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hellandhighhorror · 5 years ago

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Richard Cottingham: The Times Square Ripper

The following is the most complete account of Richard Cottingham’s life and crimes as of February, 2020. It was written and researched by Austyn Castelli for Hell and High Horror Podcast.

Richard Francis Cottingham was born on November 25th, 1946 in the Bronx. He was the eldest of three children. At age 12, the Cottingham family relocated to River Vale, New Jersey, and Cottingham started 7th grade at St. Andrews parochial school. Cottingham had trouble adjusting to the move and many who knew him report that he was a loner with very few social connections. In 1958 he developed an interest in homing pigeons and helping his mother with gardening and housework. During his adolescence, Cottingham spent most of his free time alone in his bedroom, though he was more accepted by his peers when he entered Pascack Valley High School in Hillside, NJ. During his high school years, Cottingham cultivated an obsession with pornography, specifically pornographic images of bondage. He joined the track team and competed as a long-distance runner until he graduated in 1964. Cottingham was very interested in emerging technologies of the time period and began working as a computer operator right out of high school. He got a job working for his father at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and he took computer courses at night.

In 1966 he got a job at Blue Cross Blue Shield in New York also working as a computer operator. Four years later in 1970, he married his girlfriend, Janet, at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Queens Village, NY. The couple settled in Little Ferry, New Jersey and went on to have three children. Coming from a Catholic family, it seemed that Cottingham had done everything right; he finished his education, got a respectable job, married well, and was a good provider for his wife and children. Cottingham was 5 foot, 10 inches tall with fair skin, sandy brown hair, and hazel eyes. He had distinctive bushy eyebrows and several colorless moles on his face.

However, just two years before his marriage, 21-year-old Cottingham had secretly committed his first murder. In 1967, 29-year-old Nancy Schiava Vogel disappeared. Three days after she was last seen leaving a Bingo game at her church her nude body was discovered in her car in Ridgefield Park. The mother of two had been strangled and her body was still bound with rope when she was found. Investigators came to the conclusion that she had been murdered inside of the vehicle. Cottingham apparently knew Vogel, they both lived in Little Ferry, NJ, but it is unknown how well they knew each other. For decades, the murder of Nancy Vogel remained cold.

On October 10th, 1969, Cottingham was arrested for drunk driving in New York and served 10 days in jail and paid a fine of $50. His petty criminal record also included a shoplifting incident in 1972. He was convicted of stealing from Stern’s department store in Paramus, NJ and paid a $50 fine. The next year, Cottingham was arrested and charged with robbery, sodomy, and sexual assault in New York City, but the case was dismissed. His first child, Blair, was born on October 15th, 1973 and just four months later Cottingham was charged with unlawful imprisonment and robbery in New York City, but again the case was dismissed. Between the years of 1970 and 1974, Cottingham and his family lived in the Ledgewood Terrace apartments in Little Ferry, NJ. They moved into a rented three-bedroom home at 29 Vreeland Street in Lodi, NJ in February of 1975. Janet and Cottingham’s second child, Scott, was born just one month later. Janet gave birth to their last child, Jenny, On October 13th, 1976. In the years the followed, Cottingham’s crimes escalated to drastic levels of sadism and violence.

On December 16th, 1977 at 7:00 in the morning, the body of 26-year-old Maryann Carr was discovered in Little Ferry. Carr, an X-Ray technician, was still wearing her uniform and was wedged between a chain-link fence and a parked van. The pants of her uniform had been cut to expose her left leg and a clump of her own hair was placed on her right leg and she was missing her shoes. She had lacerations to her chest and feet and showed signs of having been bound at the wrists and ankles. Traces of adhesive tape were present around her mouth and there was an imprint of a ligature around her neck. An autopsy revealed that she had a hemorrhage on her left occipital bone, indicating that a blunt instrument was used. Carr was approximately 5 foot 5 inches tall, 115lbs, and had dyed blonde hair.

Carr, a nurse, had been seen last in the parking lot of her apartment building, the Ledgewood Terrance Apartment, which was visible from the crime scene. A neighbor had seen her talking to a white male, about 32 years old with brown hair. Investigators suspected that Carr had been taken shortly after she arrived home from work. Cottingham had abducted her and taken her to a nearby hotel. Inside, he had raped, cut, beaten, and bit her for hours. He tied her up and strangled her before dumping the body where it was later found. Just like Nancy Vogel, Maryann Carr’s case would grow cold for several years. Meanwhile, Cottingham began a three-year-long affair with a woman named Barbara Lucas.

On March 22nd, 1978, Richard Cottingham was drinking at the Third Avenue Tavern in New York. He noticed a woman who was also drinking at the bar, 22-year-old Karen Schilt. Schilt, like Carr, was 5 foot 5 inches tall with artificially colored blonde hair. She weighed about 140lbs and had blue eyes. She had just finished a shift waiting tables at Tuesday’s restaurant on Third Avenue. She had gone home to have dinner with her boyfriend, and the father of her unborn child, at 6:00 pm. She had left work just after 8:00 pm and went straight to the tavern. Cottingham approached Schilt and introduced himself as John Schaefer. The two had a couple of drinks together and at one point in the conversation Cottingham asked Schilt if she was a “working girl”. She told him that she was not, but Cottingham kept hinting that he thought she was a sex worker. Cottingham told her that he lived in New Jersey, but liked to drink in the city.

After about an hour at the bar, Schilt left and started walking back to her apartment at 94 Third Avenue, which was a little under one mile away (14 blocks, near big daddy’s). She began to feel dizzy and ill and suspected that someone had drugged her drink. Cottingham had followed her out of the bar and offered to drive her home. Because of her physical state, Schilt agreed. They started driving and Schilt soon realized that they were not heading toward her apartment, but were instead en route out of Manhattan toward New Jersey.

Cottingham offered Schilt a pill to make her feel better. The drug was Tuinal, a barbiturate that depresses the nervous system. Schilt took the pill and fell asleep. Luckily, she would stay unconscious for the majority of her assault at the hands of Cottingham. He drove to a parking lot across from the Ledgewood Terrace Apartments. There, he sexually assaulted Schilt. At one point, she briefly woke up to a searing pain on her breast. She remembered hearing Cottingham say that he had once lived where they currently were. Schilt quickly slipped back into unconsciousness.

She was found lying with her breasts and genitals exposed by Little Ferry patrolman Raymond Auger. Auger checked Schilt’s pulse and discovered that she was close to death. She was missing her coat, scarf, purse, and a silver ring. Her pulse was weak and her breathing was shallow. Auger called for an ambulance and Schilt was transported to Hackensack Hospital. Paramedics had to administer oxygen and cardiac massage to bring her heartbeat back before taking her to the hospital. Karen Schilt survived the horrific attack and blood testing confirmed that she had amobarbital and secobarbital in her system when she was attacked. Doctors noted extensive injuries on the young woman including bruises on her legs, cigarette burns on her left breast, trauma to her elbow, scratch marks on both breasts, and bite trauma to her chest.

Seven months later on October 10th, 1978 Cottingham set out on 8th avenue looking for his next victim. He found Susan Geiger, a sex worker who, like Karen Schilt, was pregnant at the time. Cottingham approached the 5 foot tall, 96 pound Geiger and asked if she was available. She told him that she was committed for the evening and he offered $200 for an appointment with her that night. She declined but gave Cottingham her telephone number and told him to call for a date. He called her the next day and arranged an appointment for that night, October 11th. Geiger met Cottingham in front of the Alpine Hotel at around midnight. Cottingham took her to Flanagan’s Tavern between 65th and 66th streets. He told Geiger that his name was Jim and that he was married with young children and lived in New Jersey. He also told her that he worked with computers in Manhattan. During their conversation, he boasted that he had recently won a substantial amount of money from gambling and produced a wad of cash, likely containing a few thousand dollars, to back up this story. At one point Geiger got up and when she returned Cottingham gave her a screwdriver cocktail that he had ordered for her. He told her to keep stirring it with a straw. She did so and soon after she took a few sips of the drink she began feeling dizzy and detached. Like Schilt, her memory of what happened that night was incomplete.

