Guilty.

I stood in the evidence room, coffee in hand, casting my eyes over the boxes of yellowing paper and photographs with frayed edges; the coffee-stained remnants of countless sleepless nights trying to catch him. Twenty-six girls in as many weeks found dismembered at the bottom of dumpsters, in piles of newspaper underneath fire escapes and tossed out on the side of the freeway. All this, but no fingerprints, no real forensic evidence, nothing to go on but instinct and luck.

We got him based on a message he’d left on the Internet and some late testimony from a neighbor. He was a quiet guy – the sick ones always are – who didn’t go out much, didn’t talk to anyone. Just kept to himself in his tenement apartment, curtains drawn, training his dog all day. The most anyone heard from him was a patient, measured voice and the sound of paws running around obligingly, learning to obey the instructions of a murderer.

Sweet dog, apparently, although I didn’t see much of it. It just walked up when we raided the apartment, shook the stump where its tail had been, even gave one of the cops a lick, but after that it was gone. When you walk into someone’s home and he’s surrounded by blood spatter, tiny red exclamation marks all over the walls pointing him out like signs while he just sits there and grins, his mouth dripping and red, keeping track of the dog isn’t foremost on your mind. Nobody noticed when it escaped.

It took us years before he made it into court. The coffee rings on our desks washed off, the piles of evidence yellowed, we all caught up on our sleep and stopped having nightmares, but that night will live on in my head forever. That and the confession gave, sitting in the dock. His description of how he ate them; his face when he remembered; the way he lingered over his words. It was unique in the history of our precinct, maybe all the precincts in the world; savage beyond anything any of us had ever heard of. Said eating his victims gave him control. He ate them with passion, and the way he left the remains were like a fingerprint.

A week after he was put away, they started dying again. One, at first; we thought maybe it was a copycat who had found the details through the court reporting. Then another, a couple of weeks after, and another one a week after that. They sped up, new victims turning up night after night, and the precision, the quality of the copy was too perfect for it to be anyone else.

I stood in the reopened evidence room, coffee in hand, casting my eyes over the boxes and photographs. I had thought we were done here, but now one thing turned over and over in my mind.

He trained his dog real well.

What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously… I need to know.

“Adult to the city today, thanks mate… Yep… $3.40? It’s gone up again? Wow…”

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me, if you like. Maybe it’ll help you open up. Maybe my telling you what’s bothering me will assist you in getting in touch with your inner gripe. Awaken the Muppet within – quit being such a Kermit. Fire Miss Piggy for sexual harassment. Let Rolf know that you can tell he’s not really playing the piano when he sings.

“Is anyone sitting here? No? Do you mind? You do? Oh… okay… I’ll stand then.”

So… what’s wrong with me? I’ll tell you. I’ll need to move closer to you… my voice is husky. I have been shouting. Lying face down on the bed and screaming into my pillow until all hours of the night, muffling my tortured sobs and hiding the rictus of pain from the world at large. I’m trying to think. Be quiet – I’m trying to think here. Cease your wriggling, quiet your moaning. I’ll loosen your bonds when you understand. You’ll be free to go, the instant you agree. Nod once. Let me know…. And hush. You’re here to learn. Relax and let me in.

“No, sorry – I don’t have any spare change. However, I do have the employment section from today’s paper. You can have that instead. I don’t care what you do with it… I know you can’t eat it. But you can use it to find a job, can’t you?”

I didn’t mean to cut you, you know. I didn’t mean to let my blade slip as I used it to caress your face – your alabaster face, glistening with sweat. I can smell the fear coming off you in waves. I can hear your ragged breathing around the gag I placed in your mouth.

“Morning Julie! How are you today?… Good! Me? I feel fine… No really… I’m okay. I didn’t get much sleep last night. But I’m okay…”

Stop crying. I don’t want to see tears. I want you to know. That’s all… I just want you to know. You hurt me once, you know… I don’t think you remember. It was 30 years ago, now. I was so small. So innocent. Defenceless. And you took advantage of that. You took something of mine that I can never have back.

