"Look man, the whole paradigm has shifted, ya know? I mean, the epicenter is moved...it's further east. They say we're weird, wear weird clothes... weird rituals. Right? What about the Masons? Or the Mormons? Drink the wine, chew the wafer? Which bull shit story are you selling, Wenty? Are you smoke or sand?"
It is rare when fortune favors one with an up close, face to face encounter with a psychopath. It is often unpleasant, rarely instructive in any way, and yet it is irresistible. Kevin Crabtree is a different kind of psychopath. I'm certain that he is not the first or the only of his kind, but he's the first of his kind I've ever encountered. I have known a number of psychopaths over the years, some of them former business associates. Psychopaths perform remarkably well in the business world.
Kevin is not about the business world. He's never been part of it, doesn't care about it, has no clue what any of that is about. If I were to be more circumspect in my choice of wording I might better describe Kevin Crabtree as a sociopath. Either tag fits, really. He is a sociopath who is currently engaged in post grad studies in psychopathology. There might well have been a doctoral thesis at some point, but Kevin and the mania of the Deaf Kids from New Guinea have been mercifully brought to an end. The world will never learn the full details of their malign purpose; they will never realize their sinister aims. They do leave a trail of carnage. And a manifesto, of sorts.
I got lucky. I played a hunch and it paid off. I cornered them behind a garage on the outskirts of the town of Yellow Springs, Ohio. If one lives long enough one acquires knowledge of certain things which are often better left unknown. I'm old enough to have a few of those things in my deck and it was one of those cards I played to finally corner my quarry.
He was sweaty, greasy and even at a distance of ten feet smelled like balls. His little cosplay ensemble was threadbare at the elbows and stained throughout with ketchup, mayo and Taco Bell hot sauce. I noted for the first time the sparse patches of facial hair and a Fred Savage sized mole between his left ear and cheekbone. This was not the face of some nineteen to twenty-four year old. He was probably in his mid thirties. When he caught sight of me his face did not exhibit any sense of surprise, yet I sensed that he relaxed, somehow knowing that this was the end of the line. His pupils were dilated like saucers. I figured he was on acid. Maybe mushrooms.
"I'm not selling anything, Kev. Who's your friend here? I mean, were here. Deaf Kid 2 seems a little insulting at this point, don't you think?"
"This is Gleeb, man. Okay?"
"Yeah. Okay. That girl isn't under age, is she?"
"It's not a girl! Gleeb is non-binary. Zey/zem!"
"Yeah, and a pile of shit by any other name..."
"What?"
"Never mind. Not important." Once one has engaged with a psychopath it is good to keep them talking. Just mind where you tread.
"You sayin' I'm not important? You sayin' we're not important?"
"No no! On the contrary, Kev... if you weren't important I wouldn't be here now. I believe in what you're doing, Kev. The world needs to hear what the Deaf Kids from New Guinea have to say."
"Uh-huh. So what do the Deaf Kids from New Guinea say to you?"
"Gotta be honest with ya, Kev. I'm not really sure. I'm still trying to understand." This was a crucial juncture in our rendezvous off of US 68. It would be a crucial juncture with any psychopath. It stated plainly that there was no understanding, though understanding was still desired, and... please tell me more.
Readers at Midnight and other beasts know some of the exploits of the Deaf Kids' reign of terror. I am a Special Investigator for SCIU, the Stoner Crimes Investigative Unit. It's my job, and my nature, to burrow deep into the details. To find out where a story really begins and where it all turned south. Before I share with all of you what Kevin had to say, I believe it is only fair that I should share with you what I know of Kevin Crabtree's history.
To begin with... Kevin Crabtree was conceived via turkey baster, the father an anonymous donor. Kevin's mother was Jezebel. No, I am not shitting you. That was her actual name. Jezebel was a bit ahead of the curve and had come out full time butch in the early eighties. By 1988 she was already half coated in tats and took up with a live in gal pal named Bonnie. Same sex unions were not officially recognized by the state in those years, but the two of them nonetheless felt committed to one another for the long haul. In the summer of '89 the artificial insemination was scheduled and the following April Jezebel gave birth to a bouncing, baby Kevin.
It was all shits and giggles for a few years. They were a mostly happy little family, like any other. Struggling with the proper installation of government mandated car restraint systems for infants; discovering that formula, though less taxing upon one's teats, is no less of a pain in the ass; finding that formula and diapers combined seriously cut into available funds for cigarettes, booze, or other vices. At least they were compensated with a lot of nice family walks in the local park. And a dog.
When 1995 rolled around Bonnie decided that Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was her new Gospel. For Christmas that year she announced to Jezebel and Kevin that she was off to her new life as a full time disciple of Billy Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins. The boy with two moms was reduced to a boy with only one, which made his introduction to public school at least a little easier to navigate. Actually Kevin was doing just fine with Bonnie's departure. Unfortunately the same could not be said for Kevin's mother.