First, Cottingham put her in his car, which she remembered was a “light-colored, older thunderbird with a soiled interior”. She passed out in the vehicle and awoke only a few times before morning. She remembered snippets of Cottingham sexually assaulting her, but she was physically unable to fight back. She also remembered Cottingham using a length of green garden hose to whip her. She finally regained full consciousness in the early afternoon of October 12th. She awoke on the floor of a motel room. She later found out that she had spent the night in Room 28 of the Airport Motel in South Hackensack, NJ. She had been robbed by Cottingham, who had taken her handbag and everything in it as well as her gold earrings, which had been ripped downward from her ears, causing them to tear. She was severely injured and was bleeding from her vagina, rectum, face, mouth, and breasts. She had scratches on her swollen face and her lip was bleeding. Some of her fake nails were missing. Despite her horrific physical state, she got dressed in her torn blouse and left the motel room. She could barely walk and made it as far as the motel parking lot, where South Hackensack Police Captain John Agar noticed her. He pulled his patrol car into the parking lot of the motel and asked Geiger, who was wandering around frantically, to tell him her name. She was still impaired by the drugs she had been slipped and appeared confused. She told Captain Agar that her name was Susan Geiger and recounted as much of the last 24 hours as she could remember.

Captain Agar went to examine the motel room and found several articles of Geiger’s clothing that she was unable to put on, some of her broken fake fingernails, an unmade bed, and two discarded motel towels. Agar made sure that these items were recovered for examination. Agar drove Geiger to the Hackensack Hospital, where Karen Schilt had also been treated. They tested Geiger’s blood and the same drugs that were in Schilt’s system were found in Geiger’s. Doctors took note of all of her injuries, which included lacerations over her right eye, on her lips, abdomen, thorax, and in her mouth. She had bruises on her left thigh and buttocks, as well as abrasions on her right thigh. Her breasts had been violently bitten and had contusions and abrasions. Geiger, like Schilt, was treated and her case was opened but remained inactive. The towels from the motel room were tested and forensic scientists found seminal fluid on the fabric. They tested the secretion and were able to determine that the offender had type O blood.

On November 29tt, 1979, Richard Cottingham checked in to the Travel Inn Motor Lodge at 515 West 42nd Street in Manhattan. He booked room 417 under the name Carl Wilson. He said he lived on Anderson Place in Merlin, NJ (Merlin NJ doesn’t exist). After arriving at his room, Cottingham hung a “do not disturb” sign on his door. Staff reported that he rarely left his room after checking in. Then, on December 2nd, 1979, at 9:00 in the morning smoke and ash started drifting through the hallway on the fourth floor of the Travel Inn Motor Lodge. The fire department was called and the firefighters found that the smoke was coming from Room 417. Mere minutes before the emergency call was made, a man with bushy brown eyebrows, a clean-shaven face, and sandy hair parted to the right rushed out of the hotel lobby. He was carrying a large bag.

After Cottingham left the hotel, he got in his car and began driving away. He was pulled over by police, who asked him what he was doing out at 3:30 in the morning. He told them that he was staying at a nearby hotel and was driving to get something to eat. The officers never asked to see inside of the bag and took Cottingham at his word. He then disposed of the contents of the bag.

Meanwhile, the firefighters entered Room 417, they identified two figures through the thick smoke. One fireman, who had been with the New York Fire Department for 15 years, was able to drag one of the unconscious people out of the room and into the hallway. He got on his knees to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but when he lowered his face toward the person he discovered that there was no head. When he could finally make out the person’s body, he was horrified to see that the body was also missing its hands. That firefighter was so traumatized that he sought out trauma counseling after this incident.

Another body was removed from the room, also missing its head and hands. Firefighters were able to put out the flames and the police were called to investigate the crime scene. The room had been cleaned of fingerprints and most evidence, although blood remained on the mattress. The victims’ clothing was found folded in the bathtub. Each woman’s outfit was folded with her shoes on top. The heads and hands of the victims were not recovered from the room, nor was the dismemberment tool, although Cottingham later revealed that he used a hacksaw to sever the six body parts before stashing them in his bag and leaving the building. It was later determined that the woman had been sexually assaulted and beaten while still alive. The bodies had cigarette burn marks, bruises, and bite marks around the breasts. Each woman had been placed on a twin bed and Cottingham had attempted to destroy the bodies by setting the bedsheets on fire. The bodies were charred where the flames had touched them, but the trauma inflicted by the killer was visually evident. The amount of blood left on the mattresses indicated that the decapitations occurred on the beds. Hotel staff told authorities that the man staying in that room was around 35 years old, with light hair and pale skin.

Autopsies determined that the women had been killed at different times, though the identities of the victims were unknown. One victim was thought to be in her late teens. The other was eventually identified as 23-year-old Deedeh Goodarzi. Goodarzi was an immigrant from Kuwait. She was a sex worker and had been living in Trenton, NJ and commuted to Manhattan by train. Goodarzi was known to be a “high-class” sex worker who did business in much fancier hotels than the one she was killed in. The other victim is still a Jane Doe.

On May 5th, 1980 the body of 19-year-old Valerie Ann Street was found by Maryann Sancanelli, a housekeeper at the Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn in NJ. Sancanelli was cleaning Room 132 and found it unusual that one bed had not been slept in by the previous night’s guest. The bedspread was slightly askew, though, and the other bed had been slept in. She began vacuuming the room and when she went to clean under the unmade bed, the vacuum hit something behind the hanging bedspread. She lifted the fabric and found Street’s corpse. Sancanelli called the police. Like the previous victims, Street had suffered a brutal death. She had been handcuffed behind her back and the handcuffs had cut into the flesh of her wrists. She had been gagged with adhesive tape, which left residue around her moth. Two deep ligature marks were found on her neck. She had bite marks, bruises, and scratches on her breasts and had been hit in the shins of both legs. No clothing or personal items were found in the room. Street was 5 foot 4 inches tall, weighed 135 pounds, had blue eyes, and had dyed strawberry blonde hair.

Police were able to isolate a fingerprint from the ratchet side of the handcuffs. An autopsy was performed and the Bergen County Medical Examiner stated that Street’s injuries were “bizarre and startling”. She had been hit with a blunt instrument so hard that she had contusions to her brain. The murder weapon was likely a thin cord that had been tied around her neck and pulled upward from the right side. Street had checked into the hotel under the false name Shelly Dudley. She had listed Florida as her home state, which was partially true. Valerie Street had arrived in New York just 6 days earlier. On May 4th between 4 and 4:30 pm, Street had checked in to the hotel. She was heard from at 10:00 the next morning when she called the front desk to tell them she wanted to keep the room for one more day. She was likely murdered immediately after making that phone call.

Fingerprints finally revealed Street’s real identity. She had been convicted of prostitution in Florida and the fingerprints on the arrest record matched the body. Another sex worker told police that she had last seen Street on May 3rd at 1 am on the corner of 32nd Street and Madison Avenue. Although authorities now knew her identity, Valerie Street’s murder would go unsolved for over a month, but would eventually be linked to the murder of Maryann Carr, who had been found near the same hotel.

On May 12th, Cottingham picked up sex worker Pamela Weisenfeld in New York City. Cottingham likely drugged Weisenfeld as he had Schilt and Geiger. He drove her to Teaneck, NJ where he beat, tortured, and raped her. She was left in a parking lot where police found her the next morning, covered in bruises and bite marks on her chest. Weisenfeld was treated at a local hospital and survived.

