So Kryptikus makes his long awaited debut. All the world’s a stage! Step right up…time for the Greatest Show on Earth! Well, the Greatest Show in Indianapolis, at any rate. I thought it was pretty cool when the Editorial Board began putting “archived” material on this website. How surprised was I to learn that before the Realm, was the Canonical Story World. It was quite mystifying to learn that Techtonicus began as the lone voice crying in the Canonical Story Wilderness. I was also amazed to find out just how long it was before Techtonicus was told to take the pursuit of the truth elsewhere. Teaspoons are in short supply. Would you kids bring the spoons downstairs and put them in the kitchen where they belong! There is perhaps a sort of parallel as far as I am concerned. In this serial essay, I will take an interpretation of the facts that is truly ground-breaking; it changes everything. When I shared my theory with the Editorial Board…well, you could hear a pin drop. If I had a pin, I would have dropped it to find out whether I could have heard it. Initially, I thought that to prove my theory right, I would have to prove other theories wrong. I was told that this is not the case, but if I did seek to show the shortcomings of other theories, I best not do so in a Wellhausian manner. I didn’t know what that meant, but when I finally looked it up, I learned that this refers to proving another theory wrong by, well, utterly demolishing it. It is not enough to tear the other person’s theory-house down; you rip it apart brick by brick, leaving no two bricks on top of each other. Then you grind the bricks into dust; then you dump the dust in the river. Of course, you can do all of that in a nice, respectable way, although it would take someone made of stern stuff not to take offense. And so I met Techtonicus the Troll; the Arch Heretic; the one who bungled out of her own small part of the Canonical Story Wilderness, and bungled into the bungling part of a strange world inhabited by bunglers intent on bunglerization. I suppose that there are different definitions of a troll. There are the legendary beasts who wait under bridges to grab unsuspecting passers-by. There are those who captured Bilbo Baggins, intent on a free lunch. The most commonly followed definition, at least outside of fairy tales and the Shire, but rather in our world, regards those as trolls who, more or less, enter social media settings and proceed to simply be nasty. Perhaps it is only in the Canonical Story World that someone who made so much effort to be respectful of others would be considered a troll. There has been much debate underlying the work on this website, and intelligent minds love to debate. If I’m wrong…show me! If you’re wrong…I’ll be more than happy to show you! Not all are of like mind. There are those, I suppose, that whine and cry when losing a debate. If your belief is correct, then what an opportunity debate will prove to be! Show the world that you’re right…and that they’re wrong. Perhaps I could follow the example of the prophet Jeremiah, one who said that the only way to know if something precious is to be found in a hunk of rock is to put that hunk of rock into a crucible. Of course, you might find that nothing but dross is left when you’re done. I think that’s just fine! All it means is that I will have to go out and find another hunk of rock, and stick that one in the crucible. I may well go through many dross-laden rocks, but eventually I will find one with gold in it. Or at least, silver. Still, there are no shovel-scrapers in the Realm! Except for Paula, Stephanie, and all the cops at the police headquarters who found themselves shivering with cold until they too descended into the basement to shovel coal off of the floor and into the furnace. What would some confused person think if she had walked into the police station that evening to report that an invisible dog had dug up her flower beds? Or to report that a neighbor boy had vanished after being sucked into the Great Vortex? Whoosh! Or, which would be far stranger, someone who lived on the corner wanted to make it known that two children are really four children? Or that one kid was really two kids? Well, perhaps one was older than the other; old enough to have a baby; old enough to trick someone into thinking that baby was his. If so, then his fate is a truly heart-breaking one, seeing how he did nothing wrong. Still, our hypothetical woman is standing at the entrance of the police station listening in abject horror to all the shovel-scraping. As some would have it, that is the sign of someone’s impending death. And! With so much shovel-scraping, a human catastrophe is in the making! How relieved she was to find all the cops suddenly appear from the basement, tired and sweaty, but safe and sound. And I can’t but muse about how strange it would be to have heard a cacophony of shovel-scraping coming from the basement of Indi’s Finest! Now it is true that Phyllis dated the shovel-scraping incident as occurring in the early morning of October 26th, while Stephanie dated her dropping coal on Paula’s foot to the morning of October 25th, at roughly 6:45 am. However, it is very difficult to believe that there are two shovel-scraping events on two different mornings. This was said during Marie’s testimony:
Q. Now then, your mother told this jury Paula and Stephanie were down firing the furnace in the early morning of Tuesday, October 26 at 1:00 o'clock in the morning. Did you know Paula and Stephanie were down in the basement?
