Hey guys. Sorry about the lack of updates lately. Things have been really busy here at work.

It's my birthday today, and for once I thought I'd give YOU all a gift. So here's a short story entitled "Collection."

And I promise... My next update will be a real update. Enjoy the story, you sick fucks.

The first call I ever went on was a perfect example of how much strain the human body can endure. A man was in his backyard, chopping up fallen trees with a chainsaw. He bent over to saw through a particularly large birch when a raccoon jumped out from one of it's knolls. The man, startled, fell backwards, dragging the chainsaw down the front of his chest.

When I arrived to the scene, I found him sitting on the fallen birch, smoking a cigarette. The large, sucking wound in his chest was open far enough that his ribs and sternum were visible. He was in shock and felt no pain. He looked at me, a worried expression filling his face, and said something that I didn’t entirely expect.

“I think I might need to go to the hospital or something.”

I always seemed to get saddled with the worst assignments. Whenever there’s a bad car crash, or a man throws himself in front of a train, there's no need to fear. Just call Officer Timothy Ryan, and he'll clean your mess up. That's all he ever does.

You can only spend so many nights walking down three miles of train tracks collecting body parts until something in your mind snaps. My mind didn’t snap though, it just kind of bent in a funny angle.

There was this guy who, obviously, was incredibly bored with his mundane life. He spent all of his time behind a desk, pushing papers. Every day he went through the same routine, and every day he rotted a little inside. You see, it is possible for the living to decompose. You can see it everywhere, if you know how to look right.

So this man, this paper-pusher, this living corpse, decided to take his motorcycle out for a little spectacle of speed, try and see if he could inject a little life into himself again. He reached speeds upwards of one-hundred miles an hour before he ran into a residential area… literally.

He was just trying to inject a little life into himself. Instead, he injected a little bit of himself all over the home of Lucille and Ted Granger.

A dark night, a wet road, and a very sharp turn... One minute Ted and Lucy were sitting on a couch in their living room, enjoying whatever prime time sitcom it is they enjoy. The next minute, a motorcycle burst through their wall and went screaming into their kitchen, dragging behind it something that resembled a sack of rotten tomatoes.

The man’s insurance took care of the damage done to their home. The rest was spent on the man’s funeral. The family decided that a casket wasn’t necessary, since there wasn’t enough of him left to even bury. I guess it's worth mentioning that his final resting place was beautiful. He was cremated and his ashes were spread in Long Beach, California, at West Coast Choppers.

A few days later, I received a call from dispatch. The old couple had phoned them up, completely distraught. I headed over there as fast as I could. When I arrived, I found them both standing next to their garage, Lucy nervously wrenching her hands. Ted told her to go inside, and then approached me. He led me over to the garage and pointed at something hanging off of the gutter.

“What is that?” he asked. I squinted my eyes, trying to get a better look.

“I don’t see anything,” I said, still trying to see what it was he was pointing at. He pointed again, and then I saw it. “Oh,” I said quietly. “That’s… Well… That’s a piece of brain… uhh… matter.”

“Well get it off of my gah-rah-juh!” Ted spat in a thick accent that I couldn’t quite place. I’m pretty sure it was middle-class redneck. I grabbed a broom and used the handle to try and knock the piece down. After a few tries, the piece of flesh hit the ground with sickening squish. I put on a pair of plastic gloves and picked it up.

“What should I do with it?” I asked the old man.

“Get it the hell away from me!” he said, walking back inside of his ask.

It took everything inside me to keep from asking if he had a dog. These are the kind of jokes you make when you clean up human leftovers for a living.

Instead, I decided to place it in a biohazardous waste bag and throw it into the first dumpster I came upon. I’d put it down in my report as just being a follow-up visit and nothing more.

I don’t know why I kept it. I’ve always had problems with saying goodbye I guess.

It was fascinating. Here was an actual piece of a human being, a piece usually only seen by doctors or morticians. I wanted to keep it. I wanted to study it. I ended up putting it in a jar in my old refrigerator.

After that, every accident scene, every crime scene, I’d collect something. Nothing big though, I wasn’t greedy. I’d just take a toe here, an eye there… Little things. After a while, I almost had enough little pieces to put together a full human being. But I didn’t. I was a collector, not a mad scientist.

There was nothing sexual about it either. Granted, when we went to that one home, and found the kid dead, hanging from his doorknob with his dick in his hands… I may have taken a little sperm, but I didn’t do anything with it. I just collected it, put it in a jar.

The first time I got worried was when we went to that trailer park and found the dead infant. There wasn’t really anything to collect; the baby had just died in the middle of the night. I didn’t think I’d get away with it. I was sure I would be caught. I had seen the pruning shears on the front doorstep and…

I didn’t kill it. I just took its arm. It didn’t need it. Besides, it turns out the father had smothered the baby with a pillow. So who’s the real monster here?

Okay, don’t answer that.

They didn’t catch me that time, but eventually they did. I guess it was odd that I had six refrigerators in my kitchen filled with human remains. At first I was charged with murder, necrophilia, cannibalism… Everything they could throw at me. After a while, after forensic evidence was collected, they found that I hadn’t killed anybody. I hadn’t had sex with any of the parts, and I certainly didn’t eat any of them. I just… Well… You know… Anyway, they had no idea what to charge me with.

They sent me to a mental health mental facility. The doctors tried analyzing me, but every time they were left with the same answer: I was a normal guy who just happened to have a weird hobby. They weren’t sure whether or not they should release me. I told them that if it made them feel better, I would stay in there as long as they wanted, I would commit myself. Everybody seemed to be happy with that answer.

My family won’t talk to me anymore. They aren’t mad, they’re just confused. It’s the same with my friends… and the guys on the force. Nobody knows what to make of me. I try to explain to them that I’m completely normal, and I still enjoy completely normal things. I like watching movies, eating popcorn, reading books. This one thing, this one tiny little hobby of mine, sets me apart from the entire human race though. It makes me abnormal.

The way I see it is if I stop talking about it, and stop writing about it, they’ll feel comfortable with me going home soon. I know I’m here by my own accord, but when I do leave, I want everybody to think I’m normal again. Maybe that way I can repair some of my already damaged life. Maybe my family will see me again if they thought I was all better.

The other day an inmate drove another inmate’s skull into a concrete pillar repeatedly. Teeth, blood, chips of skull, pieces of brain went flying everywhere. It took the guards almost five minutes to stop him. By the time they finally did, the other inmate was quite dead. I took a tooth when nobody was looking.

I have to start small… can’t let anybody catch on this time.