Parts is Parts

The big question remains unanswered. Nobody, as far as I can tell, has even asked it. Am I the only one whose morbid curiosity is piqued? Am I the only one gauche enough to wonder what became of the stolen souvenirs?

It’s Shakespearean, really – the epic stuff of overblown tragedy in the violent days of yore. Thank Christ people are more civilized now. We’ve moved beyond all that dark lusting and evil plotting and vengeful retribution and bloodletting.

In this case there was no blood, since the victim was already dead (natural causes). Embalmed, even – all dressed up with nowhere to go, lying there at the funeral home taking her eternal rest.  Her hair was hacked up, her makeup smeared, and her forehead slashed. Surely it was overkill to slice off her big toe and breasts, even if she was your ex-boyfriend/ex-husband’s (legal status unclear) former girlfriend?

Don’t believe me? You can google on this! Type in “Shaynna Sims/Smith” or maybe “jealous psycho steals shoes of corpse she’d just mutilated.” Just beware the tags your computer will add to your online profile (necrophilia, dismemberment – like me, you’ll get on some really interesting advertising lists. At least you’ll be in good company).

The news tells us that Shaynna was arrested later that day, still carrying a box cutter and switchblade linked to the crime. There is no mention anywhere of either the toe or the boobies.

Enquiring minds want to know!

And why the poor toe? Breasts you can see, so to speak, in a case of romantic rivalry. Or take the hand that once caressed what was yours. Take the tongue that lied. Take the ear that was whispered into. But the toe? Toes tend to be fairly innocuous. And why just one? For the sake of symmetry, wouldn’t you want both?

VENGEANCE IS MINE, saith the Lord. I’ve always had a secret irrational fear of those words (surely intoned in a booming Charlton Heston voice), and am happy to let the jealous god handle matters of retribution. It’d sure be nice to see justice meted out as I see fit, though, and sooner rather than later.

All I see now are bastards and cream rising to the top (one of my father’s better aphorisms). Still, I’m too squeamish to take things into my own hands. The most vengeful thing I ever did was burn the original birth certificate of an ex-boyfriend.  I found it in my papers months after he’d moved back east, and ceremoniously consigned it to flames of woe out in the barbeque pit. In memory, I then roasted a wiener on a stick over the embers – but memory is a whimsical and unreliable thing.

Ex-Boyfriend deserved that harsh treatment. Yeah, I’m the one who cancelled the wedding and stayed in Colorado. But he should have been grateful. I spared him a lifetime of misery and a messy Missy divorce. Instead, he robbed me of my typewriter – an arrest-me-red IBM Selectric he’d given me when first we took up housekeeping. That typewriter was the most perfect vote of confidence ever cast for me! Ex-Boyfriend could ill afford it (top of the line, at the time) and he didn’t get the whole “I want to write” thing, but he believed in me enough to invest in the best.

To spite me, he swiped it. To rub salt in the wound, he sent me a pawn ticket for it long after the reclamation date had passed. Vengeance was his, but only for a time. I soon had another IBM Selectric — and another boyfriend.

Actually, I already had the other boyfriend. But that’s a story for another day.

What then becomes of trophies fueled by the fires of fury? Perhaps Shaynna the Slasher is a student of Greek tragedy, and planned to serve her man his lover on a plate. She strikes me as a woman more into Burger King than Thyestean feasting, though. Did she plan to mail that toe to him? Did she plot to plant those rootless nipples in his bed? Or did she just toss the tits into the trash, breasts among the cigarette butts?

Whatever happened to that sexy red typewriter? Was there a page of perfect prose in it, lost forever? Where is the treasured pearl pendant that vanished along with it, a gift from my parents when I turned 16? Ex-boyfriend probably gave that to his next girlfriend; he was into recycling before it was trendy.

I hope it brought her joy; I doubt that he did.