WICKED TALES

FIVE

I've known Mr. Coleman for about five years, so it was devastating when I found out that he'd passed away. Even more so when I was the officer on duty responding to a call for a well-being check. Mr. Coleman was known to be a night hawk and pretty much stayed in his apartment listening to jazz. When his neighbor didn't hear his soothing music he became concerned and called dispatch.

My partner and I were the lucky ones to take the call. Well, honestly, we weren't so lucky. The rancid smell of the apartment hit our senses full force. I had to step back out of the narrow entrance to the apartment. After taking a few deep breaths of clean air I tried pushing the door fully open but with no success. Mr. Coleman's apartment was completely crammed with junk, in some areas the junk piles reached the ceiling.

I looked at my partner and his face read just what my mind was thinking, either the apartment smelled this bad due to all the random shit in it. Or there was a dead body somewhere in all the random shit. I was beginning to feel overwhelmed and so did my partner. We stood in the same spots that we were in after coming inside and called for Mr. Coleman. No response. We flashed our flashlights down the small hall and decided to split up to cover more ground.

The apartment was a two-bedroom with one bathroom. It had a small kitchen, dining, and living room with a separate room for laundry. I checked the laundry room, nothing. I heard my partner calling out for Mr. Coleman again, nothing. I checked a bedroom the was right next to the bathroom, still nothing. A glint of light caught my eye from underneath the door of the next bedroom. Before I could turn the knob to go in my partner shouted that he had found Mr. Coleman.

I hurried to see if Mr. Coleman was okay and hopefully not dead. Well, he was not okay at all, no he was far from that. There he was hanging from an exposed pipe from the ceiling. That would explain the pungent smell of death, or so we thought. My partner called in the deceased man as I kept wondering what was in the other room. So I left the kitchen and went to check the bedroom. This time there was no light so I figured it was the sunlight hitting something that bounced off a reflection.

My partner yelled again telling me he had found a suicide note as well. I felt a tinge of sadness starting to overcome me but when I opened the door I instantly wanted to vomit. This was the culprit of the horrible smell my partner and I were inhaling. Three small corpses were lying on the floor torn and cut apart on their legs, arms, and stomach. There were shelves everywhere that held small to medium human skulls. In a corner of the room, there was a big pile of clothing, some extremely dirty and other torn and bloodied.

My partner startled me when he came up behind me to see what I was looking at. He whispered so low that I wouldn't have heard him if he wasn't so close to me. In an already low tone, he said that he knew the kids on the floor. That they were missing for over a week now. I was taken aback by the info but realized I knew the kids also from the missing children flyers at headquarters. We began to search the room. There were over fifteen human skulls, backpacks, school cards, candles, bowls, knives, and plates. A tabletop skillet with a huge pot sat on top of a poker table with two chairs.

My partner found a book with the title 'How to Cook A Child' and another that said 'My Children'. We were horrified when we saw that Mr. Coleman had recipes for how he liked to cook children. In the book 'My Children' he had pictures, names, ages, and where the victims were from neatly organized and categorized. At first glance, it looked to be over one hundred victims documented. Mr.Coleman was a child kidnapper that ate his victims. The suicide note confirmed everything. He had been kidnapping and eating children since the seventies, he had a specific type of child he liked to eat most and he gave us details as to where he disposed of the remains. After a grueling search of the junky apartment and a hunt for the remains of the other children. Mr. Coleman had kidnapped and eaten one hundred and fifteen children.