Six foot five Lemuel Hoskins is on his hands and knees whimpering.

Jake Povack with a cattle prod is standing over Lemuel "You do just like I say now, dontcha, big fella? You obey me forever now, dontcha?"

"Yessir" says Lemuel.

"Good!" says Jake and starts the chainsaw.

July 2 2007 Las Vegas City Hall. Police Division

"Captain. Did you hear? They just found a torso in a dumpster on West Charleston?"

"Really? Remember the head in Summerlin last week?"

"Forensics are on it. They'll match 'em up".

The head does match. During the next week the cooler fills up as the other limbs are found all over town. All are in good condition.

July 5 2007

Synchronicity? The national news media announces a discovery by Dr. Arnold Gentries of Des Moines Iowa. A secret potion they say his family has been sitting on for 150 years. It physically stimulates the holographic healing process in the subject body. All the data shows that a severed limb sprayed with this formula will automatically match up veins, muscles, and tendons if simply lined up and reattached with stitches. The bones knit solid almost overnight.

July 6 2007 6:00 AM. UMC Hospital Las Vegas

The head, torso, and limb stubs are thinly re cut and Lemuel's body is successfully reconnected using Gentries Solution, as they are now calling it.

By early afternoon "Humpty Dumpty Lemuel Hoskins" as the media are calling him, is conversing with the police. They ask what happened. He says firmly "Me know nothing. Nothing to say to you. You go now. Now I sleep". He does sleep and for fifteen hours straight. The police try again, but after a few days the hospital releases the big man who leaves briskly with only a slight limp.

"It's like a miracle" says the surgeon who put Lemuel back together. "Apparently the formula stimulates new cell growth, even of nerve cells. I'm worried about his mind though. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case with Hoskins, but sometimes when a person suffers extreme mental and physical trauma, it's like the part of the brain concerned with moral conceptualization shuts down or becomes functionally diminished. In these cases the "collective other" view of humanity kicks in and the individual tries to get even with everybody on the planet all at once. Burp gunning a crowded restaurant full of kids for example. We put Mr. Hoskins on full intravenous with the new solution and now there's no evidence of cortical necrosis, even though he showed it to begin with. I'm worried because he seems completely devoid of emotion and talks like a robot. In a situation like this, moral memory could have been lost along with the necrotic area, so I really hope Hoskins will be all right".

Lemuel goes downtown and has a huge meal, then down to the Strip. He walks around looking here and there. The next day he heads for LA, buys two huge double bladed axes and a guitar case to carry them in. That night in his room he practices with the axes to coordinate his movements like a Samurai with two swords.

The next morning Lemuel goes to a subway station at rush hour. Just before the next train comes he takes the two axes out and stands up firmly with his legs slightly apart and the axes raised high. He bellows "Me not Torso now. Torso now I make all of you. Now you live in dumpster. Now you obey me forever!"

A crowd of people are standing transfixed. Having said his piece Lemuel rushes them swinging the mighty axes. He resembles the old animation of John Henry with two sledge hammers working to connect the East and West railroads. Lemuel comes right into the crowd slaying, maiming, butchering. Dead bodies fall before him like chaff before the wind.

A crack-head jive-talker four hundred feet away yells "Hey, where's the Blue Ox, Paul Bunyan? Take a chill pill, Motherfucker!"

The train pulls in. The doors open. Lemuel enters, kills the driver, and throws the switch so the doors shut. Then with one slice he decapitates three little boys sitting in a row. The three little heads roll down to the floor like cabbages. Then he splits their father in two. The horrified mother looks up. Lemuel smiles down warmly with his big buck teeth and says "Big fun ahead now. You find new dick. Start over."

The great axemaster works his way down the car hewing and slicing. He kills almost everybody in all eight subway cars. The floors are drenched with blood. So is Lemuel. This time he has really gone to town. By the time the police pump him full of lead he has killed three hundred and seventy four people. There are another eighty seven who are hospitalized with everything from a lost hand to two severed legs.
___

July 14 2007

Lemuel's face is all over the newspapers. Eric F Magnuson has just finished a fine breakfast of Pacific Red Snapper, Monterrey Jack, and sliced bosc pear. The news lady asks him what he thinks.

"Ain't none such like unto it. Is it true that because of his large buck teeth you media people are calling him "The Beaver Cleaver"?