On May 15th, 1980, just 10 days after Valerie Street’s body was found, the FDNY was called to the Hotel Seville located at 22 East 29th Street off of 5th avenue. A fire had been set in one of the hotel rooms. Firefighters were able to put out the flames and found the severely mutilated remains of 25-year-old Jean Reyner. Reyner, like Goodarzi, was a sex worker who catered to upper-class clients. It was unusual for her to be working in a hotel as seedy as the Seville. Unlike the other victims found at the Travel Lodge, Reyner still had her head and hands intact. However, Cottingham had dissected both of Reyner’s breasts and had placed them next to one another on the headboard for police to find. Signs of bondage and torture were found in the room and on the body. Police almost immediately linked this murder with the Midtown Torso Cases, as they had been dubbed.

One week later on May 22nd, 1980 Cottingham solicited the services of 18-year-old Leslie Ann O’Dell. O’Dell stood at 5 feet 4 inches tall and had blonde hair. She had arrived in New York from Washington State just four days prior and had quickly been trafficked by bus station pimps. Cottingham told O’Dell that his name was Tommy and took her to a bar, where the two drank for a couple of hours. He told O’Dell that he was going to drive them to New Jersey where they could get a hotel room and have sex. On the way, they stopped to have dinner at the New Star Diner in South Hackensack, NJ. The diner is located half a mile from the Ledgewood Terrace Apartments. From there, Cottingham and O’Dell went to the Quality Inn where Valerie Street had been murdered 17 days earlier.

Cottingham made O’Dell wait in the car while he checked in at the front entrance. He then came out to get her and their belongings from the trunk of his car. They entered Room 117 and Cottingham briefly left to move the car. O’Dell waited for him to return, completely unaware that she was about to be tortured in unimaginable ways. When Cottingham returned, he was brandishing a knife and told her to undress and lay face down on the bed. He got on top of her and used the knife to threaten her. He told her that he would slit her throat if she made any sound. He swiftly handcuffed her wrists behind her back, as he had done to Valerie Street. He told O’Dell that he was sexually aroused by torturing and beating women and that he had done this to other women before her. He ranted at her about how she was a “whore” and had to be punished. He reportedly scraped her Pre-sacral region with the knife (internal or external?) before raping her. He lacerated her sternum and scraped, bit, stabbed, and cut her breasts. He then forced her to perform oral sex on him. Throughout the entire ordeal, Cottingham verbally threatened and abused O’Dell.

Cottingham later used another pair of handcuffs to shackle O’Dell’s ankles before removing the handcuffs around her wrists. He then ordered her to perform a variety of nauseating acts, including licking his entire body, kissing and licking his feet, and enduring sodomy. At one point, O’Dell instinctively screamed and Cottingham immediately threw her on the bed and started strangling her. O’Dell was convinced that she was about to die. Luckily, motel staff had heard her scream and called the police, not wanting to take any chances after Valerie Street’s murder. Before police arrived, staff members attempted to enter the room. Cottingham told O’Dell what to say to make them go away and held her at knifepoint while she spoke through the slightly open door. The hotel employee asked O’Dell if everything was alright and she responded “yes”, but moved her eyes side-to-side in an attempt to communicate that she was in danger. Cottingham fled, but police intercepted him and took him into custody. He had an opened roll of adhesive tape, two leather slave collars, a leather gag, a fake gun a knife, liquor, handcuffs, and Tunial capsules in his possession when he was arrested. According to the officers who interrogated Cottingham, he uttered only one sentence, “I have a problem with women”. He then asked for an attorney and the interview ended.

Authorities searched his home and discovered a private room that he did not allow his wife or children to go into. In that basement room, investigators found various trophies from Cottingham’s murders. Deedeh Goodarzi’s earrings, Maryann Carr’s keys, and dozens of pieces of clothing jewelry from victims. News of Cottingham’s crimes and court proceedings were plastered across newspapers all over the tri-state area. The media dubbed him ��The Torso Killer”, “The Times Square Ripper”, “The Butcher of Times Square”, “The New York Ripper”, and “The Times Square Torso Ripper”. In April of 1978, Janet Cottingham had filed for divorce from Cottingham, citing “extreme cruelty” and noting that Cottingham had refused to have sex with her since 1976. Throughout early 1980, Cottingham had another affair with Jean Connelly until his arrest. After Cottingham’s arrest in 1980, Janet withdrew her petition for divorce and moved to upstate New York with the couple’s three children.

On August 15th, Cottingham was charged with triple homicide in New York City for the murders of Jean Reyner, Deedeh Goodarzi, and the Jane Doe. In September, Karen Schilt and Susan Geiger identified Cottingham in a police lineup. Two days later the Bergen County Prosecutor's office in NJ indicted Cottingham on 21 counts. Cottingham’s trial in New Jersey began in June of 1981. Throughout the trial, Cottingham took copious notes. The District Attorney, Dennis Calo, remembers him as a very intelligent man who was extremely involved in his own defense. He was often seen passing notes to his attorneys with suggestions for them. Cottingham never confessed to the murders, instead opting to drag jury members and the loved ones of his victims through a trial. Several family members of the victims were called to the stand to identify the victims from the crime scene photos.

On June 6th Cottingham testified at his trial. He told the court that he had a predilection toward bondage pornography but that he did not enjoy hurting others. He denied knowing any of the living victims besides Leslie O’Dell since he was caught with her in the hotel. On June 11th he was convicted of 15 out of 20 counts. 3 days later Cottingham attempted suicide by drinking six ounces of liquid antidepressant medication in his Bergen County jail cell. The next month Cottingham was sentenced to 173-197 years in state prison for his crimes. He was also fined $2,350.

On February 25th, 1982 Cottingham collapsed while being escorted back to his cell while waiting for the Maryann Carr trial to begin. He was taken to a hospital and was diagnosed with a duodenal ulcer. Because of Cottingham’s illness, a mistrial was declared. When the trial for the murder of Maryann Carr began again in the fall of 1982, Cottingham attempted to escape but was captured quickly. On October 10th, he was convicted of second-degree murder in a nonjury trial and was sentenced to 25 years to life with a minimum of 30 years to be served concurrently with his previous sentence. In March of 1983, Cottingham was transferred to a men’s detention center in Manhattan to await his trial for the murders of Deedeh Goodarzi, “Jane Doe”, and Jean Reyner. On July 5th, 1984, Cottingham smashed his eyeglasses and attempted to cut his wrists with the shards in front of the jury. 4 days later he was convicted for all three murders and was sentenced to 75 years to life.

Cottingham was incarcerated in the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. In 2010, Cottingham confessed to the 1967 murder of Nancy Shiava Vogel. Cottingham was tried for Vogel’s murder and received a new concurrent life sentence.

In the first week of January 2020, Cottingham broke his decades-long silence and confessed to three murders committed in the 1960s. Cottingham claims that he murdered Jacalyn Harp on July 17th, 1968. 13-year-old Harp was walking home from band practice in Midland Park when Cottingham pulled his car up next to her. He asked her if she wanted a ride and she declined. She began walking forward, but Cottingham drove ahead of her and got out of the car. Harp began running and Cottingham caught up to her. He dragged her to an area of bushes and sexually assaulted her before strangling the young teen to death. Jacqueline Harp’s murder remained unsolved until Cottingham confessed in 2020.

On April 7th, 1969, Cottingham claims that he observed 18-year-old Irene Blase shopping in Hackensack, NJ. He approached her and asked her if she wanted to get a drink with him. Blase and Cottingham took a bus to a bar. After a couple of hours, Cottingham offered to drive Blase back to the bus station and she accepted. Blase was found the next day laying face down in four feet of water in Saddle River. She had been strangled with a thin cord, possibly a length of wire or the chain of her crucifix necklace.

On July 14th, 1969, at around 9:00 pm 15-year-old Denise Falasca was walking on Old Hook Road in Emerson, NJ. She was on her way to meet friends in Westwood, NJ and was expected to be home at 11:00 pm. Cottingham pulled his car up beside her and offered to drive her to her destination. Falasca accepted the ride. The next day, Tuesday, July 15th, Denise Falasca’s body was found near a cemetery on Westminster Place in Saddle Brook, NJ. All three of his newly named victims were High School students in Bergen County, NJ.

