Thompson’s eyes had been gouged out, and his sockets stuffed with torn pages of an AP style book. A message cut into his chest read, “a.m. not AM.”

UWM Prime editor in chief Mitch Bellig was charged with using slave labor to produce a campus publication that funded an underground drug factory following his arrest yesterday morning by Milwaukee police.

Bellig was found on Brady Street at 3:22 a.m. by an undercover police patrol.

“The warrant for him had gone out earlier that day,” said Lt. Fred Beckwickz. “Just doing my usual patrol when I saw this haggard man stumbling about the street. I figured he was all strung out on Nuke. The guy started attempting to hitchhike. I realized it was Bellig when he approached my vehicle, mistaking me for a civilian.”

After Bellig’s arrest, a search of his residence on the East Side uncovered an underground factory making the synthetic drug Nuke.

Nuke first made its appearance as a fictional drug in Detroit, in “Robocop 2.” Freed Prime workers said Bellig made the drug with the pocketed funds he received from the UWM Prime.

Katie Samuels, former features editor, said Bellig believes that Nuke, which he desires to distribute to the entire city, is the way to Eden.

“The guys at the lab tried to draw blood from Bellig, but only found Nuke in his veins,” Beckwickz said. “I guess that’s why he didn’t realize he was talking to a police officer when I found him. When he got to my car, he asked for a ride to a Chuck E. Cheese.”

The 1145 N. Breeze St. Chuck E. Cheese ball pit — labeled Chuck E’s Party Zone, next to Chuck E’s Mouse Maze — is the alleged source for most of the Prime’s slaves.

This afternoon investigators uncovered a rusty bear trap under the multicolored plastic balls. The bear trap had an attached piece of duct tape with Bellig’s name on it.

Police believe the device brought all the innocents into the Prime’s malevolent clutches.

Also discovered in the Party Zone were 803 pairs of socks, 54 sets of glasses, four different STDs and a 23-year-old man who’d been trying to get out of the pit since 1989.

No connection has been made between Bellig and these findings. The Mouse Maze is still being investigated.

A warrant for Bellig’s arrest was put out after University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Union Services employee Jason Fenton uncovered what he described as “a writer’s unequivocal hell that not even a nightmare could conjure.”

Fenton was tipped off to the Prime’s malpractice by a Union custodial worker. The worker found the dead body of A&E Assistant Editor Tim Thompson in the UWM Prime’s garbage.

Thompson’s eyes had been gouged out, and his sockets stuffed with torn pages of an AP style book. A message cut into his chest read, “a.m. not AM.”

When Fenton sawed through the locked office door he was stunned.

“The only light,” Fenton said, “came from a burning barrel in the center of the ruin that once was an office. There were moans and screams for help. Editors were shackled to the walls and typewriters.”

Editors were forced not only to write every article, but handprint each issue of that week’s paper with a number two pencil. The burning barrel, and their pain, was their only comfort, Fenton said.

“After I lost my foot in the bear trap, I woke up in my new dank existence,” said Dan Canning, former Prime A&E editor. “Mitch would come in shrieking threats to everyone. I turned in my section on time, and Mitch made me eat the printout. He said it wasn’t liberal enough. Then I re-did it. And then he slapped me, yelling for more sexual topics. Then he said it was bias. And that’s when he came out on his bike.”

According to eyewitness accounts, Bellig sacrificed former News Editor Doug Jarvis to his Nuke God. Jarvis’ bones were fashioned into a bicycle that Bellig often rode around the office for intimidation purposes.

Witnesses said Bellig believed only the virgin blood of a news editor could raise the production levels of Nuke in his drug factory.

When Advertising Department Manager Amanda Upson was asked why they weren’t shackled, tortured or killed, she said, “My only guess is because we worked on commission. So I guess Mitch didn’t think we needed any extra motivation. I didn’t tell anyone because I just figured they were all a bunch of Nuke-outs.”

Editors agree that Bellig probably took the money from the ads to fund his Nuke factory.

After two casualties, un-mendable mental and social injuries, the UWM Prime has folded after almost 50 years of independence.

Peter D. Fox, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association says, “I feel for Bellig. Ask any journalist and they’ll tell you they’ve been chained to a desk in one form or another. It’s really a shame that a man has to be reprimanded for his personal flaws and desire for his co-workers to discover their true potentials. It’s fine Americans like Mitch who did what had to get done to make this country what it is today.”

Bellig is scheduled to appear in Milwaukee County Court on May 13.

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