Episode 6: Critter Girl

*Click*

Voncid:  Dotti Jean Barlowe?

Faraday: yes.

Voncid: As fascinating as it sounds, I don’t involve myself in mundane cases.  

Faraday: She isn’t.

Voncid:  perhaps I wasn’t clear enough, I know she isn’t mundane.  No one that kills, cleans, and meticulously taxidermies three men is mundane, but I involve myself in cases involving the beyond.

Faraday:  This does.

Voncid:  I remain skeptical.

Faraday:  I understand, but I have *realizing the cylinder recording device Voncid has been running so far*  What is that? 

Voncid:  It’s a wax cylinder recording device.  Luca custom fit for me.

Faraday:  I thought the order of Hamsa was very against… logging things.

Voncid:  It is, its just for me.  It is essentially impossible for anyone but me to play these back, no one will ever hear it but me and my replacement.

Faraday:  You found one?

Voncid: no.  But I remain optimistic.

Faraday: ok, but you’re going to want to hear this.  This woman was brought in, three human taxidermies in her workshop, they took a confession, but she escaped the jail that same night.

Voncid: as spine chilling as that is it does not necessitate my involvement *Faraday cuts him off*

Faraday: ***listen, just listen to it.  Give me the benefit of the doubt.  Come on Cid.  I kill the monsters you tell me too and I don’t give you half this much trouble just to get you to listen.

Voncid: fine.

Faraday:  It’s her jailhouse confession for the first three.

Voncid:  Very well, this will be a recording of a recording then, I may as well get this in my log.

Faraday:  You’ll want to get involved.  Ok, here we go.  This is from January 2021, North Virginia.

*we hear a tape recorder start,*

Dotti Jean Barlowe:  Honestly, I hardly identify as a person to begin with.  I identify with small rat faced scurrying things more than I ever have with… 

*the word is distasteful in her mouth.*

People.

My mom was always always trying to force friends on me.  She would bribe or cajole other parents until their spawn would be led in, unhappily mind you, to my birthday whatever, or pool-what-have-yous.

I eventually realized if I wanted to get out of having to make nice with the kid that drooled and the one that liked fires and the one that pulled the cat’s tail when no one was looking, I was going to have to commit some light sabotage.

My critter friends were incredibly helpful in those respects.

A single groundhog let loose in an enclosed space can do a lot of damage.

Rats are impeccable swimmers.

It only took the two before my destiny as the Critter Girl of Brighthearth township was fulfilled.

Critter Girl is, for the record, a shitty name, I know, but I owned it.

My mother, thwarted as she was, never fully gave up meddling.  Her next intervention into my life, however, was really very welcome.

I had a ferret, Samsa, that did what ferrets do after a decade, best case scenario, and dropped dead.

I’d had plenty of pets die before, but Samsa and I were particularly close and I took it hard.

Imagine my surprise when my mother set Samsa, post mortem, in front of me on the kitchen table.

He was standing, coiled around a chunk of driftwood, his lithe jaws pulled back wide in his classic snarl-smile.

He was still, frozen, but it was him.  All the life was gone, but the life was captured.

*She starts to drift off into memory, getting detached.*

Life in amber…

*She pulled it together*

*Clears her throat*  Needless to say I was impressed.  

Taxidermy, she explained.  There was a guy in town my dad used to know, Mr. Hannicut, who was well known for being skilled at it.  Won competitions and such.

She spoke with him about the possibility of me apprenticing with him.  Learning how to do it.

I hugged my mother and thanked her.  She started crying for some reason and before you knew it, I was learning how to stuff and stitch and preserve and position.

It was incredible.

These animals were my very favorite thing, and now I could really see how all the parts worked, the machinery, and capture the little details that made them so special. *Drifts off a bit again*

Forever.

So my apprenticeship went well.  Mr. Hannicut was an absolute kook, but the good kind.  He also had politeness not to die until I was better at his craft than he was.  And leave me his shop and his stuff.

