SMALL TOWN HORROR

SMALL TOWN HORROR

by

L Christopher Hennessy

Metro Meats was a slaughterhouse here in town that employed a lot of young people during the seventies. My aunty used to work there, but a lot of the young men ruined her time at the place. At first it was jokes, because she was a girl, then it eventuated into locking her the dark, cold freezer, and the jokes went way too far when they stuck a finger in her. 

     Through word of mouth they found out about a worker's compensation and started amputating their thumbs with an upright bonesaw in front of her. She's still all fucked up.

     My town, the town of Eugene, is like a lot of small towns. 

     We have our horror stories.

     There was one kid, Danny Mullen, who had a thing for showing off to the girls on his BMX bicycle. He would play chicken with the oncoming cars up on Matthews Avenue. One day he lost, getting hit, hit hard, pinned beneath the vehicle, and dragged a hundred meters. I remember his teeth rolling in slow motion to rest in the muddy silt of the gutter and the Police never did find his nose.

     In nineteen eighty-six, a young man - Shawn Ingamells, only seventeen, was found murdered, just out of town. Police believe his body was moved there forty-eight hours after he died.

      He worked as an apprentice mechanic and his boss was infatuated with him. 

     It was Christmas Eve and both men got together for a few beers, to watch some porn, smoke some weed.

     Shawn Ingamells was butterflied from his dick to his chin, filled with bullets and sand, had additional knife wounds, then was burned in an old iron drum. The people who found him thought he was a decomposing animal.

     That's Christmas here in Eugene.

     Nineteen-ninety saw the Rural Technology High School massacre.

     All the animals in the science department were slaughtered, but the bodies were missing, and all that remained on the cages were bits of intestine. Dogs were blamed, but Darren Black, a student was found to have done it. His explanation was, " The black rabbit belonged to me and Suzette was feeding it. "

     There was never a black rabbit and there was never any Suzette. The Police believed he had eaten the remains, or possibly fed them unwittingly to his family, but they weren't talking.

     My town, the town of Eugene, is like a lot of small towns.

     We have our horror stories.

     I still live here.