Green - The Townhouse Massacre: The Unforgettable Crimes of Richard Speck

THE TOWNHOUSE MASSACRE

The Unforgettable Crimes of Richard Speck

RYAN GREEN

Copyright Ryan Green 2019. All rights reserved.

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This book is about real people committing real crimes. The story has been constructed by facts but some of the scenes, dialogue and characters have been fictionalised.

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This book is written in British English except where fidelity to other languages or accents are appropriate. Some words and phrases may differ from US English.

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Shirley Anne Speck was a whore, and that was all there was to it. No, not Speck. Malone. That bitch didnt deserve to carry the same name as Richards saint of a mother. How dare she treat him this way? Leaving him just because he wasnt around for a few days. It wasnt like he wanted to be away when the baby squirted out of her he was locked up. How was it fair to punish him for something the cops had done? It wasnt. It was just an excuse. Whores would take any excuse to get out of their marital duties, flaunting it around town, trying to get somebody better. There was nobody better than Richard. Nobody. When would these whores learn?

Some treacherous little voice penetrated the alcoholic haze to remind him that he wasnt strictly telling the truth there. Mary Margaret Speck wasnt nearly as saintly as hed have liked her to be. He wasnt a virgin birth. His seven siblings werent either. Then there was that peg-legged bastard that came around after Dad dropped dead. He must have been giving it to her good to make her forget all the abuse he heaped on her and the kids. She must have been moaning and flopping underneath him every night for her to turn a blind eye to the way little Richard cringed every time old peg-leg opened his mouth to spit out his poison.

Richard cringed away from that image of his mother spread out on a bed like a whore. But why? Why was he hiding from the truth? This was what all women were like. This was all that they wanted. To hurt him, betray him and toss his memory away the moment they had the opportunity. It had happened to Dad, and it was happening to him, too. Hed barely been gone a week, and already Shirley had moved on. Shed taken his kid from him. Shed taken the roof from over his head. Hed come out of prison expecting a welcome party, and all he got was the cold shoulder from everybody. What was he supposed to do? Just take it lying down when some prick in a bar took a swing at him? Would he have been the man Shirley married if hed done a thing like that? No. Shed have never let him live it down. He wouldnt have been able to stand the sight of himself. She wouldve wanted him to hit the guy. Maybe pull his knife. That was what she wanted. So why was she acting like she didnt?

Whores, every last one of them. Just waiting for a chance to slither into some other mans bed. It didnt matter if the other man was better or worse they just wanted somebody. It wasnt right, the way that women treated men. It wasnt right that these whores got to lord it over everyone, deciding who gets what and when. Why did a whore have more rights than him? Why did that whore Shirley get to decide that he wasnt allowed to live in his own apartment anymore? That he didnt get to lie down in bed with her the way that she was meant to lie down as her husband demanded. The world was all wrong, and these whores were to blame, turning mens heads and making them do whatever they were asked in exchange for a taste. It shouldnt be this way. Somebody ought to put things right. Put those whores back in their place. Let them know that they were beneath men and that they were meant to get beneath men whenever they were told.

Richard had a knife. Hed always carried one for as long as he could remember. Sometimes a fight went south, and you wanted something to turn it around. Sometimes you needed to part a man from his money with the minimum amount of trouble. That was what being a man was all about strength. He was strong, and other men were weak, so he could take what he wanted from them. That was the natural order of things, and if women would just obey that natural order, then everything wouldve been fine. But they didnt. Women were slick and slippery. They could slide around the side of what you were saying and twist your own words around to make you look stupid. They could lift up their skirts and make any man go weak. It didnt matter to them that Richard was stronger than them because they had that secret power over men that let them ruin everything whenever it took their fancy. He was done bowing down to it. He was tired of the tyranny of whores. He wasnt going to go sniffing around their skirts and begging them for what he wanted anymore. He was strong. They were weak. And the rules applied to them just the same as everyone else. Whores would give him what he wanted, or hed cut up their pretty faces. Hed squeeze their soft necks until they all went blue. He was in control now. He was the one with the power.

His hand rested on the knife in his belt as he finished up the last dregs of rotgut whiskey in his glass. He could feel the texture of the wooden handle, the grain, the reassuring weight of it. He didnt need the approval of whores when he had this. He was strong. Hed never felt stronger. When he rose up from the barstool, he nearly toppled, but a few steps towards the door put him into a rhythm, and that gave him his balance. Hed been drinking for as long as he could piss standing up; he knew how to handle his liquor. When he stepped out into the cool night, it washed the worst of his drunkenness away. The swaying stopped, his stumbling steps became steady. Stepping out into the darkness was like waking up. The warm feelings of the bar hadnt left him, but he was wearing them, instead of the other way around, wrapping that cotton-wool around himself as insulation from the cruel world out there.

Weak men would have been weeping about now, but Richard had learned to channel all his misery into anger. Sobbing never helped anything. Getting angry did. Angry men got things done. He had an enemy, and he hit them. He had a barrier; he smashed through it. It was what hed always done, and what hed always do when a problem presented itself. But tonights problem the problem of whores was altogether too abstract to present such a simple solution. He couldnt break all the whores of their bad habits in one night. He couldnt round them all up and re-educate them in the correct way to treat a man. It just wasnt practical. He needed something that he could do right now, something to set the world back on its right course, to knock the whores from their reeking thrones and put men back where they belonged, at the top of the food chain. He had to do something. Set some example. He needed to let the whores know that one man in the entire world wasnt scared of them. He wasnt afraid they might snatch away their filthy offerings. Theyd already taken everything from him, and he was still standing. They had nothing left in their handbags of tricks.

As his mind wandered through the spiky maze of his drunken fury, his legs carried him on unguided into the city night. There were few people out this late and this far from the safe neon lights of the main streets, but here and there, he caught a glimpse of them in the lamplight. The homeless, the police, more drunks staggering home just like he shouldve been, if hed had a home to stagger back to. Men, just trying to live their lives under the oppressive thumb of the whores. He sank back into his reverie and drifted a few more blocks, circling slowly back towards the bar.