I tell myself I
was born this way. As a small child, I sniffed and licked the skin on my arm,
wondering what it would be like to actually eat it. Of course, I had eaten
chicken and turkey skin and pork rinds and sunburn peel, but those didn't drive
my salivary glands into overproduction the way I expected the skin of other
people would.
I planned to major
in stem cell research and make as much human skin as I could eat, but my dreams
of graduating college were dashed when my parents became sick. I dropped out to
take care of them and enrolled in a local trade school. With my plumber's license, I was able to get
a well-paying job at an industrial gas company a few miles from our house.
After my parents
passed-on, within four months of each other, I inherited the suburban house, a
modest two-bedroom, with a generous, though windowless, basement of nearly 1200
square feet. So here I was, at 19, with
a good job, a paid-for house, a couple of reliable cars, and my whole life
ahead of me.
You may wonder,
“Greg, did you ever try to eat the skin of your dead parents?” And the answer
is of course, “No. That’s disgusting. For so many reasons.“
First of all,
that’s my parents – it’s like having sex with a sibling – you just don’t do it.
Secondly, their wrinkly, hairy, dead derma is UNappetizing. Of course, I do eat
meat that’s been “dead” a while, but skin is so fragile, so hard to preserve –
the layers are delicate, like tiramisu.
Lastly, missing
skin has a way of getting investigated. They say, "Don't eat where you
shit," which is sound advice. I would have been the first suspect if my
parents were missing skin.
Now I have
discovered a way around that problem. Missing people do not have missing skin.
I was a little
nervous about acting on my obsession. I didn’t want to kill anyone, well,
‘cause that’s murder and that's against God’s will. And, as I already
explained, I would have to eat an awful lot of skin at one time before it got
dead and gross. The human body has about six pounds of what I would consider
edible skin and that’s a nearly impossible amount to eat at one sitting unless
you’re Joey Chestnut.
So, I put my mind
to the task and came up with a solution – not ideal, as you will see, but
pretty darn ingenious if I can say so.
Being a plumber, I
was able to rig up a small gas delivery system in my basement to port knockout
gas to the area. I get the gas off the dark web, no return address. It’s
expensive, and I've had to come up with supplemental income schemes, which I
won’t go into, but I'm able to use this gas in small doses to apprehend
subjects and in larger doses to keep them in line.
I tried out the
gas on a dog I got from the pound and it worked OK. Had to dial it in a little
to get him to go to sleep, but not wake up with severe vomiting. He survived 20 doses and has become my
beloved companion, Bonger, named after all the gas he huffed.
My first
“resident” was the sister of this girl I work with named Lisa. Annie lived
about two hours away, in Renton, and I met her when she came up to visit Lisa.
She came to a happy hour and I thought, “Wow. Her skin is exquisite.” I mean,
Lisa had fabulous skin, but of course, I don’t eat where I shit, so that was
out of the question. Having a biological
match or maybe even an upgrade from out of town was a windfall.
One Friday, I
drove down to Renton and took her by surprise outside her apartment complex. I
gassed her and snapped up her 115-ish pound frame without being seen by her
neighbors. I nervously checked the rear-view mirror the whole way back, but we
made it safely. I calculated the small dose would work for up to four hours,
but she surprised me by waking as I handcuffed her to the iron railing in the
basement. I was just clear of her before she started kicking and screaming.
I was masked, so
I’m sure she didn’t recognize me, and she’d never been to my house, so as far
as she knew, she was still in Renton. I was a little unprepared for the
screaming – how loud and how long. It reminded me of a new kitten
we got who was up at all hours of the night crying forever and wouldn’t shut up
until we fed her. I doubted feeding Annie would shut her up, so I gassed her
again and that worked well. We both got
a few hours of sleep.
I decided I wanted
to keep my live contact with her to a minimum – I felt uncomfortable with the
way she screamed at me and what she said, like, derogatory things about my dick
and my mental state and my parents, etc. It went on and on, and I didn’t have
to take it so I just kept gassing her. A
lot. I'd gas her before feedings and at night and while I was at work.