Cottingham has nine confirmed murders to his name as of February 2020. It is estimated that he could have many more. His early murders were all committed via strangulation of the victim, and all of his victims were white women between the ages of 13 and 29. His later victims were typically between 5 foot and 5’5” tall, weighed between 95 and 140lbs, and had dyed or naturally blonde hair.

Richard Cottingham is classified as a power-assertive killer. His actions indicate a need to dominate and control his victims. Unlike the vast majority of serial killers, Cottingham experienced no abuse as a child. He had no history of head trauma or brain damage nor did he have physical of mental deficiencies. He had an average IQ, no history of mental health issues or drug abuse in his immediate family, and had no psychological issues surrounding his sexuality. In 2011, journalist Nadia Fezzani interviewed Cottingham for a French documentary. Cottingham had not agreed to an interview before accepting Fezzani’s request after two years of negotiation and correspondence. In his letters, Cottingham claimed to have begun killing 12 years before the murder of Maryann Carr, placing his first murder in 1965, before Nancy Vogel’s slaying. He claimed to have over 85, but under 100 victims, total. In the interview, Cottingham appears in his tan prison uniform with a full, white beard and mustache, his signature bushy eyebrows, and now lightened hair in the same style it had been upon his arrest. He walks with a cane on his right side and although he was always a stocky man, he appears to weight around 300 pounds.

Cottingham told Fezzani “I wanted to be the best at whatever I did. And I wanted to be the best serial killer”. He chuckled and continued on “I’ve probably done anything a man would want to do with a woman. Obviously, I must be sick somehow, normal people don’t do what I did.” When asked why he had cut off Jean Reyner’s breasts, he responded: “to do something different...to create some sensationalism”. He told her that he had no feelings when he committed his crimes. He said that he could put himself into a mental state that was like “remote control”. Cottingham admitted that the “power of holding someone’s fate in your hands” sexually aroused him. He told Fezzani that he enjoyed torturing his victims and inciting fear in them and that he would go only one or two weeks in between murders over a span of 10-15 years. However, this figure would place his victim count at around 390 victims, which is far out of his estimation. (An average of one victim every 10 weeks would align more with Cottingham’s estimation.)

Richard Francis Cottingham is now 73 years old and is eligible for parole in August 2025, although it is unknown how his latest confessions will affect that date. Investigators are still trying to elicit additional confessions from Cottingham, as they have been since 2004.

Sources:

Serial Violence: Analysis of Modus Operandi and Signature Characteristics of Killers by Robert D. Keppel and William J. Birnes.

Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters by Peter Vronsky

Richard Francis Cottingham “The Torso Killer”: Information researched and summarized by Jacklyn Cowin, Jenna Leonette, and The Phan of Radford University

Serial Killers: Richard Cottingham by Patrick Spica Productions.

Profile of Serial Killer Richard Cottingham by Charles Montaldo on ThoughtCo

N.J. serial killer now linked to 9 victims, but will his murder toll rise? The timeline of the ‘Torso Killer’ by Rodrigo Torrejon for NJ.com

Cold cases solved: Bergen serial killer confesses to three more deaths by Joshua Jongsma for NorthJersey.com

Infamous New Jersey ‘Torso Killer’ confesses to 3 cold case murders by Gabrielle Fonrouge and Natalie Musumeci for New York Post.

#richard cottingham #serial killers #murder #murderer #the times square ripper #the torso kiler #the butcher of times square #true crime #Hell and High Horror Podcast #hell and High Horror #true crime podcast #tw murder #tw torture #tw gore #tw violence

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years ago

Video

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CAROLINE POLACHEK - SO HOT YOU'RE HURTING MY FEELINGS

[8.00]

This, though, we think should be a hit now.

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: i feel personally attacked by this relatable content [8]

Julian Axelrod: Caroline Polachek has spent most of her career trying to hide Caroline Polachek. She's operated within bands, under monikers, and behind other artists, parceling out pieces of her genius but never showing her full hand. "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings" is Caroline's coming out and coronation, a reintroduction to her astonishing range of talents for anyone who forgot. It's also a full-bodied bop, sleek and lithe without sparing an ounce of impact. The gleaming 80s prom synths and cave sprite backing vocals promise a pop fantasia, but her bleakly hilarious cries for connection feel like a sendup of diva desperation. The most thrilling moment might be the bridge, when her wordless wail is vocodered into oblivion. Ironically, Polachek obfuscates her voice to create her most singular expression to date. And when she's done, all you can do is gasp. [9]

Hazel Southwell: Wow Frou Frou are back right in time to soundtrack my mid-thirties breakdown as well as the mid-twenties one! Except this also has a nice bit of chugging Fleetwood-Mac-by-way-of-HAIM guitar so it's tickling all kinds of aesthetic pressure points. It gained a whole two points from me for the embarrassing sax solo in the breakdown, that's a real stomach-curling squirm of a crush right there. [7]

Oliver Maier: "So Hot" doesn't push into exciting new frontiers like "Door" and "Ocean of Tears" did. Indeed, the "The Middle"-esque vocoding on the hook and relatively conventional arrangement suggest a mainstream sensibility that isn't so much absent from Pang's other singles as it is wrestled into Polachek's own pop framework. Here she's mostly content to play ball, and the result is a straightforwardly great song, still with enough eccentric turns of phrase ("X-rated dreaming"!), sticky melodies and frenzied vocal solos to stay a step ahead of the competition. I could see the abundant quirkiness being grating to those less convinced by the elegant architecture of C-Po's songcraft, but I'm helplessly charmed by both. [8]

Alfred Soto: Fans of Haim's precisely deployed synth chug will warm to Caroline Polachek's latest single: 2013 as 1987. She's gotten more assured since the Chairlift days: check out the vocal distorted unto death and into a solo. [7]

Michael Hong: Caroline Polachek is trying to keep her composure. She's out at the party, attempting to be cool, attempting to live her life. But at the same time, she's quietly suffering, counting the days her partner's been gone. "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings" is as slick as the best of Chairlift, with lines worthy of its title, like "I cry on the dance floor, it's so embarrassing," delivered without an ounce of self-pity but with Polachek's biting humour. Her attempts to appear collected fail from the outset, but her frustrations come to head on the chorus when she sings "get a little lonely babe" and the desperation and desire in her voice become palpable. Polachek's composed vocals over the heavily processed ad-libs perfectly capture the mental anguish of a long-distance relationship, her outward poise giving way to the inward chaos. [9]

Kayla Beardslee: I've been listening to "Door" a lot lately (a 10, by the way), and one of the many things that's grabbed me about the song is how impressively detailed it is: I'm still discovering nuances in the production after a double-digit number of listens. "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings" is a less complex experience than "Door" -- a name-brand lollipop instead of a box of chocolate truffles -- but it has the same attention to detail that makes playing it over and over and paying close attention so rewarding. The three claps in the verses, the "aah-aah"s panning right and left, the electric guitar strum (I think) at the end of the chorus, the gasps and "Woo!"s peppered throughout -- god, inject this shit straight into my veins. And, of course, Polachek's vocals are on point, even behind the tasteful vocoder; her voice climbing and falling on "it's so emBArrassing" is an entire journey on its own. "So Hot" is sparkly synthpop designed to go down easy, but there's substance in it too, for those who want to look for it. [9]

Isabel Cole: The lyrics unfortunately don't live up to the OTT promise of the excellent title, squashing my hopes for something exuberantly agitated along the lines of an emotion I still only know how to describe as "blogging about One Direction in 2013" in favor of a fairly banal exploration of the angst inherent to long-distance love. I do like the burbling production, with its funny little stream of disembodied vowels winding through behind the verses. [6]

Joshua Lu: An adroit tiptoe along the line between horny and tender, unconcerned with appearing too desperate or silly -- or with enunciating properly. [7]

