It rained like hell on that autumn night in 1974 when the cops stumbled upon Blac Balor in the act of strangling a waitress on her way home from the night shift. By then, Blac Balor had painted the faces of thirteen women, dressed them like Raggedy Ann dolls, and strangled them to death. He was 19.<\/p>\n
While searching Balor\u2019s apartment, cops discovered tiny dioramas Blac had carved, each depicting one of his murder scenes. When questioned, Blac confessed to being an artist, claimed to have loved his victims, which he considered his creations whom he desired to preserve in a more perfect, permanent state.<\/p>\n
On his twentieth birthday, a jury of non-serial killers convicted Blac. A judge sentenced him to hard time for life. In the joint, Blac pursued his artistic passions. He read classic literature\u2014particularly Proust\u2014endeavored to emulate the Romantic poets and studied painting and sculpture. Assigned to the prison woodshop, he became an accomplished carpenter and expert marionette maker. Doing time, loving art, and craving the love prison had denied him, he became enthralled by Proust\u2019s quote: \u201cThe greatest work of art is love.\u201d Blac Balor became determined that through his art he would be beloved.<\/p>\n
In 2019, a newspaper ran a Sunday feature about the reformed Blac Balor. Then TV news filmed him, featuring his hand-crafted marionettes performing a snippet of Romeo and Juliette<\/em>. A confident, well-groomed, articulate Balor put on a show of being civilized. An expert string-puller, he assumed the role of host to the TV people who called him Mr. Balor or sir.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My mother and I were watching the evening news while eating meatloaf, mashed potatoes and peas when the Blac Balor segment came on.<\/p>\n \u201cRemarkable man,\u201d my mother, transfixed by the flickering TV image, swooned. \u201cSo handsome. Probably lonely. I\u2019ll write to him.\u201d<\/p>\n Every day she wrote a letter to \u201cDearest Blac,\u201d then strolled to the corner mailbox humming, \u201cWhen I Fall in Love.\u201d<\/p>\n Figuring that either her letters wouldn\u2019t get delivered or that a lunatic serial killer had better things to do than answer sickly sweet love letters from an aging widow hundreds of miles away, I didn\u2019t discourage Mom. But\u2026.<\/p>\n Blac Balor wrote back, thanking Mom for her kindness, saying he hoped she\u2019d write again to brighten the days of this now repentant blackguard.<\/p>\n Mom had her hair done, bought new clothes, had professional photos taken and sent those to Balor.<\/p>\n Balor sent Polaroids of himself wearing a wifebeater shirt and showing off his muscular and tattooed arms.<\/p>\n Awestruck, Mom wrote back asking to visit him.<\/p>\n \u201cMa,\u201d I said, \u201cAre you fuckin\u2019 crazy?\u201d<\/p>\n She waved her hand at me like I was a bothersome fly.<\/p>\n Every weekend for three months, Mom rode the train 200 miles each way to the penitentiary and back, spending a night in a cheap motel. Then, one Saturday afternoon, she texted me a picture of her and Blac Balor, side by side, holding a sheet of looseleaf paper inscribed in red marker, \u201cJust Married.\u201d<\/p>\n Our state pen was a progressive place with educational and sports programs\u2014and conjugal visits. To \u201cconjugate,\u201d inmates had to build an impeccable record and be deemed trustworthy. Blac Balor\u2014artist, marionettist, TV personality\u2014had convinced the universe that he\u2019d transformed himself from serial strangler into a decent human being. The personification of truth, justice and the American way.<\/p>\n Mom put our house up for sale and bought another near the penitentiary. I found a cheap, basement studio apartment to live in.<\/p>\n Mom phoned me often, saying, \u201cI\u2019m happier than I ever dreamed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s a murderer. He\u2019s the devil.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI love him.\u201d<\/p>\n One night I couldn\u2019t hold back, and shouted into the phone, \u201cMa, remember that story about the woman who brought a half-dead frozen snake into her house, thawed him, fed him and nursed him? Remember how that turned out? Snakes don\u2019t change.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSilly boy. Snakes always change their skin\u2014make themselves new all the time. Blac is proof of such change.\u201d<\/p>\n I quit arguing. I tried to be happy that Mom was happy. Since my dad left decades before, she\u2019d been lonely and raising me wasn\u2019t easy\u2014even if I never strangled thirteen women that the cops knew about and probably a bunch more. I guess I envied her\u2014and Blac Balor. I mean, I wasn\u2019t a serial killer, but I couldn\u2019t find anybody to marry me. I had an okay job, good teeth, and I lived with the sweetest Tabby cat in my dark basement studio apartment. Still, nobody ever wrote news articles about me, or did a TV story. Or wrote me love letters, any letters. What did a murderer serving life in prison have that I didn\u2019t? Some people can get away with murder, even if they\u2019re caught.<\/p>\n Life went on just that way. I lived with my cat, while Mom and Blac Balor enjoyed connubial bliss one weekend each month on what I envisioned as a raggedy-ass double bed inside a windowless concrete box.<\/p>\n Near Christmas, Mom pestered me to spend the holiday with her and my \u201cstepfather.\u201d I declined.<\/p>\n Christmas morning the phone rang. I figured Mom was calling to say Merry-Merry and that she was happy.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is Warden Roy Bean. I have bad news. Your mother\u2019s dead. Balor strangled her during their conjugal. We found her\u2014ropes tied to her neck, wrists and ankles; her face made up like Raggedy Ann\u2014hanging from a water pipe. Balor said their sex game went wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happens to that murdering snake now?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCharges filed. Prosecution. Probably gets another life sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo, he got away with murder?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019ll have other consequences, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cConsequences? What are my chances of getting that son-of-a-bitch-bastard alone for ten minutes?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNon-existent. To even get inside you\u2019d have to be arrested, convicted, but even then\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cArrested, you say?\u201d Of course, I\u2019d miss my cat, but I started planning. If teenage Blac Balor could strangle thirteen women, how hard can it be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When questioned, Blac confessed to being an artist, claimed to have loved his victims, which he considered his creations whom he desired to preserve in a more perfect, permanent state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":24589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-nick-di-carlo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23651"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24590,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23651\/revisions\/24590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}