Perfectly Natural

CW: This story has detailed, silly descriptions of violence and gore.

1.

Special Agent Thelonius Pickle and Special Agent Jemima Dump, both of the New Orleans Violent Crimes Unit, squatted next to the dismembered body of former prostitute Areola Grande. Each had a set of nose plugs affixed to their faces, because the corpse, only a couple of hours deceased, was already stinking worse than the urine-filled gutters of Bourbon Street during the Southern Decadence Festival.

“Whaddya think, Dump?” inquired the stoic Pickle.

“Could be we got a serial on our hands,” came Dump’s reply. It was a conclusion Pickle had already considered, this being the third mutilated hooker they had discovered in as many weeks. But, being good detectives, it was incumbent upon them to make all the necessary connections required to prove out this theory.

“Ya brought the rubber gloves, right?” asked Pickle, knowing exactly how messy the next few minutes were bound to be.

“Um, no. It was yer turn to restock. I bought the last two packs.” Dump said, defensively.

“There ain’t no turn takin’, Dump!” replied Pickle with an uncalled-for hostility. “New guy stocks the gear.”

“And where’s that written?” Dump asked, standing her ground.

“It’s understood,” Pickle said flatly.

“Understood, my balls,” Dump shot back. “This ain’t because you got seniority. It’s cause I’m a woman.”

“That is such garbage.”

“And because I’m black!”

“What?! I’m black too,” Pickle said, off-balanced. Regaining his composure, he continued. “This ain’t because yer a broad.”

“Nope,” replied Dump, seemingly agreeing with him. “It’s cause yer a cheap bastard.”

“Now that might be true!” Pickle agreed, relieving the tension hanging over the scene. Dump and Pickle were never really cross with one another. It was just that when a person spent one’s days elbow-deep in the collection of fluids and squish that used to be parts of a whole human body, it tended to make said person a bit pissy.

“Well,” said Pickle resolutely, “I guess I’m raw doggin’ it.” With that, he reached down and started sifting through the pile of miscellaneous body parts, gloveless.

“You ever wonder why a belly button looks more like a hole and a butthole looks more like a button?” Pickle asked, flicking something that could've been a severed one of either of those from the pile of Grande’s remains.

“That’s cold, Pickle, even for you.” Dump was looking at the pieces and parts with dual senses of growing disgust and hope. The disgust was from the fact that her partner, who obviously had no understanding of bloodborne pathogens, was probably giving himself syphilis and hepatitis with his bare-knuckled sift through Areola’s remains. The hope was that he wouldn’t find what he was looking for, the tell-tale proof that would connect this grisly murder to the other two they were currently investigating. If that proof were here, and if a serial killer with this particular distinction were truly on the loose and in active weekly operation, heaven help the Big Easy.

“Bingo,” Pickle grunted, lifting his hands from a crater that probably used to be an abdomen, cupping a handful of greenish-yellow chunky liquid. Jetisoning the ichor to the sides and shaking off his hands like a dog fresh from a rainstorm, sending bits and droplets of it flying toward Dump and all over the crime scene, Pickle made his unqualified pronouncement. “The Gagging Tagger has struck again.”

2.

3 hours prior to Dump and Pickle’s arrival on the scene, Professor Harry Stump, aka the Gagging Tagger, had just solicited the services of one Areola Grande, the French Quarter’s finest piece. Grande had been recommended to him by Stump’s last victim, Buttermilk Wanapecka, shortly before Stump had choked Wanapecka to death with her own severed left buttcheek.

This encounter with Grande started much the same as the Wanapecka affair. Money was exchanged, and a secluded location was requisitioned. Stump had requested that restraints be worn by his victim, and Areola, despite losing two business associates in the past fortnight, agreed, no doubt thinking it all part and parcel of her trade and concerned more with her pay day than with her own safety. Then Professor Stump pulled forth his doctor’s bag and its plethora of sharp and surgical instruments, and his plumber’s kit and its collection of blunt and plunging aperati, and the torture began.

Before delving too deeply into the details of that scene, with its cascades of blood and its tossed-salad carnage of hacked limbs and organs, it serves to try to understand the dichotomous psyche of our evil perpetrator.

Stump, like so many men of distinction before him, was an unexplainable contradiction. How did Thomas Jefferson declare that all men were created free and equal and then rape the slaves he owned as property? It boggles the mind. Why did John F. Kennedy, with the hottest of all first ladies as wife, feel the need to sneak his side huzz into the White House? One can only guess. Why did Tanya Harding kneecap Nancy Kerrigan when Harding obviously had the stronger triple salchow? The logic is inexplicable. The incongruous nature of some baffles mere mortals like ourselves. So too the life of Stump.

You see, Professor Harry Stump was not your everyday mutilating serial killer. He was no run-of-the-mill Jack the Ripper type, only targeting prostitutes and grinding some insane axe against females, Jews, and society at large. Well, actually, all of that stuff basically was true. He was a demented freak, wired to kill, he knew not why, but with an insatiable hunger to cause pain and bodily harm, to end life in dances of screaming agony. So yeah, typical serial killer villain. But, unlike all of those hardcore murderers you’ve seen in Netflix miniserieses, Stump had one unique character trait that set him completely apart. He hated, and grew uncontrollably squeamish at, the sight of blood.

