Churning Butter

WARNING! All of my writing is intended for adults over the age of 18 ONLY. Stories may contain strong or even extreme sexual content. All people and events depicted are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Actions, situations, and responses are fictional ONLY and should not be attempted in real life.

If you are under the age or 18 or do not understand the difference between fantasy and reality or if you reside in any state, province, nation, or tribal territory that prohibits the reading of acts depicted in these stories, please stop reading immediately and move to somewhere that exists in the twenty-first century.

Archiving and reposting of this story is permitted, but only if acknowledgment of copyright and statement of limitation of use is included with the article. This story is copyright (c) 2014 by The Technician ( [email protected]. )

Individual readers may archive and/or print single copies of this story for personal, non-commercial use. Production of multiple copies of this story on paper, disk, or other fixed format is expressly forbidden.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
* * * * * * * * * * * *

The bright blue Ford compact glided smoothly to a stop at the curb in front of a run down bar in an even more run down area of the city. It was supposed to be an unmarked car, but the blue police lights clearly seen mounted on the dashboard and in the rear window gave things away rather badly. Besides that, shortly after the city of Chicago put several dozen of these identical “blend in with the traffic” vehicles on the road, there were at least a dozen YouTube posts showing them with their lights flashing, pulling over motorists or responding to calls. With the easily recognized color and the visible lights, they might as well have had been painted white with the blue stripe on the sides and CHICAGO POLICE in big, red letters.

It didn’t make much difference anyway. Detectives Katrina Ecstranger and Melvin Beckermann were not undercover or trying to sneak up on anyone. They were working a major case and someone had called in what sounded like a good tip. The late-afternoon call had come from the owner of a dive called Clancy’s Place. He told the desk officer that he would be tending bar “all day and half the night,” and that they should send somebody down to talk to him.

This wasn’t an area of town a cop wanted to be in after dark without backup, so the wise choice was to follow up on the lead immediately. They walked quickly into the bar with Katrina staying several steps behind her partner just in case this was some sort of trap. Moving from the bright sunlight of the street into the dim darkness of a sleazy bar always had a certain pucker factor to it since you were basically defenseless until your eyes adjusted to the darkness. Keeping one eye closed as you walked from the car to the front door helped, but still, if this was a set up, things could go south very quickly.

The bar, however, was empty except for Harvey, the bartender and owner. He was the one who had called the station house earlier with “maybe a tip on this Full Moon Rapist guy.”

Behind their backs around the station house, detectives Katrina Ecstranger and Melvin Beckermann were known as Tom and Jerry. “Tom” because Katrina told everyone to call her “Kat,” had a cat-like face, and always moved with lithe, almost feline movements. “Jerry” because Mel’s rather pointed noise and almost permanent smile made him look very much like the cartoon mouse of that name.

Mel leaned against the bar and waited for Harvey to start the conversation while Kat stayed closer to the door to cover things. After a long silence, Kat finally said from across the room, “So, Harvey, what have you got for us?”

“I’m sure this is nothing,” he replied, glancing nervously up at Mel, “but youse guys have been coming in here couple times a month for the past year asking if I’ve heard anything unusual. You know, somebody bragging about what they done… that sort of thing. You even said that if I got something there might be a reward in it for me.

“This can’t be anything, but it…., hell, I don’t know… it just struck me as really odd. There’s this little nothing of a guy. Must work or live in the area ‘cause he’s been coming in here about five every day for eight or nine months. Doesn’t say much. Just sits here drinking beers all evening. Not drunk, ya’ know, but getting a real buzz on by the end of the night. Yesterday, I tells him, ‘You need to watch how much you’re knocking back or you’re going to end up having to go to those monthly meetings.'”

He glanced down nervously and wiped the bar with the rag in his hand. “I was just kidding him, you know…, in a friendly sort of way, to tell him to watch how much he was putting down. This is a family place regardless of what it looks like. I don’t really need barflies and drunks, but he didn’t seem like that either… Anyway, he says to me, ‘They don’t have meetings for what I’m addicted to…’

“He looked really sad, almost desperate, so I says, ‘They got meetings for everything. What’s your particular brand of trouble?’

“He downs the rest of his beer, lays his money on the bar, and gets up and starts to walk towards the door. Just before he goes out, he turns back to me and says, ‘Churning butter under a full moon.'”