Will Adams: There's a certain melodrama that comes with relating embarrassment ("I could have just DIED!"), particularly with intense crush feelings for a former flame, that "So Hot" nails. It's there in the gasp before the final chorus, the way Polachek's distorted vocal wails as the backing vocals murmur "show me the banana" and the song's title. While the previous Pang singles took time to wiggle their way into my head, "So Hot"'s charms are immediate. [8]

Kylo Nocom: The Aces via Forevher era Shura shouldn't sound endearing, yet Polachek is a vocalist and songwriter entertaining enough to sell it completely. "X-rated dreaming" is a clunky phrase, but I'm obviously reaching, damn it: the song exists for the title and it's a great one. [9]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Caroline Polachek makes music that is almost too perfectly formed-- rhythms that sound like perfect tessellations, dazzling vocal performances with leaps and runs that are almost inhuman, synths that sound wrought from glass. The only thing preventing it from being intolerable is the stuff she's singing about, the fundamental vocabulary of longing that her work, whether solo or in Chairlift (RIP), speaks. "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings" is just another manifestation of a running theme in her work, but it stands out for its directness and messiness-- she's not just crying in public but on the dancefloor, pining in ways that are almost outside of society. It doesn't all work on the record (the bananas on the bridge are a little hokey) but it feels so deep it can't be avoided. [8]

Stephen Eisermann: A sexy little song that owes much of its sex appeal to Caroline's voice, the harmonies, and my god that production. It's crisp and clean, like the white dress shirt my fantasy man wears; the one I thought of as I closed my eyes and listened to this song. Lust in song form, this one. [7]

Joshua Copperman: So good it's hurting my feelings: I keep wanting to save my [10]s for songs that feel Big and Important, like "Slip Away" or "The Joke." Maybe something that doesn't have immediate political importance but stands on its own, like "Cellophane." (Being co-written by a transgender woman when the Supreme Court is about to decide whether transgender people can be fired on the basis of their identity might qualify this song, but I don't want to reduce Teddy Geiger to her gender.) From the opening line, which seems to swipe from Robin Williams' character in mid-2000s Blue Sky Studios comedy Robots, it's clear that this isn't exactly a deep song. Instead, "So Hot" is perfectly goofy songwriting, down to a bridge where Polachek chants "show me the banana, na na na na na" while also performing a guitar solo with her voice. Even better, it's a three and a half minute pop song, so it doesn't have time to meander like "Door." There isn't anything personal or political about this, but that doesn't even seem to cross Polachek and co's mind. Losing oneself in a pop song is just about the most overused trope in all of music criticism, but there's something to not being serious or even defiantly silly. It's just fun for the sake of fun, which is hard to justify as a [10]. Except maybe that was the whole point of this poptimism thing. In that case... [10]

[Read and comment on The Singles Jukebox]

#Caroline Polachek #pop #music #music review #writing

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eightdoctor · 6 years ago

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Bruce Week Day 3: Mirror/Night and Day

ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17859947

He runs and runs and his DNA runs with him. Every morning Bruce wakes up with a different face.

They say that your life and its path is dependent on the friends you make. So by extension, your life, your personality, is all reliant on your friends, your acquaintances.

Bruce doesn’t have those, and he doesn’t know what he lost first; his life or his friends. Maybe they were synonymous with each other, or maybe not. It’s not like it matters.

After his friends - and his life, he supposed; he’s dead now, technically, not even a person but a thing, a possession - he lost his assets. The money he had been saving for years for the white picket fence and the swing set in the backyard is gone, his apartment is gone, his clothes and furniture and everything is gone. They renovated his lab into a storage room, they deleted and purged all his files and research. If your life depends on what things you own, well...you know how it goes.

Then it was his name. With every disguise came a new name, a new person, a new life. A life that was discarded when he was found, peeled off and thrown away like trash. Countless names and lives and people were killed by the monster, the Hulk, whatever you call it, but countless names and lives and people were killed by Banner, as well. Names distinguish the person, a name decides your life and your identity. Bruce Banner had no name because he couldn’t afford to have one, and so he had no life because he couldn’t afford to have one.

The next thing to go was his autonomy. Simple, easy. He has no choice in where he goes, he just floats in the wake of the Hulk as he paddles furiously away from the military. Philosophers argue if humanity has free will, but Bruce doesn’t need to argue. Because he knows. The answer is a resounding no.

The last straw, the final nail in the coffin of his horrible, fucked up life, is the removal of his face. After a month of running and hiding and dying, the gamma twists his insides and swaps some nucleotides around so some As become Gs and Ts become Cs and he wakes up in his grubby motel as a stranger to himself. His hair is lighter, almost ginger, his eyes are rounder, his chin squarer. The reflection in the mirror moves with him but it isn’t him. It’s the worst feeling, he thinks - that disconnect. He knows he should look different, look like how he did on that fateful Day (a deafening roar and a wave of heat and power and green, green, green...the screaming and the Geiger counter ticking ticking ticking…), but he...doesn’t.

An adaptation. A mutation. An evolution. Call it whatever you want. Bruce calls it death.

Bruce is dead. It’s too bad he can’t die.

It’s in some backwater town in Texas where he breaks; some meaningless, inconsequential town with a population of 107 where the nearest Walmart is 45 minutes away. He’s staying in a cheap bed and breakfast owned by a nice old woman who can barely move from arthritis.

The room is adorned in frills and has that distinct old-person-smell, but it’s nicer than most of the places he’s stayed in in the past few months, with a mattress that isn’t rotten and electricity that doesn’t flicker.

It also has a mirror. He tried to avoid them after seeing how his appearance shifts every week, but running into one is more or less inevitable, isn’t it? Sometimes he catches his reflection in shop windows and cringes, or there's a flash of the wrong face in a body of water and he flinches. But he hasn’t looked close. He doesn’t think he’d be able to keep it together if he does.

And he was right.

It’s a Tuesday, when he breaks. He wakes up, showers, leaves the shower, towels off, walks past the mirror on the dresser, stops. Stares.

It isn’t him. Or it is him, but his cheekbones are lower on his face and his eyes are almond-shaped and hazel and he doesn’t even recognize himself. It’s like there’s a mime behind that pane of glass doing what he does as if the mirror isn’t a mirror.

He raises a hand to touch his chin, and the man in the mirror copies him exactly. A choked noise rises in his throat, some horrible hybrid of a scream and a sob, born of surprise. The man’s face that is-isn’t-is his reflection crumples, and Bruce feels his do the same.

It’s like his brain is split in two. Logic says that he’s in the mirror, that that’s him because that’s what mirrors do, they reflect, but then there’s his instinct. This isn’t him. This can’t be him. He doesn’t look like that. His hair is dark brown and his chin is pointed slightly and his eyes are dark and almost black.

He collapses to his knees, as if something hit the back of his legs and they buckle like a marionette with its strings cut. The man in the mirror follows him down, down, down. Bruce feels like crying, but the tears don’t come. They never do. He isn’t allowed to have these emotions, this sort of distress. He isn’t allowed to cry, because the Hulk doesn't let him. Crying leads to anger leads to destruction leads to death. So he doesn’t cry, but he wants to.

He doesn’t always get what he wants.

Bruce feels himself float away from his body, his face. He tries to hold on tight, because he can’t lose control, he can’t, but he never really feels himself come back down, and he never feels himself stop floating.

Jen’s apartment is there. It’s there, and she’s in it. Bruce knows she’s in it, because he had watched her walk in, his face concealed by a bowed head and the grimy baseball cap he had pulled out of a Salvation Army bin. Today his hair was ginger, the color of orange sand, and his eyes were round and owlish. He only got a glimpse of himself in the grubby mirror as he left his motel room.

But it didn’t matter what he looked like, because Jen was there. She was right there. His cousin, his friend, his familial soulmate. Less than 100 feet away.

Bruce couldn’t go speak to her, though. He was frozen, stuck, as if his spine had grown roots and anchored him to this metal bench with chipping green paint. His hands wove together in a flurry of movement fueled by his anxiety, and his legs shook his seat with how hard he was bouncing them.

Go talk to her, moron.

