“She’s cutting my fucking throat!” he
shouted as I walked into the room.
The man was quite an interesting
sight. Tall, skinny, brown hair, blue eyes, strong jaw, hadn’t shaved in days,
and the perpetual jitterers of a man truly frightened to his core. The officer
who escorted me in told me his name was Travis McCurry and that he was just
another run of the mill wackjob adamantly admitting to a crime which probably
hasn’t taken place, at least not by Travis. However he was an interesting
wackjob, the officer told me, so apparently worthy of some psychoanalysis.
“Who fucked him up?” I asked the
officer as I had watched Travis through mirrored glass.
The officer, a fat, squat, bald
little man in his late thirties, just chuckled, “you’ll have to ask him, Doc,
‘cause we surely didn’t believe it.”
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“Wasn’t you guys?” I inquired.
“No man,” said the officer, “he came
in like that.”
“She’s cutting my fucking throat.”
“Who?”
“The woman I killed a year ago.”
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I sat down across from Travis
McCurry. He wasn’t handcuffed but he was beaten to a bloody pulp. Two black
eyes, nose still dripping blood, swelling on his cheekbones, split lips, top
and bottom, his neck looked as if someone had already cut it, deeply, but it
had already begun healing and was knitting together cleanly. Additionally, he
had two large patches of dried blood on his shirt, one on each pectoral. He sat
uncomfortably in a graywhite chair in a graywhite room with a graywhite table.
A pale florescent light flickered on the ceiling and glimmered just slightly on
the mirrored glass behind which the officers watched us.
“Killed?” I inquire.
He looked exapersated and utterly
exhausted. “You’re the third cop I’ve told this too! Is this a joke to you?”
“I’m not a police officer,
Travis,” I replied, paused, then quickly added, “is it ok to call you
Travis?”
He took a deep breath and leaned back
in the wooden chair, “its fine….but if you’re not a cop what are you?”
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I introduced myself as a clinical
psychiatrist that the police employ from time to time to sus out various
confusing situations and talk to people in certain predicaments where police
are inadequate.
Travis stared at me for a moment,
then stood up and, in dramatic fashion, took off his bloody shirt and threw it
on the floor.
His nipples, still bleeding, had been
cleanly sliced off leaving two dark-red oozing patches on his chest.
“Sus that out…they literally rotted
off me, before my very eyes, decayed and turned to dust over just a few
months….the doctors couldn’t explain it, and once it got this bad they tell me
there’s no way a sharp instrument hadn’t done this….they thought I did it to
myself! Tried to commit me! And look at my fucking throat, man! I’m days away,
hours, minutes maybe! ”
I took a deep breath in an effort to
retain my composure.
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“….do you wanna tell me what
happened?…”
“Already told them…”
“Yes, but they don’t believe
you…try me.”
“Look, that’s what happens next, after the
nipples, I swear, she’s gonna cut my throat!”
Hysterics were setting in. I instruct
him to take a deep breath and he does.
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He was calming down, tired now,
having exerted himself.
“Tell me what happened, Travis.”
He exhaled, sighing audibility to
demonstrate his displeasure, gathered his thoughts and began.
“The night I buried her I started to
feel it…gentle at first, just a light stinging on my ass cheeks, then, over
the next few weeks it got more and more intense, a slapping, like someone was
smacking my ass. Within a month or so the red ass graduated to
these…inexplicable…bumps and bruises…”
He pointed to large, severe and
obviously fresh scrapes and bruises all over his torso and face.
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“…these have been here for six
months.” he looked me sternly in the eye, “and they fucking hurt, worse every
day.”
“Then my nipples….a burning at first,
like a paper cut, then it started to feel like someone was slicing them off…I
went to the doctor, stitches, cauterizations, referral after referral…”
“No results?” I ask calmly, to break
the silence.
“No,” he replied after a moment. “It
just kept getting worse, my face has looked like this for months… months! It
looks like I got my ass kicked yesterday but I haven’t gotten my ass kicked in
years, not like this anyway…
“Then my neck started, a little sting
at first, then the same feeling I had in my nipples: a slow deliberate slicing
that gets worse every minute, every second of everyday, deeper and deeper into
my throat…and you don’t believe a word of it…”
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I leaned across the table slowly and
made eye contact.
“I believe that you believe it,
Travis.”
“But?” he returned eye contact in a
confrontational manner.
I choose my words carefully,
“…but…I think it would be quite difficult for a dead woman to do this to
you…”
He stayed silent, looking down at his
lap, eyes welling with tears.
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“What do you want us to do, Travis?
How can we protect you?”
He looked up, “I don’t know, I feel
like this will stop if I confess and…I don’t know, am punished, if justice is
served or something… maybe if I tell what I did to her it won’t happen to
me…I don’t know! It’s a year now and I’m out of options…”
Long gone now was the man yelling at
me just a few minutes ago. Now he had broken down, looking beaten and without
hope. At that moment nothing remained of his spirit…I pitied him, pitied him
more than I have pitied any man in a very long time.
I stood up and placed my hand
comfortingly on Travis’ shoulder. “Tell me her name.”
“Algea….Algea Reid, I still have her
school I.D, I tried to show them but…..why do you ask?”