A. I knew they were putting more coal in it.
Q. How did you know that?
A. Because I always went down - I always kissed Paula good-by.
Q. At 1:00 o'clock in the morning?
A. No, sir, I always kissed Paula and Paula was down there when we had to go to school and I went down and she had - Mom had told her to go downstairs and put more coal in the furnace.
That’s what I thought…October 26th is the right date. That, of course, necessitates that Stephanie is not correct, i.e. she is wrong. Marie appears to be trying to remember what different witnesses would say, or having difficulty remembering what she is supposed to say. Marie will acknowledge that the event took place at 1:00 am, but then states that she herself got up to kiss Paula. What do kissing Paula, 1:00 in the morning, and coal have in common? Stephanie would say that the coal-based event occurred right before she left for school. She also said that all the other kids were asleep. Marie says that she was not asleep, but was actually awake at 1:00 am. Why? To kiss Paula? Why? She always kissed Paula before she went to school? So we encounter a girl so enthused by learning, so imbued with a love of education, that she will arrive at school so early that she must wait hours by the front door. Stephanie! Mr. School has no interest you…he prefers Paula! Marie knew about 1:00 am, knew that Paula and Stephanie were in the basement at that hour, but apparently also knew that Stephanie would state that the coal-oriented accident occurred just before leaving for school, and hence Marie heads downstairs to kiss Paula. I feel safe in believing that both occurred on the same morning, and that Phyllis Vermillion is right in both the date, as well as the time.
To continue…if I were suddenly at 3850 East New York Street, having hypothetically left the hypothetical police station where I had just hypothetically been, and I were an ardent adherent of the Inherited Wisdom, then I would hear something bizarre indeed! Paula and Stephanie are generating clearly audible shovel-scraping as they scoop coal off the floor and into the furnace. But Sylvia is also generating her own shovel-scraping. This sub-set of shovel-scraping in Gertie’s basement is trying to let ‘Phyllis can’t count the number of her kids’ Vermillion know that the girl herself is in serious trouble. And so a cacophony. Whose shovel-scraping did Phyllis Jean Keel-Thompson-Smith-Neely-Vermillion-Keel-McCoy hear? Of course, Stephanie dropped coal on Paula’s foot. Then as they stand and argue, Sylvia lies not but a few feet away scraping the floor with her shovel. So that would mean that Gertrude had two coal shovels in her basement. Then Gertrude begins hollering. At whom? She alternates between hollering at Stephanie and Paula on the one hand, and hollering at Sylvia on the other. “Would you two shut up!” “Sylvia, stop scraping the floor with the second shovel in an attempt to get Phyllis’ attention!” “Stephanie, leave Paula alone!” “Sylvia! If you don’t stop your shovel-scraping I will stand here yelling until a neighbor calls the police!” If you could scrape out a message using a coal shovel in someone’s basement, the bona fide coal shovel-scraping of two other girls would surely make interpretation and understanding of the other girl’s shovel-scraping impossible. And so we find ourselves lost in a bizarre, dualistic fog blanketing Gertie Wright’s Hole in the Universe. Wait! I have been told by another writer that she is posting an amazing essay of her own. And she has said categorically that we should no longer call Gertrude Baniszewski by her alias…which, it turns out, wasn’t a real alias…at least, not at first. What alias? Mrs. Gertrude Wright, unless I’m Wrong about that. No, I’m Wright about that! The other side of the double was on North Dennis Street. No, North Denny Street. Baby Denny lives on the East New York Street side of the Denny Street double! If Denny is short for Dennis, then Dennis lives only a few feet away from North Dennis Street. Name-games! It is also fascinating that a man who was unfairly tricked, and I speak not of the Cleric, who wasn’t tricked, but did claim to have been the victim of Jenny-backed trickery… no, I mean the man who was tricked. When he chose to leave this life in such tragic circumstances, he lived not too far from Wright Street. To make the name-game even more interesting, the man who divorced Juel Sanders also lived not far from Sanders Street. At any rate, I will not be a Wellhausian Troll. Why did Techtonicus suddenly say that there was only one girl involved in the Great Mystery? I asked, and was told that she didn’t really believe that…after all, it was only a dream. And so I join the ranks of so many people who have been tricked…the Cleric, the Nurse, Dennis Wright Sr., among others. And I promise that if I’m bested, I will not cry and whine. No! I will argue my point well, but then re-consider what I believe in order to see if I am, in fact, correct. If not, then my being wrong has lead to my being right…maybe.