“Like I say, it can’t be anything, but he said ‘full moon,’ and youse guys have been driving me nuts about anybody who says anything weird about the full moon cause you don’t got no leads on this Full Moon Rapist guy.”

“You don’t happen to have security cameras, do you, Harvey?” asked Mel.

“In this dump?” He snorted. “There’s an ATM across the street. Last time I got held up, youse guys got a clear shot of the punk who did it off them tapes. Maybe there’s a picture of the little weirdo over there.”

“We will check that out,” said Detective Ecstranger. “And if it turns out that there is anything to this, you’ll get a portion of the reward.”

“What’s it up to?” asked the barman. “Last I heard it was over a million. Wouldn’t mind getting a big piece of that.”

“If this weirdo has anything to do with the Full Moon Rapist, you will get something. It will depend on how important your tip has been to the case.”

Just before Mel walked out the door, Harvey spoke up one last time, “Oh yeah… I shoulda told ya. He will probably be here tonight, but definitely not tomorrow night. He might stop by for a quick one tomorrow, but he won’t stay. Moon’s almost full, ya’ know, and he ain’t never in here on the night of the full moon… always leaves before it gets dark.”

***

As the two detectives walked back to their car, Mel stopped and turned to his partner. “So what do you think?” he asked. “Doesn’t sound like the type of person who could overpower twenty-some women and several men over the course of the past three years, but he said the magic words and disappears on the night of the full moon.”

“‘Full moon’ could be a coincidence,” answered Kat, “But it has never been released that the rapist uses butter as a lubricant and to screw up DNA testing. Lab boys say it shouldn’t interfere with DNA tests, but somehow it does. They can’t get anything human to try for a match. And ‘Churning butter under a full moon’ is too good a description of what is happening. He’s got something to do with it, even if he isn’t our perp.”

They had reached the car. Mel triggered the door locks and they both slid into the seats. Kat was unusually quiet. Her breathing was a little heavier than normal. Mel noticed, but said nothing.

Mel noticed a great deal. He was a good detective, and good detectives notice everything. He and Kat had been partners for three years now and had been working this case as point on the task force for over a year. He knew that the case affected Kat deeply. It affected him too. It was almost personal. Someone had been raping woman… and men… in his city, once a month for the past 40 months and the police were no closer to catching him now than they were three years ago when he first started.

Over the past year, Mel and Kat had watched or listened repeatedly to the interview tapes with the victims. The story was always the same. It was a full moon. They were in a relatively deserted area of some sort where they thought they were safe. One woman was in a park. One woman was on the roof of a building. One man was in his own home. Each thought that they were alone. They all insisted that they neither saw nor heard anyone approaching them when they were suddenly knocked to the ground by something large and heavy being thrown against them.

“It was like a large bag of sand” one of the victims had described it. “It knocked me off my feet, and the next thing I knew I was lying naked on the ground.” Another said, “I was in the garden in my back yard, and I thought I was safe because it’s totally walled off with a heavy gate that I keep locked. But somehow, whoever it was got in without me seeing or hearing him. I don’t know how long I was lying on the ground, but I know it had to be several minutes. I must have hit my head because it was like I was stunned or something and I don’t remember him taking off my clothes. As I came back to my senses I could feel something cold being inserted into my ass. It felt slimy. Then something slick was being rubbed on my body, especially on my breasts and buttocks.”

Mel especially remembered one victim had trembled and looked down at the ground describing the attack. “It almost felt good,” she said in a quivering voice. “I am so ashamed. It felt soooo good. Despite what was happening, my body was responding. And then I felt his tongue on me. He was licking me. I’ve had oral sex before, but this was different. It felt really odd. His tongue was longer… and rougher than it should have been. And it wriggled strangely inside of me… both in the front and in the back.”

She broke down and cried for several minutes. The female officer conducting the interview waited patiently for her to finish and then asked, “Can you continue? We really do need as much detail as you can remember.”

“I am so ashamed,” she repeated. “I was so turned on. Am I a bad person?”

The interviewing officer remained silent, but put a hand on the victim’s shoulder to show support and then asked her to go on. She continued, “I felt him pull me up into a kneeling position.” She suddenly looked startled and looked up at the camera that was recording the interview. “He had gloves on! I had forgotten that. Really strange gloves that were soft and rough at the same time. Something on the gloves almost scratched me, like there was metal or something somewhere on the fingers. Then he entered me from behind. I’ve never had anal sex before. I thought it would hurt, but it felt good.