MONDAY, OCTOBER 30
This week of mangled hot dogs, spooky suicides, and death sentences for dictators kicks off with the fittingly disturbing story of Gary Helms Jr., the 19-year-old man in Albertville, Alabama, arrested after allegedly raping his mother. Details come from the Associated Press, and only make it worse. "From what we understand, the rape stemmed from an argument between [Helms] and his brother," Sergeant Jamie Smith told the Associated Press. "Apparently they were arguing over a girlfriend. And the rape was some sort of retaliation toward his brother." Unfortunately, Helms's retaliation was enacted upon the worst third party possible—his 45-year-old mother, who was reportedly passed out drunk on the couch in her trailer home when her son decided to avenge himself against her other son by fucking her. "During the attack, she did come to and recognize her attacker," said Smith. Upon waking to a nightmare, she "tried to get away," according to the police report, "but he held her down until he was finished." After reportedly admitting to the incestuous assault, Helms was arrested and charged with first-degree rape. For those readers still struggling to wrap their minds around the basic facts of the story, Sergeant Smith offers a sturdy interpretation: "It's totally sick, is what it is."

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31
The week continues with Halloween, once celebrated as the spookiest time of the year—a distinction that's since been seized by the weird week and a half of justifiably paranoid waiting, accusations, and recounts that seems to follow every major U.S. election in the new millennium. Nevertheless, Halloween remains plenty spooky, as evidenced by today's story from deep in the Frenchy heart of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where a group of teenagers ventured into a house under construction and found the fright of their lives, eventually. The shit went down last Friday, when the group of teens left a Halloween house party to go "ding dong ditching," which the Spokesman-Review reports is "ringing doorbells and running away." Stumbling upon the aforementioned house under construction, the teens entered and found what they believed to be a bag hanging from the unfinished basement's rafters. After shooting the dangling basement bag with a BB gun and pelting it with chunks of lumber, the kids returned with a flashlight to discover the would-be bag was a real-life man, whose body hung lifeless from the rafters. Then things got really weird: Returning to the house with friends/further witnesses, the teens were confronted by the unfinished home's owner, 65-year-old Norman Giddings, who'd received word of a possible break-in from neighbors and greeted the teens with a machete. Cops arrived, further bloodshed was averted, and the chief deputy coroner confirmed the man in the basement had hanged himself not long before the teens first entered the home. As for the teens, their deeds (trespassing, corpse pelting) went uncited, as even the machete-wielding Mr. Giddings acknowledged they'd "been through enough."

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1
Nothing happened today, unless you count the 20-year prison sentence given to Bryan Nicholas Garcia, the 23-year-old South Carolina man who repeatedly tried to dig up the grave of a 12-year-old girl whose photo he'd noticed in the obituaries and with whom he'd hoped to make love. Attentive Last Days readers should take note that today's story of a man prosecuted for trying to dig up the grave of a sexually alluring corpse whose photo he spotted in the obituaries is unrelated to last month's story of a man prosecuted for trying to dig up the grave of a sexually alluring corpse whose photo he spotted in the obituaries. Last month's ambitious would-be necrophiliac—20-year-old Nicholas Grunke of Wisconsin—recently found his charges of attempted sexual assault dismissed after a judge noted Wisconsin has no law against necrophilia, while today's ambitious necrophiliac/pedophile Bryan Nicholas Garcia will spend the next 20 years in prison, after which he must register as a sex offender.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2
The week continues with one of the most entertaining crime reports Last Days has ever had the pleasure to encounter, courtesy of the Contra Costa Times. The saga began early this morning, when police in El Cerrito, California, received a call about a naked man lying on a tree stump and masturbating near the El Cerrito train station. Soon, police arrived to arrest the naked man—33-year-old John Sheehan—on suspicion of indecent exposure. Before placing Sheehan in the back of his car, Sergeant Paul Keith asked if he had anything on him that police should know about. Sheehan replied that he had a screwdriver hidden in his anal cavity, and police did what anyone confronted by a man with a screwdriver in his ass would do: called for a fire engine. Summoned firefighters quickly determined that a trip to the emergency room was more in order, but before an ambulance was called, Mr. Sheehan interceded. As El Cerrito Detective Corporal Don Horgan told the Contra Costa Times: "When [Sheehan] heard what they were talking about, he said, 'Hey, don't worry about it. I can do it.'" Thus commenced one of the most striking law-enforcement scenarios in American history, as police officers kept their guns trained on Sheehan as he carefully removed the would-be potential weapon—described as a six-inch metal awl wrapped in black electrical tape—from his derrière. Sheehan remains jailed on suspicion of indecent exposure and one felony count of possessing a concealed weapon.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3
Speaking of upsetting news in ass: Today brings the dark story of the police investigation launched into the University of Central Florida's Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, where three new pledges were recently found so drunk they had to be rushed to the hospital. Details come from southern Florida's Local 6 News, which reports university police became involved in the alleged hazing gone wrong after noticing loud, aggressive screaming and moaning coming from the SAE fraternity house. "At first, students would not let police into the fraternity house because they said they were performing a ritual," reports Local 6 News. "Apparently, that ritual included male students dressing up like women and drinking until they had to be hospitalized." Inside the frat house, police found a "strong smell of urine and vomit" and the three soon-to-be-hospitalized drunk-and-dragged-up pledges, including one young man who was sobbing on the floor in a rainbow-colored wig and a diaper. Today, a university official confirmed that the investigation included the possibility of sexual assault. "There were some things confiscated by police inside the house that leads them to believe that [the three young men] may have been sexually assaulted," reports Local 6 News, specifying at least one of those things as a smattering of mangled hot dogs. Stay tuned for further developments on the world's first nonhilarious story involving diapers, a rainbow wig, and hot dogs.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4
Nothing happened today.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5
The week ends with the long-expected, conclusion-forgoing, and suspiciously timed conviction of Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity, for which the deposed Iraqi dictator was sentenced to death by hanging.

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