Wasn’t it supposed to be easy to talk to a friend, as instinctual and inherent as breathing? Bruce hasn’t had a friend in so long, perhaps he forgot what it was like to have one. Or, well, he hopes she’s still his friend, he would understand if she wasn’t. Maybe that’s why he can’t walk up to her apartment and ring the damn bell. Maybe he was afraid she wouldn’t like him anymore.

He’s always been such a damn coward. A milksop, just like Ross had said on that fateful day.

He shouldn’t have come here. He should just walk away, and forget he was here, and just leave. Jen didn’t need to be involved in this, and fuck, Jen probably hated him anyway, despised him -

He didn’t realize he was walking until he found himself standing in front of her apartment door with no recollection as to how he got there, fist poised to knock, a few inches from the wood. Fuck. He couldn’t do this. Bruce looked down at himself. A blue jacket with a mystery stain on it he had found on the sidewalk covered his emaciated torso, a pair of frayed jeans a size too big hung off his hips. What a mess this was. What a mess he was.

God.

The door opened, and Bruce stumbled back. Why did he come here he shouldn’t have come here but it was too late now because she was right there.

“Uh…” Jen stood in her doorway, awash in the natural light emanating from her apartment; it made her look ethereal, like she was a spirit or ghost or something. Bruce had to restrain himself to reach out and touch her, to see if she was actually solid or just a hallucination, a mirage. He wouldn’t put it past his brain to do something like that. “Can I help you…?”

Bruce looked up in shock, saw the wariness and trepidation present in her eyes. There was no spark of recognition in her features. None. Her eyes were void of familiarity, as if he was a stranger. He blinked, unsure of what to do. He was expecting surprise, happiness, anger, sadness - anything. Not this. Not this…this nothingness.

She didn’t recognize him. He doesn’t know what to do. What does he do?

“Jen,” he coughed, voice hoarse from disuse, “Jen…” his desperation was palpable.

“Um...yes?” She had taken a step back, her hand on the door, ready to close it.

“Jen - Jen, Jen,” he repeated her name like a mantra, a chant. It almost didn’t sound like a real name anymore. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she wasn’t real, maybe this was just some bad dream. “Jen, it’s...it’s me.” It’s Bruce. He couldn’t say that, though. Because he wasn’t Bruce, hadn’t been in years.

Jen was looking more and more freaked out the more he spoke. She didn’t recognize him. She didn’t recognize him. “I’m going to...I’ll be right back,” she moved to close the door, but his foot darted out to prevent it from shutting.

“No!” He called. “No, no Jen, Jen please…”

“Sir,” her formal tone caused thorns to grow around his heart, squeezing and piercing and hurting. “I don’t know what you want from me, but -”

God, he couldn’t take this, this, this torture. “Jennifer! It’s me, it’s -” Robbie Bruce David Robert “Bruce. It’s Bruce.”

Jen’s stance immediately stiffened. “You - you aren’t Bruce. You can’t be. Bruce is dead.”

Bruce was dead, she was right. He was dead, and now there was only Bruce.

“And besides…” Jen continued, “you don’t look like him.”

Bruce didn’t know what to say in response to that, because she was right. He didn’t look like Bruce. So he just mutters something about having the wrong person and leaves, because he’s a coward.

Later, after Jen got shot and there was blood blood blood, pooling on the tarmac in a puddle of scarlet so thick it was almost black, reaching out to him in red tendrils like it did when Mom died, Bruce moved into action from the alleyway he’d been watching from. He couldn’t have done anything before the gunshot, because then the Hulk would have come out and hurt Jen and he just couldn’t hurt her, not again, so he didn’t move and just stood there and watched. And then Jen was bleeding out and he stood and watched. Just like he did on that night with Mom. He stood and watched until something clicked and he was spurred into motion.

The blood transfusion happened during one of those times where everything goes fast and slow at the same time. Bruce stares as poison enters her veins and hopes that it’ll work, that she’ll be alive after this.

He drops her off at a hospital when she’s stable.

Later he finds out that a large hulking woman, big and green and muscular, was seen in L.A.. As Bruce is eaten by the guilt, he hopes that Jen doesn’t become Jen.

He hopes she can keep her life.

He’s in Bangalore when he’s found. The slums are warm and hot and damp, steam rising off the muddy ground like a sauna. Most nights he arrives at his abode - a liberal use of the word - with inches of mud caked on his shoes and weighing his steps down.

When they find him, he’s asleep. But he wakes up, because he’s always been a light sleeper - it’s a habit that has roots in alcoholic fathers and crying mothers, that stems from running running running. He’s sure he hears them before they see him, because an entire military squad is very hard to keep silent. He doesn’t bother running, which is a first for him.

He’s just sick of existing and not existing in this wretched sort of purgatory, with his different name, different face, different blood. He doesn’t know what parts of him are really him anymore. He’s just a harbinger for the Hulk, a carrier of the plague, a bad omen that predicts nothing but destruction.

So he walks out of his lean-to and faces his executioner, arms up in surrender. Bruce doesn’t move and doesn’t care as they shackle the mutant inhibitor around his neck and roughly restrain his hands behind his back.

This is wrong. So, so wrong.

He shouldn't let them do this.

But he is just so, so tired.

So he does.

His hair is brown - almost black - and it falls in his eyes limply, burdened from days of dirt and grime and oil. Bruce’s eyes - they're more wide set, now, a light brown - are sunken like a corpse’s, and his movements are jerky like the undead. It’s appropriate. He looks as dead as he feels.

They say keep your friends close and your enemies closer. He has no friends, but he does have enemies. It’s the one thing he does have.

But they are mostly the Hulk’s enemies, so maybe he doesn’t have anything, after all.

Ross towers over him, square muscles square torso square jaw pulled taut, something awful glimmering in his eyes.

“Finally found you, you bastard,” Ross gloats, chewing a gross black cigar. Bruce doesn’t blink as Ross exhales smoke like pepper spray into his eyes. He does tear up, though. It’s the first time he’s cried in years.

Dead eyes glance up at their captor, blank and dull. Furious eyes stare down at their prisoner, filled with fury, then...something else. Confusion.

“This isn’t him!” Ross shouts at the army men surrounding him. Bruce’s face is slack with shock as his restraints are removed, and he’s shoved unceremoniously back into his house. He stands there until the soldiers leave, their feet light and solid despite the mud beneath their boots. He stands there and doesn’t move. And then he starts laughing. He laughs and laughs and laughs until he realizes he’s crying and the tears finally come and don’t stop.

He clutches at his cheeks with a tenacity that makes them bleed. He doesn’t feel the sting from his nails piercing his skin or the burn from the salt in his wounds. He just feels relief and disappointment and everything. He hasn’t felt anything in the past year, hasn’t allowed himself to. But the dam broke and now there’s everything.

The blood drips down his chin and mingles with the tears, and together they fall to the floor in a cavalcade of scarlet.

They say that your life and its path is dependent on the friends you make. So by extension, your life, your personality, is all reliant on your friends, your acquaintances.

He has friends now, and they’ve been with him for about a month. He had sought after Betty one day and explained everything, and Jen had seen Hulk save the world and had sought after him, and Rick...well, Rick was always there when he needed him. So he had friends, which was nice. He wasn’t used to nice. But he could get used to it.

He has possessions now as well. Jen let him live in her guest bedroom. He had a weighted blanket, a stack of books and scientific journals, and a phone and laptop. He felt almost like a normal person, almost like he didn’t have a maelstrom inside of him, always ready to be unleashed.

He was in Jen’s guest bedroom when he saw it.

The room is cluttered; not disorganized, just cluttered. Busy. He can’t find it within himself to throw anything away - he hasn’t had anything in so long, that he keeps everything. Ticket stubs, notebooks, dried out pens, everything his hands have come in contact with litter every surface. There’s a bathroom attached to his room, and this bathroom has a mirror, as bathrooms do. He avoids it.