Blood, the motor oil of life, was also the most revolting thing in the world to poor Stump. Imagine the handicap! As all can agree, this lost soul had to kill people in the most brutal and torturous ways possible…he was built that way. But every time he did, each time toenails ripped free and fingers went flying, the bile would build inside Stump’s guts. The heaves would come in great, wracking punches to his midsection. Choking back what needed to spew forth as his hacksaw would rip through bone and gristle, Stump would begin his signature gag. And then, without fail, at the moment when Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer would have been leaving a different kind of clean-up on Aisle 12, Professor Harry Stump would explode in his own special way, vomiting all over what was left of his victims.

Such is the climactic moment when we zoom in on his interaction with Areola. The killing was done, but the carnage was building to a crescendo. She had hung on like a champ too, not dying after the loss of so many appendages and fleshy parts, fighting death until the organs started coming out. She was “retch baiting” him, as Stump liked to call it. Finally, moments after death, right as her stomach exploded from the way Stump was squeezing it like a water balloon, Stump could gag back his personal triumphant culmination no longer. Forth came the three cheese coneys he had had for lunch. Out sprayed the Live Wire Mountain Dew in its toxic orange hues. Up summoned the devils of morning porridge, mostly digested, and milk curdled by his own stomach’s heat. Like a Florentine fountain he sprayed, like a kinked hose uncorked he flowed, and like a forgotten enema patient he expelled his oversaturation. It was this mess that Pickle would flick from his fingers a few hours later, and it was this expulsion that would allow Stump to live a normal existence again, for a few days at least, until the need to release came upon him once more.

3.

The next day, Special Agent Dump and Special Agent Pickle stood behind the podium in the conference room. They were briefing the police force on the perpetrator’s psychological profile that they had developed.

Pickle began. “Shut yer pieholes, ya dirty dogs. Jemima’s gonna give ya the skinny on our slasher. Go ahead, Dump.”

A few snickers came from the Old Boys Club of senior officers who were congregated in the couple of back rows of the room. Jemima Dump, feeling she was being slighted because of her sex and experience, was having none of it.

“Any a you old bastards wanna asphyxiate on your own scrotum, ya just keep gigglin.”

The group was properly hushed.

“Alright then, here’s what ya need to know. We’re looking for a caucasian male, in his 30s or 40s, and probably well off.”

“And how do you know he looks like that?” piped up one of the middle-aged white cops in the back, stewing from the shushing he had just received.

“Don’t worry, Cleveland,” Jemima shot back. “Although ya fit the description perfectly, we’re pretty sure we’re lookin for a different cracker.”

“Alright,” Pickle interjected. “Let’s stay on track here.

“Right,” Dump concurred, calming down. “So anyways, be on the lookout for someone like this, and also someone who may have one more very particular quality that’s only gonna be noticeable if yer really paying attention.”

The room sat silent in anticipation of what the magic missing piece of the perp’s profile might be.

“The guy we’re lookin’ for,” concluded Jemima Dump solemnly, “is a real bitch.”

“Dammit, Dump!” Pickle piped up again. “Why can’t ya just tell it straight?”

“Sorry, Pickle,” Dump continued, properly chastened. “What I mean to say is, the fool we lookin’ for…as strange as this may seem…gets girly at the sight of blood.”

“Typical Dump and Pickle nonsense!” piped up someone from the back.

“Bullcrap!” said another officer, defiantly.

Pickle stepped up and took charge before things could devolve any further. He ended how he had begun.

“SHUT YER PIEHOLES!”

The room quieted.

Pickle continued. “I know it sounds retarded y’all, but Dump’s shootin' ya straight. Our perp, the Gagging Tagger, has a weaker stomach than my drunk Grandpap Johnny on a rollercoaster. No doubt he gets all excited by the gore, like any serial killer freak. He could probably snap his underpants in two after any of these killings. But, like most of us, the blood and stuff really grosses him out.”

“How does that help us?” asked a younger officer near the front of the room, a bright kid named Jack.

“It’s just somethin’ to look at for, Goff.” Pickle replied. “Unfortunately, it’s all we really have to go offa.”

The officers in the room filed out morosely, feeling farther away from capturing the murderer than they had before the briefing.

Pickle turned to Dump and found her solemn expression matched his own.

“If we’re gonna catch this guy, we’re gonna have ta get damn lucky.”

“Like a birthday masochist at the spank factory,” Pickle concluded.

4.

Things might have continued on in that manner indefinitely if not for the squirrel incident.

Professor Harry Stump was enjoying an afternoon stroll in the French Quarter. Wearing his professorial garb of cardigan and loafers, he was attracting very little attention from the tourists around and other local passersby. That was, until he became fascinated with the behavior of one specific grey-tailed squirrel.