Eventually, I
worked up the courage to see if she was sufficiently anesthetized to withstand
a little “operation.” I approached her with a Taser in one hand and an X-Acto
knife in the other and gave her a little prick on the upper arm. She didn’t
flinch, which was a positive sign. I courageously made four neat cuts – about
one square inch – and peeled off the skin. It was harder to extract than I
expected and there was a lot of blood. I
bandaged it, without antiseptic, more to soak up the bleeding than anything
else, and got out of there with my prize.
I went upstairs
and put it on a small saucer – like a dinner plate for a tiny person. It looked
a little messy – I needed to work on my “plating” skills. I wiped it off and
repositioned it in the center. It looked different from what I expected, and
the smell was a little briny and iron-y on account of the blood.
It was also thin,
like the thickness of a quarter. Since then, I have come to be more discerning
and skilled with my knife cuts, regulating the depth depending on the subject
and the flavor I’m after, but this one was mostly the outer and next layer – not
too much of the subcutaneous fatty layer.
My mom had these
little forks for appetizers or shrimp, neither of which we ever had in all my
time in the house, but it seemed like the right tool for the job, so I got a
tiny fork out of the drawer to match my tiny plate and tiny bite. Turns out the
fork was too small and the skin too slippery. My craving got the best of me and
I picked it up off the plate and popped it in my mouth.
It’s difficult to
describe the emotions I felt with that savory delicacy dancing on my tongue.
The predominant feeling, though, was relief. Relief I wasn’t crazy all these
years and skin was meant to be eaten and enjoyed. Soft and tenderly it kissed
my tongue as if it knew we were lovers.
It wasn’t yet as
personal as it would be. At this point, I didn't know if it tasted like Annie,
or any anonymous source, like a piece of fish from the market. I was definitely
intrigued to find out, though.
I chewed on it a
little and, to my surprise, it dissolved rather quickly. I thought it might
take some effort – like jerky – but it basically evaporated. I remember
thinking "Maybe I could eat six pounds at a sitting… " but of
course what I ate was not even an ounce - or a tenth of an ounce. I sat there,
in my chair, with a type of energy buzzing, almost surely adrenaline from the
hunt and from the new experience. Hooked and ready to go back for more, I
heard, “You sick fuck! What did you do to my arm?” coming from the basement.
Her muffled voice
sounded more like “Yu sid fuh, whad yud-do m-uhrm,” but I knew what she said. I
also knew it was too loud. If someone was on my doorstep they surely would have
heard it. So I went to my old bedroom and grabbed the cover off my bed and staple-gunned
it to the inside of the basement door. The house was now peaceful again. All
the carryings-on from little Annie muted.
I felt bad about
Annie’s responsibilities, like who was going to pay her electric bill, did she
have a pet that needed to be fed, etc., but I figured it was all going to work
out in time. Turns out I was right. Within three days, a co-worker told me Lisa
had already been down to Renton to find her sister (not there, duh), and I’m
sure she would feed the pets.
I was dealing with
my own problems, like how to keep Annie from bleeding out. I had sampled her
more aggressively in the past two days, taking most of the skin from her left
arm and shoulder. She was in a little pain, so I gave her some ibuprofen, but
most of the time she was either passed out on her own or I gassed her to sleep.
Even when she was awake, she'd only mumble and wasn’t rowdy like she was on day
one. The gas was causing some type of dementia which was probably a better
state of mind for her.
Another problem I
was having was to keep her fed. In her state, she refused to eat or drink and
it would be a matter of time before she died of natural causes. I started to
calculate her life expectancy, or “shelf-life” as I wise-cracked, to be less
than two weeks. I was mildly successful at getting her to drink water when she
didn’t know she was doing it.
