THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT FROM THE PUBLISHED NON-FICTION MEMOIR OF FBI AGENT JAKUB BARTOSZ. IN IT, HE DETAILS MUCH OF HIS TIME SPENT CHASING THE INFAMOUS MAGGOT MAN SERIAL KILLER.
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I still remember when the newspapers named that jackass. "The Maggot Man Strikes Again"- how cliche. All of us in the office were disgusted by the blatant profiteering; I mean, these were kids, for God's sakes! These articles printed almost faster than the cops could get to the families. Imagine learning your kid was dead fom from the local rag?
That monster was a fast bastard. We tracked him across the entire United States of America, from the East coast, to the West, and then back to the East. He was always one step ahead of us, somehow, as fast as those damned flies.
The things were at every single crime scene. At first, we just thought these murders were just.. worse than usual. All bodies attract a certain amount of decay in death, and nature has no shame and no respect for the dead. Maggots are gross, yeah, but they gotta live, too. When we die, we just become cogs in the great machine that makes the world spin.
That first body was different, though. I remember going over the photos, once we started linking them all together. Piles of maggots, and I mean piles of them- don't give me that look, you bought the book. You knew what you were getting into.
They weren't normal, either. The number of maggots and flies at each crime scene, and always in some construction zone, it was unbelievable. Pest control had to be called at every single one, because the sheer volume was just nuts, especially in cases where the poor vics were only dead for a few hours. Absolutely carnivorous little fuckers, too. I swear, those maggots could eat through a cow in about a day, leave nothin' but the bones.
I remember, I got to one crime scene, and the girl's entire face was gone. All of it. All that was left was her blonde hair, shaved off, like all of them.
That was his "modus operandi", to use a fancy term. The guy targeted young girls between the ages 6 and 10, and all of them blonde. He'd chop of their hair, strangle 'em, and then leave 'em to the flies.
Fucking monster.
We realized pretty quick that the flies were his. He brought the nasty things to each crime scene, dropped 'em all on his victim, probably sat there and watched. I used to wake up in a sweat, and flies still make me jump, the stupid bastards. The ones you know, they got nothin' on the things this guy bred. Absolutely violent, vicious little creatures. Unreal. I never understood how he did it, or why, and he was never interested in sharing. Very little came out of his past, too, so we're just left in the dark on that, I guess. Guy never talks to anyone but the flies that somehow get into his cell.
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Betcha didn't know about that. The guy had flies in his jail cells. The cold blooded gang bangers and the murderers and the drug lords? They wanted nothing to do with the Maggot Man. Most child killers got no chance in prison, but this guy? Somethin' about him scared the piss outta his cell mates, and all of em wanted out. Absolutely nuts- but I believe it. I saw him up close and personal, got to deal with him, and the man's dead inside- like a caricature of Michael Meyers, from those Halloween movies. He'd probably either have been best friends with ol' Maggot Man, or he'd have been scared shitless of him.
Either way, the guy was a monster. We all agree with that, and at the time of writing, his date with the chair is comin' up fast. No one deserves it more. He never touched the kids- weird, in a serial killer, it confused the heck out of the psych guys- but he killed 'em and left 'em for fly food.
He always left a calling card, though. You'd think the flies woulda been it, but no- there was something else.
He always left one o' those handheld games that were all the rage.
It was never anything name brand. They looked like something that got jerry-rigged together in some guy's basement, or maybe some kinda cheap knock off produced in China, if they were even doing that back then. I remember I got my kid one o' those plug and play games for Christmas one year- box said it had 9,999 games. Technically it did, yeah, but they were all cheap knock offs that barely ran, nearly identical to the published, licensed games of the mainstream media.
Not that we knew that back then. We just saw an inexpensive video game option that swore it had a bajillion and a half fuckin' games, and even if I was making decent money as an Agent, well, I wanted to cut corners. Savin' money for big family vacations, that whole thing.
Man, that plug and play was shit.
So was this guy's game, every single last one of them. We still got most of 'em locked up in evidence. They were these gray blocks, and you'd boot 'em up, and this screen would appear, a list of games- but every line just said "GAME OVER" on it, like some kind of shitty, fucked up joke.
Yeah, fuck head. It was GAME OVER for those girls. I bet you found that real funny, as you watched your weird fuckin' science experiment bugs feast on their bodies.
Fuck.
You won't find a single Agent or cop who handled these cases that's okay. It takes a stupid amount of drugs to keep me from breaking down, and a lot of my buddies are like that.
The Maggot Man left a mark on all of us, and a slight phobia of flies isn't so uncommon as you might think, after those incidents.
I need a drink...