic defect called emmetropic binocular deviation. A demure, lilting voice but a mouth fouler than a waste hopper at a pork-processing plant. If anything, she was an interesting person—diverse and extraordinary. Spooky stood almost six feet tall, a hundred and twenty pounds, emaciated to near breastlessness, and all thin blue veins beneath parchment-white skin. It was the ice a.k.a. crank a.k.a. crystalized methamphetamine that kept her in the perpetual state of borderline starvation. Eleven years ago she’d been a runway model for the Ford Agency. A cover for
Allure
and ’
90s Woman,
a stint for Betsey Johnson, and several cosmetic commercials. After so many thousand-dollar-per-day shoots, however, it hadn’t taken Spooky long to become utterly habituated to drugs. The fall was fast. When Vinchetti’s spotters had seen her turning tricks in Utica, they’d snapped her right up; Vinchetti liked them tall, slim, and gutter-mouthed. One night she’d been higher than Robert Blake’s attorney fees when she’d made the very grave mistake of attempting to seduce one of Vinchetti’s most loyal buttons, Paulie, whose job it had been that evening to drive her home after her nightly visit to the compound; she’d confided: “Paulie, I fuckin’ absolutely fuckin’
hate
fucking Vinch. He’s got a little dick, and his breath could knock down a motherfuckin’ brick wall,” and this she related with her hand deftly plying Paulie’s crotch. Paulie had simply smiled, shaking his head, and walked right back into the compound to relate the entirety of the incident to Vinchetti, who, by the way, was the supreme boss of what the U.S. Justice Department referred to as the Vinchetti/Lonna/Stello Crime Pyramid. Vinchetti controlled virtually all of the white heroin and underground porn distribution on the east coast. At any rate, as recompense for this foolish slight, Vinchetti’s personal doctor, a well-spoken, Deloreaneasque former Beverly Hills plastic surgeon named Winston F. Prouty, had painlessly amputated Spooky’s arms two inches above the elbows. Now Vinchetti used her for kink tricks and videos. He wanted plenty of stump left on each arm, so that the stumps could be inserted into other women during four- and five-ways. It made for great footage.
“Camera ready?” Frankie asked.
Nick made a few adjustments on the tripod. “Just about.”
“Lights bright enough, Nick?” Spooky complained in her velvet-soft voice. She sat upright, nude, on the very cheap coffee table that complemented the “suite,” which was actually a room at the Howard Johnson’s on Route 233 near Rome, New York. They got a special rate of ten dollars for two hours because the bathroom was completely out of order thanks to the crack dealers who’d trashed the place last week when a drop went bad. Nick and Frankie figured they’d spend the money they’d saved on extra drugs. This was a scat flick. Who needed a fuckin’ bathroom?
“Fuckin’ lights are cookin’ me like a motherfuckin’ curry-and-ginger pheasant satay,” Spooky maintained her complaint, the simile prompted by old memories of four-star Big Apple cuisine back when she was with Ford.
“Live with it, bitch,” Frankie remarked.
“Throat yourself, you dead-dick goombah motherfucker,” Spooky quietly retorted.
“Jerk me off,” Frankie snapped back. Then he paused and belted out a laugh. “Oh, wait a minute! You
can’t
jerk me off! ’cos you ain’t got no
hands!
”
“Yeah, I
wish
I had hands, then I could give you the finger.” She looked at Nick. “How do you like this useless piece of shit? Fuckin’ guy’s got more cock than
three
men and he can’t do shit with the motherfucker. What good’s a stunt-cock who can’t fuck? Like tits on a motherfuckin’ bull.”