The third
challenge was to keep her from defecating in the basement. She was peeing and
pooping in her spot and I had to clean it up. “Don’t shit where you eat”
came to mind.
I solved the
bleeding problem by getting some styptic powder from Bonzer’s pet store, but it
came in such small quantities I had to find something else to use – baking
powder worked well and it was cheap and edible.
The other problems
could only be solved by the right motivation. Clearly, I was not going to let
her go, so her only hope was escape. I figured the best way to keep her alive
was to nab her a friend who would be on her side and encourage her to keep up her
strength until such day as they could both escape.
So what is better
than one friend? Two friends! I drove
two hours east to Providence where there’s a large college community and
snagged a dark-skinned, somewhat heavy-set, black girl named Shonda and a girl
with an incredible tan – I’d guess at least part Hispanic from her last name,
Heredia. I got them back to my house without too much trouble and handcuffed
them a good distance from each other in the basement.
They both woke up
horrified after taking note of their predicament and seeing Annie, insane and
partially scalped. Despite the
sandwiches and waters I gave them, they screamed non-stop, so I had to
repeatedly gas them.
I don't know if
you know this, but the sound of three screaming girls is almost twice as loud
as one. I just figured loud was loud,
but of course, the sound of cheering at a football game is much louder than one
person by themselves. So I added two more comforters and stapled them to the
beams over the descending staircase. Afterward, I couldn’t hear them at all
unless I was perfectly quiet and the AC wasn’t running.
That day, I made a
Neapolitan lunch with a generous sampling from each of the three girls. It was
soooo tasty, each with a peculiar flavor, but in a good way. Shonda’s skin
paired well with ranch dressing. It was delectable. I had to go back for
seconds and I worried I was going to eat her all in a couple of days.
My plan to have
the girls support each other was also working, at least with Shonda and her new
friend Mariel. They ate their sandwiches and drank their waters and I’m sure
they kept each other’s minds off the pain of their wounds, plotting certain
revenge and such. I kept what they thought were the handcuff keys on a ring
close by, but not too close. Should a resident ever get the keys, they wouldn't
open the cuffs anyway, but they served as a carrot for hungry rabbits.
By this time, I
thought five residents would be a satisfactory living arrangement in my
spacious basement, so I got a little greedy and nabbed Samantha and my first
dude, Ricardo, specifically chosen because he was hairless. My addiction to
eating skin is not a sexual thing – I’m sure you don’t care if the pigs or cows
you eat are male or female – they’re mostly female, I suppose, but at least at
this stage it was more about opportunity than preference.
Mixing things up
would help confuse the police who might be starting to search for a serial
killer, although, technically I had not killed anyone, yet. When Annie
died, on day 22, I am proud to say, it was of her own natural causes, not any
one specific thing I had done. I mean, I had removed the skin from all
but the tough areas on the bottom of her feet, but she was still breathing the
last time I gassed her.
The four other
residents were especially irascible that day, so I gave them a pep talk,
telling them that even though Annie had no more skin to give, I would never
intentionally kill her – I would try to keep all of them alive. I’m sure they
didn’t buy it, and I wasn’t even sure myself.
Now I know, that if I had five living, but completely unskinned beings
taking up room in my basement where perfectly skinned persons could be, I'd be
forced to make other arrangements.
Shonda was getting
there. I had eaten most of her skin, delectable as it was, and now she was a
mess of baking powder and gel covering her musculature. I went “deep” in areas,
relishing her juicy fat layer from time to time, but the top layer was my main
obsession. She toasted up really nice. I
dreamt of eating her forever, just like I used to dream of eating pizza every
day when I was a kid.
Everyone slept
while I removed Annie from the house – no reason to rile them up further. I
buried her in a woods 20 minutes out of town where I was able to drive my car
off the road without anyone seeing me. I took the trouble of burying her deep
and proper - not only to avoid detection but because it’s the right thing to
do. Someday, maybe in 30 years, I'll send her sister an anonymous postcard from
far away telling her where to find the body. Closure. It was hard for me to see
Lisa at work, knowing what she was going through, but I coped.
