Gideon’s Lost Gospel: A Snuff Life

The doc’s book: the Opening

“CANNIBAL, n. A gastronome of the old school who preserves the simple tastes and adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period.”

 Ambrose Bierce

Excerpts from the posthumously published autobiography:

“Best Before: A Dance Of Pleasure And Pain”

by Doctor Bartholomew D. Gideon, MD

I was once told by a great man to write what I know.

This is what I know: Snuff.

It was that same great man who also handed down to me another equally useful kernel of knowledge, one that carried me through many dark hours of doubt and on through to the completion of this work. Although, I’m sure that if he knew of the subject matter, he would not have been so forthcoming and helpful.

“When in doubt,” he had told me, “Speak to the page as a friend, a lover, or a stranger if you must, but forge on and converse. You will find comfort there. Inspiration’s embrace is fleeting and often fickle, so when she calls, go to her and hold tight for as long as you can before she leaves you with nothing but a vague memory and an empty page.”

I do not name him here out of respect for his widow, who asked me to refrain from divulging his identity. With gratitude and understanding, I will honour her in this.

Friend, Lover, Stranger.

My Struggle, my Search, my Snuff, my saviour of man’s folly:

I choose you, stranger.

Chapter 1

My Struggle

Hello You.

Yes. That’s what it says: Snuff—and I do not mean it as a nasally ingested substance. You know what I mean. I say “you,” because I may as well include you, just to lend some ease to you as you traverse this journal. Allow me to cut straight to the question that I know must be scorching the back of your tongue. How, you ask, could a doctor of psychiatry find himself swept into such a dark practice?

Not that much of a stretch, really. How I came to produce, and direct—no, orchestrate these films—is of little importance now. But I will tell you why I stayed with it. One, no, two reasons. Money—glorious money. Did you know that if you pad the walls and floor with enough money you can’t hear the screams from the basement? It’s true; I wouldn’t lie to you.

The other reason is because—and I believe there’s a little of this in everyone—I am a devout fanatic of tragedy and carnal pleasures of the flesh…just like you.

No, you say? This isn’t something you would do? I say, “Liar,” and boldly so. It is inherent in us all, though some—I count myself among that number—boldly embrace this truth as the release from the norm that it truly is.

Come on in. The water is fine.

Believe me. I am the doctor here, remember?

Why so fidgety? Is it because you are afraid to admit that you secretly know that I speak the truth? It’s alright. It will be our little secret. You see, every living thing kills something else to further its own lifespan or territory, but Man is the only animal that also kills for sport. Is it for trophies to hang on a wall? Or a brazen invitation to the rest of nature to admire Mankind’s superiority over all that swims, flies, runs, or crawls?

No.

I believe it is fear. This is where you ask: Fear of what?  And I nod knowingly, and say, just loud enough for you alone to hear: It is the fear of being wrong, my friend. You seem confused. If you don’t understand what I mean by “wrong,” ask your priest, rabbi, or Buddhist monk. They may not tell you, but they will know. They will know.

I believe that Mankind strives to distance itself from the stench of evolution through practiced denial. With a mile-high wall of flowery words, the human race screams, “I am no link in the chain. I am outside the chain.”  And so the chant continues unchecked; building speed until the shrill cry becomes nothing more than five simple words bled impossibly across each other, layering into a solid, shrill cry of, “Iamnotamonkey.” 

Which we all know is a lie, even though the Monkey-Scopes trial still rages on in the back alleys and side streets of Heaven. What? Not a lie? Yes! Yes it is. I know. I know this because I’ve seen the worst things that you can do. I have them alphabetized, categorized and rated by content—all for your viewing pleasure…for a small fee, of course. You understand; nothing is free anymore.

I am certain that, among my vast library, you’ll find a multitude of vulgar yet deliciously barbaric deaths and mutilations; a bullet, knives, a good old fashioned disembowelment, or the ripper special: Strangulation.

Go ahead, peek through your fingers; I’m not here to judge.

These are fine ends, to be sure, but they don’t hold a candle to the utter savagery involved in laying flesh back to the bone with nothing but teeth and fingernails. Fear not, I do not speak from personal experience. I am no monster. I watch, nothing more.

Of all the Manimals that have realized that their gene pool started as nothing more than a guppy pond many millions of moons ago, my favorite has always been the earliest and most basic: The cannibal. Prostitution may be the oldest profession, but cannibalism was mealtime long before three grunts and a shrill whistle could name it. Back before the tail fell off and the gills disappeared, that reptile reflection in the puddle would have looked mighty tasty cooked up and served with a side of beetles. Yum.

Are you still with me?

It was this lust—no, not lust—desire that drove me to search out these carnivores—no easy task let me tell you. This part-time odyssey spanned most of my adult life. Along the way, I became well acquainted with a few of their numbers and eventually was given the opportunity to employ some as performers. Being showmen at heart, these murderers danced for the camera like bears mugging for treats at the circus.

And, oh, how they danced in my Black Maria.

They are out there: That gentleman in the check-out line to the left of you, the friendly fellow that held the door for you at the bank, or your tow-truck driver—could be anyone. That’s what they do, you see. They can be anyone.

Archangel is one of those anyones.

Zane Ellis—this is not his birth name—basically fell into my lap. He was given into my care after a most unfortunate incident involving his parents and a week-long, one-man Donner party revival. The lad was barely out of his teens, but, right away, I knew he was special. His career with the firm would be both long and distinguished. He did not let me down. Ten years later, and the glory of his mastery still outshines the sun.

