Bern the Pedovore
Horror story about predators becoming prey
Leech started the YouTube channel for two reasons: catching child predators yielded high tension footage of the most unsympathizable people in society, the true under-foot shitrags, which was algorithmic gold, and because of things he’d never admit, but which he sometimes feared was fairly obvious to anybody curious about his obsession with such a shady self-starting form of vengeance.
He watched hours of uploads and livestreams from vigilante videographers who called themselves things like the Juvenile Defenders Guild or Preds Out for Peds or South Texas Kid Protectors or Patriots V. Elites. It was like fishing for the dumbest trout, easy enough for a deadbolt like him to figure out.
He created a dating profile for a person who didn’t exist and named her Ashlee. He put her age as 18. After matching with some seamy-seeming older dudes, Ashlee would get comfortable enough to “admit” that she was actually a few years younger than she wrote and was that okay? the stupid ageism on these things! The dudes were always fine with it. Some expressed suspicion that she was a cop, and these guys usually ended up blocking her. The ones who stuck around, i.e. the real idiot tunas, were often deluded enough to agree to meet in public. Leech set these up in Walmarts or drugstore parking lots, and it was there that he commenced the ambush.
Sometimes when messaging the shitrags, he felt bad for them. In the course of these purposefully drawn-out babycatfishing conversations, Leech saw how lonely they were, underseen by everyone in their lives: spouses, bosses, friends, even by their own kids (it was crazy the number of dads out there). But then he’d remember that monsters, the real monsters, are human beings, a ringing bell that alerted an excuse that amounted to nothing.
He called his channel JCS - Jim Carves Sickos, a riff on an existing property, and six months into its creation, Leech had uploaded 16 videos of “catches” ranging in length from 13:54 (the pharmacy worker from Southlake, who bailed the second he saw Leech’s video camera) to 2:00:23 (the trailer janitor with the long rap sheet and obvious need for the spotlight). Leech sold it inside as the truth it was: taking down scum and blasting them online, which would hopefully hurt them in a never-ending way. People said the internet was forever. His pain certainly was.
The persona of himself that conducted the catches he dubbed The Fisherman Slayer on account of the fuck you heavy metal merch he wore, paired with a branded hat, a curling lower lip, and a waving middle finger to all those watching who might recognize the underhanded gutter sea-stream talk. The filth.
On the twelfth day of the twelfth month, in the corner of the small apartment he shared with his great aunt, mostly bedridden at this point, his last living tether to the terrible, Leech pulled down the window shade and opened a specific app.
He scrolled through the active conversations.
Matt
Al
Bern
G.
Ermoon
He answered messages in each one, more or less the same with small variants. Conversations in crumbs. Each at its own pace. Once he coaxed enough from them for the cops to book, he’d suggest a meet up. Arrests made for great video endings, the swirling red and blue lights and the predator in cuffs, perping off.
Leech tossed out the idea to Al, Matt, and G., suggesting the nearby Quiktrip. Al responded immediately, and an hour later, Leech was parked at the end of an unassuming lot, watching a gaunt forty-three-year-old man in glasses shuffle out of his car, a man whose admissions of intent on a person he thought was a child were printed out in a sheath of papers forty pages deep on the passenger seat.
Leech set up his rearview camera to film everything in front of the car, checked his phone, clicked on his GoPro, took a gulp of 24-hour energy, and climbed out of the car.
Three hours later, he had a lightly edited version of the footage up to go. It was good stuff. Al had broken down immediately, started sobbing, and even made a bunch of weird offers to get himself off. Leech had just pressed the upload button when he heard a ping. He checked his messages.
It was Bern.
How is tomorrow for you?
I have a fun estate for reeling in feast.
Sea grime splash!
-B
Leech-as-Ashlee responded immediately yes, ofc even as Leech-as-Leech felt a misalignment and raise of apprehension. It was the fishing language, which always gutted him (how could it not?), but it also felt like something more than that. Something beyond his small personal harms and ruin.
Leech scrolled backwards up the chat. The old man, Bern, said a lot of quasi-stilted things throughout their two days of messaging, but nothing that aligned so closely to Leech’s own trauma. And when the phone pinged with another message from Bern — Hook, line, and supper? — it felt like such a divine touch of retribution, the continuation of the curse, that Leech-as-Leech and Leech-as-Ashlee immediately shook hands and agreed in text (as the latter) to come to the old man’s house the next day.
Oh, how the small-eyed misjudge the ocean.
The following afternoon, covered in cameras and heavy metal gear, down to his dirt-stained shit-kickers, Leech-as-The-Fisherman-Slayer called a carshare to take him to the address Bern gave him. It was in a pre-built part of town, underdeveloped and only recently zoned for construction, forty minutes according to the app. Bern messaged that his phone might be off but to call on the codebox when he arrived. All this was suspicious as hell, but Leech saw none of the danger and all of the opportunity. He would be filming, and if need be livestreaming, extra measures of security.
The car dropped him off at the end of an unfinished road. Leech turned on the spot. There was an idea of a driveway in front of him, but other than the grassy endlessness of blackland prairie on all sides and the open caw of the sky (was that birdcall?), nothing.
Confused, Leech was considering options when a voice spoke from an unseen source. Welcome, Mr. Leech. Walk until you see the codebox.
Leech froze. This was backwards, everything in him screamed. Not the least the most obvious. No one knew him as Leech, his private identity of healing. Also, there was no pretense. In every other instance, he’d been the one to reveal Ashlee would not be showing up.