“Hello?… Yes… Yes… well, I’d be delighted to attend, thank you, Simon. When’s it on?… let me check my diary and get back to you, but I think we’re off deadline then. Sure… I’ll email you and let you know. Thanks mate! Bye. Yep, Bye.”

So you could probably fathom that I’m a bit angry about that. I know, I know… it was a long time ago. And you probably felt some guilt after you raped me. Who knows… did you? Nod if you did. You did? Really? So how about now? Do you remember who I am now? You do? Excellent… I expect that what I’m about to do will hurt quite a bit… you may want to prepare yourself…

“I’m off to lunch now – anybody want anything while I’m downstairs? No?… I dunno what I’m having. Probably a salad or something. I’ll see what’s there. Back soon!”

There it is! Please – stop shouting. I can’t understand you when you scream. By golly, that does look painful, doesn’t it? And I certainly didn’t expect it to bleed that much. Do you want to hold it? Cradle your manhood in your hands and mourn its loss? Here… press it against your torn flesh, staunch the bleeding a bit. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll wake up soon. See that this is all a dream. But dreams aren’t supposed to hurt, are they? Dreams aren’t supposed to bleed. But my dreams do… my dreams bleed, red like the setting sun. Awash with shades of crimson.

“Yeah, mate… that’s nearly done. I’ll put it on the server once it’s finished and you can have a read. Let me know what you think.”

So what do you think now? Do you think what you did is okay? Did you ever expect that I’d find you one day? Because I’ve been looking for you, you know. Every day, I look for you – and I find you – and I truss you up like a prisoner of war, and every day I think of new and darkly exciting things to do to you. But you don’t remember: so let me remind you. Yesterday, I raped you the way you raped me, but I used a knife. Today, I took your manhood. Tomorrow, I’ll feed you your own kidneys. The day after that, I’ll take a soldering iron to your eyes. After that, I’ll snap your bones, one by one, until you’re a helpless bag of worthless meat.

“I’m off home, now… I don’t think, so mate – if I have one beer now, I won’t stop until bed time, and I’ve got some work to do when I get home. But thanks – I’ll come to the pub with you another time. Sure thing… see you in the morning.”

Oh look at you… cowering there, all blood and shit and tears. How does that feel? Do you feel good? I do. I feel power. I feel the power you took from me 30 years ago. I feel it like you felt it when you had me. When you dragged me kicking and screaming from my childhood. I can see it in your eyes – you understand it now. So, I’ll keep my promise. I’ll let you go – just like I did yesterday, and tomorrow I will hunt you down again. You cannot hide from me. You have no power over me. I will kill you. One day. But not today. Not yet.

“Dear God. Please look over me while I sleep. I pray, dear Lord, that one day you let me find the man I am looking for. And I pray that you grant me the wisdom to forgive. But to never forget. Just once, God… just once I want to look into his eyes and ask him “why?”. I promise I won’t hurt him. I promise you that. I couldn’t hurt anyone. I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

Pottyfeed

Elevator pitch: broadcast your toilet breaks. Optionally, podcast the splashing noise. Think Twitter meets your toilet.

Our verdict: next year we’ll all be doing a number 2.0 and subscribing on our iPood.

RichardQuest.tv

Elevator pitch: follow CNN’s Richard Quest live on your laptop or cellphone as he wanders round Central Park with pockets full of methamphetamine and a noose attached to his testicles. Think Robert Scoble crossed with your very worst nightmares.

Our verdict: ask us when we’ve stopped shuddering.

Getahitman.com

Elevator pitch: post a job, hitmen bid against each other in the only way they know how. A Google Maps mashup allows you to find contract kills near you; get paid with Google Checkout when your contract checks out. Think oDesk meets Grosse Pointe Blank.

Our verdict: this should kill the market.

Dictatr

Elevator pitch: long on psychotic sociological ideas but short on manpower? Crowdsourcing a fascist government regime is as easy as tagging your enemies. Think flashmobs meet Anschluss.

