It was after dark.  I was walking to my hotel in a big intimidating city, Chicago.  Then I turned a corner and I saw them.  I was so horrified I almost retched.   I kept my composure, though, and called the police.

While I waited, I forced myself to glance again.  All of those poor people had been decapitated.  Rigor mortis had set in, keeping them in their lifelike positions. Their skin was blanched.   But as I stood there, trembling, several young adults strolled by and they didn’t even look concerned. In fact, they were laughing . . . partying! Joking!  Such a grotesque insensitivity to the plight of others! Such an unseemly juxtaposition! But what was that over to the right?  I spun around and I saw even more victims.

I shook as I took these photos, constantly looking over my shoulder in case the fiends who committed all of these murders might return to decapitate me.

I couldn’t understand the cleanness of the wounds.  The amputations must have been done with some sort of hideous razor sharp self-cauterizing blade.  There was thus no way to tell how long these poor people had been dead.   What sort of society have we turned into, I wondered?   Maybe fundamentalists of all stripes are correct.  Maybe we are a sick society.  We’d have to be a rampantly immoral society to produce criminals capable of doing this . . .

Then the police arrived.  I told them about the crimes and pointed to the victims.  The police started to get angry with me.  They said that I shouldn’t make trouble or they would throw me in jail.  Then it dawned on me.  This threat is so big that everyone is “protecting their own.”  Everyone in Chicago is so terrified that they simply can’t allow themselves to care or to get involved.  If they got involved, they might be next. Or maybe someone else in their family.  Someone has got to break this story, I thought. Even if it has to be me.  Then I turned one more corner and saw that the nightmare got even more horrific.  Children! Our children.  Our future. What is the world coming to?