The essay titled “Missing Persons” is central to my essay. In what way, that will become clear later. But I do wish to contribute to the sense of “time shock” found in that essay. Time Crunch. How deceptive the deceptive date of October 5th proved to be! Hey, Lester…10+5=15! No The Three Weeks? How contrived was The Two Weeks! Lester and Betty don’t like the date October 15th because they don’t like the topic of conversation that echoed around Gertrude’s Magical Kitchen on that date. How frustrating it must have been to unexpectedly be handed a The Two Weeks! So 14 days contract and are crunched into 11 days. And yet, critical thinking and teaspoons in hand show just how crunched 11 days can become! But I do wish to make a few comments on this crunchification. I think that the other author did miss something. I have learned that the more crunchizing that the witnesses do, the better. And in one case at least, there is a witness-based crunching that takes us farther away from 11 days, and even closer to a calendrical singularity. What witness performs such an important service? That’s easy…my favorite, i.e. Paula. She does this in her forced confession; the one obtained by forcing the pregnant teenage girl to stand against the wall, as at least one cop walked back and forth between the interrogation room where she was being abused, and the one in which Johnny was being abused. In her confession, which, of course, existed in at least two versions, evidenced by the different locations where her signature was found on different copies, some of which disappeared, she provided some important chronological markers. Here is the first marker:
Q. Did you ever punish or strike Sylvia Marie Likens?
A. Yes, my dad gave my Mom, a mans police belt, to punish us kids with, and in three months I beat Sylvia Likens with this police belt, about twenty-five times on her butt, leaving bruises, on the first of August, 1965, I broke my wrist when I hit Sylvia Likens in the jaw, leaving a bruise. I have pushed Sylvia Likens, several times down the stairs steps, I knocked her down the stairs once. I have thrown a coke bottle at Sylvia Likens, and I given her a black eye.
So here we have The Three Months, which is in fact, a little problematic. When did Sylvia and Jenny move in?
Q. When did Sylvia Likens and her sister Jenny Likens, come to live with you?
A. Around July 4, 1965, both girls stayed overnight. Mr. Likens, wanted my Mom, to care for both girls, while he and his wife travelled state to state, working for fairs.
Chronologically, this is correct. But Paula went on to say that she beat Sylvia with the police belt 25 times “in three months.” Is she saying that she beat Sylvia with the belt on 25 separate occasions? Or is she saying that she administered 25 smacks with the belt on one occasion? And did she stop beating Sylvia with the police belt on October 4th? Notice too that the police belt was brought to Gertrude’s house to “punish us kids,” whereas the claim would also be made that the police belt was brought over to Gertrude’s house as a means to punish Johnny. This could suggest that Paula herself got whacked with the police belt. How strange it would be if Sylvia inflicted that whacking! I know something stranger than that! What if no one got smacked with the police belt? What if the whole police belt element, the existence of the police belt itself, was driven by the fact that a police belt was found at the scene by the cops who worked the crime scene at 3850 East New York Street? Or maybe the North Denny crime scene? In other words, John left his belt behind, and it was found by the other cops. Why was it there? Why had he been there? This was covered up by adding the police belt as an efficient object for smacking naughty kids, whereas I’m sure that Gertrude had had plenty of kid smacking-items of her own. But the police belt had been left at the crime scene. The Canonical Story goes into overdrive!
Paula also mentions pushing Sylvia down the steps, throwing a coke bottle at her, punching Sylvia in her iron jaw, and giving her a black eye. What is distinctly lacking here is any reference to anything that could be labelled as “torture.” Perhaps the best way to start is to let her state when Sylvia was forced to stay in the basement:
Q. Will you tell us where Sylvia Likens slept in your house?
A. Yes, upstairs with the girls, until this past week and a half. Sylvia Likens wet and shit on the bed, so Mom made her sleep on the pad down in the basement, and she was kept down in the basement in the daytime.
I see! She slept with “the girls,” and not “us girls.” Of course, Paula slept in the Mysterious Third Bedroom, where Little Denny Street may have slept when he was not overcome with a bout of insomnia. So we go from The Three Months to The Ten Days, which is, obviously, one day less than The Eleven Days. She will refer to The Ten Days again:
A. During this past week and a half, my brother Johnny Baniszewski, M/W/12, put a gag in Sylvia's mouth and tied her up about three times up stairs in the bedroom, and twice he did the same thing while she was in the basement. Johnny teased Sylvia and made fun of her. Sylvia, was tied at the wrists and ankles, sometimes with rope, sometimes with a piece of cloth.