Our verdict: sure to take over by 2010.

AmIABetterDirectorThanUweBollOrNot

Elevator pitch: Uwe Boll movies are shown alongside homemade videos of overweight, bearded men making tortuous political rants, fluffy kittens making biscuits and babies laughing uncontrollably. The public votes on which is the more engaging, and one lucky winner gets to take the German film director on in hand to hand combat. Think YouTube meets prime time reality TV meets movies made for tax reasons.

Our verdict: evil awakens.

PrivacyInvasionSupersite

Elevator pitch: enter invasive details about your own life and the lives of your friends and family, ignoring the fact that some of the site’s early investors have connections with the CIA, and that your data is both being mined and sold individually to commercial organisations. Think … oh, wait.

Our verdict: hey, it’s a revenue model that works. Kiss your right to a private life goodbye. Poke!

I have a problem with you.

I mean, not specifically you, sitting at your computer playing on the Internet when you ought to be doing something far more important. You’re a harmless procrastinator, inching closer and closer to death without being totally cognisant of the fact that one day you’ll be gone and nothing you’ve done in your whole entire life will have mattered. You’re harmless. No, I mean you, each and every one of you, the bolus collective audience as a group. You suck.

I’m going to cut straight to the chase. Each and every one of you has potential. You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake, to paraphrase an over-paraphrased, overrated, verging-on-fascist style-over-substance pseudfest of a movie, but you could become one. Make the right decisions, fail to succumb to apathy, follow your heart and try and avoid the bad luck that dogs anything with a pulse, and there’s every chance you could turn humanity on its head and make a permanent, indelible mark on civilisation. I’m not joking. You could change everything.

Thing is, you don’t. Never have, never will. You can’t, you won’t. You’re an apathetic, skill-deprived, underperforming son-of-a-schmuck who might as well just shit out the rest of your days phoning in your lines in a 9 to 5 trainwreck of a life, squirming through relationships you don’t really want to be in and going through the motions of being a happy, well-to-do human being when really you want someone to switch off your charade of a life and change the channel to something interesting. You and psoriasis are on an equal footing. You’re a flake. Except you’ve willingly seen at least one episode of America’s Next Top Model, and psoriasis isn’t sentient and doesn’t have eyeballs, so in at least one important respect you’re losing.

Even versus Karl Rove – accepted by many to be the walking, heaving human being equivalent of psoriasis – you lose. I’m not going to explain why. You just do.

Here’s where, in normal circumstances, we might think about publishing a top ten list. We’re a site on the Internet, after all, and the idea is that you post ten articles a day and get paid roughly a gonad hair every ten words for the privilege, so actual textual content with paragraphs and things isn’t normally the order of the day. We did an article called "What would Jesus do?" which was just a list of things we thought it would be funny for Jesus to have sex with, for Christ’s sake. Paragraphs don’t really belong on the Internet. They seem wrong, like thoroughly researched investigative journalism, or linking to Goatse or Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up now that they’re both so totally over.

But you deserve a little more punishment than a bullet list can provide. You see, your apathy isn’t just affecting you. It’s not just affecting your family or the people you know. At best estimate there are well over six billion people on this tiny, choking crapsicle we call a planet, and you’re affecting them all. I’m not saying you directly control the fate of the universe, but every time you don’t give a shit, a baby dies. So care, asshole.

This has been a political broadcast on behalf of caring. Your heart endorses this message. And I’m going to lay off the goddamn whisky and go to bed.

Hug Time

Okay, so this is a catalogue mention on the website of Little, Brown and Company. But we thought the irony was too good to pass up; Little, Brown & Co publish Hug Time, and are owned by Hachette Book Group USA. In turn, their purse strings are controlled by Lagardere, a French group that sells over $13 billion worth of military aircraft, satellites and missiles a year. Other properties owned by the weapons manufacturer include Virgin Megastores and French Elle.

Huggy!