I had already given up on competitions, I won ‘em all, what was the point though, I didn’t do it for attention.  I had to stop and remind myself to do it for money sometimes.

I lived and breathed sawdust, but I still had to eat, which was honestly pretty annoying.  

I mastered wire and wax and resin, but my practice was really small, which was fine with me.

It was out of the way, deep in a pine forest, smelled amazing.  Clean.

I kept a big colony of all kinds of critters on ten acres or so.  Made friends with wildlife.

I was actually happy for a minute there.

I didn’t advertise.  Then people might come.

Still I was good enough at it by then that I had some notoriety so people were always bringing me great specimens.

I liked the critters best, but it was great to have variety.  I liked to do pets best, but I tolerated the hunters, especially if they brought me a good one, or something I’d never seen up close before.  

Something to study and learn and figure out, like a meat and skin puzzle.

My absolute favorite was the two headed pig that lived to be a whole month before it died.

I did a real masterwork on that one.

Shouldn’t have done so well.  Drew too much attention.  So little good ever comes from lots of attention.

They ran a picture of it in some city paper.  I smiled looking at the black and white rendering of its four kind little eyes.

They ran it alongside that poem.  The one by umm, Laura Gilpin.  Do you know it?

*Pauses to wait for a response*

No?  Oh, it’s a real nice poem,  I like it a lot.

*Click, recording pauses and then resumes.*

Voncid:  Entering the poem into the notes for further consideration.  

Two Headed Calf, by Laura Gilpin.

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother.  It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass.  And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual.

*Click. The tape resumes*.

Dotti Jean Barlowe:  I got a reputation as someone who could do really tough jobs, which I could, but it turned into a bit of a curse.

People started bringing me things… things they probably shouldn’t have killed.

The albino deer broke my heart.  Poor thing had everything stacked against it and…

Anyways I didn’t like what was starting to happen.

Rarities should be left alone.

They learned that the hardest hard way.

One night, these three guys show up.  It was already dark.

Headlights in the drive after dark when you’re not expecting anyone, is there anything as ominous?

These men show up with two big trucks covered in tarps.  I can smell the blood from my front porch.

These are really nice cars.  New boots, new hats, expensive, everything was expensive.  They’re trying to look like cowboys, but there isn’t a rough edge on any of them.

*Affecting a southern accent and a deeper voice* 

“Hey there,” one says with a big orthodontist built smile that glows white even in the dark.

“We’ve got some real amazing shit,” they say.  You’re going to blow your top when you see it.”

I can smell what they’ve got in the back.  It’s fresh.  It smells crazy.  Not like anything else I’ve ever smelled.

“I’m not taking jobs,” I tell them.  “Specially not in the middle of the night.”

*In a gruff voice*

“Oh you’ll take these,” another guy says laughing.

“Not the kind of stuff to be driving around in the daytime if you follow.” says the first one.

“Take a look” the third one who hasn’t said anything yet said.

So I did.

Hyenas.  A lioness.  An elephant’s head, tusks still on.

“They’ve been on ice.  Couldn’t get the freezer truck down this road.”  One of ‘em said.

Another one sees the shock on my face and must have mistaken it for awe.  “Nice huh.”

There was something in the truck I'd never seen.  Not just hadn’t seen in person, but had never seen in a book or anything.  It was like a big, I don’t know how to describe it, like a big mink? Its long legs were stripped like a zebra.  I thought it was some kind of hunting dog, maybe a maned wolf, but it had a bright, glossy green stripe down its back.  Bright green and shiny even in just the headlights and the moonshine, like peacock green.  I’d never seen anything like that on a mammal.

Its dead black eye stared up at me.

Its eye didn’t reflect anything.  No light. *Her voice gets a bit dreamy*  Just like a perfect black pearl.

*In her gruff voice*

“Hey.  Stay with us.”

“This is a big job, and we are going to cut you a big check, ok? But discretion is necessary, for obvious reasons.”

“No.”  I say.  

