Jeremy Brown was at first surprised to read the New York Mirror headlines. Professor Leticia Commodore had been bludgeoned to death in her apartment on the Upper East Side. “It was a nasty sight,” her landlord told the press. Her assailant, Robert Killeen, a student of hers, was reported to be a “nice guy” by everyone who knew him.
Although he hadn’t seen her in years, Jeremy Brown reflected on
the thoughtless yet abrasive remark she made to him nearly fifteen years
before, when he himself was a student and an extremely impressionable, youthful
gentleman. “You’re’ too nice. I like men who treat me nasty.”
Abnormal Psych
101
a short short
story by Slim Blazinfire
After
applying her lip-gloss and powdering her face, Dr. Shirley Krautburger, with a
swagger, slicked her hair back into a ducktail. She had disposed of her one
hundred and fifty-seventh victim by cutting it into tiny pieces after removing
certain vital organs she coveted: the vagina, the heart and the liver.
One hundred and fifty seven was a kindly little blond-haired
Gentile girl she had picked up in the supermarket while the child’s mother’s
back was turned. She had then sautéed the vagina, the heart and the liver and
added it to her matzo ball soup. What a delightful supper. Now she was looking
forward to teaching Abnormal Psych 101 at the Community College. Little did her
students know the truth. Her topic today would be Pedophiles and Serial
Killers. She would carefully profile the disgusting men who
abduct little girls, then eat their vital organs and dispose of the bodies.
How she hated men. While she was still a child, her mother had
taught her to hate her father, Irving Fleissburger, a man her mother claimed
had deserted them. “He’s a Gentile-hating child molester, a rapist and a
murderer,” her mother told her, all lies she had finally come to realize,
except for the part about the Gentile-hater. Plus, she knew damned well why her
father left them, that her mother had driven him away. It was her mother who
was the child molester, the rapist, the murderer, as well as a Gentile-hater.
Shirley identified with her mother, her hateful mother . . . the
child molester, the rapist, the murderer and the Gentile-hater.
As her own mother had poisoned her mind, Shirley
Fleissburger-Krautburger would attempt to poison the minds of her students, to
make certain that her male students hated themselves and that her female
students hated all the males in the class, all of the males in the world.
Furthermore, she would program her female students, her Manchurian
candidates, into sodomizing Gentile females and filing false rape charges
against Gentile males. She knew she was evil. She delighted in her devilish
plans. She also knew she was a paranoid schizophrenic. She’d diagnosed herself.
But her students didn’t have to know. That was her little secret.
While driving to work at the college one morning, Dr. Krautburger
reflected on the bikini-clad hotties in the latest swimsuit edition
of Hardball Sports Illustrated, the magazine she’d subscribed to for her “wimp”
husband and two sons, who were, fortunately for her, away for the week,
attending a Super Bowl event. She fantasized herself sodomizing the hottie of
the month. Little did anyone need to know the truth about her. That was Dr.
Shirley Krautburger’s secret.
She was proud of herself in having convinced everyone that Dr.
John Bartholomew, the previous psych department chair, was sexually harassing
her, when in fact he was a nice guy, which to her was the same as a wimp.
Nevertheless, she’d managed to inherit his chair after he blew his brains out,
so they thought. Little did anyone know that it was she who blew Dr.
Bartholomew’s brains out. And she’d afterwards carefully removed her
fingerprints from the revolver, then positioned it near the corpse of Dr.
Batholomew, so that there would be no telltale evidence. Little did anyone have
to know the truth about her. That was another one of swaggering Dr. Shirley
Krautburger’s little secrets.
The front page of The Daily World blurted it out.
Churchy civic leader Madelyn Krockmeyer Bladesdell, 61, had been bludgeoned to
death in her bed eight years after the death of her oil baron husband. The
woman’s vocal chords had been ripped out and were found floating in her bedpan.
A dozen paring knives, a dozen swords and a dozen bayonets penetrated her flesh
from multiple angles. A quotation from the Bible had been scrawled in blood-red
lipstick on the wall over her bed: Do not think I came to bring peace on
earth. I came to bring a sword! For I have come to set a son against his
father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law. A man’s enemies shall be of his own household! Yours truly,
Jesus Christ . . . Matthew 10:34-35 . . . . Vengeance is mine!
