Neal Romanek - words/worlds » Fictions

True Murders #1 – Christopher Marmalate

Neal Romanek — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:01:36 +0000

From Michael Galindo’s “True Murders: A Book of Murders & Murderers”:

CHRISTOPHER MARMALATE

“The Foot Farmer”

Christopher Marmalate, aka “The Foot Farmer” (b. 1916 – d. 1951) murdered fifteen young men between the ages of 16 and 25 over a single summer in 1951. Marmalate lived in a small two-room house with no plumbing or electricity at the edge of a piece of public wasteground outside Spirit Lake, Iowa, USA.

Christopher Marmalate served in WWII in the Pacific and was several times disciplined for assault and drunkenness. He was discharged four months before the end of the war after his parents, along with two younger sisters, died when a tornado struck their Iowa home, leaving as the only survivor Christopher’s young brother, Paul Marmalate. In April 1949, Paul Marmalate was killed by a train. The wheels of the train parsed Paul’s body into 7 separate pieces. Christopher identified Paul’s body after it had been discovered by a group of teenagers. The remains were cremated.

In mid-May 1951, 20 year old bachelor Sam Knauss was reported missing, after he failed to report to his job as a delivery truck driver for five days in a row and family members found his house abandoned. Sam Knauss had been last seen at an after-hours bar on the outskirts of Sioux City by bookstore owner Morgan Krieger, a bar Christopher Marmalate was known to have occasionally visited.

Marmalate dispatched his victims by gunshot, usually with a single shot to the head. Although in at least three of the victims, multiple gunshot wounds to the back and torso indicate the victim attempted to flee or evade dying.

Spirit Lake, Iowa - aerial survey

After shooting the victims, he severed their feet at the ankle joints. Initially he used a newly purchased hacksaw, but by the end of the summer a heavy axe was employed. Marmalate then buried the severed feet in holes carefully plotted in a circle around his house.

Though there was no way to absolutely match up every severed foot with its owner, it is believed that Sam Knauss’s feet were the first to be buried, in a line 24 feet away from Christopher Marmalate’s front door.

All Christopher Marmalate’s victims were from the Sioux City, Iowa area. The feet of each man were buried, within hours of their owner’s murder, exactly 24 feet away from the killer’s front door. The number 24 was somehow significant to Marmalate, as revealed by the many diagrams and maps of the area he drew and which were found strewn around his dwelling – marked with the number 24, or multiples of it, accompanied by arrows and cryptic symbols.

Marmalate died of a self administered gunshot wound – fired from the same WWI issue Colt revolver he had used to kill his victims. Police arrived to find the body lying in a shallow, hastily dug trench after receiving an anonymous tip about the murders. It’s almost certain the tip was a call from Marmalate himself.

Over 100 maps and diagrams, drawn in pencil on cardboard and scrap paper, were retrieved from the Marmalate House. These are currently held by the State Historical Society Of Iowa. The Society’s museum has an extensive collection of material about the “Foot Farmer” killings.

—

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Tarzan, Mon Ami

Neal Romanek — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:10:00 +0000

TARZAN, MON AMI

(from his faithful friend Paul d’Arnot, Capt.)

How lordly indeed you are, my friend,
In the new suit from La Confection des Élysées.
How you honour them
By condescending to wear it.

When I was in the jungle
With you, at your mercy,
I was afraid of you.
Now here in La Ville-Lumière,
Where no man like you has walked for 10,000 years, now you are afraid.

You showed yourself to me, naked in your jungle – the only fearless man in all the world.
And now I see you, hackles up,
Moving from stillness to stillness like an unquiet animal.
When the marquise shakes your hand and says “Honored. Honored,”
You smell the blood on his
Breath, and you chill and wonder why no one else does. Are they all in league?
When the girl in service curtsies, says “Bonjour, monsieur,”
You hear her heart breaking, and you wonder why no one else does.

Return to the jungle my friend, out of this dangerous place.

Return to the tranquil jungle, under your mother’s canopy,
Where the names of things come easily to your mouth, where things are called what they are.

Every word of French I taught you – like ashes in my mouth.
I said “God made you a gentleman at heart, my friend”!
Dieu!
I feared you so.
I hoped to make you into something more like me. How could I know that I was making you
More dangerous with every word? Injecting you slowly with urbane distemper,
Pasteurizing you with good intentions.
When tantor became l’éléphant,
Numa, le lion,
Hista, le serpent – per Académie! -
I turned the sweet opera of your world
into the jeers of packs of lunatics, the whoops and hoots of cannibals.

That you would save my life and mother me back to health and I in repayment, would set the dogs on you.

Forgive me, Tarzan.

There was a moment, mon ami, when you were almost saved.
Do you remember? Did you know?
I put on my helmet, ready to go,
Picked up my revolver from that wide table stump, the one I’d made my toilet table.
And – perhaps in fever still? – abruptly threw it into the brush.

I didn’t know why then.

But I know now. After that month with you, I felt so naked, vulnerable, like a baby cleaving to his rattle. I had to throw it away or lose all courage forever.

But you retrieved it for me.
You dived after it.
You put it back in my hand.
“Tu, tu, tu, tu, tu!” you chirped like a jungle bird, pressing the revolver on me.

And I accepted it.
I shouldn’t have accepted it, should I?
I ought to have thrown it again, farther still, and turned my back on you.
Should have run away down to the river and never seen you again,
Emerged from the jungle a better, braver man.

