Murphy Updike’s life was messed up. With a capital MU. His mother was an overweight pothead who had had countless male friends. She didn't know which one was Murphy's father. She had run away from home as a teenager to be free of her parents' constant harping to study hard, get a job, clean her room, etc. etc. etc. She had been fired from several jobs for her poor attitude, slovenly dress and under performance. She subsisted on food stamps and welfare.
Her current companion had been in and out of her life a dozen times. Some of her “friends” had treated Murphy well. Most had not. Some, when they tired of his mother's charms, satisfied their lusts on the young boy. When Murphy cried and begged and pleaded with his mother, she told him, “shut up.” When she told her companion about Murphy's complaints, it went even harder on Murphy. Murphy spent most of his youth locked in dark closets after being beaten.
Murphy had little intelligence and little imagination. Due to his experience with his mother and his mother's companions, he had little interest in the opposite sex. He ran away several times, in his teen years. But he always came back, to receive more beatings. Finally, he “outgrew” the beatings, as most children outgrow measles or mumps. It was simply awkward; he was too big to beat, so his mother's companions just ignored him.
Murphy fell in with the lifestyle at the cluttered, dirty, two-bedroom wooden house with peeling paint that had once been white. He sampled marijuana at her mother's “parties,” then moved on to more serious drugs; anything he could get. Petty theft came as naturally as video games to other youngsters.
Murphy remained in a constant state of drug and alcohol-induced stupor.
At one particularly heavily drug-laced gathering, the house was full of zombie-like creatures in various states of dress and consciousness. The air was thick with scent and smoke. One morning Murphy awoke in his mother's bedroom, in his mother's bed, in his mother's arms.
Murphy's first murder came two weeks later. It was a young barfly who sold her body for drugs. More followed. The police, inured to violence, were sickened by the conditions of the corpses. All their faces had been ripped off. The case dragged on for months before the killings came to an abrupt end. A tragic fire, apparently touched off by candles, claimed the lives of Monica Updike, Murphy Updike, and a dozen other young people. There had been a party. The victims succumbed to smoke inhalation in their sleep.
- - -
“Mr. Glubwart on line one,” Desiree Caliente reported to her boss. Screwtape sighed and picked up the phone. “Well, what is it?”
Glubwart could scarcely keep himself from crowing. “A major coup, sir. One I've been working for quite a while. The mother, the son...”
“How many?” Screwtape interrupted. He didn't want to hear any self-serving back slapping.
“Twenty-six jewels, sir, fairly delivered. Twenty-six to zip.” Glubwart was crestfallen that he didn't get to brag about the details.
“Much better.” Screwtape wasn't in the mood to be generous. He had bigger fish to fry. Much bigger. He hung up before Glubwart could continue.
“Miss Caliente. Give me Intelligence, Southeast District.” Something was going on with that female subject of Glubwart's after all. He felt it. Screwtape wanted to find out what. Glubwart had warned Screwtape. If Screwtape failed to follow up and things went South (pun intended), it could be Screwtape's head and neck on the line. He was not satisfied by the Eastern District Chief's negative report. He had to dig deeper. The connection went through swiftly.
“Yes, my Lord?” Intelligence Chief Brazenwit reported.
“I need some information. Female subject, name Mary Parker. Centerville, Clayton County, Alabama. I want everything: Full brain scan, family history for past three generations. I want it now.”
“Yes, my Lord.” Brazenwit was accustomed to receiving impossible requests from his boss. As chief of intelligence, he had a certain degree of protection from Screwtape's insatiable maw. But he was still cowed. He knew he had to summon all his archivists and researchers to meet Screwtape's demands.
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