I can’t stop looking at that incredible animal they have in there, tossed in like roadkill between other endangered animals they have murdered for no reason other than to make their smallness more bearable.  

“No.”

And I go to get inside.

But one of them grabs my arm and twists it.

“Bitch, don’t you fucking walk away from me.”

It hurts already and he’s starting to twist.

I don’t let on.

“Are you nuts?”  I ask.  You have this rare, expensive stuff, and you smuggle it into the country and you 

bring it to someone you’ve never met?  You’re crazy.

The first one, the talker, the one with the big smile grabs his friend and pulls him loose of me.  

“Our usual guy, ran into some trouble, and our backup guy too.  We understand this is a huge inconvenience, but it will never come back to you, and we are going to make it worth your while.  Six figures worth your while.”

*Sarcastically* 

Gosh, I say, I can’t even count that high.  I really need all that money, living out here in the woods with my animals, what an incredible opportunity!

I probably should have realized how dangerous the situation was.  Probably should have played it differently.  These kind of people are used to always getting what they want, and sometimes they do crazy shit if they suddenly don’t.

The smiling ones smile fades.

“I’ve tried to be nice, but this has been a tough month.  One of those piece of shit animals back there actually killed a friend of ours during the hunt.”

I didn’t have to ask which one.

“We are not walking away empty handed.  You can shut up, do your job, and make a bunch of money and go back to fucking your pet badgers or whatever, or my friends and I can beat the shit out of you, burn your house down and use those cages full of muskrats and shit back there for target practice.”

I could hear my own teeth grinding.

But what could I do? I agreed.

I told them we needed to get them inside, that I was going to be up all night skinning.  Let's get ‘em down to the walk-in freezer.

I don’t really know what I was thinking, I was stalling I suppose.

We went into the back of the first truck and without thinking about it, I ran my hand along the back of the strange animal.  That green stripe even felt like feathers, soft and smooth.

And warm.

He said they had them on ice but this one was warm.

I picked it up, it was the smallest of the bunch, but I still had to sling it over my shoulder.

I had just started down to the side of the house where the workshop entrance was when it started whispering to me.

“I know what you’re thinking” it said.

You might not believe this, I don’t really understand it myself, but… *pause* it didn’t seem weird.  I accepted it right away.  There was never a shocked “oh my god, what is happening moment”

It was talking to me and I whispered back.  That was what was happening.

“What am I thinking?”

*Another voice faintly overlays with Dotti Jean’s*

“You’re thinking you want to kill them.”

I suppose it was right.

*The two voices together*

“Well if you want to kill them you’ll have to do it now.  Taxidermy takes a long time right?  By the time you’re done, they’ll have their shit together.  You’ll never see them again.  You’ll see a go between of a go between.”

“I… I shouldn’t kill them.”

*The two voices together*

“You should.  You’ll like it.” It said with this honey in its voice.  It was so sweet I had to believe it.

“I can get them arrested.  I can call…”

It interrupted me. 

*The two voices together*

 “No you can’t.”

And I knew that was right, too.  What would even happen to them?  Fines?  Shame?  They had all the money and if they had any pride, any self respect, they wouldn’t be poaching in the first place would they.

I turned and looked back up the hill to where the trucks were.  The beams lit the front of the house up, the contrast plunged everything else into pitch darkness.

The fat one had a lioness slung over his shoulders and was following me down.

The lionesses, even dead, was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.

Animals.

They were animals.

But not good ones.

We were in the workshop now.  All my projects and tools swayed comfortingly at me, like they were saying hello.  They didn’t know how much trouble we were in.

Samsa looked worried though, he knew.

I pulled the handle on the big freezer, the weighted door swinging out to reveal turkeys and geese and other birds frozen whole.

*Two voices together*

“It’ll be easy.  I’ll help you.”

Earlier, as I was telling this story I tried to think about how to lie to you.  I wanted to change the story, make it so they left the animals with me and Mr. Green Stripe talked me into killing them over the course of the months I was working on him.