I waited for you to run away,
While hoping you’d stay
To lead me home.
Hoping – again, yes – that you’d do my work for me. Poor slave.

By nightfall, you had brought me to the Solomougou Post
Where the men smelled like bloody earth
And more vermin creeped than in the deepest jungle.
I held your arm.
Together we found a one who would take us down river next day.

All night you perched in a tree – do you remember? -
Watching the coolies, after hours, stagger and sing below.

On the river the pilot asked many many questions about the strange white man out of the jungle -
Not about me, one more European out of his depth – about you.
I answered them. I answered all his questions!
What a villain!
The gall I had to answer his questions about you!
Maybe I was fevered still. Not in my right mind. Not in my right mind.

Forgive me, Tarzan, my White Skin. Forgive me.

C’est une drôle d’idée – that you should be “White Skin”.

Among my shallow, colorless people, you are deep and black as your rivers, deep and black as your night,
Deep, black as the great expanse that cradled and suckled the world before the mind of Le Dieu blasted away all that was peaceful, wiped away all that made sense and was sweet and perfect.

I have a black top hat and a black coat. And in Belgium the winters are white and wide and cold.

The Africans, in those hell-squalors we saw along the river,
I swear I saw them shed tears at the sight of you.

I swear I heard them sing:

“Oh there goes an African. Africa has made that man. And only Africa made him. He was not deprived of his lordly heritage, no. No. He was rescued and exalted. Exalted by the land. Saved by Africa. Taught by Africa to be strong and wise and to hear all the knowledge pouring in like cataracts from within, from without. Oh, Africa, that unites spirit and mind. Oh, Africa, that unites heaven and hell. And, look, they are taking him away! And they are taking him away!”

Mon Dieu, my white ape.
I have returned you to the hands of your captors.
I have delivered you back into the clutches of the slavers.

Forgive me, Tarzan.
Forgive me, Tarzan.

—

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Sapin

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Interview With Brother Cory Three Blanco

Neal Romanek — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 06:07:00 +0000

(excerpt of an interview with
Master Brother Corey Aurem Three Banca CSE,
of the 3rd Order Of Lemsas-At-Dakka, Subsecretary of Public Mind,
Faculty of The Cyclopedia Of Worlds)

INTERVIEWER: So this picture. What is it? It’s a planet.

BROTHER CORY AUREM THREE BANCA: This is an image captured of the world called Aeminal. It is a planet which is blessed in being the ceremonial residence of The Great Supreme Eminence Who Cannot Be Named. The Residence is on a chain of islands off the south-east coast of the large sea that is visible there in the image.

INTERVIEWER: Okie, dokie. And exactly what is the Great Supreme Eminence?

BROTHER BANCA: It is the Supreme Eminence who declared the The Cyclopedia Of Worlds should be made available. It is to Him that all gratitude and allegiance is due.

INTERVIEWER: Hmm. Is he some kind of cult leader?

BROTHER BANCA: (laughing) The Eminence leads nothing, the Eminence is followed by no one. To Him we offer up our gratitude. And our gratitude He reflects back to us. But these are matters of little import truly. May we keep the discussion to the availability of The Cyclopedia Of Worlds?

INTERVIEWER: Uhhh. I guess. If you want.

BROTHER BANCA: Many thanks. I would very much like to if it would be convenient and agreeable to you also.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Sure. Um. So what is this Enyclopedia Of Worlds?

BROTHER BANCA: The Cyclopedia Of Worlds is a work commissioned by the Supreme Eminence in which all of natural and social history of the New Era – a span of roughly 500 years – the period since humans left behind their planet Earth – all that time is available for study. For study by scholars and laymen of all the developed worlds across all of the Tres Magna.

INTERVIEWER: Across all of the what?

BROTHER BANCA: The Tres Magna. Or “The Big Three” as they were once called. These are the Three Agencies who have represented the bulk of human social and commercial structures in the New Era. After the War Period, after the Ascension of the Supreme Eminence, the power of the Three Agencies has been reduced to … well to mere aesthetics really. They continue to operate, but their impact is largely symbolic. This is not apparent to many. But it is the truth.

INTERVIEWER: No. It’s not apparent to me either.

BROTHER BANCA: (laughter) No. No. Of course not. This is one of the reasons the Supreme Eminence has commissioned the Cyclopedia. There are so many, many – most – men and women and so many worlds that do not know how their own immediate circumstances operate. And so much less the majestic and complex histories of the New Era. (laughter) Ah, it is funny that we call it the New Era. It is 550 years old and we still say we are living in the New Era!

INTERVIEWER: Who can view this Cyclopedia Of Planets?

BROTHER BANCA: The Cyclopedia Of Worlds is available to anyone who can hear or read you and me right now. Immediately. They can go to the Cyclopedia now. And I urge them to do so and to look and read at their leisure. “Let them study as much as may give them pleasure, and never so much as they may become tired. The student must be continually at play. When he applies himself to study as to toil, then will it take him seven times longer to learn seven times less.”

INTERVIEWER: And who said that?

BROTHER BANCA: Sanard Mimo Mimas. In one of the monographs the great man wrote when he was imprisoned on Aphrophine.

INTERVIEWER: And – should I even ask? – what is … Aphrophine?

(Brother Cory Aurem Three Banca laughs and applauds)

INTERVIEWER: Alright. Uhh … we have to go now.

BROTHER BANCA: Good. Many thanks to you. Many thanks to you. Many thanks.

(end)

THE CYCLOPEDIA OF WORLDS

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