Fred Bauers is a good looking young man of twenty eight years, five feet ten inches tall, with reddish brown hair. Women would like him, if he would only give them half a chance, but Fred doesn't want emotional entanglements. Despite Fred's middle class background and secondary school education somewhere back east, he is simply an irredeemable, rotten, no good son-of-a-bitch. Everybody who has ever known him well will tell you this.

Bauers has just been reading the tragic story of the Donner Party, trapped by snow in the California Sierra during this past winter. An idea begins to take shape. For some time Fred has been in the habit of dry-gulching small parties of settlers heading West and taking everything of value from their dead bodies including scalps. But why not steal even more?

Three days later a family from Pennsylvania with father, mother, two sons, and one daughter come through, heading for California. Fred's usual method is to get all the victims with one or two sticks of dynamite, and then run in quickly with a club and pistol to finish off any survivors.

Today as usual, Fred kills the entire family, then robs and scalps the bodies. But this time he does something very different. He cuts off all the victims' ears, noses, fingers, and toes. He also takes the ladies' breasts and the mens' peckers.

Fred once tried to rape a fiery red-haired daughter, but she kicked him in the nuts, and almost got away before he slit her throat. Now with all the pretty young daughters, he instead kills her with the rest, completes the robbing and scalping, and then removes the daughter's dead body to a secret place at a safe distance where he can enjoy several hours of relaxed pleasure. In such instances, once he is satiated, he takes the girl's body parts just as with the rest of the family. He brings all his relics home and treats them with special leather tanning solution to preserve and make them supple.

The biggest credibility problem with his story will be how these Donner Party relics survived the winter intact. The organs are all, of course, ones that even reluctant cannibals would cast aside, because they are a bit too "personal" for the stew pot. The reason that animals didn't get them first is that Donner Party members accumulated the relics in tins and then buried these in the snow. Fred, of course, began this archaeological exploration "one beautiful April morning" just as the snow was melting.

Fred does his grizzly business with six more families, and then in late May, heads for San Francisco. The wealthy, rough and ready, rollicking atmosphere of the Barbary Coast should be just the right market to get high prices for these trophies.

On the way through the California Sierra he stops at the Donner site, so he will have familiarity with the area and be able to field any unexpected questions.

June 18, 1847

Fred Bauers checks into a modest, but respectable, hotel and has a nice dinner of steak, potatoes, and Brussels Sprouts. The next morning he places an add in the newspaper: "For Sale. Archaeological Treasures. Beautifully mummified human relics from one of America's greatest historical tragedies. Offered for the collector of the unusual as a fine investment. Legal certification will be given if requesred."

A great many people write to Fred Bauer displaying caustic disapproval, ranging from a few cool words to long angry sermons. There is even a small petition from a church group. A few collectors however, do contact him and arrange to see the items.

In almost every case, collectors want the items, but always try to chisel the price way down by saying things like "I'll buy these, but not for anywhere near the huge price you're asking! I may be able to resell them eventually as macabre curiosities, but never as historical items. Anybody that works in a mortuary or funeral parlor could easily come by items such as this. I don't say that I disbelieve you personally, but there is no formal documentation, only your story about it. I have to think about what the buyer will say to me twenty five years from now".

Fred holds on to his collection for awhile. One fine cool sunny afternoon he gets talking with a Chinese man in a strange little shop high on the hill overlooking the sparkling bay. The shop owner will buy all Fred's items for use in magickal potions. The Chinese man doesn't care about them as Donner Party relics, but will pay a little more than the collectors, because he can chop them up into a hundred or more salable pieces. Fred takes his modest profit and heads for a good restaurant.

After a fine meal of roast Cornish Hen with yams and peas, Fred begins to drink. By eight o'clock he is drunker than he has ever been in his life. He has heard about the waterfront whores of San Francisco. Now he steps out into the bracing night air and heads for the waterfront area with these ladies strongly in mind. His brown shoes clomp loudly along on the cobblestones until he comes to a small tavern. The place is very smoky and quite dingy from it. The men inside are mostly merchant sailors. Fred sees many whores, but they are all busy talking with other men.

The bar runs left to right, turns ninety degrees running straight to the back of the room. Fred settles in a spot on the right about two feet past the corner. Opposite him on the left about six feet from the corner is a large, rugged, well tanned man, about thirty two, with a short beard, blue sailors clothing, black stocking cap, and a patch over his left eye. He came to the West three years ago and happens to be the oldest brother of a Pennsylvania family who recently disappeared in the Rocky Mountains as they came west during April.

