Template:POTM/June 2015

''When Melissa was fourteen years old, her father sold her to a crank cook named Diesel for two pounds of crystal meth and a broke-down Trans Am. Diesel kept her chained to a rusty woodstove during the day with a mason jar of water and a box of Cheerios, while he worked in the lab back behind the trailer, breaking Sudafed and Ephedrine tablets down into glass-like shards of amphetamine. In the evening, Diesel would swing open the door, the cat piss stench of burning chemicals wafting into the tiny trailer, and unchain her so she could make him meals, wash dishes and mop. At night, as the bullfrogs began to bark and the crickets chirped, she would press her fist into her mouth, trying to stifle her cries of pain as he lay upon her, his rank smell of sweat and chemicals overwhelming her.

Two months later a couple of Boy Scouts found her naked corpse in a drainage ditch in a patch of woods outside of Eureka, California: a pale tangle of limbs sticking out of the trash and sewage of the dirty culvert. Though the case officially went to Homicide Detective MacClenny, Detective Standler had been at the crime scene assisting. Standler had helped take her by the arms and pull her remains from the rank sewer water and debris. As her body rose up from the muck, her head had lolled to the side and her wide, staring eyes had looked straight at him. For a moment, Standler thought he saw a flicker of life register in them, though her gray, bloated face clearly revealed she was long, long dead.

Detective Standler (now ex-detective Standler, suspended, out on bail, and awaiting trial for manslaughter) settled deeper into the seat of his car. He was parked in front of the police chief’s suburban home, waiting for the fat fuck to arrive home from work. He sipped from a pint of Wild Turkey, washed it down with a warm Budweiser, and thought to himself, someone who could do something like that to a fourteen year old girl, how can you let someone like that live? Who would possibly miss them? Who could possibly care? Read more...''