No One Is Innocent
By Graham Swanson
Tyler Thomas Has Never Been Found The Peru Boat Ramp. This is where police believe Tyler was disposed of by Joshua Keadle
I
The Student
Emma entered the office and by the ray of natural pale light from the window. Happiness and eagerness shined from her eyes. Brown hair over her face did not hide the excitement or the pride of her discovery. Only 19 years old, hailing from the wooded farm land where the sand cranes nest, protected by a dark stone given to her by seminarians who once practiced witchcraft on the land. She handed over her physical copies.
After the murder of Tyler Thomas, many people began asking themselves why so many strange men seemed drawn to the tiny town of Enoch, population 600, home to Enoch University. Her death however, ten years ago, was erased from the campus. While many local people still remembered and gossiped, the faculty was hoping old wounds would stay closed. Yet problems remained. From the school shooting 60 years ago, to the girls being assaulted at a house party, the town became a quiet, sombre place, when it was once fun, full of youth, and alive.
Some rumors piqued the curiosity of the young student. The deaths, the rape, the flow of meth, all committed by a race that once lived on the river floor before the time of the Native American, that had bred with humans and then spread across the south east.
“I didn’t know anything about her.” The professor said. A black robe hung on the door.
Despite the dour silence of Professor Ambrose Zelycki, or “Dr. Z” as he was known on campus. He fit the role of university educator and researcher. Thin arms, thin neck, thick glasses, thinning but theatrical hair style. He gladly took a break from the mire of research to conduct this meeting on the final paper.
“Do you have digital copies?”
“Of course.”
“You know, no one has ever published anything like this.”
“I know, it’s unbelievable what we can learn from these people.”
But they aren’t people…
“I don’t think you understand. You need to destroy this research.”
“Well, the Jimn get a bad rap. But they didn’t kill Tyler. That guy wasn’t even from here.”
“We attract strange people. It’s a part of being remote and diverse with so many young people. Nonetheless, we don’t really do anthropological studies here. Let me get into contact with my colleagues at Dagan University.”
“But it’s all formatted perfectly, cited perfectly. I took time off work to do these interviews. I even had to find a secret village of them. It’s all there. The anthropological connection between the local inhabitants and the Jimn is real. That means the Jimn are real!”
The professor opened his desk. Inside he had a master key to the dorm rooms.
“And have you shown anyone else this paper? Your parents, your friends?”
“Well, my roommate knows.”
“And have you shared this online at all. Posted it to a blog or perhaps sent an email?”
“No, I’m afraid AI will steal it.”
He turned to hide the shadow growing under his eyes. He took his glasses off and polished them, then took a dagger from his desk drawer and placed it in his lens case
“Congradulations on your discovery. This will be the biggest find in Nebraska since the Mastadon. Maybe even the world. I’d like to treat you to celebratory sushi.”
“That would be great! I can’t stay too late. I’ve got a date tonight, and I told my roommate I’d feed her fish.”
“Oh don’t worry. There will be time.”
Before he got into the car, he checked his kit to make sure. Nylon rope, duct tape, syringes with nerve relaxer.
The car drafted down the highway to Omaha but made a quick turn at the Niabrara down an abandoned road overgrown with dry reeds and the ruins of a hospital on the outskirts of fallen buildings.
II
The Victim
I can feel them. Every bone. Every tooth. Every bite from a fish.
Little slivers in the whirlpool.
Big femurs dragging in the mud.
Hair and flesh peeled off by the toxic urchins living in the bottom of the river.
They dug their teeth into my cheeks and laid eggs in my mouth.
Eggs in my brain.
Eye balls taken by water worms.
These sea cretins are all sick. Even the peaceful fish eat the flesh of the dead because there isn’t much else left untainted by the sewage. Every time it rains, Omaha opens its flood gates, and pours raw sewage down stream. I drink this water, this water presses me further down, greasy shit water eats at my bones. Despite feeling so slick, it’s sticky.
The water turend from brown, to green, to yellow. At the bottom, a trench of feces and dead animals laid collected. I actually vomited when I swallowed it, but under the water, the vomit has no where to go but the sacks in my face.