The ensuing four years of young Kevin's life were a tumultuous time. Jezebel descended from your garden variety minor depression to a full blown clinical variety within eight months of the split. This naturally led to the prescription of a cocktail of anti-depressants. These, combined with further self medicating efforts through illegally obtained pain killers, sent her into a prolonged dive. She could not hold down steady work. They moved five times in a span of four years. It was a rough life for Kevin in his budding youth.
On the eve of the new millennium Jezebel leveled out of her long decline and entered into the first stability they had known since Bonnie had left her. This did not, however, come without some price. Jezebel hitched her wagon to an Amazon of a woman named Liz. Short for Elizabeth. Elizabeth was wealthy and quite gainfully employed as a successful surgeon. For the first thirty-three years of her life Liz had been known as Eddy, from her birth name Edward. Jezebel was fully aware of this. I don't know if either of them ever informed Kevin.
A couple of years passed as a household. To the casual observer they were a small, quiet family. Dr. Liz was well respected in the community and as Kevin prepared to enter the sixth grade his life was radically altered. He had bounced from one public school to another since the first grade. Now he was enrolled in the private Windemere Academy. For his first day of school, for the first time in his life, he was not waiting at a dirty bus stop in ill fitting hand me downs. This year he was chauffeured in a BMW with his neatly tailored school uniform, complete with the tacky penny loafers.
Dr. Liz doted upon the both of them lavishly at every opportunity. You would not be wrong if you are thinking that this sounds at least mildly creepy. It was. And it would get much worse. Kevin had always been below percentile, lagging behind his peers in size and maturity. He entered the sixth grade at the age of eleven, right on the cusp of puberty, and this was when Dr. Liz began to take an unnaturally keen interest in the lad's development, subjecting the boy to frequent physical examinations. Sometimes this was done with Jezebel's knowledge and without objection. Other times it was done without her knowledge because she was unconscious. That may or may not have been by design.
These examinations became increasingly focused upon his sexual development. At the age of eleven years and six months Dr. Liz noted that, although the testicles had descended, there were still no signs of pubic hair. Despite this overall lack of development Dr. Liz remained fascinated with the boy's genitalia. While Kevin was well behind his peers in physical development, it seems that there was at least one area where this did not hold true. Dr. Liz had discovered that Kevin Crabtree was blessed with an impressive member. Where most boys at such an age were still at little more than the "nub" stage, this boy was sporting a true hose.
Now it may have been nothing more than simply being impressed by such endowment. I don't know for certain, but I suspect that there was a vein of jealousy in this obsession. Perhaps Eddy/Liz had not been so blessed and this may have been what ultimately led to the decision to become a "woman". Or perhaps it was remorse. It may just be that Dr. Liz was bat shit crazy. We may never know for sure what drove her actions, but given that we are talking about an individual who was a graduate of med school, and certainly should have known better, I'm going to come down in the camp of bat shit crazy.
There are a few theories that have been floated about what ultimately happened. Some suggest that Dr. Liz meant to resume life as Dr. Eddy via organ donation. Some would suggest that the good doctor intended to fully realize the illusion of womanhood by giving birth via Jezebel's surrogate womb. Whichever case it may be, Dr. Liz began to elicit Jezebel's support for her schemes by once again plying her with prescription pain killers, easily facilitated with a prescription pad.
On Valentine's Day 2002, just a few months shy of Kevin's twelfth birthday, Dr. Liz performed a full (and unauthorized) orchidectomy on him. Jezebel may or may not have been consulted. It's doubtful that she was in any state to give consent anyway. Kevin was not consulted in any way, merely drugged and subjected to the radical surgery. This all came crashing down within a week. Dr. Liz and Jezebel were both arrested and Kevin was whisked away by Child Protective Services.
In keeping with what had already been a very unorthodox childhood Kevin was ultimately placed with a great uncle, a brother to his maternal grandmother, for the balance of his teenage years. Kevin's uncle Garth was a bit of an eccentric character also. Garth was fifty-eight and lived on a remote farm of a few hundred acres in northern Wisconsin. He was one of those people who could tick off quite an eclectic selection of boxes on a demographics survey. He was a Vietnam War veteran. He was nominally a Buddhist, though some of his other traits would seem at odds with this. He was a proud anarchist and an arms enthusiast. The property was paid for and Garth was able to maintain it and cover the property taxes by growing Christmas trees and marijuana. Until Kevin arrived Garth's typical day would entail riding about his property on horseback while blaring Dead Kennedys over the multiple speakers he had wired about the forest.