It’s a Tuesday, when he sees it. He wakes up, showers, leaves the shower, towels off, walks past the mirror in the bathroom, stops. Stares.

It’s...it’s him. It’s him. His reflection stares back at him and he has a pointed chin and high cheekbones and dark brown eyes and light brown hair and it’s him - God, it’s him. He doesn’t react at first, just looks and doesn’t blink or move. It takes a while for the realization to break through that wall of shock. An arm slowly raises to feel his chin. He blinks.

And then he’s laughing. He’s laughing like that night in Bangalore. Loud and manic and relieved.

Jen must have heard him, because she barges in, almost knocks the door off its hinges.

“Are you okay - oh my God.”

He looks up at her, eyes glistening with tears. “Jen, Jen, I’m me.”

“Oh Bruce,” she says, and Bruce doesn’t need to correct her, because she’s right.

A name decides your life and your identity. Bruce finally has a name again, because he finally has an identity again. He looks like how he did on that fateful Day (a deafening roar and a wave of heat and power and green, green, green...the screaming and the Geiger counter ticking ticking ticking…).

For the first time in years, Bruce is alive.

#yeah ive already posted this sometime but im proud of it and it fits the prompt so #there #bruce week #bruceweek #bruce banner #bruce banner appreciation #my writing

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entangledvoices-archive · 6 years ago

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Mun & Muse comparison

tagged by: @stilesbegiles tagging: @redemptivexheroics @araethi @menxyouxneed @mijnhelden

✚ M U N | I N F O R M A T I O N ✚

Name: Kayla Nicknames: Kay, Kiki Wishlist Nickname: Not really got any Height: 5′8 Eye Color: brown Hair Color: brown Ethnicity: English Lives in: England Character(s) Most Identified With: Erm... lets not go there... I have a lot, not sure what people identify me with the most XD Hobbies: Crafting, dressmaking, reading, binge watching netflix. Special Talent(s): *Hides* I am not special!!! none of my talents are special XD Warning/Disclaimer: Is a completely odd and strange Bean Struggling With: an addiction of adding muses.

✚ M U S E | I N F O R M A T I O N ✚

Name: Lydia Martin Nicknames: Town Whackjob, Human Geiger-Counter for Death, The Banshee, Ariel, Harbinger of Death, Pretty Little Thing Wishlist Nickname: Lydia is just fine. Height: 5′3″ Eye Color: Hazel Hair Color: Red, she prefers Strawberry blonde, or Cinnamon, Ethnicity: caucasion Lives in: Beacon Hills Relationship Status: (In the thread with @stilesbegiles) Stiles Special Talent(s): Banshee abilities. Struggling With: Beacon Hills!

In Conclusion: Its not worth pretending to be someone else, just to be loved. Be who you really are, and those who love you, love the real you.

#taggy thingy

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purkinje-effect · 7 years ago

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The Anatomy of Melancholy, 8

Table of Contents Go to first. Go to previous. Go to next.

(Updated 2019.01.29. Minor name tweaks.) Food squick tw.

At first, Carey thought he’d awoken to a hangover, but remembered he hadn’t had a drink the day before. He deduced dehydration when he couldn’t recall the last he’d drunk anything besides coffee. Jolting up on the lobby couch, he fretted over whether Angel had used the water reserves to make coffee the day before, or if the Handy had somehow used tap water. He squinted, too tired to speculate.

The morning ached in long stitches. He removed his dress shirt and threaded himself back into his spinal corset. In a fumble of beleaguered jerks, he adjusted the laces tight enough to his liking, then dropped his hands to either side of him. He stared out hollowly at the blown-out skeleton of the dropped ceiling at length before he even bothered with the rest of the orthotics, or even put his shirt back on. How much of the debris from downstairs had been the stuff from the dropped ceiling? By comparison, the ceiling on the second or third floors hadn’t made all that much mess. This line of thought, too, required more caffeine than he had in him.

He took his glasses and the Mentats tin and ambled into the break room. Alone, he shook the now-cold half-full percolator, but the idea of coffee turned him off for probably the first time in his life. Skimming the cabinets yielded nothing he thought might appease the intense nausea which beset him. The deteriorated, faded packages and the biting sourness of the fridge corner evinced his delusion that any preservatives in food from before his freeze would have kept them food-safe all these years. Even the Salisbury steaks felt suspect. Had any of the questionable things he’d eaten set off his stomach? Again, he worried about the unknown water source which had percolated his caffeine fix. He discarded these hindsights, and he settled on one of the three bottles of Melancholia which Angel had so graciously considered food rations in themselves. Surely, the nutritive substitute wouldn’t prove past its prime like everything else.

Like him.

Carey set the cane across a table, and sat and unscrewed the bottle. He nipped at it tiredly. After a few sips, he set it down and rubbed at his nose bridge with a grumble. Not even the syrupy horrid medicinal cherry flavor of Melancholia could wash out the sulfurous bouquet of the ‘smoothie’ which had permeated every surface of his mouth. In repeated attempt to liberate it of its increasingly rank coating, his tongue smeared against the roof of his mouth and his front teeth raked across his tongue. Irritable, he chugged the rest of the nutrient-fortified meal substitute, tossed the empty bottle in the sink, and wandered into the stock room again, flicking on the lights.

The heavy low set in as Carey paced about. Actually following dosing directions this time, he popped a Mentat under his tongue and let it dissolve sublingually. He recognized a need to meter his Mentats usage, without knowing the pharmacy’s stock. The wartime rations had affected everything, especially the public’s access to chems, and likely impacted availability even at warehouse levels. He couldn’t afford to risk profligacy with a cache of something which so readily defogged his frost-mired grey matter.

Deflated and restless, he shuffled about the stock room shelves. This time he had overhead light to facilitate skimming the overall supply at a glance, not just his Pip-Boy light. Bedpans. Gauze. Thermometers. All the saline, iodine, isopropyl alcohol, and witch hazel a medic could ask for. Needles and catgut. A variety of scissors, forceps, lances, scalpels, and the like, all rusted beyond any patent usefulness. A crate of walking canes beside the walkers. He gritted his teeth. He couldn’t use the box of Epsom salts without a place to soak, and he disowned the heartache of it by tossing the box unceremoniously back on the shelf where he’d found it.

Carey grunted as he unfolded the unrusted wheelchair to sit in it, and he hooked the cane between himself and the armrest, across the back and seat upholstery. With a few testing nudges at the chrome handrims, he resigned to tooling around the building in it for a bit. To try it out, he told himself. As he went along, he noted that walking put less strain on his upper body than wheeling himself, but he felt steadier. Compromise peddled him along by shuffling his feet. Though he still denied it, the altercation with the RadRoaches had enervated him. There would be more roaches. There always were. If he wanted to survive their next encounter, he’d have to make compromises like these. Besides, he couldn’t live in the orthotics, and until he could better determine the permanency he feared of his condition, he needed to acclimate to other modes of mobility.

The wheelchair set him on a different eye level, and he seized upon the hygiene section where it had previously eluded him. After all, he’d last bathed in 2077, and he felt that grime to the bone. His intent stare scanned the shelves. Mouthwash. Toothbrushes. Toothpaste. Dental floss. Hairbrushes and combs. Shampoos and bar soap. Towels and washcloths. Toilet paper, oh lord why hadn’t he considered the horror of running out of toilet paper. Unintelligible exasperation compelled the eager vault survivor to lay a towel across his lap and scoop a wide variety of these things into it. Holding back tears of excitement, he propelled himself to the second-floor bathroom like a deadline chased him. Before he even got there, a gob of toothpaste and the freshly unpackaged toothbrush already churned in his mouth. The paste didn’t taste like much of anything anymore, but it still very much did the trick.