How do you know my name? He didn’t move an inch.
The voice giggled, high and alone. Different, it was hard to explain. Please cease the charade, Mr. Leech. Walk until you see the codebox.
Leech listened to the voice. It was weird. He was definitely aware of what he was doing, but he also knew that he shouldn’t be, that at the very least he should stop and consider, but that wasn’t how things went, smartness and safety was never how it went for him, not now, not when he was young and undeserving and a fishing boat was just a fishing boat. Leech walked down the patch of grass that looked like a driveway if you squinted. In silence, for nearly a minute, until the road was forgotten behind him.
Stop, the voice said. By the tree.
Near a rooted stump, a metal gadget stuck up from the ground. A kind of intercom with an old-fashioned screen.
Press 8, the voice said. Nearby but also far away. Press it eight times.
Leech turned to the screen and did as he was told. After his eighth press, there was a beep and he saw, further down the way, past a hedgy grove of cedars, a second road, just barely there. He took a deep breath and started walking.
The house at the end of this road was large and imposing. It looked neither old or new, which was odd in itself, unfinished in some parts but also clearly inhabited due to the electricity evident behind many of the upper windows. He passed a circular fountain set in the driveway. It showed a child spitting up water. Leech walked past it on feet that glided up to the house. The front door was open. He stepped inside.
Hello? Leech called out. He couldn’t see anyone. Just so you know, I’m filming. It’s for my own safety.
Leech took a few more steps and stumbled. There were statues. Lots of them. All showing the same scene. A large man in a strange hat. Small stone children littered around his feet. His left arm held a few choice cuts while his right hand was in the process of shoveling a child into his salivating disengorged mouth.
It’s a scene I’ve seen.
Leech spun around.
An old man stood there, partially hidden in the shadows of the home. Except he didn’t look old. It was weird. He didn’t look young either.
I seen it in Switzerland. The words sounded funny in the man’s mouth. Such a pretty pitcher. He took a sideways step into the shadows.
Leech felt far from brave, but that didn’t falter his actions. He tried to steady the plane. Keep to the script. Um, we should have a talk about the messages. I have a record of your conversation with Ashlee and um, I can call the police.
From within the shadows, the man waved a hand. No, we have tastier things to discuss. He shifted a little and Leech saw he wore a leathery shirt that reached up to his neck.
Leech hated it. This. Everything. It felt more dream-like than any real life experience he’d had, and yet it was happening. There was no mistaking the active vein in his temple. That shit didn’t pulse like that in dreams. Leech double checked it to be sure. Yep, it was pounding. All there and terrible.
Yes, the man in the leather ensemble said. This is no dream. Though the set up is a bit dream-like, sure, I’ll accord you that. Tut tut. Try to put it different.
There was a long silence where Leech felt a tangible scrutiny. It was awful.
You’re much older than my preferred, the shadow man spoke. And you waft devastation. It’s not unkind to you. Another maillard aroma of the human.
What… Leech’s voice was hoarse. What do you want?
I want what you want.
That didn’t make any sense. What do I want? Leech asked.
You want, the man said, still hiding in the shadows, your hunger to be sated. I want the same. We have our vices, don’t we? I admit I’m a gourmand, a glutton if one were to barb. But I won’t lecher you.
An oily silence, abother ripple of that dream-like quality to the air, which ripened the more the man spoke.
I’ve been studying banter, see? Leech’s skin felt raked. Human speech is fun. So delicious. Such yum. Would you like to hear a joke?
Leech didn’t want to hear a joke. He didn’t want to hear anything. He wanted to leave. This whole place gutted him horribly, differently from the fisherman, hard to believe there was a ripple of worse things, much darker vistas than the psychological damage visited on individual humans. Something was here, something that shouldn’t be. It was hard to explain. Felt like the rules were different, like what was happening was not held by the same logic that bound every other instance of life.
What’s the joke?
I saw a father in the park. On his shoulders he wore a contraption that held his child in place. I walked up to him and pointed at his back. Where did you get that?
On the internet, he said. It was like a hundred bucks.
No no no. I mean where did you get the small human.
Silence.
Tut tut, Bern said. At first, the father also didn’t find the joke funny. But then I explained it. And he saw how funny it was. It was so funny that he handed me his small human. To complete the joke. And then he went to find a screwdriver to mush into the softest part of his skull. Get it?
Moral of it, the shadowy being spoke, is you have to be careful what you put in your body. Don’t want to go around frachering yourself.
It moved partially in the light, past a pair of statues, and Leech saw the thing he thought was leather. It wasn’t leather. It was skin, or something like it.
I’m most often careful. But you’re here and I’m ravenous. And then, with no warning, the thing, this horrid hungry thing, lurged forward, mouth opened wide like a thrasher, and took a generous bite out of Leech’s arm.
Past its prime, it said as it chewed. It spoke to no one, Leech having been reduced to a state past scream, where his body contorted and clicked in shock, blood spasming down from his gaping wound. The creature from statuesque nightmares of an existence haunted by its own nearness, trying new things, spoke like it was using its voice a final time, one last turn before discarding the peel. Human fruit when it ripens loses the spiiiiice. Tut tut.
It’s okay, the thing cooed to the dying man, stroking his limp hair, protective in its destruction. No one’s gonna miss a YouTuber.
It was always nice to end with a joke.
Super creepy! Pedovore is definitely a word that gets one's attention. There was a child killer named Albert Fish in the 20's who was just a monster, and Stephen King based a villain on him called the Fisherman for his book Black House. That book has some really dark shit.