It was three years ago since the burger stand opened I am local police officer working in Manila and I happen to buy burgers from the nearby burger stand that stood across my house.
I always liked to eat hamburgers and I have been eating it since I was a kid, I couldn’t say no to a burger as it has been my favorite food but it is also the one that will traumatize me for the rest of my adult life
One day a man in his 50s set up a burger stand called “Joey’s Burgers”, the man is a 5’11 tall white american with gray hair and a full beard. He had permit to set up a burger stand and it was a perfect spot because the location he chose to set up his burger stand is just a few meters away from Antonio Rizal National High School and people from all ages went to buy his burgers
I was one of them and at first it tasted good, he’s not like the other burger stand owners who buy their processed patties but instead he makes his own patties in home and stores them in coolers and freezers then brings them to his stand to cook and serve.
He usually opens at 8:00 as it was a vacant time for some students who will buy his burgers and I would always buy burgers on my way to work, and it is that time when he opens his stand that I go and buy his burgers, I even buy 3 burgers at a time and I honestly liked it because the burgers tasted good.
I befriended Joey and we became good friends, he usually reserves 3 burgers for me everytime he opens his stand and he is so polite and has a good sense of humor even if there was a language barrier, he always jokes about me that his patties are made of rat meat which is a popular urban legend in Manila where people use rat meat to make patties, dim sum, or hot chinese buns
These of course are not real and there are no recorded cases of this so I wasn’t alarmed by such jokes from Joey and he even talks about many urban legends that originate from Manila, he always talks about it with me and we occasionally joke at each other
He cracks up some hilarious jokes and it made us good friends. One day I asked him about his burgers and why do they taste good and all Joey told me is that he has a secret ingredient that he mixes it with pork and many other seasonings that he came up with that made his burgers tasty
I asked him if he could tell me what the secret is, he refused and told me it’s a secret his dad told him and he must keep it and even when I reasoned with him, I was refused to know the secret ingredient of Joey’s burgers, I then gave up in respect of his decision and it doesn’t matter to me anyway because I don’t know how to make burgers
Several months have passed and we have a 23 missing persons cases and I always stop at Joey’s in a rush because we’re handling many of these cases and we cannot find any of the missing people, some suspect of kidnapping and their relatives hoping they’re still alive but there is no way to know unless we find them
So one night after leaving from the station I stopped at a local church, it was a big baroque church built by the Spanish in the year 1844, I kneeled down and prayed the rosary in front of a statue of the virgin. One of my petitions was her to tell me who the criminal is and where to find the bodies or the missing people, I got a feeling that Joey is the perpetrator but I dismissed it
I have no evidence whatsoever and Joey is just a normal guy making burgers for a living, as he told me “I’m living my best years by living my passion and it’s making burgers”, how could I accuse such a sweet guy?
Four months have passed and the people are still missing, not one of them are found but the cases only started to add up, before it was 23 now it’s 40 people missing and we don’t know who is taking these people
For some they think it’s the syndicates who kidnap children or some other gang that manages to stay hidden, but nonetheless we will find them if they were a gang hiding under our noses and we will get to arrest them and even maybe rescue the kidnapped people but for now we still have to search and investigate.
I went to my home and I was greeted by my wife and two kids, they were already having dinner when I got home because I am late, I got late because of work, I was working on the case of the missing people in our area, all 40 people in our area are missing and there’s no one that seems to be a perpetrator of the crimes
“Hey. You look stressed” my wife greeted me and hugged me.
“Yeah honey, a lot of people are missing in our area and we still don’t know who the suspect is” I sighed
“It’s been running for months now, can’t your station find any evidence?” My wife said while wiping the sweat off my brow
“Nothing yet….it’s unfortunate and it seems like the suspect is skilled and knows how to hide his tracks” I said as I sat down on the dinner table
“Well….have you guys found any witnesses? You’ve searched far” my wife asked
“Nah, nothing. No witnesses” I sighed as I looked down on my plate
“Maybe it’s time to look into our area” My wife said
“We did and no one is found to be the suspect” I said looking down at my plate with the dish finally eaten
“Well I guess you need to rest now along with the kids” she said in her soothing voice
“Whatever happens, don’t go outside the house until the case is over” I said to my wife
“You can bet on that, my uncle stays with us here and walks the kids to school while you’re gone” she replied
“Well that’s great, I think we should pay him more and let’s go to bed, I’m dead tired” I said back and my wife nodded and took the plates off the table.