This was a safe refuge and Garth was able to provide well for his young charge. Twice divorced, Garth was sympathetic to Kevin's injury, feeling likewise castrated if only in the euphemistic sense. At the same time, however, he also felt seriously creeped out by the kid. By the time Kevin had turned sixteen Garth felt that it was time to introduce the boy to marijuana. He was almost certain that the lad must have already indulged, but he was disappointed to find that Kevin had no interest whatsoever. He considered that this might well be due to the mother's substance abuse issues.
Garth had no children of his own as a matter of choice. Taking Kevin in was also a matter of choice, albeit one heavily tempered by a sense of obligation. No parties concerned with this arrangement were under any illusions; Garth understood, as did Kevin and the officers of the court, that he was not going to be a source of nurturing. His role was as caretaker. As Kevin matured Garth was able to look upon him with the eyes and wisdom of an old man, while also drawing comparison to his own youth and the many of his peers who never came home from the jungles of Vietnam. He developed the same sense of duty to the young man as he had for the new, green draftees that just kept coming for the entire twenty-two months that he was in country. There was that duty that every swinging dick has to prepare boys to become the next generation of men.
Well Garth did his best. He did not have the benefit of the normal eighteen to twenty-one years one is given to complete the task. He had instead only seven. And really not a lot of good material to work with. Someone else's damaged goods. How to relate to a young man who had an empty sack before his first hard on? That is where the Buddhism kicked in. As much as possible Garth zenned his way through the experience. Of course it also bears mentioning that Garth instilled in Kevin his considerable knowledge of firearms and explosives. For all of his effort he was always left befuddled at Kevin's utter disinterest in any of the typical masculine pursuits. Instead the boy's world was filled with Pokemon figures, anime comics and TV shows. Garth was convinced that this was just unnatural. He expressed concern to Kevin's doctors, who had prescribed testosterone supplements to compensate for the absent testes, but Kevin was not consistent in taking them. Alas, Garth was no more diligent in ensuring compliance.
At the age of seventeen Garth saw to it that Kevin got a driver's license and he provided the young man with an old Ford Econoline Van. It was a late eighties vintage, in shades of white and primer. Soon after Kevin took a job at a Taco Bell in a town about twenty-five miles from home. For the next two years Kevin and his uncle lived more as roommates than as charge and guardian. Kevin did really little of anything else but go to school, work, then home. Every bit of free time he had was spent absorbed in some form of anime. Then, abruptly in June of 2009, Kevin just left. It was one year after his high school graduation and two months after his nineteenth birthday. That is the last time that Garth ever saw him.
From there everything seems to go black on this kid. For an entire decade there is absolutely zero public record for Kevin Crabtree. No license renewal, no vehicle registration. No moving violations nor parking tickets. No medical records, voter registration, library card, credit cards or bank accounts. No tax returns. Zip, zero, nada! The dude was completely invisible for a solid ten years. I know with some certainty that this can in fact be done. But not by Kevin Crabtree. Not without some outside help.
Our Kevin's return to public life came with the auspicious arrest on multiple charges in rural Iowa, around the time of the 2020 Hawkeye Cauci. Someone posted bail for him. I could never discover who. The charges included drug and drug paraphernalia possession, among others. Garth might be gratified to learn that this at least rubbed off. It was some months later that a preliminary hearing was held via zoom (during pandemic protocols). Attorneys for Kevin entered a plea bargain on lesser charges and paid the attached fines by wire transfer the same day.
For the next four years Kevin bounced around the upper Midwest, taking one fast food job after another. He managed to avoid any further brushes with the law and evidently left most of his gigs on good terms. He was able to be rehired numerous times at a string of Burger Kings and Taco Bells throughout Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Finally, in February of this year, Kevin arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, where he landed a job as a shift manager at a local Burger King.
Madison, Wisconsin is the home of the University of Wisconsin. I imagine that most of you knew this. Long a liberal or "blue" bastion, U of W has grown in the last four years to one of those places where the woke monster is completely unchained from it's moorings. Thus the management of those fast food establishments in proximity of the university are no strangers to odd ducks in their work force. Kevin's job performance was without issue, though there were a few complaints that arose a couple of months after he started there. It was at that time that Kevin grew very vocal about the rainbow trans rights group he'd become involved with. He also chose this time to introduce his "Fursona". For those unfamiliar with the etiquette this is how one "comes out" as a "furry". The HR kommissars insisted that Kevin had the right to "express" his "true identity". He was hence known as Shift Manager Kevin Cocoa-Bear.
This was the beginning of the reign of terror. Little by little as the weeks passed Kevin was able to edge out employees who fell out of his favor. He replaced these with other furries, members of a new band he had formed called The Deaf Kids from New Guinea. It was weird, but it was working. It met the standards of depravity that the citizens of Madison are accustomed to. Everything was going fine until one day in early September. It was only a couple of weeks after the latest crop of freshmen had arrived. A customer was served a Whopper with cheese that was contaminated by an errant fire retardant tag, escaped from one of the furries' fursona's. It escaped notice at the time, but within days was brought to the attention of a BK district manager.