Fred keeps drinking and begins to talk with a drummer to his immediate left. "I'm from Wyoming. Brought lots of dry ears, fingers, and peckers out here to sell as artifacts of the Donner Party. God-damned collectors wouldn't give me shit. Had to sell 'em to a Chinaman. They use 'em for medicinal purposes. Hah hah!".

Now the large man opposite looks up and enters the conversation.
"Might I be so bold, Sir, as to inquire how and where you obtained such items?"

Fred looks up and grins warmly, loudly bragging out his murderous deeds. "Hell, I dry-gulched seven families to get them items. Everything got eaten by the Donner Party or by animals after. Thought I'd help out posterity and create a little historical relevance. Figured souvenirs would sell big out here." He goes on with the bloody details at some length. The sailors and whores just gaze at him, profoundly amazed by his drunken stupidity. Like all true psychopaths Fred Bauers actually believes that others share his values and will thus admire his great success in murdering innocent people.

Finally the Pennsylvania man interrupts saying "Sir, you are an evil, godless coward!".

Bauers, emboldened by drink, walks quickly over to the bigger man. "Watch your step, One Eye, or I might just cut off your dick!" Fred swills down the last of his drink and breaks the glass on the brass rail at the edge of the bar. Raising the ragged weapon, he lunges at the big man who deftly grabs Bauer's wrist, pushes the hand down onto the bar, and pounds it once very hard with his fist. Keeping hold of the wrist he spins Fred around, putting his left arm across Fred's neck in a choke hold. Then he undoes Fred's belt, opens his trousers, reaches into his own coat pocket, and draws out a steel castrating tool. He slides the instrument to just the right spot to leave Fred's testicles intact and makes his cut.

Fred bellows, screams, gasps, and then collapses to the floor when the big man releases him. Says the big man looking down "Sir, may I say additionally that you are a now a functional dehorn, as well as a coward, and that I thank you very much for surrendering up such a fine historical relic." With this he takes a napkin and with it picks up Fred's penis from the floor, enfolds it in the napkin, puts the little bundle in his pocked, and heads for the door. He looks back over his shoulder as he tosses a twenty dollar gold piece onto the bar saying, "Innkeeper, I'm very sorry about the mess".

Fred nearly bleeds to death, but some church people, actually the same ones who petitioned about his advertisement, manage to pull him through. After this, Fred quickly drinks away the last of his money and ends up shining shoes. The cowardice is now much more visible in Fred's face. During the next year, most of his teeth get knocked out by sailors who decide not to pay for their shoe shines.

One day, after passing out drunk, Fred awakens up to find himself tied on a bed, belly down, naked in a small room. That's right! In comes Ham with a big leather strap. Fred is completely broken by her within twenty minutes, but she beats him another two hours just for her pleasure.

Now Fred is sold into slavery, and put on a ship leaving for Shanghai. After a long sickening voyage, he is taken to the House of Po where Lin Yi's younger sister trains him to bow very low. With a hard looping knuckle punch to the testicles she says "I like all my slaves to have big ones, plump with semen all the time. Yes, Slave, no relief! Ooh, and look how the little stub stands up so hard, just like a one half inch penis".

Miss Yi finds certain tasks appropriate for Fred's toothless mouth, but tires very quickly of watching these episodes, and sells him to the Academy of Torture, where those adept in the arts of pain teach their discciples using live victims. Every day for several months they keep Fred squealing like a sow until he finally dies of heart failure. His body is cut up and put into slops for the neighborhood pigs. Waste not, want not.

February 17, 2023

"Good ending! Justice prevails again" says Jeff enthusiastically. Then he thinks:

"Bauers, the ultimate psychopath. Is Sharron a little psychopathic, or just traumatized? ...but who says you can't be both? Like Bauers, her behavior gets more depersonalized every day. It's stupid to compare. Bauers was 10,000 times more evil than Sharron, but still...

"Sometimes we learn by studying the greater clarity of extreme cases. See, she's a 'case' now... like I'm not? Why do I put up with all this bullshit? My own passion is a crueler mistress than either Sharron or Cathy... and I read once that some people claim, when kinky sex becomes obsessive, ultimately the sadist commits murder or the masochist commits suicide. Are the three of us in the early stages of something really tragic, or am I just turning into a worried fool?"

That night Jeff is quiet and contemplative at dinner. Finally he says. "I have to study, so please exude you pheromones without me tonight. Cathy looks a little disappointed, so Jeff says "Don't worry. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and the tongue more exploratory. Jeff wasn't lying totally, and spends a long evening at his studies.

The next day Jeff reads another strange tale of human depravity.