The squirrel in question was a bit of a daredevil, and that was what had first caught Stump’s eye. The avenue he had been sauntering along sported huge oak trees on both sides of the street. The trees created a lovely shaded canopy for the cars and pedestrians enjoying the avenue, but the early autumn weather was also causing a bit of a mess in the road. The acorns on the trees' high limbs were beginning to drop to the ground, and many were littered in the gutters and in between the lanes of traffic. The squirrel, no doubt a hoarder, was gathering up a good-sized collection of the nuts, but for whatever reason, he kept braving traffic to grab the ones that rested in the middle of the road, a place never advisable for a squirrel to hang out for a long time.

Stump saw the squirrel run into traffic once, just miss getting hit by a passing car, grab a nut, and speed back to the base of the nearest tree. Stump mentally applauded his bravery, prepared to move along and continue enjoying his walk when the squirrel made a second mad dash into the street. This had Stump intrigued, and he copped a squat on the nearest bench to watch the action. Incredibly, super squirrel emerged from the tree again, no doubt about to brave a third trip into traffic. This was just too much for Stump. The danger, the hint of death so present, the mental vision of the squirrel's body smashed flat under the tires of a car, eyes popping out of the skull, organs shooting out the anus. The visual was making Stump’s seat on the bench uncomfortable.

Stump began to mumble something, at first almost inaudible, but then gaining in volume and timbre the closer the squirrel got to the edge of the street.

“Do it…do it, you furry little bastard.”

The squirrel, seemingly happy to oblige, took a tentative step or two into the street.

“Oh yeah, that’s it, you saucy thing. That is it!”

The squirrel jumped back out of the street, just dodging a car that had been hurtling toward him.

“Oh gosh…oh no, you didn’t. You better get back in there, Daddy. You better go all in!”

Stump’s volume now was quite conspicuous, and other pedestrians who had first stopped to observe the erratic behavior of the daring rodent were now transfixed on the startling behavior of the well-dressed man.

The squirrel was not to be deterred, and again he made a valiant leap into the road, his eyes locked in on a nut of considerable size that would make a prize for any winter’s den. He crossed the first lane of traffic, his personal Rubicon, and Stump found himself as singularly focused as the animal. They were in this together.

“You’re doing it, aren’t you?” Stump asked the squirrel as the beast began to cross the second lane. “You’re trying to make me a very happy man, aren’t you?”

The squirrel gave his non-verbal concurrence by taking another tentative step, now directly in the path of traffic. A car was quickly approaching, and Stump felt the end was near.

“Do it, baby…DO IT!”

A crowd had gathered around now. Only a couple of them were looking at the squirrel.

The squirrel saw the car at the last minute, took two steps forward, and allowed the vehicle to pass right over its head with tires passing on both sides of it.

Stump nearly exploded. “Are you teasing me? Is that what you’re doing, you naughty thing? Are you…” he was having trouble completing the thought. A slight heaving was happening in his chest. “Are you…” he continued, “retch baiting me?!”

By this point, cell phone cameras had come out. Some were panned back far enough to see the squirrel, but most were zoomed right in on Stump’s animated face.

Indeed, it seemed the squirrel’s intention was to prolong the moment of anticipation. After the car passed, the squirrel darted quickly to the middle of the road and got hold of the prized nut. Then, he feigned a run back, but stopped in his tracks an inch shy of another potentially flattening tire. This was more than Stump could handle.

“DO IT! DO IT! DO IT, YOU DAMN TEASE, GO!!!”

The squirrel, never having been cheered on with such exuberance, decided it was time to go, and that’s when it all blew up.

The squirrel ran for and seemingly made it past the first lane of traffic. But, he mistakenly stopped too soon, and his big, fluffy tail got caught under the tire of a Geo Metro. The car wasn’t big, but it was large enough to snatch the tail right off the squirrel and send it flying sky high and onto the windshield of the next oncoming car. Little spurts of blood cascaded around the road as the severed appendage whipperwhilled through the air. In a thoughtless blur of pain and panic, the wounded squirrel shot toward the curb and safety, now no longer giving any thought to dodging traffic. The next car got him square and ran over his back. This forced all of his organs and internals to come expelling out of his mouth, from a face that just happened to be looking directly into the eyes of Professor Stump. Stump was having an almost equally violent reaction.

“YES, OH GOLLY YES!” he screamed in ecstasy, jumping from his bench, lunging toward the dead squirrel, and throwing up his lunch all over the bloody mess of smushed beast in the road. The gory sight must have been spectacular because he continued to heave and retch, losing days and days worth of sustenance, all in a spectacular display of insane macabre gratification.

Calming down finally, he rolled over and found the crowd gathered around him, cell phones recording, people dumbfounded. One or two people actually began clapping. Then the whole group exploded into uncontrollable laughter. Stump sprang to his feet and ran away faster than a squirrel with a perfect nut.

It didn’t take long for the “Squirrel Pervert” videos to make their way viral online, and Dump, Pickle, and the rest of the Violent Crimes Unit to make their arrest. In the interrogation, Stump was shown a number of slasher flicks, and when each ended in a combination of expulsions, they knew for sure they had their man.

Now the hard-working hookers of New Orleans can finally sleep safely knowing the Gagging Tagger and his infamous dagger have been bagged for good.