Officer Paula! Stop speaking in police jargon! You may omit “M/W/12” if you please. What? You didn’t say that? The police inserted that into a confession which they would later assert had not been altered by them? Still, when asked to confess to hurting Sylvia herself, Paula places the abuse during The Three Months. But when it comes to making false claims about Gertrude making Sylvia sleep in the basement, and also making false claims about Johnny, the period of time referred to has contracted significantly. Note too that all Paula says her brother did was to tie Sylvia up. She does not state that he hurt Sylvia. In fact, the whole “tying Sylvia up” element is clearly nonsense, since it is followed, not by claims of abuse, but rather by the claim that Johnny simply teased Sylvia and made fun of her. This is like going from 80 miles an hour in the fast lane headed into the Darkest of Places, to slamming on the brakes. Johnny tied up Sylvia, but only made fun of her? Did he tie her up and then make fun of her? Given the outcome of the Paula vs. Sylvia fight, perhaps it would have been safest for Johnny to make fun of Sylvia when she was unable to leave him with a broken wrist. Of course, Johnny was small, and I have no doubts that he would have found it nigh impossible to actually tie her up in the first place. And why, following the nonsense, did this sudden desire to tie Sylvia up not begin until The Ten Days? So months of not tying her up suddenly culminates in five instances of tying her up, only to do nothing to her, or at least, doing nothing more than teasing her and making fun of her. So the chronology:
The Three Months- Paula abuses Sylvia
The Ten Days- Gertrude makes Sylvia stay in the basement; Johnny suddenly starts tying Sylvia up
Thus we see an inexplicable contraction of the time-line, and note that making Sylvia stay in the basement, tying her up if nothing else accompanied it, and teasing and making fun of another kid…none of this is torture. In fact, Paula attempts to explain The Ten Days during which Sylvia stayed in the basement as linked, not to abuse, but due to the fact that Sylvia was urinating and defecating “on the bed.” In effect, Paula is saying that Gertrude made Sylvia stay in the basement for hygienic reasons. Of course, the scenario Paula invented can not be the truth. Sure, the child is no longer doing this in the bed upstairs, and the basement would be preferable, speaking hypothetically. But it is still very messy, and I find it impossible to believe that if this were going on, even in the basement, Gertrude would want it happening in her house at all. The laundry sinks are in the basement, as is the coal-burning furnace, and other inhabitants of the house would need to be in the basement at various times.
Paula has also created a clear contradiction. According to her, Gertrude forced Sylvia to sleep in the basement during The Ten Days. But not just to sleep:
“Sylvia Likens wet and shit on the bed, so Mom made her sleep on the pad down in the basement, and she was kept down in the basement in the daytime.”
So Paula is essentially saying that during The Ten Days, Sylvia was kept in the basement night and day. But when Paula is asked about what she had seen Johnny do to Sylvia, she states specifically that during The Ten Days, Johnny tied Sylvia up five times…with three instances having taken place upstairs in the bedroom. So Sylvia was not spending all of The Ten Days in the basement. And! Why the bedroom? The most logical answer to this question is that Sylvia was sleeping in the upstairs bedroom, and that clearly compromises Paula’s ‘Sylvia had to sleep in the basement for hygienic reasons, and was likewise kept there during the daytime’ element. But now she will crunch the time-line even more:
A. Yes, I have seen Mom hit Sylvia Likens, with her fist on the face, and she has thrown coke bottle at her, and I have seen my Mom beat Sylvia Likens, about ten times with a board, four times during the past week.
So Gertrude beat Sylvia with a board…i.e. the paddle…a total of ten times, four of which were during The Seven Days. But spanking a kid isn’t torture. Punching isn’t torture. Nor is throwing a bottle at a kid, and note that Paula doesn’t even indicate whether the bottle actually hit Sylvia. A woman stoned on Phenobarbital much of the time probably makes a pretty poor pitcher. Ball four! But! Cigarette burns are torture:
“I have seen my Mom hurt Sylvia Likens, on the arms, back, and legs, with a cigarette about fifteen times during the past week.”
So the only acts of torture in Paula’s statement, the cigarette burns, are inflicted by Gertrude during The Seven Days. And crunching the chronology by distinguishing between The Ten Days and The Seven Days only adds to the ridiculousness of it all. Gertrude begins keeping Sylvia in the basement because of bladder and bowel control issues ten days before the girl died. But she waited until The Seven Days to start burning her with cigarettes, the only act of torture in Paula’s statement. So, following the story, Gertrude only has to wait seven days before Lester Likens will be back. She waited from July 4rth to October 19th without actually torturing Sylvia, even dealing with the hygiene issues, to finally inflict 15 cigarette burns during The Seven Days. Must I say that this makes no sense whatsoever? But it does have the effect of shifting the only description of torture, and one that would figure so significantly after Kebel did his little 15x10= 150 arithmetic, to a Seven Day period. And thus we experience Chronological Velocity, hurtling head-long from The Eleven Days to The Seven Days, and then crashing into a Singularity.