He dumped his treasures into the bathroom floor beneath the sink, and hung up the towel and a washcloth on the handrail beside the toilet. The ceramic wall-mounted sink held his gaze as he continued to scour the taste of Angel’s deviled egg smoothie from his mouth. The mirror had fallen off the wall, but the pieces no longer littered the pale tile floor as they had yesterday, owing to Angel’s compulsive cleaning habits. He turned on the faucet and the wall gave up a metallic groan before pouring out sour gold-brown water. He let it run for a while, his eyes shut in meditative comfort slowly continuing to brush. He still distrusted the water, but the unyielding need for self-care stifled any concern.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” He turned the hot water handle up to max, to let it run. “I’d get irradiated?”

The stress of that permanent looming threat cracked through the froth into a weak, tickled chuckle. He expectorated, but kept brushing his tongue. Then, he noticed just how much blood he’d spat out, and stopped and watched it swirl down the sink, tongue slowly receding back into his mouth with a frown.

When the flow no longer appeared yellow from years trapped in the plumbing, he set the back of his hand beneath it. His Pip-Boy’s Geiger counter didn’t make a pip, but the faucet still ran cold. Just running the hot line demonstrated no diminished flow, so he deduced that rather than the boiler or plumbing impacting water pressure, the first floor’s breakers more likely must have fed the boiler for the building.

They’d have to excavate the first floor’s back room to survey. The building wouldn’t have a bathtub or shower, but perhaps eventually he might regain hot water without having to boil it in small batches with a hot plate. A plastic cup went under the faucet, and he swished with it a few cupfuls. The water garnered a distant contentment. Chasing it with a bit of mouthwash helped ease both the metallic flavor and his mind.

He pulled out all the bobby pins he could locate in his nest of hair, and put them in his slacks pocket. Locking the door out of habit, he disrobed and deposited his effects in the seat of the wheelchair. The first bar soap he unwrapped had gone rancid, but he opened a second to find it almost pristine. The shampoo smelled more like book paste now, but still flowed from the bottle well enough.

It wasn’t a bubble bath or an Epsom soak, and it was cold as hell, but it would have to do for now.

The soaps and such would remain in the bathroom, tucked in the floor beneath the sink. Carey sat in the wheelchair to reaffix his braces and binding, and put his glasses back on, but stopped short with his clothes and Pip-Boy in his lap. It irked him, the mess he’d made of his ensemble, but he couldn’t reasonably remedy it with just a small sink and bar soap. Surely, he could locate Abraxo venturing into town–if not in the supermarket, the high rises or their laundromat. He re-dressed and latched the bulky grey-green Pip-Boy back around his left wrist, then wandered back to the break room. He pushed the swing door open with his feet and wheeled himself inside, then shoved a chair aside to sit at a table, still drying his long, dark hair.

“Angel, a question: Did you brew the coffee yesterday with purified water, or with tap water?”

The pale blue Handy busied itself with… something in the far corner.

“Oh, Sir! Good afternoon!” It jammed the door of the fridge shut and rushed to refill the coffee cup it had cleaned when its owner had excused himself. It handed the lukewarm drink to him. “My word, though, what a question. I used the canned water! Was I not supposed to?”

“Oh, ah.” Though he knew now he could trust it, he stared into the black coffee. Somehow, the answer disappointed him. “No, it’s not that. I just realized this morning that clean water might be rarer than I thought. Coffee seems like it should stay a treat for now, unfortunately. Until we find a trustworthy water source. I need to test the water here for pathogens, but I don’t really have the tools or know-how for that.”

“If it pleases you, Sir, I might remind you that all General Atomics Mister Handies come standard issue with a network of condensators. Mine haven’t worked for some time, but perhaps were they operational again, I might… refine water for you?”

Nearly startled by the comment and its spectrum of implications, he looked up from his drink at the robot, still not having taken a sip. Of course, Angel was just as worse for wear as he was–it had operated, to his knowledge, the entire time he’d been in stasis. The condensators were nearly nonessential components of the robot, but if they’d stopped working, far more must also have. A remiss sorriness drained color from his face.

“I seem to have upset you, so let’s put that behind us for now. Forgive me for not having prepared your breakfast this morning, but you’ve told me in the past that if you had no engagements, to let you sleep… You look like you feel a thousand times improved.” Its ocular lenses flickered over him. “And… you did opt for the wheelchair, after all, I see.”

“I’m just trying it out.” Carey stiffened as he drank the stale beverage. “And yeah, a good wash does wonders, doesn’t it?” He hid gnashed teeth best he could, the stress leaching out the Melancholia from his flesh. “Say, how much bourbon have we got left?”

The Handy rummaged through its own back compartment to reach the glass bottles it had opted to keep in stow rather than shelve anywhere just yet.

“Roughly twelve ounces,” it said, eyeing the bottle once it had located it.

“Whiskey? Vodka?”

The chemist hadn’t really committed to memory the vestiges of the wet bars he’d cleaned out along the way.

“Besides the bourbon, you do have a bit of vermouth, rum, and vodka left as well. Though, I do recommend the bourbon if you intend to mix it with your coffee, Sir, since we’re without cream.”

“That’s all right. Bring me the rum, please.”

Angel obliged.

“Should we aim to restore a wet bar here? Perhaps we could locate a cache of liquor here in the ruins of Lexington, hm! Comb the high rises to lift your spirits, ha-ha!”

“Cute, Angel. …Once I’m acclimated to the building here, and to myself,” he interjected under his breath while he poured liberally, “we’ll have to do some supply runs. Bare minimum, shoulder our way past those… ghouls into the Super Duper Mart. Hopefully, they haven’t squatted the market in large numbers.” He took a swig of the doctored caffeine and slumped in his seat. “Lord, that was terrible the other day. I’m sure they’re not just in the market, though. I’m more worried about them than I am about my constitution. We’ll have to ready up for that.”

He refrained from mentioning any desire to visit Hawthorne at the Red Rocket.

“In the mean time, I’m confident we can certainly make this place quite cozy. Do you think it feels secure enough to work towards calling it home?”

“For a while, at least.” The smooth spiciness seeped into him, and the mellow returned a bit. He held his tongue, not to complain aloud of his lack of a bathtub. “But right now, I’m going to use the afternoon to take stock of the… equity of the lab.”

“I’ll be down here, if you need me, Sir.”

Carey tossed the towel down from around his neck, tired of rubbing at his hair.

“What were you doing when I came in, anyway?”

“Oh, well! I had hoped to clean out the refrigerator, since we’ve got power in this room again.” It demonstrated the trouble by re-opening it. A thick, fine-filament mass coated every surface, and wrinkled sac-like fruits bulged from it. “It will take some time, I’m afraid, but nothing a little pluck and elbow grease can’t remedy.”

“Are those…” He wheeled up closer, and noted the pale lime glow of the fungus. His face fell slack. “…That’s brain fungus. There must have been some cross-contamination from one of the technician’s lab coats, and the spores ended up in here. Or maybe, someone stored a sample in the fridge with all the food for some godawful reason. –Doesn’t matter how it got there, really.” He sniffed, his lip curling a touch. “Good lord, were’ looking at a lot of Mentats there.”

“Does this mean the mold bears some value to you, then?”

“Utmost.”

“But the appliance is so vile, Sir.”

“So is most of the building. I’ll manage.” Carey pointed at the Handy with a firm, accusatory glare. “Do not clean out that fridge. Not before I secure another place to harvest them from. I don’t know how rare they are now, or what kind of viable stock remains upstairs. Consider it the first medication I’ve touched upon so far that has given me legitimate reprieve from my… illness.” He grabbed his coffee cup to take it with him. “Speaking of viable stock, you know where to find me.”

“I wish you luck.”

Carey stopped short of the swing door and turned back to his Handy.

“You don’t happen to remember where the antifreeze from in Sanctuary ended up, do you?”

It knew exactly what he was on about, and suddenly it lit up at the opportunity to assist however needed in his procurement of the requested chemical.

“Ah! I know right where it is. Go on ahead to the laboratory. I’ll bring it to you!”

“Thank you. You’re an angel.”

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#fo4 fanfic #fallout 4 fanfic #sole survivor #sosu #fallout 4 #melancholy #food squick maybe

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