But that’s not the truth.  And you’ve gone through all the trouble to get me back here, to speak with you…

I guess I’m just a little embarrassed that he convinced me to kill them in the time it took me to walk him down to my freezer.

Honestly, it didn’t take much convincing.

I set Mr. Green Stripe on my skinning table, said I’d work on that one first.

The fat man spit on the dusty floor.  “That thing was an asshole.”

I opened the freezer for him and motioned to a free spot on the floor.

“Put it there,” I said.

My heart was thundering.

He leaned over awkwardly and dropped it onto a low shelf, his knees almost buckled under her weight, even gutted and hollowed out as she was.

*Two voices together*

“Easy,” Mr. Green Stripes said.

He was right.

Before the man could right himself, I grabbed his pale blonde hair and pulled.  He fell forward onto his hands and knees.

I slammed *slam* the freezer door on his head.

He made a weird little grunt and fell straight down.

A few more slams.

*Two voices together*

“Natural,” Mr. Green Stripes said.

The second man walked right in behind us, cradling a hyena.

The skinning knife *crunching sound* went up under his chin, easy as pie.  His arms were full, I could almost feel the hyena clinging to him, pinning his arms, keeping him from raising them.

He made a lot more noise than the first one.

*In her gruff voice* “Hey, what the fuck was that.”  It was the smiler.  He was still up by the cars.  I heard a door open.

Mr. Green Stripes warned me he was getting a weapon.

I could hear the pine needles crunching under his feet as he stormed towards the workshop.

I didn’t have anywhere to go where he wouldn’t see me.  My eyes scanned the room rapidly, like a trapped animal.

The second man had fallen forward onto the skinning table.  His blood had pooled out, the way Mr. Green Stripe's head was laying… it looked like he was drinking it, or maybe, he was drinking it.  Was the pool shrinking?  Was I going mad?  More mad?

When the smiling man burst through the door, the strange animal had already soaked up most of the visible blood.

Its long neck lifted up off the table.

It started laughing, *Faint echoing laughter* this high insane laugh.

*The second voice that has been layered over Dotti’s, this time alone*

“Ammmmmmbrose” it said mockingly.  

It must have been his name.

The man wailed, though he somehow didn’t seem very surprised.  He unloaded his shotgun *shot* , pumped it, shot again *shot*the laughing animal was still howling giddily but the second shot knocked it off the table.

He stormed forward firing again *shot*  and again *shot* into the thing on the floor.

He never noticed me.

The piece of driftwood Samsa sat on was heavy *squelching, crunching sound*.  

I think he was unconscious after I hit him the first time *another crunch*, the second blow he was on the floor so I had more leverage.

A nice satisfying crunch sounded that it had done the trick.

Mr. Green Stripes didn’t talk for weeks after that, not until I cleaned him up, got him nicely put back together.

But when he woke back up, started talking again, he had some really interesting ideas about what

*Dotti Jean’s voice begins to fade and the second voice begins overtop it*

 I could do with the three mostly pristine new specimens I had in my freezer.

*The tape over her confession cuts*

Faraday: the detectives ran out of tape, had to turn it over.

Voncid: So there is more?  I’m still not convinced these are anything more than the ramblings of a mad woman.

Faraday: *with a smile in his voice*  I didn’t tell you how she escaped from prison.

Voncid:  *thinks for a moment*  I see… oh… oh well… 

Faraday:  mmhmmm

Voncid: Was Dotti Jean Barlowe broken out of prison by three men?

Faraday: yes.

Voncid: Were these three men described as having a certain stiffness to them?

Faraday: they were.

Voncid: and the taxidermy of the victims’ bodies

Faraday: disappeared from a badly damaged morgue.

Voncid:  Well… ahem.  You sort of buried the lead there didn’t you?

Faraday:  I know, I’m incorrigible.

Voncid:  Well let's get after it then shall we?  Further investigation into this line of inquiry will be labeled under… umm… ah, Critter Girl.