He choked me then stripped me of my clothes. He took my rings, he took my shoes. He burned the fashion but the jewelry he tossed out the window of his truck. They’re still out there in some farmer’s dust. He doesn’t even know. I can watch from the dark of the river. I can hear them. Why dig up the past, why not just let us live and forget? Because nothing is lost forever. Soon the water will dry up, and I will walk again among them. They will hear me every night when they step onto the porch to take the dog out.
III
The Killer
“You’ll never find her”.
Keadle, the man who had been stalking Tyler, the man who snuck into the same party as her, found her when she was drunk, and picked her up in his truck. He shook the bars of his cell. The men in the other cells kept back from the light and remained pressed against the wall. He spouted water from the toilet at the guard.
“You’ll never find her.”
He told the guard, both men dripping with piss and fluid. The other cops had to drag him out of the jail so he wouldn’t beat the suspect to death.
“You’ll never find her”
As he lay on the cot, he saw a shadow slide through the bars. In its hands shined her golden ear rings. Its flesh black and ruined, pieces of bone revealed through the holes in the flesh canvas. Especially the palms. Completely stripped of flesh and muscle. His long black robe failed to hide the decay in flickering fluorescent lights.
“You will never find her.”
The red eyes shined in the dark of the cell as it slid through. It was already wearing pieces of her skin. It pierced the familiar holes in its new canvas and hung the ear rings from them. Ears hanging from its neck. It took the killer by the hand, and in the morning they found him baked in raw sewage from the river.
Since they never found the corpse of Tyler, it looked like the prosecution wouldn’t be able to convict him. However, truth is, before his trial, he was dragged away back to the river.
“Youll never find her.”
He begged all the way to the depths of the shit river where he drank from the most bitter spring. Warren Buffet never even knew that the bathroom he used would become a drinking fountain for the likes of him. Keadle’s appeal was rejected, and his sentence was finalized. He was sent to the Clink in McCook, where his name would be nullified, and his inmate status would be that of an illegal immigrant, so he spends his remaining days being trucked around the country and being farmed for hard labor until the day he dies.
IV
The Necromancer
The gnome hermit. Yes I know him. We know all about the Jimn. We were there. Him and I are special but I don’t talk to the same spirits. He feels… old. I prefer the dead spirits. The world within the world and beyond. In my time I wore many different suits of flesh. With her rings, I can raise of her body from the murk. The gnome hermit already found her. He protects her remains from me, for what I will do with her sickens him.
Why do you need to disturb the dead?
He understands not the power I wish to use. For the natural powers of moon, tea, and cane answer to him, only the deformed skulls drenched in tainted blood answer to me. I didn’t choose this, the underworld did.
If they recover her rings, then they would've taken her body and chopped it up in a coroners lab. I will make her complete. I will restore her, as she will join those shady men of the crackhouse where the Jimn doth dwell.
V
The Professor
Dr. Z dumped the bags into the water. The northern floods wash the melting snow down and bury the bottom with mud. Someday, she will rise to the surface. Until then, “I’ve never heard of her. She went to school here? Hope she’s okay.”
Lastly, he held her final paper. Her phone. Her laptop. A pistol he hoped to never have to use. He opened the trunk. Emma’s roommate lay squirming within bound and gagged. He wrapped plastic around her head, then a towel, then finally two pillows on either side of her head. The gunblast echoed through the night but he wasn’t worried. There was a gun club up in the hills nearby. He scooped her body out and dumped it next. She floated for a second, then the dark hands of the Jimn arose and pulled her down to rest with them.
He sat around a makeshift campfire by the sandy shore. The Necromancer and the Jimn gathered to drink wine from the same bottle and smoke meth. He threw the final paper into the fire, and gave the technology to the Necromancer.
The Necromancer made swift configurations with his hands and fingers. Then the water opened up, and she came slurping from the putrid river. Mostly reassembled, her neck still twisted where Keadle choked her. Mud squirted from her packed rib cage. Golden brown river water poured from her eye sockets. Snails covered her face and arms. A snake hung from her jaw. It all stayed in place, within her skull and hips, as muscles and flesh reassembled and compacted around and around until there stood a blemished robe of rotten , bitten, scared flesh.
“No, sorry. I have never heard of her.”
All the professors at Enoch now say.