The
obituary went on to mention that the oilman’s widow had been a member of the
board-of-directors of the Children’s Home Society, of the Riverside Family
Counseling Service, of Planned Parenthood, and of the Riverside Public Library.
She had contributed generously to B’nai B’rith and the Anti-Defamation League.
An ardent feminist, she had served as the first female member of the vestry of
St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, then, as the first female elder of the
Presbyterian Church.
Tall, lean, twenty-four-year-old Ted Bladesdell had waited and
waited for this moment. While his biceps had slowly turned to steel, his heart
had turned to stone. His wicked step-grandmother had been unrelenting over the
years in her efforts to drive a wedge between him and his grandfather, in her
efforts to degrade, to defile, and to humiliate Ted with her castrating
remarks.
Twelve-year-old Ted had been looking forward to visiting his
grandfather during the Christmas holidays, and he had never forgotten the cruelly
disparaging note the wicked woman had inserted in the envelope containing his
grandfather’s Christmas card, telling him to stay away, that he would never be
welcome in her home and to not try to invade it.
Ted was sixteen
the first time he’d ever laid eyes on the wicked woman, the first time he’d
dared to defy the threatening wicked words of her poison pen, when he knocked
on the front door of his grandad’s home. And that was the last time he ever saw
his grandfather alive. The wicked woman had stood over the two of them,
brandishing a paring knife, which she held in her hand only inches from Ted’s
head, verbally castrating him, humiliating him, defiling him with her evil
tongue. What incensed Ted the most was that she did it right in front of Ted’s
granddad, who’d been left paralyzed from a stroke and couldn’t utter a word.
The fateful
scene had replayed itself over and over in Ted’s head, the sight of the paring
knife clutched tightly in his wicked step grandmother’s hand and pointed at his
head, while her cruel, evil, castrating words echoed in his ears.
“Help!
Someone help me!” he would later scream as her wicked apparition appeared,
hovering over his head in the middle of the night, even though he was alone in
his own bedroom and miles away from her.
What
remaining sense of self-worth Ted had was soon quelled by the Marine Corps
drill instructor, Little Jesus, who repeatedly reminded Ted that
he was lower than whale shit on the bottom of the ocean and instructed
Ted how to twist a bayonet into human flesh without feeling so much as a pang
of remorse.
Both
Madelyn Krockmeyer Bladesdell and Little Jesus had nurtured Ted well for the
task he had to do. Now the wicked witch was gone. He’d finally released his
broiling, seething pent-up anger. He’d made the Churchy two-faced witch suffer
right up to the last minute . . . yet not nearly enough, he thought later. Not
nearly as much as she’d made him suffer with her viciously vulgar, evil words.
But, he’d surely be acquitted. Justifiable homicide, any decent judge would
say.
Judge
Bloodgood deliberated in his chambers for ten minutes, then returned to the
courtroom: Ted Bladesdell, you are a fine man, a valiant man. You have
conducted yourself as any normal red-blooded man would have under the
circumstances in which you found yourself. I knew Madelyn Bladesdell well. I
knew her to be a wicked, malicious two-faced witch, if there ever was one! The
Church and the Marine Corps taught you it was right to kill. I hereby find you
Not Guilty. May your remaining days be more pleasant. Walk proudly, hold your
head high and take care of yourself, my man. The witch is dead! Hallelujah! By
the way, Mr. Bladesdell, you might be pleased to learn that Little Jesus
himself was beheaded with a bayonet by one of his recruits who said he got fed
up with being told that he was lower than whale shit on the bottom of the
ocean.
Thank you,
Your Honor, Ted Bladesdell replied to Judge Bloodgood, You have made my day,
Sir!
As Ted left
the courtroom he reflected on the words of Jesus Christ, as recorded in the
Book of Matthew: Do not think I came to bring peace on earth. I did not
come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his
father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law, and a man’s enemies shall be those of his own household.
Ted then
added: and I have come to free a grandson from the wicked spell of his
wicked step-grandmother!
Ted then heard a voice. It
seemed to come from the heavens above. It said: Thank you, Ted. I
am proud of you, my son. You have overcome the wicked witch!