My Thoughts on the Gray Grave Discourse
An Uncanny Story for STSC Symposium: Fiction II
It happens sometimes. Maybe once or twice a decade some small town frontier police find “the bodies.” I can’t recall a single incident where they are complete skeletons, it’s always pieces — skulls mixed up in a pile here, femurs scattered over acreage often publicly owned. If you were to tell me another New Mexican rural mass murderer had been found, I’d guess about 12-20 victims.
When a serial killer is found in the suburbs, it’s always like three or four victims. The victims are known tragedies: missing children or mothers, or family of the killer. The news shows stunned faces of next door neighbors, yadda yadda “He was really quiet”… These rural ones, their neighbors don’t get interviewed. The camera crews don’t arrive. You learn about the event not through the Albuquerque Journal or Santa Fe New Mexican but rather something called something like “The East New Mexico Frontiersman’s Guiding Star” that is about 16 folded pages and a stripped down, 90s era website.
Nevertheless everyone knows about the case just as well as if it was reported on the 9 o’clock CBS evening news. “Who are the victims?” never generates names, much less cheerful but bent and battered pictures of grinning innocence. After a wait of a few weeks you get that one follow-up article from the Guiding Star, a quarter as long as the original discovery article: sex workers, migrants, one hobo from Atlanta who ran away from his family twenty years ago.
The weirder news is not the killer or victims, but rather the serial killers’ wives, family, accomplices: toothless hags living in filth and apparently just fine with helping out or at the very least accepting the killer dragging the body through the kitchen to dismember it. The Guiding Star never, not once, shows the face of the serial killer; it’s always the photograph of the wife. The household itself looks fairly normal, but poor. The wife looks generally unwell, but also like she’d snap a person in two if they poked at her too much. The camera, therefore, keeps its distance. She glowers.
This news is interesting to you precisely once: the first time you read about it. Normally you’ll forget about it until another one crops up in 5-10 years. Which is why the Gray Grave event was so peculiar. It really shouldn’t have set off all this interest.
F⃣ I⃣ L⃣ T⃣ H⃣
“🅷🅼.”
🅃🄷🄴 🄲🄾🄵🄵🄴🄴 🅂🄿🄻🄰🅃🅃🄴🅁🄴🄳 🄾🅅🄴🅁 🅃🄷🄴 🄳🄸🄽🄴🅁 🅃🄰🄱🄻🄴. 🄷🄴 🄿🅄🄻🄻🄴🄳 🅃🄷🄴 🄲🅄🄿 🄰🅆🄰🅈 🄰🄽🄳 🅆🄸🄿🄴🄳 🄷🄸🅂 🅆🄴🅃 🄹🄾🅆🄻🅂.
The waitress rose over his shoulder, sponged the coffee up with a rag stained of coffees decades yore.
“🅵🅸🅽🅸🆂🅷 🆂🆆🅰🅻🅻🅾🆆🅸🅽🅶 🅱🅴🅵🅾🆁🅴 🆈🅾🆄 🆂🅿🅴🅰🅺.”