Two days later, I
replaced Annie with a girl named Anne (imagine that?) She even looked a little
similar, which was probably why I picked her out of the dozens of girls coming
out of the late-night Gold’s Gym spin class. The others used to slip up and call
her Annie, which was kind of a hoot. I, however, always called her Anne. I was
always respectful toward my residents. They threw feces at me and were so
offensive with their language, especially Ricardo who spoke Spanish – it was
like having my own personal x-rated Berlitz tutor in the basement.
Days led to
months, and I learned most of these guys didn’t last long past the time when
they had served their purpose. I think it was the taxing of the constant gas. I
looked into some safer alternatives and tried convincing them to stay quiet
longer and be gassed less, but it usually worked out to 40 days – which seemed
biblical in a way.
Ricardo lasted 55
days before taking his own life by cutting through his veins with the handcuff
edge - and that was a bloody mess. Virginia and Sophie both puked at the
sight of blood – even their own, so I had a lot of PB and J to clean up in
addition to the blood pool. Thank god we had a drain at the far end of the
basement or I would have spent hours traipsing up and down the basement steps with
towels soaked in puke and other bodily fluids.
In November, I had
one incident which was a little disconcerting. I was headed into the basement
for the daily feeding (feed in the morning, harvest in the afternoon), and
after unlocking the basement door, Tough Nuts Tony, scared the shit out of me
as he flew past the threshold wielding a sharp metal object.
Tony Cartiani, was
an Italian from Andover and he wasn’t scared of shit. Every day he would tell
me how he was going to kill me and what he was going to do to make it as slow
and painful as possible. He cracked me up. I nicknamed him Tough Nuts Tony, or
TNT, for short. I was confident he'd still die close to 55 days, but he really
stepped up his game.
Turns out, Tony
had broken his hand to get out of the handcuff, and then fashioned a shiv from
a bracket on my water heater drain pan.
As he came barreling out of the basement, I stared into his mostly
intact face, where I had only recently begun working around a homemade neck
tattoo of a gorilla or a bear or something. More like an inky blob, reminding
me why I avoid skins with tattoos. And
squids.
I dropped the bag
of sandwiches and bottled waters and threw my hands up to defend myself. Tony
came down with a wicked swipe, fileting the palm of my right hand along the
fate line, which, in retrospect, seems appropriate. I reeled back and grabbed a
knife from the butcher block. I stabbed him right in the black blob, where
there's also a major artery, but he was still coming, swiping at me with the
metal bracket. It was like he was on drugs or something and the knife sticking
out of his neck was a minor inconvenience.
Surprisingly, he
didn’t try to go out the front door, as if getting to me and killing me was his
only goal. He was just stumbling around the kitchen table trying to reach me as
both of us were spraying blood everywhere. Bonger who was sleeping right
there, in the kitchen, did nothing to help me, putting his paws over his
eyes, presumably to keep the blood spray out of them.
After our sadistic
game of Duck-Duck-Goose ended with Tony slumping to the floor, I sat in the
chair wiped out and watched Tony’s blood pool on the linoleum. My own injury
looked to be severe. The muscle inside my palm was visible, and my thumb was
twitching uncontrollably. I poured a bunch of Styptic powder into the wound and
superglued the skin together. I did a really shitty job of it and my hand is
permanently cupped to this day. The pain was also unreal for the next three
weeks. I considered gassing myself to get through it.
Now it’s February.
After piling up the body count to 22, with five in the chamber, the heat is
starting to come down. The number of missing persons within a 200-mile radius
is getting to be national news and it’s only a matter of time before they start
door-to-door searches. At least I was smart enough to not be in the center of
the search area.
The way I see it,
I only have a couple of options – stop or move to a new location. Setting all
this up in a new location will be challenging.
But I have to try.