Oh, yes. I wax needlessly. I was speaking of my hunt. We’ll rejoin Zane later.

I was able to locate many of these cannibals without difficulty. That is to say, until that ugly business with Armin Meiwes, the “Rotenburg Cannibal,” as he was so ineptly labeled by a drooling press. After Meiwes’ confession and the release of his private library to privateers worldwide, the world suddenly believed in the boogey man again.

Across the globe, police agencies were finally waking to this entity.

The dominoes began to fall in Germany first, then sporadic arrests of others around the globe found the tipped spotted tiles webbed out like veins in a drunken eye. I’ve tracked the many cannibals migration from that overturned floorboard, as they scurried away like roaches from a light. The hunters-become-hunted forsook their cozy Internet haunts and chat rooms, and bled back to their dark places like sand through a sieve.

I followed.

Many of them stayed dormant, like fish in the bottom of a dried riverbed, waiting. I catalogued and nothing more; I would never turn them in, but I knew who and where they were. Some of the more resourceful, as well as numerous hard core fanatics, resorted back to the old school tactics of their forefathers—to a more personal approach. Often clumsy, but never boring, these killers would employ long unused skills to stalk and capture their prey, and then, take what they would.

The Supermarket Cannibals—as Zane called them—often dealt with certain specialty “agencies” which acted as a go-between, matching customers to a product they called “cattle.” Small advertisements would be placed in obscure fetish magazines, and other left field media—a cattle call.

Here, let me give you a taste. The following is an actual advertisement:

Bored? Feel alone?

Life not turn out the way you wanted?

Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be eaten alive?

If you answered YES to any of these questions, come on down and learn about something your friends may already know…”

I’m sure you get the idea. Successful cattle—those dumb enough to apply—would be accepted into special training camps as slaves and could later be bought at auctions. Farfetched, I know—even to me. It is true, though. But you should just take it from me, and do not, I repeat, do not go looking for yourself. In finding what you are looking for, it may also find you.

Or, if you do decide to go looking, bring a camera crew along so that others may, at the very least, glean some sort of amusement from your stupidity. Maybe they’ll sell it to me. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Some cannibals used what they called “pets” to procure meals. This was a widely common practice for cannibals that utilize this particular vehicle to network with each other, thus reducing costs by pooling resources. Sometimes regarded as “Judas cows,” these paid pets—normally vagrants or derelicts—would pose as prostitutes or drug dealers and lead unsuspecting “clients” into the stew pots of their masters. This type of man-eater is one that I find to be slightly more interesting than your garden variety mass murderer. Although quaint, they are extremely unruly—and for this reason my dealings with them have been quite limited. I find that they carry a shelf life of no more than five years, and most of them are as bright as a match held up to the sun. Many of this type would murder each other just as quickly as they would, say, you—for food, or fun…or just to see the pretty spray of color as an artery’s contents make a crimson rainbow in the afternoon sun.

In this subculture, as in any hierarchy, there were, and are, those who rose to the top, spoken of in many circles as near-royalty. These are men…and a few women (sorry, ladies, but it is a widely known fact that women make better victims than killers) with the savvy and means to soar above their contemporaries, but below the radar of outside entities which would otherwise incarcerate or kill them. This breed finds the tease of the hunt to be as exhilarating as the feed—sometimes more so. A killer like this, given the proper funding and resources, could expect a long and fruitful career.

This leads me back to Zane; my brightest hope and mightiest failure. He is whoever you want him to be. He adapts and excels in the art of seeming nondescript—or standing out; it’s his forte, if you will. He loves the theatrics of the experience in its entirety, but sometimes these traits carry him a little too far, and he stumbles. During these lapses I help him up, dust him off, and put him back on course.

It’s the angels. That, above all else, is his major problem. It is always the angels that get him into trouble. Not real angels: the ones that he paints. And don’t get me started on Canada…or that girl, what’s-her-name.

I’m sorry. I digress. His side-line “art,” as he calls it, holds more pain than portent between us. I will move on.

Consider me lucky to find one so in love with his work. You cannot see me, but as I think of him, my heart swells with pride. There are many like him, but this one is mine. Not only was he my most intriguing patient, he has also been my biggest star. There is a very rich, albeit select, market for his medium—or I should say, our medium—and we’ve bathed in its splendor.

We make movies. Probably not the kind of films Thomas Edison had in mind when he invented the Kinetoscope. But then again, the personal massager was originally marketed as a therapeutic aid for sore muscles. They now come with more attachments than a Swiss army knife, and speed settings.

Before you judge, know this: I am a businessman and this is my business. I am not the deviant here. I provide a service to a select few who see through the brutality of the act to the raw essence of Man the beast. So a candle or two gets snuffed in the process.

That’s life.

All life?

No.

But, what is “life,” anyway? Is it the hours between dawn and dusk? Or atoms, to breath, to dust, back to atoms?

I can only shrug, and say, “Why does it matter?”

Are we not—at the end of life, after the coffin drops and the mourners go back to their drone-like existence—just meat packed in a single serving container? The expiry date is written right there on the stone above the box. It is today, always today. So, with this knowledge slowly making the circuit through your cerebellum, one should think it would be prudent to get it while it is fresh.

Somewhere out there, there’s a dinner bell chiming. Is it you?