I got up and went upstairs to the bedroom, I changed into my house attire and drifted off to sleep.
A scream in the middle of the night awakened me and I instantly got up, it woke my wife up and she rubbed her eyes, I quickly rushed to the window to see what’s going on and saw a woman getting dragged into a dark alley, I told my wife to get the kids in our room and I rushed to get my service weapon to pursue the man dragging the woman
Once I got my service weapon, I immediately ran out to chase who’s dragging the woman, the man is fast and is dragging her through the cement road of the city and I am into the chase, the lights are dim and many dark corners are present so I am alert all the time while I chase the man, I aimed the pistol and shot at the man but I missed
He dropped the woman who happens to be a young woman in her 20s working as a waitress in a nearby club and I immediately recognized her, I helped her get back to her feet and I looked to see the man but he was never there and I didn’t see him again that night
I escorted the woman to the police station I am working at and reported the incident, they asked me to describe the suspect but I cannot since all I saw was a dark silhouette pulling a woman since it is dark in the street I am living in.
They made her stay in the station and I was given a ride by my colleagues on the way to home, they asked me about the encounter and I described it as creepy and strange and I couldn’t miss the rotting scent of the man who dragged the young woman to the dark
When I got home my wife and kids are already sleeping and so I decided to stay in the living room and lay on the sofa, I didn’t sleep that night so I mostly spent all those hours using my phone and immediately took off for work when 6:00 AM came
I arrived at the station and they had already took the surveillance footage from the cameras and saw what happened
It was a young woman walking alone at night and a man dressed in an all black clothing stalks her, a few minutes into the footage and the action took place, He sucker punched the young woman that dropped her to the ground and dragged her to the dark and that is when she screamed, I saw myself in the footage chasing after a man and shot at the man
The man let go of the woman and ran away but it seems that he wasn’t hit, other cameras caught a glimpse of his face and to my shock it was Joey He was the one who is responsible for such a crime and so we were dispatched to arrest Joey and we did go to his residence
Just by standing at the door we already can smell rotten meat and no one’s answering so we decided to break down the door and to our shock and horror we saw inscriptions and drawings from what I could call blood on the wall saying random stuff and depicting violence and Joey is not to be found anywhere
We came back to our senses and searched the whole house, all we can find are human body parts and bones of animals, it was smelling bad inside there and we were searching up the house for items and evidence until one of my colleagues discovered a hidden door.
We opened it and saw stairs heading down to some basement and it smells even worse, we went down to search and the walls are covered in blood, we saw cells with bones in it and halfway through the hallway the wallpaper suddenly changed, it was nothing more but human skin used as wallpaper
My colleagues vomited upon realizing what it was and I joined them as well, it was disgusting and the floor is full of blood, we carefully walk through and saw a horrifying discovery, all bodies of the 40 missing people are confirmed to be in the basement
We confirmed it and another team was dispatched to assist us and as we were searching all the corpses for identity confirmation I found a piece of paper inside the mouth of a dead woman and I opened it
Here is what’s on the list:
“Joey’s burgers recipe
1 pork meat 1 cow liver 1 piece of human meat 1 piece of cheese 1 piece of human breast tissue Salt and pepper Buns Lettuce Bacon”
This horrified me and traumatized me for the rest of my adult life and I was escorted out of the house as the entire SOCO comes to the house, I threw up outside and passed out
I awakened in the hospital and I was soon discharged, Joey was never found and is still wanted today. He is out there somewhere in this world and I cannot forgive for not catching this monster and what’s even is that he has been feeding me human flesh for all that time
Joey is still out there and he might strike on your neighborhood next, so if you see a white guy opening a burger stand, you better watch out and be careful out there.