This was a serious incident, a severe breach of the company's brand. Both the store manager and Kevin were called out in front of the crew when that district manager came around. We'll call him Dick, because as anyone who ever worked for more than fifteen minutes in fast food knows, all DMs should be named Dick. Dick was not pleased and was making no secret of it. I believe part of his exact words were, "I don't give a fuck what HR said, you're not wearing those gay assed costumes to work any more! And that.....IS....FINAL!". Among other things. He really carried on for a while. Dick fired the store manager, a forty-something single mother of some Latin extraction (maybe Honduran?). She just bailed in tears. Dick seemed to take some measure of satisfaction from this, but only for a moment. Kevin knew that Dick was preparing to turn his wrath upon him.
He gave the silent signal to his fellow furries, who then discreetly acted in unison. They shut off the exterior lights, shut off the drive thru microphones, locked the doors and cranked up the fryer as high as it could go. I mentioned earlier that part of my investigations are aimed at determining just where a story goes south. For those of you who have stuck with me so far you probably think that the "going south" part came and went some pages ago. You would be wrong. It is here, right here, that this tragic tale turned south. Terminally south.
They fell upon poor Dick before he could begin to understand what was happening. He was rapidly chloroformed then dragged back to a prep table in the rear of the kitchen. Everything was swept from the table and the unconscious Dick was laid upon it. Kevin was forming a plan in motion and gave his command to the other furries.
"Wrap his head tight in cling wrap and hold him down until he's suffocated. I'm gonna round up all the cash. Check his pockets and wallet and get his car keys."
Dick was dead inside of five minutes. Between the store bank, cash proceeds and cash from Dick's pockets they had $276. They took Dick's body and somehow were able to lift him up in a manner to insert him headfirst into the bubbling fryer. That did not go well. At the deepest point the body would only sink to a point a few inches below the shoulders. It was too late to correct the error and the entire fryer, fried dick and all, toppled over. Kevin and Gleeb miraculously escaped any injury. The other two furries were not so fortunate. They both had been entirely doused in boiling oil and were almost immediately engulfed in flames. Even in the remote possibility that they might have survived those injuries they'd wish they hadn't. The two of them fled the scene driving separate vehicles, Kevin his van and Gleeb behind the wheel of Dick's Nissan Maxima.
This audience has some idea where it all went from there. At least the worst of it. There is more that none of us will ever know, and that is just as well. This pair of fuzznuts have a laundry list of state and federal charges to rival the hanging scene in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Despite this fact I have found no law enforcement agencies at any level to be in hot pursuit. Not even lukewarm pursuit. Although I am not certain why this is the case, I do understand this is the reason why SCIU was called. We are a non-government agency and we are renowned for handling matters like this in very discreet fashion.
Just over twenty-four hours ago the Deaf Kids' six week reign of terror was brought to a discreet and quiet end. I had cornered them when they had no cards left to play. There was no one else to witness this encounter, by design. Gleeb was still recovering from a recent tongue piercing and could only manage an unintelligible "Nngnng-guk!" Kevin, on the other hand was a bit more verbose and I allowed him time to deliver his swan song:
It's all about minor chords and darkness. Anti-matter and the ice cold clarity of the void. The Zoroastrians were right, man. And the Gnostics too. Coulda been a Basilidian brainchild, but they handed it over to those thugs in Rome. Wanna know the truth about empires?The longer they live, the longer we all gotta pay for 'em, man.
You think you live in a world of light. You don't. There is light, but there is also darkness. It's all around you. It's in you. It's everything. But the world is blinded. The people can't see it. They have to know. That is why I have to return to the light. To release the light of darkness upon the world. It's gonna be beautiful, man. It's gonna be para....
That's where I shut him down. I didn't need to hear more. I darted them both with cyanide. They were both dead before they hit the ground. The bodies were discreetly disposed, no remains will be found.
I should feel bad for Kevin Crabtree. His is indeed a tragic tale, from his unlikely birth to his bitter end. But I don't feel bad. I can only feel nothing. That may be due to some failing on my part, but I'm not too sure about that. Upon further reflection I find Kevin Crabtree to be emblematic of an entire generation of boys who never grew into manhood. They have remained forever stunted at that pre-pubescent level, effeminate, preening and utterly castrated in every sense of the word. They are the progeny of every shrieking harridan who ever berated them for their toxic masculinity. They are the whipped pups upon whom a class of harpies have vented their spleen for every ill they believe to have been visited upon womankind. It is convenient to blame men for what nature hath wrought; for what revenge may be exacted from nature?