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“Well,” I explained, “I’m going to
ask the police to search her name up, and if your story about killing her
checks out, and she’s missing or had been found dead then you’ll get to make
your confession, I’ll talk to the police, you have my word.”
He said nothing but I noticed a very
faint glimmer of hope in his bloodshot eyes.
I patted him on the shoulder once
more and exited.
“Run that name please.”
“Already on it,” one officer replied.
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I poured myself a steaming cup of
coffee, black with just a bit of sugar.
“What had he done to that girl?” I
wondered aloud.
I had recognized no guilt in his
eyes, only fear, only self-preservation. It was an intense fear, a bone
rattling fear, the fear of a man facing the abyss of death…but a fear not
based on guilt.
Only someone who feels guilty would self-mulatate in his
position, he doesn’t qualify, screams a voice in my head
“Got her!” I heard an officer shout
victoriously behind me, startling me.
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I sip my coffee and turn around to
hear.
“I guess Mr. Crazy’s story sorta
checks out,” he began to read from the printout, “Algea Reid…white, female
21, attending Huntington Nursing school, goes missing from her birthday party
on January 28th…hell!….exactly one year ago today!”
“Happy birthday, Algea!” another
officer rudley interjects. Everyone laughs.
“…goes to bar “the Nite Owl” with
friends celebrating her 21st birthday, leaves with older man in mid thirties,
described as tall, well dressed and handsome by her friends…who apparently
recognised little else through their vodka goggles…”
There was a brief pause, then the
officer looked up from the printout with a perplexed expression, “I don’t know,
Sergeant Baxter, should I get a statement from him?”
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“A bit late for that,” I say cutting
off Sergeant Baxter’s reply as I look through the mirrored glass.
The officers crowd around me to see
the brutal site.
Travis McCurry’s throat had been cut, deeply, and he had bled to death, likely in a matter of minutes, on a cold concrete floor, bruised and battered, in a pool of his own blood…alone in the room…
Hello! My name is Tyler R. Martin. I’m a 22 year old U.S Army veteran of the Iraq conflict and am now a full time writer/poet. I run a poetry blog called Bourbon, Cigarettes and Syllables at bourboncigarettesandsyllables.com. Please enjoy my submissions and thank you in advance for taking the time to read my work!
Continuing our AI journey from last time exploring Little Red Riding Hood herself as the Big Bad Wolf… All of these are based upon the AI generated art and prompts using NightCafe and then created as posters in Canva.
How very… Phantom of the Opera predatory… this is definitely not what I had in mind. Maybe something more cutesy?
Ugh. Maybe not.
Wow, that seems like such a cop out, cropping off the head so you don’t have to depict it. And I don’t want to lose the Little Red Riding Hood reference completely.
So no surprise there, I knew that was too many references to work.
And as promised in Big Bad Poetry, we shall embark on our next AI journey, this time looking at Little Red Riding Hood. I had wanted to depict her as the Big Bad Wolf one and the same, although maybe not so big nor bad. But it just wasn’t happening quite as planned. All of these are based upon the AI generated art and prompts using NightCafe and then created as posters in Canva.
So I actually like this even better than my original vision, it is playful and even a bit serene (especially given the Sinister style). The wolf is just being a wolf. It’s quite lovely, really. But it wasn’t what I had in mind, so I revisited the idea later to see if I could get that result…
Over the river and through the wood flashed the fleet-footed Red Riding Hood on her way to her “grandmother’s” house.
When running past, who should she see but just one of the little pigs three cowering like but a tiny mouse.
“But my dear piggy, what do you fear?” Red Riding Hood asked as she slunk near, teeth hidden under a sheepish smile.
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The nervous small pig looked up in fright and decided that Red was alright, missing the subtle clues by a mile.
“The Big Bad Wolf, that horrible beast upon the other wee pigs did feast!” the last little pig said with a squeal.
Red Riding Hood laughed with a great growl and threw back her heavy long-robed cowl, in a vast terrifying reveal.
For she was really the wolf Big Bad hidden beneath the cape that he had stolen from Red Riding Hood at point.
“And now I’ve caught you too my pretty and surely t’wouldn’t be a pity if I gobbled you up in this joint.”
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T’was then the wee pig leapt to his feet And cried, “Big Bad Wolf, I shall defeat, for I am no ordinary swine!”
The little pig also wore sheep’s clothes spun in spells every woodland witch knows; Old Granny herself was quite divine.
“Now give me back my granddaughter’s cape, before I grab you by your ruffed nape and send you pig-squealing down the road…”
The wolf dropped the cape and ran, that cur, but Granny was swifter and hexed his fur and the wolf she turned into a toad.
Thus the moral of this story goes, when in the woods, no one really knows what sheepish sheep’s clothing is a ruse that big bad wolves and old witches use.
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So this is actually an intro to my next AI art journey with NightCafe which developed from me not getting the results I wanted (Little Red Riding Hood herself as a wolf). Here’s a preview with Eric’s versions as he is much more literal in his prompting than I am, but where’s the fun in that? 😉
Prompts (from left to right) in Dark Fantasy style, executed Aug. 1, 2023:
Bipedal wolf in Red Riding Hood’s cloak
Bipedal wolf in Red Riding Hood’s cloak close up portrait
Bipedal wolf in red cloak close up portrait
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.