When in reality, there’s a laptop and there’s worms that prove not only the existence of the Jimn, but also that the faculty knows about the problem of creepy men who descend from these creatures and prey on the young pretty girls of Enoch. Every single night, the remains of Tyler drift across the paved lanes between campus buildings. The hermits claim that she stands there on the ramp in the middle of the night when the ice is frozen on the anniversary of her death.
VI
Studies on the Jimn
Archaeology in Nebraska: Historical and Anthropological Connections Between Wildlife, Local People, and the Fabled Jimn of the Missouri River Basin
History 202
Emma Braglinger
Dr. Ambrose Zelycki
Long ago before humans crossed the land bridge into North America there lived a race of r\ lizards that dwelled at the bottom of what would become the Missouri River. They were cruel, mean, and ugly. They crawled from the water to grab eggs and chew the bone of kin that washed to the surface. It devoured raw corns, not just the hard kernels, but the cob and stalk. They also rose to the surface to take rotting carcasses below.
Indigenous tribes who initially settled in what we call America learned to avoid and respect the remote areas inhabited by these creatures. The translators for Enoch University have been able to find indigenous words used to refer to them, but mis use of Sea Creature- Jim is most prominent among the locals. Dr. Cortes of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies wrote that this colloquial title is related to several indigenous words that sounded to the early Fur Traders like GUNK DIET JIMN, then was mistranslated into English as “Sea Creature Jim” when the later settlers arrived. In search of these lost indigenous words, He writes ‘the closest translation found is “One That Prevents Peace On The Water”.
The usage of this term means that the Early Europeans made contact with these creatures. When the French fur trader Orland Dubuque made a trip there in the early 1600s, he returned to Fort Orlean with no company left, all his furs gone, and rich with gold and some bottles of wine. Upon his deathbed, he dictated a terrible confession. From French, he said “The wealth and empire I manifested was built on a marriage I regret”. Though he was divorced many times and sired many children all over his travels, scholars at Enoch have found the documents he signed with a “Lord Viction”. The mark used to sign the contract is turned to the side. If it were right side up, it would be the words “Heaven Convict”. The document was a bargain in which Orland would secure furs and women for the Jimn of the river. What he got in return is a secret that was lost in the pillaging of his estate and suicide of his only son, who is believed to have started the fire.
Over time the Jimn adapted to wearing clothes and using tools. They refused to go to school but developed sophisticated smuggling rings powered by money they made from trading with slavers. Instead of building houses, they claimed trees and protected them by the sacred shotgun law. The Jimn used to leave their eggs in these trees until the Arbor Protection Act of 1862 forbade people from claiming wild trees as personal property.
These early connections were essential in the crossing of the Homo Gene and the Jimn Gene. The founder of Nebraska City, Stephen Nuckols, brought the first 5 slaves into Nebraska. He imagined building an empire out of the west with a super race mix of Jimn and his own slave girls. By the late 1980s people ceased using the moniker “Sea Creature Jim” as their amphibious appearance retracted. Their scales, their external ear openings, their flexible eyelids, all retroverted. They started using their fingers to feel and instead of using their sensory tongues to learn about objects. The spot of light in their skulls that helped them detect predators receded. Their skin lost its ability to change color, and instead it turned to a milky green or even yellow oil. Researchers have determined the color to be “Chartreuse”. They no longer basked in the sunlight on rocks, but hid in the dark of their homes. They seal the doors and bolt shut the windows. They come out to work in the factory or at the fast food joints along the highway. Then go back to their nests where they are sustained on cans of Speghettios and pills.
Once Europeans began migrating to America, they made contact with these monsters, and saw an opportunity. A wealthy man named Stephen Nuckolls arrived at the site that would become Nebraska City near Enoch. He saw these creatures, and took many into his bedroom. He laid the first brick down in that town, and declared an alliance. The bricks made of purple were made of sands from the bottom of the river. These creatures were giving them to him, and in return, they’d get to live in the town he created. He planned to build an empire built by slaves with a golden road that stretched to the West Coast ruled by his own race- himself, and the river lizards. Today, the river lizards are almost indistinguishable from homo sapiens and the humans that descend from them, but upon close inspection it’s clear to the learned mind that these people are not homo sapien. They can’t take DNA tests because the origin is undetermined.
Many Europeans mated with them, and they bred a sub race of humans that still lives in South
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